Fuel Poverty

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

As the noble Baroness said, the Government are very focused on this issue. We are trying to improve the various schemes to focus them more on low-income and vulnerable people. We have a report from the Competition and Markets Authority looking at price, and at the key issue of pre-payment meters, which are extremely important for the poor and vulnerable—and which Lord Ezra, who used to ask questions on this subject, did so much to bring to everyone’s attention.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that it is not only the price of fuel and heating that are important, but how you use them? In my days as a member of the London Electricity Board, we encouraged a programme to be sent, particularly to elderly and vulnerable people, telling them how they could intensify the use of one particular room at times when they would be at serious risk of ill health if they did more. At least we sent out information that could be useful to people to protect them. Are the authorities that produce fuel still doing that? If not, can it be sent out by a health department or someone of that type?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

The noble Baroness makes an important point about the need to get the information to the consumer, which I very much agree with. Public Health England recently estimated that cold homes cost the NHS £850 million a year—so we need to get the regimes right, and we also need to communicate that well, both through the energy providers and more generally.