Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011

Baroness Maddock Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2011 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)]

My Lords, I beg to move that the Committee has considered the draft Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011.

These regulations build on the voluntary agreement negotiated by the previous Government with energy suppliers. I applaud them for bringing forward the primary legislation in the Energy Act 2010, which has allowed us to make this scheme a reality.

For over five years, the numbers of households in fuel poverty has risen. It is estimated that in 2010, 4 million households were living in fuel poverty in England. The Government are committed to tackling fuel poverty and supporting low-income and vulnerable consumers to heat their homes affordably. The warm home discount scheme enabled by this instrument will help this to happen.

We are aware that fuel poverty is an issue that is best tackled via many angles, not just one. That is why there are four proposed elements to the warm home discount scheme. The first is the core group. A specified financial benefit of at least £120 per annum will be provided to households in receipt of certain elements of pension credit. Receipt of pension credit guarantee credit, which goes to some of the poorest pensioners, is one of the best ways to identify this group. We consider this group to be at high risk of fuel poverty. Over half of all fuel-poor households contain someone over 60, and over 80 per cent are in the lowest three income deciles.

The second group is the broader group. The same financial benefit specified for the core group will be provided to a broader group of households, who are fuel poor or vulnerable to fuel poverty. We have specified a number of state benefits that energy suppliers could choose from to identify those eligible for broader group support. Suppliers would also be able to propose additional criteria for approval by Ofgem, which would target support at those in or at risk of fuel poverty.

The third group involves the legacy spend. This will give a smooth transition from the voluntary agreement, which is an agreement that has been in place for the past three years between the Government and energy companies. It provides financial assistance to vulnerable consumers but the agreement ends this month. The amount of spending by suppliers on these legacy forms of support will decrease over the course of the scheme, as the amount of spending on rebates for the core and broader groups increases. The warm home discount scheme builds on the success of the voluntary agreement, and allows the Government to provide stronger support for the people who need it.

Lastly, there are the industry initiatives. Suppliers will be able to fund some activities in addition to the provision of direct financial support, which will benefit households in or at risk of fuel poverty. The scheme regulations detail which forms of support can be funded and include activities that improve targeting of the available support or those that provide energy advice to consumers. Through the scheme, those participating energy suppliers will provide support worth up to £1.1 billion over the next four years. But we must ensure that the resources we have are used effectively to tackle the problems underlying fuel poverty.

On 14 March, the Secretary of State launched an independent review of the fuel poverty target and its definition, led by Professor John Hills. Our intention is that suppliers’ contributions to the policy will be proportionate to their market share. Further regulations will be laid to allow a reconciliation mechanism to guarantee this, should the House support these scheme regulations. Subject to support from Parliament for the data-matching regulations due to be tabled later this year to help identify the core group, we estimate that around 2 million low-income and vulnerable households will be assisted by the scheme annually. On that basis, I commend this instrument to the Committee.

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, I welcome what the Minister has said, and these regulations, but I have some questions that I hope he will be able to help me with. I should also declare an interest: I am a vice-president of National Energy Action, a charity which campaigns to help people in fuel poverty. I know that the Minister himself, through the passage of the Energy Bill, is very committed to trying to alleviate fuel poverty in this country, but I wonder if he can help me.

The Minister estimated that 2 million households a year will benefit from this scheme, and he also explained that there will be legacy households from the voluntary scheme. Can he tell us how much of an overlap there is between these two groups? Maybe this is in the documents that go with the order—I did have a look at them, but I was not able to find this myself.

Also, following the Budget there was a lot of peripheral discussion about the fact that the upgrade on the winter fuel allowance that had been in place temporarily for two years was not continuing. I appreciate that the Minister may not be able to do this today, but is it possible to say what percentage of pensioners who get the winter fuel allowance are likely to be helped by this scheme? It is fairly important that we get that message out, given that there has been publicity in local papers about how terrible it is that people are losing their extra £50, or, if they are over 80, £100. It seems that many of the people who will find it hardest should benefit from this scheme, and it would be helpful if we could get those figures out.

I turn to my other question. Other than the pensioner or elderly group, will the Minister tell us more about how he sees other vulnerable groups, and who are they? I understand that the main concern of this is to protect the health and welfare of elderly people, but there are of course other vulnerable households—as indeed the noble Lord mentioned. I am thinking particularly of low-income families with young children, or people who have long-term disabilities or illnesses which mean they need to be kept warm.

I welcome this, I hope that the regulations that go with it later on are fairly speedy in coming, and I look forward to the answers from my noble friend.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

My Lords, like my noble friend I, too, welcome these regulations. They bring a little more certainty to what has hitherto been a rather uncertain variety of schemes.

My main concern has always been how the suppliers are intended to identify the householders that they are supposed to help. My noble friend will remember that we had some discussion about that on the question of the Green Deal. It is on these energy discounts and what have previously been called rebates on bills that the problem has been at its most acute. I do not need to go over the detail of this, but when we first debated the CERT scheme—it must be nearly four years ago—two things were evident. One was the considerable hostility of the industry—the suppliers—to becoming involved in this sort of activity. I think attitudes have dramatically changed, and I find in talking to industry representatives a clear recognition that helping those who are most likely to suffer fuel poverty is indeed very much part of their social obligation. I welcome this change of heart; a variety of factors have contributed to it and I do not necessarily need to go into them.

The second problem, as I said, has always been that of identifying the households. We pressed former Ministers very hard on this and eventually secured a clause in the Pension Bill which allowed Ministers in the Department of Work and Pensions to supply the names of pension credit pensioners, as households likely to be most in need. Given the problem that had been identified—I will forbear from giving a quotation in Latin, because that now is rather frowned upon in this House.