International Energy Agency Report

Baroness Neville-Rolfe Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There are, of course, very few people in this country who benefit from air conditioning; rather, it is heating that is the issue. Nothing will drive people to turn down their heating at the moment more than the current high gas prices. I am not sure that we need much of a government information campaign to encourage people to save money where they can, but we do not want it to be at the expense of people living in cold homes.

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)]

My Lords, I echo the tributes paid to the amazing career of Lord Plumb, whom I remember so well in a previous commodity crisis as an interlocutor with the then Agriculture Minister, John Silkin. He was very effective. Given the somewhat limited scope of the IEA-promoted self-help that we have seen in this report, can the Minister remind us of what the Government are doing to insulate consumers, the elderly and struggling small businesses from the mushrooming of energy prices that we have seen?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Indeed, I would be happy to help my noble friend and build on the answer I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Oates, earlier. We are spending from £750 million up to £1 billion a year on ECO 4. We are spending £6.6 billion over this Parliament on all the different insulation and energy-efficiency schemes that I mentioned earlier, delivering practical measures in hundreds of thousands of homes up and down the country. These very successful schemes are driving up the energy efficiency of the poorest households in the country. They are excellent schemes and worthy of the House’s full support.