Family Justice (Transparency, Accountability and Cost of Living) Bill

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Friday 26th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the most welcome moves made by this Government is to give a greater local say on wind farm developments—such as at Tydd St Giles in my constituency, which has galvanised the local population. The vast majority of people are deeply concerned as we already have many wind farms in North East Cambridgeshire. Fenland now produces more energy than it requires for its own needs. The local countryside was asset-stripped of most of its rural services under the last Government, and one of the few things being added to rural communities is something they do not want. My hon. Friend is right: because of the cost and environmental impact of such schemes, we should instead embrace the big-ticket energy solutions that are going to work.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The Bill suggests a road map for ending fuel poverty; it is not an in-depth discussion of energy generation. I would therefore be grateful if the hon. Gentleman returned to the issues addressed in the Bill. I think Mr Speaker has already given a warning on this matter.

[Stephen Barclay]

I am most grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as, with characteristic prescience, you anticipate my closing remarks.

The very cost that the PAC has looked at on a number of occasions is what is driving fuel poverty in the fens: the cost of production is adding an extra tariff that is particularly detrimental to my many elderly constituents. We have sought to help them through an initiative that would, perhaps, be welcomed in Madam Deputy Speaker’s constituency, too. The Golden Age Fair is run by Fenland district council and helps those living in fuel poverty to access the limited grants and other aids that are available. It does so by running a computer programme that helps to analyse people’s living costs.

I commend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley for introducing his Bill, and I support his aims. Like me, he seeks to address some very real concerns about child protection. However, although the existing structure clearly has flaws that we need to address, we cannot do that by having more experts commenting on experts. We address it by ensuring expert reports are accurate—not by having more complexity, which serves to create less accountability —and by having a simpler, clearer system that will better champion the interests of the children we seek to protect. By having such a system, I hope we will ensure that my constituent, a loving grandfather, will be able to get custody of his grandson—as he wants, and as I believe is in the best interests of the child.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

This CRB issue is very important. The fact is that one local authority does not recognise a CRB accreditation from another local authority. For example, my sister taught at one school and yet she had to pass the CRB accreditation process to pick up her children from, and use a minibus at, another school. Would it not make sense to have a CRB system whereby accreditation is recognised nationally?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I know that the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee) realises that he needs to come back to the Bill. Although he and other Members may be tempted to discuss CRB checks in general, they can do so only in so far as they relate to the Bill and not with regard to a rewriting of the scheme.

[Dr Lee]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), I have had a CRB check on more than one occasion, which is remarkable. I agree that it would be nice if the checks were portable.

To bring the subject back to the Bill, my point is that we should be cautious about anything to do with CRB. The central thrust of the argument of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley is to protect the child, and I am not convinced that CRB checks do that.

Part 3 mentions fuel poverty. As I have said, I serve on the Energy and Climate Change Committee and, on the day on which EDF has announced an 11% increase in fuel prices, the cost of fuel is of great importance to every family throughout the country. I think that that is why the definition of fuel poverty and, indeed, poverty need to be carefully drawn up. On poverty, most of us can only really talk about the experiences of people we know. My grandfather was born into what I would describe as poverty: he did not have running water or a toilet, he shared a tap with six other cottages, and there was no electricity. That was in the 1930s in this country. He also shared a three-bedroom home with eight siblings. I would describe that as poverty.

Today, I struggle with the definition of what poverty is, and I draw on professional experience in making such comments. I have made home visits to pretty socially deprived parts of Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, one of which was to somebody who had a fantastic plasma screen TV—I think it was bigger than the one that I am fortunate enough to possess—but no carpets. Ultimately, when we draw up a definition of poverty, we have to bear in mind that attitude and choice make a profound difference to how much money people then have left to spend on fuel.

There are some difficulties with the current definition of fuel poverty in the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000. The Library briefing paper highlights how the definition relates to problems with fuel prices, household income and dwelling condition. The conditions of the dwelling are the responsibility of the dwellers to some extent. The individuals in the social housing flat that I visited had made a choice to spend money on equipment for a fantastic audio-visual system and Sky subscriptions, and not to spend it on carpets. Does the fact that they are no longer able to afford a properly insulated flat—which it is not if it does not have carpets—mean that they are in poverty or not? On the definition of fuel poverty, which is what the hon. Gentleman seeks to address, let us not shy away from the reality that there are people in this country who make perverse decisions on priorities for home expenditure. If we can deal with that, we may go some way to dealing with the problems of fuel poverty.

I cannot conceive of a situation whereby anybody in this country is as poor as my grandfather was. If they are as poor, that begs the question: where does the £3 billion-plus per week spent on the welfare state go? We spend a significant sum as a proportion of our gross domestic product on welfare payments, so if there are families and individuals who are genuinely without enough finance to pay for food and heating, I suggest that the system is not fit for purpose.

Energy efficiency is mentioned in the Bill. I do not need any convincing that improving the efficiency of both residential and industrial properties is the lowest-hanging fruit in trying to reduce families’ energy bills, and indeed in reducing the cost of energy to the country, given that we import so much of it. I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman in that. I expect that there will be cross-party support for that principle. If the finances allowed the Government to subsidise and incentivise anything, I hope that it would be the proper, fuel-efficient insulation of properties. The Government’s green deal is a good start in that direction, and I hope that there will be more work in that area.

I am not 100% sure that microgeneration is the way forward. Combined air conditioning and water heating pumps are a good idea, and I visited a site in Norway where they were being made. I believe that work on that would be beneficial. Ultimately, we need to find a way of generating our electricity in the most cost-effective, efficient and low-carbon form possible. As I said in an intervention earlier, nuclear is the only option that ticks those boxes. I do not know the hon. Gentleman’s personal position, but I know that his party has some reluctance in the nuclear arena. They should revisit the matter, because as far as I am concerned, the science, engineering and everything else points to nuclear being the solution. If we could bring about the most cost-effective possible installation of nuclear power stations, energy prices would become more stable and affordable in the medium to longer term for families up and down the country. The fuel poverty that is mentioned in the Bill would therefore become less of a problem.