Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (amendment) Order 2017

Callum McCaig Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd March 2017 General Committees

[Jesse Norman]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government made clear in a debate last Thursday and in other remarks that they would bring forward a consumer Green Paper and a response to the Competition and Markets Authority. A specific response on the issues he raises will be addressed in those documents.

The order will reduce the overall spend of the scheme from £860 million a year now to £640 million a year. That has been done to constrain the impact of Government policies on all consumer bills. In making the change we have also sought to ensure that the support offered by the ECO is focused more on those in more need.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

In this and any future scheme, has any consideration been given to putting the burden on to the taxpayer as a whole, as that would be far more progressive and would go some way to reducing fuel poverty? As the Minister will know, those with lower incomes pay more on fuel bills and therefore a bigger share of the contribution to schemes that are meant to reduce fuel poverty.

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[Jesse Norman]

There are two points to make on that. First, the way to think about all these things is as part of a wider energy mix that is designed to solve the trilemma of security, affordability and decarbonisation. On the contribution of offshore wind, for example, it is true that there is some question as to its total cost when including intermittency. It is also true that, had it not been for the substantial Government investment in this area, we would not have the situation in which costs for this technology are falling faster and further than anyone would have anticipated.

[Callum McCaig]

On intermittency, I understand—and I put a question to the Minister’s colleague at Energy questions last week—that the Government are refusing to publish a report that they commissioned to look at that very thing. If there are questions on the cost of intermittency, publishing that report would greatly help us to have that debate in an informed manner. Will the Minister look at publishing the report by Frontier Economics on the full cost of electricity generation?

[Jesse Norman]

I am happy to look at the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion. On the point I was making to my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate, we are not starting from the position he described. That position has the effect of disguising costs. The reason why we have carbon emissions issues is precisely because of the externalities built into previous models of industrial development. Those substantial costs were not included in the true cost of production of the goods and services concerned. It is simply untrue to suggest, even by implication—I am not suggesting my hon. Friend was suggesting this—that there had been some Elysium or status beforehand in which costs were explicit and are now not; there were costs before that were not explicit and there may be costs now that are not. From a Government standpoint, there is no hiding of costs as regards expenditure by either consumers or the Government.

Let me say a couple of other things. The overall energy market approach my hon. Friend describes was well outlined recently in a report by the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, as he may know. It remains an important part of the accountability of Government that we respond to it and are aware of it as an alternative. However, it is worth saying that it would do nothing as such to alleviate the issues of fuel poverty that concern us today. In my judgment, it is not an answer to say that local authorities are somehow a go-to alternative. The truth is that the delivery of those and related measures by local authorities has historically been quite mixed.

On the setting the 10% figure, that was designed, based on the consultation, to allow for a period of experimentation during the transition period, precisely to assess whether that number could be raised in line with the suggestions that have been made. The number involved—even at 10% of £45 million—is not a trivial amount of supplier obligation. I think that is a reasonable and proper justification.

I will say a couple of things about the matters raised by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test. He asked why we were presenting the order so late. I share his concern about that. My preference would be for measures to be presented to Parliament as early as possible. The difficulty has been—in part, this refers to a couple of earlier points—last year’s changes in Government and knock-on effects, which have delayed the process. It is certainly not something that any Government would want to make a habit of, so I take the point.

I have a couple of comments to make in response to what the hon. Gentleman said about a reduction on a reduction: first, the number of homes in fuel poverty has continued to fall since 2010, and it is clear that the measures continue to have a powerful effect. It is also important to bear down on consumers’ bills. If the hon. Gentleman wants to introduce specific costed proposals for restoring the funding that he criticises the Government for reducing, it is incumbent on him to state by how much he would be prepared to put it up, and how much he would be prepared to burden taxpayers or consumers. In addition, we expect, by September 2018, to have met a target of 850,000 homes insulated. That leaves 150,000 by 2020, which is in line with the manifesto commitment made in 2015. The Government believe that they are on track.

As for the fourth carbon budget, the hon. Gentleman was talking about totals—and the challenge for the Government is to meet the fourth carbon budget in total. The support and advice that the Committee on Climate Change offers is always welcome and of interest to us, but the focus is on the total. The hon. Gentleman painted a beguiling picture of towels being tightened and retightened in the bowels of the Department; but I think it is fair to describe the process of aligning all the different carbon saving measures required to meet the budgets as complex and difficult. That is what the clean growth plan, which will be published in due course, will do.