Cost of Living

Caroline Flint Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but believe that the Gracious Speech fails to help families, squeezed households and pensioners to deal with the cost of living crisis and the double-dip recession; regret that cuts to feed-in tariffs and the Warm Front scheme mean that families and pensioners who are paying higher electricity and gas bills have been abandoned by the Government; call on your Government to ensure that energy companies meet their obligations and provide the cheapest tariffs for over 75s, to protect small business owners, to ensure the Green Deal is offered fairly to all consumers and cuts bills to increase competition in the energy market to drive down energy bills for all; urge your Government to reverse their out of touch decision to increase rail fares by three per cent above inflation in 2013 and 2014, and to allow train companies to increase train fare prices by a further five per cent; call on your Government to ensure that train operators cap all regulated fares fairly across all journeys so that no regulated train fare increase is more than one per cent above inflation, to reform the bus market by extending to the rest of England London-style powers to regulate fares, protect services and to require operators to provide a concessionary scheme for young people; and further call on your Government to help hard pressed motorists by temporarily reducing VAT to cut fuel prices and boost the economy.”.

This Government promised recovery, but they have delivered recession—a recession made in Downing street: the worst unemployment in 16 years; 1 million young people out of work; the first double-dip recession since the 1970s; a lost decade for Britain’s families and pensioners, who are being subjected to the most sustained assault on their living standards in living memory; and a Government who are hurting, not helping.

Unfolding day by day in kitchens and living rooms in every town, village and city up and down this country is a cost-of-living crisis. Two of the biggest pressures on family budgets are rising energy bills and soaring transport costs, so my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), who will close the debate for the Opposition, and I could not let the Queen’s Speech pass without addressing those vital concerns.

The VAT hike will cost a family with children an extra £450 this year and push the price of petrol at the pumps even higher. Just when the costs of child care are rising twice as fast as wages, this Government have cut the child care element of working tax credit. While bankers have seen their taxes slashed, cuts to front-line services will mean fewer police on the beat, longer NHS waiting times and more families pushed to the brink because of the costs of social care and the closure of Sure Start children’s centres and other vital support for families.

We have a Government who stand up for the wrong people, with a Budget in which millions are asked to pay more so that millionaires can pay less; a Government who do more for the rail companies than for hard-pressed commuters; and a Government who put the energy companies before families struggling to make ends meet.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I am sorry to interrupt the rhetoric with some facts, but will the right hon. Lady remind the House what happened to rail and bus fares during 13 years of Labour Government, and can she confirm that Labour’s policy is that rail fares should continue to increase above inflation?

[Caroline Flint]

We saw what was happening and put a cap on those fares. This Government have decided to remove the cap and to let fares rise way above inflation, but we have said that when they do rise above inflation they should do so by no more than 1%, so we are not going to take any lectures about supporting families from the Tories and Liberal Democrats in this Government.

The truth is that in every corner of the country families have huge worries when they look at depressed and frozen wages, more part-time work and more people who are long-term unemployed; and every week families worry about energy bills.

Energy bills have now risen up the agenda for families and are one of the biggest worries that they face. The latest figures from Ofgem put the typical annual energy bill at £1,310, so what is the Government’s answer? At their energy summit last year, they told people:

“Check, switch and insulate to save.”

But, in an answer on 18 April to one of my parliamentary questions, we found out that fewer people switched energy supplier in the final month of 2011 than ever before. I do not remember seeing that in one of the departmental press releases.

The Government said that energy efficiency was a no-brainer, but the Warm Front scheme has collapsed, the energy companies are not delivering the measures that they were meant to and the green deal is in chaos. In last week’s Queen’s Speech the Government promised

“reform of the electricity market to deliver secure, clean and affordable electricity and ensure prices are fair,”

but the irony of the Government’s electricity market reforms is that one thing they do not do is reform the electricity market. There is no change to the way in which energy is bought and sold, nothing to open the books of the energy giants and nothing even to improve competition in the energy market and break the stranglehold of the big six: no change, no hope and, I am afraid, not a clue how to help families affected by those pressures on the cost of living.

Our energy market is not working in the public interest. Confidence in the energy companies is at a near-record low, complaints have soared and today five of the big six energy companies are under investigation by Ofgem. Yet they see fit to award themselves huge bonuses totalling millions of pounds and even discounts on their own energy bills, while leaving their customers to struggle.

Last winter, more than 6.6 million families and pensioners across the UK could not afford to heat their homes properly. The number of pensioners dying from hypothermia has doubled in the past five years. Yet four out of five people are paying more for their energy than they need to. Energy prices are already at near record levels, and last year, when wholesale prices rose, every energy company put up its gas and electricity prices, in some cases by as much as nearly 20%. Yet when wholesale prices fell this year, none of the companies cut both their gas and electricity prices. British Gas, for example, cut only its electricity prices, even though it has twice as many gas customers. On the other hand, EDF, which has significantly more electricity customers, cut only its gas prices. Now, with increases in wholesale prices on the horizon again, British Gas, Britain’s biggest energy supplier, is threatening yet another round of price hikes.

These are not the signs of a healthy, functioning competitive market; they are the symptoms of a market that works in the interests of the energy companies, not of the public. There is a reason the market works like that. We have companies that both produce and retail power. They generate the power and sell it to themselves, and then on to the public. When wholesale prices are high, the generation side of the business makes big profits; when wholesale prices are low, the retail side of the business makes big profits. Either way, the energy companies always make big profits and customers always foot the bill.

That was exactly what the respected Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank found a few weeks ago. Its research shows that if the market were truly competitive, efficiency savings alone would knock £70 a year off the average bill. It reckons that over 5 million households in the UK are currently being overcharged and that if something were done about it they could see savings of at least £300 a year. That is why we have said that all energy suppliers should have to sell the power that they generate into an open pool from which anyone could bid to retail to the public. That would allow new firms to enter the market, increase competition and help to drive down bills. Of course it would not be popular with the big energy companies, but unlike the Government, Labour Members are putting the interests of the public ahead of those in the energy industry.

[Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)]

It is all very well for the right hon. Lady to recite a catalogue of problems, but I am scratching my head about the record of her party in government, when prices were going up and we all had problems. I was not aware that the Government of the time were stepping in to look after consumers as prices rose. It is worth pointing out, of course, that Labour’s own leader was Energy Secretary at the time.

[Caroline Flint]

This Government have now been in office for nearly two years. The truth is that—

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

rose—

[Caroline Flint]

Could I first answer the question from the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray)?

The truth is that the leader of the Labour party, when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, did start to tackle the discussion about the energy market. He said that we should have a pool, and that was in our manifesto. He also undertook to look at better ways in which we could provide for energy efficiency, and I will come to those shortly. In government, we had a good record of helping people with their bills. Millions of people were helped by Warm Front and millions of pensioners were helped by the winter fuel payments. What are this Government doing to help people with that? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. There is an excessive amount of noise in the Chamber. It would be good if the issues could be aired in an orderly manner. I am grateful for the assent to that proposition from so experienced and senior a denizen of the House as the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), who is himself setting an excellent example that others could follow.

[Caroline Flint]

I am always pleased to talk about Labour’s record in government, but let us now talk about the other side of the debate about energy prices—that is, saving energy. As Ministers are fond of telling us, the cheapest energy is the energy that we do not use. I am very proud that over 2 million households were helped with energy efficiency and insulation under the previous Labour Government. Through Warm Front, we helped over 200,000 households each and every year. This year, only 40,000 people are getting help.

The last time we debated this matter, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), said:

“Warm Front does not deliver insulation”.—[Official Report, 11 January 2012; Vol. 538, c. 256.]

He obviously had not browsed his Department’s website, which states clearly:

“The Warm Front scheme offers a package of heating and insulation measures”.

With such insight into his Department’s policies, we can only hope that the job of deciding who was eligible for a Warm Front grant did not fall to him. However, that might help to explain why nearly 30,000 people who applied for help last year were turned down.

Let us reflect on the figures. Under Labour, in each and every year more than 200,000 households were helped by Warm Front. This year, under this Government, only 40,000 households received help and 30,000 were turned down. They were turned down even though there was an underspend in the Warm Front budget of more than £50 million. That is right: hundreds of thousands of families face higher bills next winter and every winter because of cuts to Warm Front, and tens of thousands of families and pensioners who applied for help last year were left in the cold because of the incompetence of the Secretary of State and his Department, while £50 million that is in the Government’s coffers is going back to the Treasury. We asked whether the underspend could be used to provide further help through the programme. The answer, which I received very recently, was that it is going back to the Treasury.

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)]

I will try to help the right hon. Lady, because her own Front Benchers are laughing at her. May I take her back to the comments that she made about the Leader of the Opposition? When he was doing my job, he was pressed on what the Labour Government were going to do about energy prices. In 2009, Andrew Marr asked him:

“When it comes to the price of energy…are we or are we not going to have to pay more?”

He responded:

“There are upward pressures on prices, yes”.

I am afraid that the right hon. Gentleman did very little on consumer prices. Labour had a record of failure.

[Caroline Flint]

We have not seen much of the Secretary of State since he took up his post. If that is the best he can offer after a number of absences from the Chamber, I worry about this Government and their handling of one of the most important areas for consumers and for jobs.

It is absolutely true that in reshaping the energy market to provide a low-carbon future, there are pressures. We have never denied that. However, today we are talking about the efforts to make the energy market more competitive; how we can ensure that a trail of energy companies is not investigated for mis-selling and dodgy dealing; and the increasing number of families who, under this Government, are paying more than they need to. The Government are stepping away from any responsibility to help the most vulnerable people in this country to tackle their fuel bills and keep their energy consumption down. It is possible to have policies on that, while recognising that there are pressures in the bigger scheme of things. It is a given that there are pressures—it is what a Government do about them that counts. This Government are doing nothing at all.

In government, we put tough obligations on all the big energy companies to use some of their profits to help poorer customers in deprived areas make their homes more energy-efficient. The community energy saving programme was meant to help 90,000 households. Two and a half years into the scheme—most of it under this Government—and with only a matter of months left, just 30,000 households have been helped. What are the Government doing about that? As far as we know, they are doing absolutely nothing.

We do know that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, had a meeting with all the big energy companies on 1 February this year. We also know that the energy companies are lobbying the Government to relax the obligations on them or to push back the deadline. The Minister refuses to tell us what exactly was discussed at the meeting, what was agreed and whether he has caved in to the companies’ demands. Why will he not tell us that? He will not share with us—

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Flint]

I will just finish the point that I am making.

[Gregory Barker]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Caroline Flint]

No, I will not give way before I inform the House of the reason that the Minister has given me. He will have to wait a second. Tell me if this is wrong—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Minister of State is a rather excitable fellow. I am not interested in whether he thinks he can answer now. He will answer at the point at which the intervention is allowed. The hon. Gentleman is a senior member of the Government. He needs to cultivate a reputation for being a cerebral figure, not an over-excitable one.

[Caroline Flint]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We have tabled parliamentary questions and used parliamentary procedures to get information, because Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change are not especially forthcoming off their own bat. In response to my question, what did the Minister say? He said that he would not tell us, and I quote—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let me make the point for the last time. We conduct debate in an orderly way. We do not have Members, be they Back Benchers, Ministers or Opposition Front Benchers, yelling out from a sedentary position, encouraged by cheerleaders behind them. It is an unseemly way to operate. The Minister has registered his interest in offering his view, and no doubt he will have the opportunity to do so in due course. In the meantime, he should sit in statesmanlike quietude and the House will benefit.

[Caroline Flint]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. When I asked the Minister precisely why he could not tell us what was discussed at the meeting and what had been decided, he replied that he could not because it would “prejudice the commercial interests”—presumably of the big energy companies. That is a direct quote. I find it hard to believe that the big six energy companies are revealing, in front of each other—apparently, they are competitors—information, so sensitive that it would prejudice their commercial interests, about why they are not on target to meet their obligations to help people with their fuel bills and energy efficiency.

[Gregory Barker]

What we said is that we could not give the minutes of the meeting, but I can tell the right hon. Lady extremely clearly that I made it absolutely, perfectly clear that we expect the companies to fulfil all their obligations, we are not backing down and we will continue to hold them to account—unlike the previous Government.

[Caroline Flint]

I listened very carefully to that intervention, but I still do not understand why the hon. Gentleman said to me that he could not share the minutes because it would “prejudice the commercial interests”. I am interested to know what commercial interests were in the minutes of that meeting. I find it hard to believe that any of the six companies would discuss such sensitive information in front of each other.

[Gregory Barker]

The right hon. Lady will know that no minutes of any meeting were ever shared under the previous Government. We do not release minutes. However, I tell her again, very clearly, that we are holding the energy companies to account, we fully expect them to deliver their obligations and we will make sure that they do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Flint]

All fine words, but obviously the excuse for not sharing is changing as the debate continues. What is very clear from that answer is that it is all flannel, all rhetoric. There is no sense of what demands the Government have put on the energy companies, or of whether the companies will have to meet those demands by the set deadline, a few months hence, or of whether the number of families helped will increase from 30,000 to the 90,000 the companies are supposed to be helping. There is no sense of clarity, and no practical suggestions or effort by this Government to get a grip. On delivery, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, has previous in so many other areas that it is becoming rather a pattern.

The truth is that the Government have not defined what action they will take. They hold private meetings in which they are not willing even to share some practical explanation of what will happen next. Is it impossible to understand why the public are feeling so let down and why organisations that support families in difficult circumstances are worried about whether this Government have the gumption to get on top of this issue, when they are failing in so many other areas? If there is a choice between the interests of the big energy companies and those of people who are struggling to make ends meet, it seems that under this Government the energy companies win every time. That is the real problem with the Government: not only are they out of touch, but they stand up for the wrong people.

[Laura Sandys]

Having got quite a lot of exercise in the last few minutes trying to intervene, I welcome the opportunity to point out a few facts. In 13 years of Labour Government there were six or seven energy White Papers, I think, but only one Bill. In two years of this coalition Government, we have got retail market reform coming through from Ofgem; one piece of energy legislation has been passed, and there is a second in this Queen’s Speech. That shows that the Government are absolutely committed to delivering a competitive and fair market to a greatly squeezed consumer.

[Caroline Flint]

The truth is that the Labour Government left in place—[Hon. Members: “A recession.”]

[Mr Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)]

We did not leave a recession.

[Caroline Flint]

As my hon. Friend says, we did not leave a recession, that’s for sure. That is at the door of this Government. When we left Government, we were a world leader in setting targets for reducing emissions and signing up to international agreements—acknowledged by the present Government as an historic effort by a British Government in any situation—and unlike in many other countries, we had a consensus around that, which is good. The problem is that this Government are squandering that legacy with the measures they are taking. We have fallen back in investment in renewables. Families are being abandoned, left on their own to deal with rising energy bills. In addition—I am sorry if the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys) did not catch my earlier remark—we do not have an energy Bill that will achieve real reform of the energy market to make it more competitive and fair for British citizens.

Warm Front has collapsed. The Government are not standing up to the energy companies. A lot is resting on the green deal. We want the green deal to work. It is an idea on which the leader of the Labour party worked very hard; it was included in our manifesto and the pilots started under our Government. The truth is, however, that unless Ministers want the green deal to be a good deal, it simply will not work. Time and again, in debates in this Chamber and in Committee, we have proposed improvements, but the Government have refused to listen. Last year, the Government said that the green deal would help 14 million households to improve their energy efficiency, but today their impact assessment forecasts that the programme will reach fewer than 4 million. Even the Government’s own advisers think that is optimistic: the Committee on Climate Change now thinks it will help only 2 million or 3 million households. The Government claimed that the green deal would help to create 100,000 jobs, but today that estimate has been halved to just 60,000—[Hon. Members: “That’s not half.”] I said nearly half. It is still nothing to be proud of.

My next point is very important, because one of the Government’s trails for the green deal was that it would save households money. The so-called golden rule was supposed to guarantee households that the savings they made from greater energy efficiency would cover the costs of the original measures, and just last month the Deputy Prime Minister promised:

“We’ll ensure customers are never charged more for the home improvements than we expect them to make back in cheaper bills.”

However, in answer to a written question from me, the Department was forced to admit:

“It is not possible for Government to guarantee people will save money”—[Official Report, 26 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 983W.]

If Ministers are not careful, they will have a mis-selling scandal on their hands, and it will be entirely of their own making.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

The right hon. Lady talks about the Leader of the Opposition, when he was Energy Secretary, working very hard on the green deal. Why then, when we proposed an amendment to the green deal in the Labour Government’s last Energy Bill, which became the Energy Act 2010, was it voted down by Labour Members, and why did the then Minister, the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock), say it was simply illegal and impossible to deliver it?

[Caroline Flint]

The hon. Gentleman has been a Member of this House for some time and he knows that the last Government, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), were absolutely committed to pursuing the green deal. That is why the pilots started under our Government. That is why the measure was in our manifesto. I think the record speaks for itself. The fact that, on one occasion, we did not support an amendment tabled by the Conservatives is proof, and the result was that the green deal was going ahead. The pilots were under way, it was in our manifesto, and had we won the last election—sadly, we did not—it would be in a better state today. The green deal was meant to be up and running by this October, and the secondary legislation should have been laid in March. With just over a week until the House rises, we will not see anything until the middle of June at this rate.

There are question marks over whether the energy companies even have the technology in place to bill people correctly. No green deal assessors have been trained, because the courses have not even started yet. Most importantly of all the public, the people who are meant to be taking up the green deal, have absolutely no idea what the interest rate will be or how much it will cost them.

So desperate are Ministers to prop up the policy that they are now considering whether to force it on people who find that their boiler breaks down. Imagine—a family whose boiler breaks down on Christmas eve could have to wait for the council to come round to do a full audit of the property’s energy efficiency, and then have to agree to take out other measures, before they get their heating and hot water turned back on. That is the type of policy that the Government are proposing, and it just shows how out of touch they are.

The truth is, even when times are tough and money is in short supply there are still things that a Government can do to help families and businesses. I know that the Government are short of ideas. At one of my speeches earlier this year, no fewer than 18 civil servants were on the attendance list, including five from the Department of Energy and Climate Change alone. If the Secretary of State is in the market for good ideas for his energy Bill, here are two that I offer him.

First, let us put all those who are over 75 on the cheapest tariff. We know that the elderly are the most vulnerable to the cold weather, the least able to access the best online deals and the most likely to pay over the odds for their energy. In the Secretary of State’s own constituency, if we put all those over 75 on the cheapest deal it would help nearly 8,000 pensioners. It would help more than 8,000 in my constituency. Across the country, it could save as many as 4 million pensioners as much as £200 a year on their energy bills, not through spending more money but by getting our energy firms to show greater responsibility to their most vulnerable customers. However, I am afraid this do-nothing Government stand idly by, content to leave Britain’s pensioners paying more than they need to.

[Mrs Anne McGuire (Stirling) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend also accept that given the number of people who self-disconnect because of the higher charges on key cards, it would be valuable for energy companies to consider how there could be a lower tariff for families who are under pressure? Those families have to take the decision themselves not to continue to heat their homes.

[Caroline Flint]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend. There are a number of areas in which more could be done to make energy companies more responsible, but we hear nothing from the Government about issues such as people on prepayment meters or key cards.

We are talking not about a social tariff but about people over 75 missing out on a deal that they could get if they looked online. For all sorts of reasons, they do not necessarily use online systems as much as others do. Putting them all on the cheapest tariff would be a simple way of making the energy companies step up to their responsibility, and it would get those people the deal that they deserve. They should be able to do that, but every time I have mentioned it in the House I have been knocked back by the Government, who think it would be a measure just for rich over-75s. It would not. It is about justice and tackling the way in which energy companies run their customer services, which are not working in the interests of customers. I would have thought the Secretary of State, as a former Consumer Minister, would understand that a little better.

The second idea among many that we have is that we should consider the position of small businesses. We believe that some straightforward, practical steps can be taken to help relieve the pressure on them and give our economy a shot in the arm. First, we should put an end to unfair contracts and the practice of rolling small businesses on to more expensive tariffs without their consent. Secondly, we should stop small businesses being subject to six years of crippling back-billing for mistakes made not by them but by their energy supplier. We do not allow that to happen to households, and we should not allow it to happen to small businesses either. Thirdly, we should ensure that the energy companies act responsibly towards small firms that have fallen into difficulty with their bills. Just as they have to take all factors into account when a family find themselves in trouble, so should we ask them to come up with sensible and realistic repayment plans for small businesses.

There we go—two ideas: helping the over-75s to get the tariff they deserve, which through no fault of their own they cannot get because it requires online technology, and helping small businesses with some of the ways in which energy companies are exploiting them. We are accused of not having ideas, but there are a few for which I hope we can get Government support. We are trying to think practically about ways to rein in the energy companies and make them more accountable to their customer base, whether it is households or businesses.

What is the biggest drag on people’s living standards? The scandal of millions of people being unemployed, and a Government who have no vision and strategy for putting them back to work. I was at the Yorkshire Post environment awards last week and met businesses at the cutting edge of innovation. I saw that Britain is not short of the skills or technology to lead the world to a new low-carbon economy. However, the Government are short of the political vision to do so, and today we learn that even the Foreign Secretary, a fellow Yorkshire MP, told businesses just last weekend to work harder. He does not believe the Government are doing enough to support Britain’s green businesses.

As I have argued many times, the transition to a low-carbon economy has the potential to be a major source of wealth and employment for this country, both for young people looking to get their first job and for older workers looking to put their skills to use in new industries. However, Britain is falling behind. When Labour left office, the UK was ranked third in the world for investment in green business; today we are seventh. Investment levels are still billions short of where they were in 2009, and jobs and industries that should be coming to this country are now going overseas.

Let us look at solar energy. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle—he has his fingerprints all over these projects—took a knife to the solar industry and had the audacity to claim that more people would get solar power and more people would be employed in the solar industry as a result. Today we see that because of his cuts and his strategy, solar installations have fallen by 90% and 6,000 people have lost their jobs, with yet more cuts on the way. In the end, whether it is solar or any other type of clean energy, businesses will not invest, build factories and create jobs until the Government end the dithering, stop shifting the goalposts and get behind the industries of the future.

We have an electricity market reform Bill that does not reform the electricity market, a Queen’s Speech that does nothing to help families with the cost of living and a Government who, I am afraid, are too much on the side of the big energy companies and not enough on the side of hard-pressed households. I am aware that a number of the Secretary of State’s colleagues, led by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood), have put forward an alternative Queen’s Speech on energy. The Prime Minister has to decide whether he is going to run with the Vulcans or stick with the huskies.

To advocate cutting support for clean energy, and instead dash for gas when wholesale gas prices are the single biggest factor in driving up people’s bills, is madness. There is an alternative—Labour’s fair deal on energy. It would put the public first, protect the most vulnerable and deliver a competitive energy market with fair prices for all. I commend the amendment to the House.

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[Mr Davey]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. By next April, we will have saved a two-earner family on the basic rate of tax more than £1,000 a year in income tax. That is a policy to help people on low pay.

[Caroline Flint]

The Labour Government left office with 1 million fewer people in fuel poverty than we inherited in ’97. No doubt this is a complex area, but the truth is that in the last two years, according to Consumer Focus, there has been a sharp increase in the number of homes in fuel poverty in England and Wales—it has increased from one in five to one in four. What are the Government doing about that?

[Mr Davey]

The right hon. Lady ought to know that we saw a massive V-curve because of how fuel poverty was measured under the previous Government—fuel poverty came down earlier in their period of office and shot up dramatically as global gas prices increased. She is not living in the real world if she thinks that is the correct way to measure fuel poverty. That is why this Government are getting to grips with the problem. We are ensuring we measure the problem properly so we have the right policies, which the previous Government never did.

To return to feed-in tariffs, I remind the right hon. Lady that we have had to reform the scheme designed by the Leader of the Opposition so that huge windfalls do not go to a few people. Our reforms will ensure that many people benefit from solar PV. We are the party of the solar many; they are the party of the solar few.

On Warm Front, the right hon. Lady offered no recognition of the progress we have made to spend our budget; of the reality that a warmer winter last year reduced demand; or of the fact that the shameful scaremongering by Labour Members on Warm Front, who said the scheme was closing more than a year before it will, might just have put some people off applying.

When it comes to Governments being responsible for putting people’s bills up, the right hon. Lady ought to talk to the leader of her party. Let me refer her to the UK’s low carbon transition plan, published by the Leader of the Opposition when he was in my job. Let me further refer her to the analytical annex, page 66, table 9, and the estimate of the cost of the renewable heat incentive on people’s gas bills, as proposed by Labour. The estimated increase in gas bills by 2020 was £179, but this Government stopped that approach, because we were not going to put £179 on people’s gas bills. That is 179 reasons for not taking Labour seriously on energy bills.

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[Mr Davey]

Actually, the hon. Lady’s constituent will be a big beneficiary of the coalition’s policy to increase the personal income tax allowance. She will benefit from that big income tax cut—bigger than anything that Labour did. In fact, I remember Labour taking the 10p rate away from people such as her constituent, costing them £236 a year. So I am afraid she has shot herself in the foot.

[Caroline Flint]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for providing the House with more information about what the Government are attempting to do. The chief outcome of last autumn’s summit, however, was that the companies agreed to write to people to let them know that they should switch and save. Labour argued that the energy companies should be much more specific and make it clear to people what cheaper tariff they should be on. I take it from what he has just said, therefore, that we have a Labour policy gain today.

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[Mr Davey]

The Government have taken many measures to try to keep down the cost of fuel, but the hon. Gentleman will know that we do not control the price of oil globally. I am delighted, however, that we are not suffering from a tanker fuel dispute. The resolution of that dispute is extremely important. [Hon. Members: “No thanks to you!”] That shows how little Opposition Members follow these things.

I will shortly be holding a round-table discussion at my Department to continue the momentum building behind collective purchasing schemes. Together with our policies to make markets work better and to help consumers to get the best deal, we are also making it easier for people to save energy. As the right hon. Member for Don Valley reminded us, one of our mantras is that the most affordable energy of all is the energy we do not have to pay for—she is quite right about that—yet too many of our homes and businesses are leaking heat and wasting energy. Making them more efficient will help consumers and small businesses to cope with costs. We can cut those bills and keep people warmer for less.

Later this year, we will introduce the green deal, bringing energy saving within reach for millions of homes across the country. A new Government-backed scheme will enable householders to make energy efficiency improvements at no upfront cost. Trusted local and national brands will pay for the work with the costs recouped from energy bills, and the green deal will help householders to stay warm for less. We estimate, for example, that a three-bed semi could save £120 a year by installing wall cavity insulation.

When costs rise, the poorest are often hardest hit, so we are committed to helping the most vulnerable heat their homes more affordably. I mentioned the warm home discount in response to the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). It will continue to assist about 2 million low-income households with the cost of heating their homes in 2012-13. Alongside the green deal, parts of the new energy company obligation will deliver heating and insulation measures to low-income vulnerable households, including those in some of the most deprived communities.

[Caroline Flint]

Will the right hon. Gentleman provide clarification on the energy company obligation? I understand that about 50% of the money will go to the most vulnerable families and the other 50% to those with hard-to-treat homes—we are talking about solid walls. Within the second group, is he prepared to consider prioritising the most fuel poor, rather than subsidising people on large incomes? We recognise that hard-to-treat homes are a problem, but we must ensure that that side of the budget prioritises the fuel poor and the vulnerable living in such homes and gets the subsidies to them.

[Mr Davey]

Since becoming Secretary of State, I have spoken to Professor John Hills, given all the work he did analysing fuel poverty, and I have made changes to the energy company obligations as originally designed. The Deputy Prime Minister talked about this issue recently. We will be laying regulations before the House for debate this summer which will contain all the details that the right hon. Lady seeks. I say to her in the nicest possible way that she needs to wait a little bit, but those regulations will be laid before this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Lady is absolutely correct. I wrote to her in February asking for the figures and it took her over a month to respond—

[Caroline Flint]

Pathetic.

[Dr Huppert]

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Lady that that is pathetic—[Interruption.]