Caroline Flint
Main Page: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency
Caroline Flint Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House notes that the typical annual dual fuel energy bill has now hit a record high of £1,400; notes with concern the warning from the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group that 300,000 extra households could be pushed into fuel poverty this winter; further notes analysis by National Energy Action which shows that support for fuel poor and low income households will fall dramatically under the Energy Company Obligation; believes that the most sustainable way for households to cut their energy bills is to make their homes more energy efficient; and calls on the Government to ensure that the Green Deal is offered on fair terms and at affordable interest rates to the public, without punitive upfront assessment fees or early repayment fines, to ensure that appropriate action is taken against energy companies that have not met their obligations under the Community Energy Saving Programme or the Carbon Emissions Reduction Target, and to extend the deadline for Warm Front until the full budget for 2012-13 has been committed to expenditure.
As the cold weather sets in and parts of Britain are plunged into sub-zero temperatures, millions of families up and down the country, who are already reeling from the latest wave of energy price hikes, who have been hit by the strivers’ tax and who are facing an even bigger bill to renew their rail season tickets, now find that even the most basic human task of heating their homes has got a little bit harder than it should be. Today, the average family’s annual energy bill stands at a record high of £1,400, up by nearly £300 since the last election.
There are things beyond the control of any Government. No Government can control the weather from day to day or global gas prices, but the test of any Government is the way they respond to those events and the choices they make. I want to address the choices that this Government have made and show what we would do instead.
When we heard that a written ministerial statement was forthcoming today, it crossed my mind that the Government might have thought about our motion’s proposals and seen sense. Instead, the statement says nothing and does even less. I am afraid that it is not worth the paper it is printed on.
No doubt the Secretary of State will tell us that everything is okay. He will tell us that the warm home discount is helping low-income and vulnerable households, but he will not admit that it was the previous Labour Government who legislated for a compulsory rebate from the energy companies to their poorest customers. Nor will he mention that, under the Government’s scheme, hundreds of families with children are still not getting the help to which they are entitled. He will tell us about the support for local energy schemes that was announced yesterday and the energy company obligation, but he will not say how, even when those are taken into account, the level of support that this Government are providing for vulnerable, low-income and fuel-poor households has halved from what it was last year and that it is a fraction of that in years before that. He will say that it does not matter that Warm Front is ending or that the carbon emissions reduction target and the community energy saving programme have finished, because ECO is being introduced. However, over the next 10 years, the Government expect ECO to lift only 250,000 households out of fuel poverty. That is 50,000 fewer than will fall into fuel poverty this winter alone.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that 850,000 more people are now in debt to their energy suppliers? What does she think the Government should do about that?
Caroline Flint
It is very worrying, as my hon. Friend has stated, that Consumer Focus has indicated that both electricity and gas customers—often the same household will pay both bills—are finding that the debt that they owe their energy supplier is going up. That should be an indication that more needs to be done.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Does the right hon. Lady agree that it is a scandal that under this Government, for the first time in 30 years, there is no Treasury-funded scheme to insulate people’s homes? Does she support the call to use the revenue from the carbon floor price or the emissions trading scheme on fuel-poverty measures?
Caroline Flint
I agree; as I will say in my speech, when Warm Front closes on Saturday, it will be the first time since the 1970s that a British Government have not provided an energy efficiency programme. That is a shame. In answer to the hon. Lady’s second question, I believe that we should look at how we can better deal with the issue of energy efficiency. Although the motion does not cover the suggestion that she has made, we have outlined how we can use some money that is already available to get to some of the most vulnerable households.
The difference between Warm Front and ECO is that the Government pay for Warm Front, whereas consumers pay for ECO through their bills. Starting ECO is therefore no excuse for ending Warm Front before the budget is spent.
As a result of the choices that this Government have made, more people are being pushed into fuel poverty, more people are being forced to choose between eating and heating, and pensioners are going to bed early to seek warmth in a house that they cannot afford to heat. Not only Labour Members are saying that. Transform UK predicts that more than 9 million households will be in fuel poverty by 2016. The Hills fuel poverty review, which was commissioned by this Government, but about which we have heard little since its publication, warned that unless Ministers change course, 200,000 more people are set to be in fuel poverty in the next four years and millions of families will be pushed into even deeper fuel poverty. Before Christmas, the Government’s advisers on fuel poverty, the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, predicted that 300,000 more people will fall into fuel poverty this winter.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
I agree with the right hon. Lady that we want lower energy bills. Does she understand that America followed a much more successful policy than the EU by going for cheap gas? Would she recommend that the EU learns from America so that we can have cheaper gas for all our people as well?
Caroline Flint
We have to look at the diversity of our energy supply, but it is unfounded to suggest that there is a silver bullet in relation to gas, because it is unknown as yet. There is another side to what America has done. For example, 40 million people in America are involved in collective switching schemes and, at a local level, community energy generation programmes have been supported through investment. There are things that we can learn from our cousins in America and elsewhere.
However, we are debating the choices that have been made by this Government. The fact that expert organisations are telling all of us as policy makers that the number of people in fuel poverty is going up means that we have to address it. It has not happened by chance or by accident; it has happened because of the choices that this Government have made. They have chosen to end Warm Front. They have chosen to cut winter fuel payments. They have chosen to cut dramatically the support for vulnerable, low-income and fuel-poor households. I am afraid that that is something that they have to face up to.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend reflect on the fact that this ministerial team, in its different guises during this Parliament, and having had a destructive influence on the industry and on jobs in my constituency through the hasty downgrading of input tariffs, has now sneaked out the announcement that it will do away with the Warm Front scheme, which will further erode jobs in my constituency and have a devastating impact on the potential for people to get their houses insulated?
Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend is right. One side of this debate is about how we can help those who are fuel poor and tackle housing stock that leaks energy through its walls, roofs and windows. Another side is about hope for the future and addressing, through new forms of energy and energy efficiency, the prospect of real growth and jobs. I will say a little more about the number of jobs that are being lost.
Caroline Flint
I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and then I will make a bit of progress. I might take more interventions later.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
In a previous reply my right hon. Friend spoke about collective switching schemes. May I inform her that, as of this afternoon, 15,034 UK residents have signed up to the Labour-controlled Greater Manchester Combined Authority’s Fair Energy initiative? That will help them benefit from substantial combined purchasing power across the Greater Manchester city region’s 10 councils, and lower household bills as a result. Is that not a result of Labour in action?
Caroline Flint
It very much is an example of what Labour councils can do at local level and I am proud that the British Labour party was the first political party in British history to launch its own energy collective switching scheme.
Caroline Flint
I will make a little progress. A great political myth of our age is that there are no alternatives to the choices that the Government have made, but the truth is that if they can find £3 billion for a tax cut for the highest earners in the country—worth on average £107,000 a year for 8,000 people earning more than £1 million a year—they could have found some money to have kept Warm Front going, to have not cut winter fuel payments, or even to have invested in the green deal to keep interest rates down. However, they did not.
If the Minister wants to compare records I would be happy to do so. Time and again we have heard Ministers claim that fuel poverty went up under the previous Labour Government, which is just not true. Let me lay the myth to rest with a few facts.
Caroline Flint
No.
The simplest test of any Government’s record is to compare the number of people in fuel poverty when they left office with the number when they took office.
Caroline Flint
If the hon. Lady would like to listen to some facts she might learn something. Figures published not by Labour but by the Minister’s Department paint a very different picture to the one the Government try to portray. In 1996, the year before Labour entered office, 6.5 million households were in fuel poverty. In 2010, the year we left office, that number had fallen to 4.75 million—nearly 2 million fewer households in fuel poverty. That can be spun however people like, but those are the facts. Under Labour, fuel poverty went down, not up. That happened because of choices we made—choices to introduce winter fuel payments, to invest in energy efficiency through Warm Front and the decent homes programme, and to ensure that all new homes for the future will be energy efficient and zero carbon. We made a choice to invest in our health services, hospitals and communities to protect the ill, the elderly and the poor from the cold—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) asks from the Government Benches what that has to do with it, but as she should know, a good health service helps to prevent cold-related deaths.
Those are policies for which the Labour party fought and argued, often in the face of opposition. They are policies that Conservative Members pretended to support and pledged to protect when they knocked on doors seeking people’s votes, but which they quickly dumped as soon as they agreed to trade with their coalition partners.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
The right hon. Lady does not raise the standard of debate when she uses statistics in that way and does not engage with the real issue of how we measure fuel poverty. That is why the Government asked Professor John Hills to carry out a review of how we measure fuel poverty. The right hon. Lady knows that fuel poverty has been correlated more with the price of gas, and at one stage, because of the way fuel poverty statistics work, the Queen was deemed to be in fuel poverty. We want to reform those statistics so that we have a better debate and a better way of targeting money on those in fuel poverty. Does she agree with that?
Caroline Flint
Well, the Government certainly are not doing the job of tackling fuel poverty, and that will be outlined further in my speech and in the motion. Who in the House would disagree that the best way for people to save money on their bills is to improve their energy efficiency? That does not just keep out the cold for one year, it does so every year. If ever a Government set out to prove that they were out of touch and completely lacked any common sense, they would begin by making it harder for people to make their homes energy efficient.
Caroline Flint
I will perhaps take an intervention a little later, but I have taken quite a lot of interventions and I want to make some progress.
Let me come on to the green deal. We have always said that we want such a scheme to work. All three parties went into the general election with a pay-as-you-save scheme in their manifestos, and the pilot started under the previous Labour Government. Properly executed, it could really help to cut people’s bills and create jobs. In the build-up to the launch of the green deal, the Government have not been shy of making big claims for this policy. Ministers have proclaimed that it would reach 14 million homes by 2020, and 26 million by 2030. We were promised that it would create up to 100,000 jobs by 2015. They told us it would be the biggest home improvement scheme since the second world war. That is not the scheme before us today.
Under this scheme, just to find out eligibility and what measures are available, someone might have to pay £100 or more. This is a scheme where, instead of using the green investment bank to make green deal loans good value—as happens in Germany—interest rates could be as high as 8%. People could end up paying more in interest repayments and charges than the original measures cost. This is a scheme where, if people try to do the right thing and pay off their loan early, or have to pay it off because they are moving house and the new owner does not want to take on the green deal, they will be hit with penalty payments running to thousands of pounds. Yes, the Government who preach about debt will penalise people who want to pay off their debts. Under this scheme, according to the Government’s own impact assessment, the number of lofts lagged every year will plummet by more than 80%. This is a scheme that has so far seen nearly 2,000 people in the insulation industry lose their jobs, and 1,000 more put on notice of redundancy. For all the hype, this is set to be the green disaster, and the public will vote with their feet. Given the choice of deal or no deal, the public, in their millions, will be saying no deal.
Let us look at the obligations on energy companies. Not only have the Government made a mess of their flagship policy, but they have failed to get the energy companies to keep their side of the deal. In government, we put tough obligations on the big energy companies to make them offer energy efficiency measures for free, or at a very low cost, to households in deprived areas. Those programmes were known as the community energy saving programme and the carbon emissions reduction target, and they came into force on 1 October 2009 and ended on 31 December last year. Ministers and Ofgem have therefore had two and a half years to keep the policy on track. Instead, they sat back and did nothing, as month after month companies failed to stay on course, and they watched, in the final few months, as the energy giants threw money at the problem of take-up, which they should have dealt with far sooner and more effectively, instead of leaving their customers to foot the bill.
Ministers cannot say that they did not have any warning. On 16 May last year, I told the Government in this House that the energy companies were not on track to meet their targets. Let me remind the House what the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) said in response:
“we fully expect them to deliver their obligations and we will make sure that they do.”—[Official Report, 16 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 554.]
Now that the scheme has closed, will the Minister tell us whether he has kept his word and made sure that the energy companies met their obligations, or will he now admit that because of his complacency the energy companies have missed their targets? As a result, families across the country are facing a cold winter with poorly insulated homes when they could have been helped. If those companies have failed to honour their obligations, will he tell the House that he will expect Ofgem, as it states in the motion, to use its full range of powers to take tough action to ensure that companies know that there is a price to pay if they do not do what is required of them?
Charles Hendry
The point I wanted to make earlier—I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way—is that in the interests of transparency can she confirm that the number of people in fuel poverty started to come down in about 1995 or 1996, as wholesale prices came down? They continued to decline until 2005, when they bottomed out at approximately 1 million, and then rose inexorably to 3 million, 4 million and 5 million from that point onwards as wholesale prices increased. That was not a matter of political success or failure; it was a matter of wholesale prices more than anything else.
Caroline Flint
I do not accept that it is just a matter of wholesale prices. There are issues about prices and I recognise the experience that the hon. Gentleman brings to the Chamber on this issue, but the truth is that if we had not had the decent homes programme, the Warm Front scheme and other measures to help tackle homes that leak energy, in both social and private housing, we could have left office with more people in the grip of fuel poverty. The truth is that the numbers went down.
Under Labour, the Warm Front scheme helped well over 2 million households insulate their homes, improve their energy efficiency and cut their bills. No one would pretend that the scheme is perfect—no scheme of such a size ever is. I have dealt with cases in my constituency where people have not received the kind of service expected, but when Warm Front closes on Saturday, the Government will be, as I have said, the first Administration since the 1970s not to have a Government-funded energy efficiency programme. I do not think that that is a fine record to set.
In its final year, it is no exaggeration to say that Ministers have run the scheme into the ground. The number of people receiving help this year is on course to hit an all-time low. Between 2006 and 2010, nearly 250,000 people were helped each year, but so far this year fewer than 22,000 households have been accepted for help—not 80,000, as the Prime Minister told the House earlier today. In the Secretary of State’s own constituency, just seven households have received assistance in the last year. I am not sure whether that will feature in his election literature in 2015.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
I understand that the Warm Front scheme helped a lot of people, but the right hon. Lady will recognise that the Public Accounts Committee report on Warm Front said that it was badly targeted, that about 75% of households were not expected to be in fuel poverty and that it did not really help any countryside house that is off the gas grid.
Caroline Flint
Labour has already said that those families and homes off the gas grid should come under better regulation supervised by a new energy watchdog. I take the point from the hon. Lady and others who are concerned about that. As I have already said, I am not suggesting that Warm Front is perfect. These schemes always need to be assessed to see whether they are delivering, but the truth is that 2 million homes were helped. Warm Front helped to ensure that people’s homes up and down the country were warmer.
Mr Iain McKenzie (Inverclyde) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is a disgrace that 60% of homes in the country that can take cavity wall insulation have still not received it and that only 2% of those with solid walls have been insulated?
Caroline Flint
Absolutely, and the question is this: what have the Government been doing for the past two and a half years? [Interruption.] Well, for a start, 2 million homes received a Warm Front grant under Labour. What is this Government’s record? Let us talk about that. Even families who have been accepted as eligible for help under Warm Front are facing huge delays. Despite being asked parliamentary questions, so far the Government have refused to reveal the average waiting time, but yesterday morning on “Daybreak” I learnt of a single mum called Susannah Hickling who was forced to wait nine months.
From asking other parliamentary questions, I have uncovered a huge backlog. In response to a question on 18 December, the Government were forced to admit that of nearly 22,000 successful applications for Warm Front grants—fewer than we have had in previous times—just 6,000 have resulted in any work, meaning that nearly 16,000 families who have been told that they will receive help are still waiting, in the middle of winter. I understand that the Government are now saying that the backlog is only 14,000. That is hardly a sign of success. If that is the case, I hope that the Secretary of State will update the House on how many households are waiting and when they can expect the work to be done.
On top of that, a further 9,000 people have applied for assistance but are still anxiously waiting to know whether they will get any help before Warm Front closes for good. Notwithstanding the insulation or energy efficiency measures that have finally been installed, the amount of help that people end up receiving has been quietly slashed by two thirds compared with last year. This year, the average level of grant provided under Warm Front is just £997, but last year it was more than three times as much at more than £3,000. In short, we have a scheme in its dying days under which people are receiving less help than ever before, with a massive backlog and thousands of families being given the cold shoulder.
Disgraceful though that is, it gets worse. Despite all the hardship—the cuts in funding, the reduced help, the delays—the Government have been forced to come clean and reveal that more than half the budget is predicted to remain unspent. In answer to a parliamentary question from me on 12 December, the Government confirmed that, from a total budget of £100 million this financial year, just £34.8 million has spent, while another £15.1 million has been committed but not yet spent. That means that more than £50 million that this Government chose to set aside to help low-income households through Warm Front might not even be spent at all. Given that the average Warm Front grant this year has been just under £1,000, that means that some 50,000 low-income or vulnerable households could have received help but will not, unless the scheme is extended and Saturday’s deadline is pushed back.
Let me ask the Secretary of State a straightforward question. What possible justification can there be for shutting down a scheme and turning away people in need when only half the budget has been spent? If he cannot answer that question, will he not see sense today and agree to extend the Warm Front scheme until the entire budget has been spent or committed to expenditure? No one is asking for more money or for the budget to be increased. We are simply saying that if the Government have chosen to set aside £100 million for Warm Front this year, they should at least ensure that this support reaches the people it was intended to reach.
Gloria De Piero
It is a particular outrage and a disgrace—call it what you will—that there is money left over given that I and, I am sure, colleagues across the House are being contacted by constituents, including vulnerable and elderly people, who are trying to get help from Warm Front, but who have been told that they must wait or have not had the answer that they need in these freezing temperatures. It is nothing short of a disgrace.
Caroline Flint
It is indeed a disgrace. I do not say this without thinking about it first, but I think this Government have basically driven the scheme into the ground.
It makes it even more unforgiveable that we find ourselves in exactly the same situation as last year, when, despite repeated warnings, the Government had an underspend in the previous financial year of £50.6 million in the Warm Front scheme. Instead of that money helping people to reduce their energy use and cut their bills, it went back to the Treasury—presumably to help to fill the holes in the Chancellor’s borrowing targets. Why were Ministers not on the case? They have known since October 2010 that Warm Front was due to end this Saturday. After last year’s debacle, if I were a Minister I would have been all over this issue and not waiting for another car crash. Indeed, if I can access that information through parliamentary questions, Ministers should have known about the underspend, the backlog and the thousands of applications still waiting to be decided on. If they knew there was a problem, why were they not on the sofas of “Daybreak” or “This Morning”, or out in the country promoting the scheme and ensuring that people knew the help was available? The Government are keen on performance-related pay; perhaps they should start with the pay of Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Richard Fuller
I am extraordinarily grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. Perhaps my question will move her on to something more constructive and what we can do to improve some of the schemes. She has mentioned the Warm Front scheme and some of the problems with the backlog, but the Public Accounts Committee found that only 35% of the households that were likely to be fuel-poor would be eligible. Does she not think that it behoves us to look at improvements to the scheme? What would she recommend constructively that we could do better?
Caroline Flint
I will tell the hon. Gentleman what I recommend. There is £50 million in the Warm Front budget. The Government should delay the closure of the scheme and extend it so that more people can get what they need. Indeed, only 22 people in his constituency got Warm Front in the last year. Is he happy with that? Is he satisfied that £50 million will go back to the Treasury, rather than helping people in Bedford and every other part of this country? I suggest that he put that in his press release for his local paper, explaining why he will sit on £50 million before letting it disappear from the communities in Bedford and everywhere else in the country.
Sometimes there are Opposition motions whose purpose is to express a clear dividing line between us and the Government; sometimes they will contain policies or proposals with which we know the Government will not agree; on the odd occasion they will even be used to make a political point or two. In preparing today’s motion, however, we focused on common-sense solutions to some of the problems relating to Warm Front, the green deal and the obligations of the energy companies, in order to ensure that our energy efficiency schemes deliver, that help reaches those who need it most and that, even in these difficult times, people who are struggling are not needlessly left out in the cold when money is available and has been committed to help them. It is in that spirit that I urge all hon. Members to support a green deal that is a good deal, tougher action on the energy companies if they fail to meet their obligations, and the extension of Warm Front until its entire budget has been spent. I commend the motion to the House.
Mr Davey
As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Department for Work and Pensions administers that benefit, and I am sure that he has made that request to the Secretary of State for that Department. My Department has been encouraging people in many parts of the country who are off grid to buy early, because they can get much better deals than if they leave it until later.
Although the extra payments are welcome to those who get them, they are not received by everybody. They do not address the fundamental problem of homes and appliances that waste energy and money. Britain’s draughty homes account for a quarter of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. Millions of homes do not have full double glazing. More than half do not have enough insulation or an efficient condensing boiler. Most do not even have proper heating controls. The single most effective means of bringing bills down for people, including for the most vulnerable, is to help people waste less energy. Energy efficiency is about using less energy to provide the same warmth, or more. That means lower bills and lower carbon emissions.
Caroline Flint
I quote the written ministerial statement from today:
“The Warm Front scheme has been an important policy in tackling fuel poverty among private sector households in England though the installation of a range of heating, insulation and other energy efficiency measures”
and since 2000 it
“has helped around 2.3 million households vulnerable to fuel poverty.”
Given that this budget has a £50 million underspend, will the Secretary of State explain why he is not urging his colleagues in Government to extend the Warm Front deadline so that the budget can be spent to help the very people he has just been talking about?
Mr Davey
I am coming to the Warm Front scheme, because the right hon. Member for Don Valley made much of the fact that we are closing it down. Under the previous Government, the Warm Front scheme was the vehicle by which some vulnerable households were helped, but we consider the scale of the fuel poverty challenge to be much greater, and, as she has admitted, there were problems with the scheme. We are far more ambitious, because fuel poverty must be tackled and Britain has some of the oldest and, therefore, draughtiest, housing stock in Europe. If we are serious about climate change and tackling high energy bills, we should not help just those who are at risk of fuel poverty, although they should of course be a priority. We believe that everyone should have the opportunity to green-proof their house and achieve lower energy bills in the process.
Warm Front will be closing, as announced more than two years ago, but applications will continue to be accepted up to 19 January, and the work will be followed through, for all who apply up to 19 January. I have set out to the House today in a written statement how that transition will work. Even before 19 January, we brought in Warm Front’s successor—the affordable warmth scheme, which the right hon. Lady did not mention, and which is part of our new energy company obligation. Affordable warmth is up and operating, and low-income households who previously could get Warm Front can now get affordable warmth. It and the energy company obligation, which are both now in operation, will support our most ambitious policy of all—the green deal.
This is a transformative moment. We shall see the full launch of the green deal this month. From 28 January, all households will be eligible for it. They will be able to make energy-saving improvements that will be paid for, over time, through their energy bills and the savings that they make. This is an affordable way of retrofitting millions of homes, making them cheaper to heat and lowering carbon emissions at the same time.
The right hon. Member for Don Valley rightly wanted to talk about Warm Front and the details of its budget. I shall deal with that now, although she herself admitted that there will problems with Warm Front. As she said, we have spent £38.4 million of the £100 million budget, and £15.5 is committed. We expect to spend about £70 million by the end of the year. We will not return the remaining £30 million to the Treasury, as the right hon. Lady implied, because we want to do all that we can to address fuel poverty, and we have worked hard to ensure that the money is spent on tackling it, organising a local authority competition for cash from a special fuel poverty fund. I told the House yesterday that about £30 million was being provided for local authorities across the country to spend on local energy efficiency projects for low-income and vulnerable households. There will be no waste. As it comes to the end of its life, Warm Front is being recycled, and what is replacing it is infinitely better.
Opposition Members seem to think that Warm Front was a fantastic scheme, but people had to apply for it, whereas under affordable warmth the energy companies will have to go out and find people in order to help them. I should have expected Opposition Members to support that.
Caroline Flint
When—in, I believe, October 2012—the Secretary of State announced the competition for local authorities seeking to win money to help energy efficiency locally, did he make it clear that it would be Warm Front money? He has said that £30 million will go towards the scheme. What is happening to the other £20 million of Warm Front underspend?
Mr Davey
The right hon. Lady was clearly not listening when I said that we expected that amount to be spent by the end of the year. [Interruption.] It would help if the right hon. Lady listened now. She will know that uncertainties are involved in schemes such as this—even Labour could not macro-manage everything—but we expect to spend about £70 million.
The right hon. Lady asked whether we had announced that the money would come from the Warm Front scheme. We did not do so, because we were not absolutely sure what we would be spending on Warm Front by the end of the year. I wanted to ensure that we were making fuel poverty a priority, and that any underspend from Warm Front or anywhere else was targeted at it. Now the right hon. Lady is criticising me—
Caroline Flint
I am happy to withdraw it, but I will look into the facts to establish whether it was made clear in that announcement that the money would come from Warm Front.
Kwasi Kwarteng
Forgive me. There was, however, a considerable amount of spending, and as the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) has acknowledged, that spending was not particularly smart. It was not directed to the most vulnerable; Labour simply spread it around in their usual style and hoped they would get results as a consequence. Again, that was a deeply irresponsible way in which to conduct the public finances.
Caroline Flint
In a mature way I was honest about acknowledging that big Government schemes often have situations in which the service is not as good as it might be. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that helping 2 million people through Warm Front was not worth doing?
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am not saying that for a second. I am saying that it is one thing to spend money, but quite another to spend it effectively. Under the previous Labour Government, yes, it is true, the money was spent; they were world champions at spending public money and no one disputes that. I am, however, disputing whether that money was spent effectively. Many people—indeed, the electorate in 2010—believed that that money was not spent particularly effectively.
In the remaining moments of my speech let us look more closely at Labour’s record. As the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Mike Crockart) pointed out, fuel poverty increased hugely during the Labour years. I am not so partisan as to say that it was all Labour’s fault, and I have acknowledged that there were rising fuel costs and that we were in a commodity cycle which meant that fuel costs were going to go up. It is a fact, however—such facts cannot simply be wished away—that fuel poverty increased dramatically under the previous Labour Government for the reasons I have outlined.
It is nauseating for Government Members to be lectured on fuel poverty by the right hon. Member for Don Valley and her friends, when their record was so dismal. The Government Front Bench are trying to do exactly the right thing under straitened economic circumstances and with difficult public finances. They are trying to get a fair deal not only for our constituents, but for businesses up and down the country. There is a recognition that a lot of interests are being balanced in a fair way.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
It is a shame that the shadow Secretary of State took such a combative and shrill tone at the beginning of this important debate, because no one has a handle on caring about their constituents. I was privileged to serve on the Energy Bill Committee in the previous Parliament, and I noticed that the then Government took no measures to tackle the complexity of tariffs or the issue of those who are fuel poor and who use metered fuel, although the Labour party is raising those issues today. I encourage the Minister to keep up his good work, because we do not have money to throw around as the previous Government did. In all the comments from the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), including from a sedentary position, I have yet to hear whether Labour would continue Warm Front in some form after 2016 or introduce another scheme. Perhaps she will enlighten us in the winding-up speeches.
Mrs Main
I will not, because she did not give way to me when she was being particularly vociferous on how good Labour was on fuel poverty.
As I said in a debate on fuel poverty in the previous Parliament, my constituency is usually regarded as an affluent one, but it does have areas of multiple deprivation needs. In 2006, St Albans had 2,400 households in fuel poverty; in 2008, it had 3,500; in 2010, according to the latest figures available, there were even more. A degree of humility about such calculations is, therefore, important. It should also be recognised that in constituencies such as mine, a higher amount of family income is spent on rent and mortgages, so many people feel fuel-poor, whether or not they are technically in fuel poverty. I welcome the fact that under this coalition Government most families will be put on the best tariff that suits them if that is possible.
We have very little time to debate the matter today, but the green deal will be an affordable way of tackling fuel poverty. I believe we would be casual with taxpayers’ money if we simply splashed out the dosh—the right hon. Lady said that it was £50 million, but the correct figure is £30 million, which will be reinvested. The Labour party would have continued the Warm Front deal, which, as Members on both sides of the House have said, was fraught with difficulties. When elderly constituents of mine were told how intrusive the Warm Front deal would be in terms of where the boilers would be located, and how they had to go along with what they were being offered, rather than having it tailored to suit their needs, they backed out of it, and were left with nothing. Rather than imposing something, the green deal gives people choices to tailor a system to suit their household.