Caroline Flint
Main Page: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
May I be one of the first to add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) on winning her election today to become Chair of the Health Committee?
I beg to move,
That this House notes the policy of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition to freeze energy prices for 20 months while the energy market is reformed; further notes that in recent months wholesale gas and electricity prices have fallen significantly, with gas prices for next day delivery 38% lower than their level this time last year and electricity prices 23% lower; believes that in a properly competitive market wholesale cost reductions should be passed on as quickly and as fully as cost increases; and calls on the Government to provide the energy regulator for Great Britain with powers to force energy suppliers to pass on price cuts to consumers in all parts of Great Britain when wholesale costs fall, if suppliers fail to act.
Last week we learned that wholesale energy prices have fallen significantly since the start of the year, and yet there has been no reduction in consumers’ energy bills. Indeed, bills are more than £60 higher this year than they were last year. So today we put before the House a very simple motion. It notes this sustained and substantial fall in wholesale prices in recent months, and it calls for decisive action from Government.
Other proposals could have been included, to which the Opposition remain committed, including a price freeze for 20 months while the energy market is reformed, which the motion notes and the Opposition reaffirm, which, just to be clear, would stop energy companies increasing their prices, but would not stop them cutting them; put a ring fence between the generation and retail arms of vertically integrated energy companies; create a pool for all electricity to be traded in; and provide greater transparency for trades in the gas market. But we have debated and voted on those many times before in the House without agreement. So in the interests of securing consensus today, the motion proposes only one measure, on which we hope it will be possible to find agreement: new powers for the regulator to be able to force suppliers to cut their prices when wholesale costs fall if they do not do it first.
We believe that we need to establish a new regulator with a clearer mandate to protect consumers, because in this respect alone, we believe Ofgem has failed. But again, given there is not consensus on this point, the motion simply proposes that the regulator—whether the current regulator, or a new one, as we have proposed—be invested with tough new powers to ensure that consumers see the benefit of falling wholesale energy prices. This is a motion that the whole House should be able to support, and I want to set out why.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
Is not this just the kind of issue on which politicians can reconnect with the public? One fact that emerged from the recent elections is that people feel that politicians are powerless. When energy companies flout public opinion, they feel that we have very little to say from this House. Should we not be supporting the motion because it is a real opportunity for politicians to reconnect with the public? The public are not stupid. They see prices rise—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is not making a speech. An intervention has to be short.
Caroline Flint
This is a chance for us to come together and pass the motion so that we can tell the public that we understand that regulation does not protect them when wholesale prices fall and those cuts are not passed on to them.
Let me start by explaining exactly what has happened to wholesale prices. Energy suppliers source their energy in a variety of different ways over a period of time. For the big six, some will be bought from their own generation arms, some will be bought in bilateral deals with other generators, and some will be bought via an open exchange. This process of buying and selling, and re-buying and re-selling, will begin some years before the energy is required for delivery. Not all of those trades are made public. It is precisely that lack of transparency that lends weight to the suspicion that energy companies can always find some kind of wholesale price movement to justify whatever prices they want to charge.
On the data that we do have, however, and to which the regulator has access, the picture is clear: wholesale prices are down, and not just slightly down, but substantially down, month after month. Forward prices are 16% lower for gas this year compared with last year, and 9% lower for electricity. Spot prices are 38% lower for gas compared with last year, and at their lowest level since September 2010, and electricity prices are 23% lower and at their lowest level since April 2010. But so far, the only people to benefit are the energy companies.
One of the things that happened when Labour was in government was that Ofgem began requiring companies to report publicly on their profits. Two weeks ago, in its most recent supply market indicators, Ofgem found that the profit margins on selling gas have now hit 10%, double the 5% margin the companies were making this time last year. The profits on a dual fuel bill have more than doubled during the last year, too. But consumers have not seen any benefit, and if the energy companies fail to cut their prices for the rest of this year, a typical household could miss out on savings of more than £130. The same is true of businesses, which have even fewer protections than households, a problem that my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) and I are determined to correct.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
Does the right hon. Lady recognise that a principal problem is that those on prepayment meters are twice as likely to be in fuel poverty? Therefore, does she welcome the moves by EDF to introduce a fixed-rate tariff for prepayment meter customers? Does that not rather indicate that the market and these companies are beginning to listen and to take the actions necessary?
Caroline Flint
No. We can simplify the tariffs, and we recognise and welcome that. We can look at the problems of people on prepayment meters, but if the price that has been struck as part of the overall bill is not a fair one and does not reflect the fact that costs are going down for the companies, no simplification of tariffs and no efforts to help people on prepayment meters are a good deal. We must get ahead of this. We must get to grips with how the wholesale prices are set and what we are going to do when the companies do not pass on cost reductions. That is the essence of our motion today.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Caroline Flint
I will give way one more time, then I want to make progress. I realise that we are short of time because the earlier debate went on considerably longer than expected.
Andrew Gwynne
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. Was she as shocked as I was to see in the annual fuel poverty statistics report projections of households in fuel poverty increasing to 2.33 million? That is equivalent to the population of west Yorkshire living in fuel poverty. Is that not a damning indictment of a market that just does not work?
Caroline Flint
It is regrettable and worrying that, as I understand it, the number of families in fuel poverty is higher now than 10 years ago. All families deserve a good deal, whether they are in fuel poverty or not, but of course we need to give full attention to those who are most vulnerable.
As is to be expected, the companies have come up with all kinds of excuses, and I shall deal with each of them in turn. The first excuse is that even if wholesale costs have fallen, other costs have increased. Given that wholesale costs are by far the biggest single component of a household’s energy bill, making up about half of it, we would need evidence of quite dramatic increases in other costs for this claim to hold true. What might those other costs be? Energy bills are made up of five components: wholesale costs, network charges, environmental and social policies, and the supplier’s operating costs and profits. If we leave aside the operating costs and profits, which are within the company’s control, that leaves only two possibilities—network charges and policy costs, both of which, helpfully, are regulated by Ofgem or mandated by Government, meaning that we can test the companies’ claims.
According to Ofgem, network costs are up slightly, by about £7 on the average bill compared with last year, and are forecast to remain flat this year. So that cannot explain the gulf between wholesale costs and retail prices. What about environmental and social policies—the levies that pay for investment in clean energy, insulation and support for the most vulnerable? Given the cuts to schemes such as ECO, the energy company obligation, the fact that the warm home discount is now funded by the taxpayer and the cuts to the forecast increase in the carbon floor price, the claim does not ring true.
Undoubtedly, there are cost pressures, particularly from the small-scale feed-in tariff, but I hope the Secretary of State, who, after all, sets and monitors these costs, will agree that in no way can they account for the scale of the gap we are now seeing between the prices that companies pay for energy and what they charge their customers.
The second excuse we have heard is that the companies’ hedging strategies prevent them from passing on the reductions. What are these hedging strategies? One would be forgiven for thinking that they are a convenient device that enables the companies to complicate matters and confuse people whenever they are challenged about their prices. In fact, they are simply companies’ trading strategies, which determine how far out and in what quantity they begin to buy the energy they need for any given day. So what the energy companies are saying, in effect, is, “Sorry, we bought our energy on another day when it happened to be more expensive”—which, by the way, just happens to make their generation businesses more money, but let us not get into that for now.
It is impossible for anyone to verify the companies’ claims because they never disclose their hedging strategies, but I invite the House to be sceptical. In a properly functioning competitive market, we would expect that, given that wholesale costs are the largest single component of bills, there would be some motivation for companies to try to out-compete their competitors on that price. Adopting a different hedge might allow them to do that. Just to say that companies have different hedging strategies does not address the substantive question of whether they are adopting trading strategies that impose higher than necessary costs on consumers.
An even less persuasive version of that argument has been suggested. Some so-called analysts have suggested that the reason the companies have failed to pass on the cost reductions is the prospect of an energy price freeze. Although I welcome their confidence in a Labour victory at the next general election, I must say that of all the excuses I have heard in my time in this job, that has to be the most ludicrous. The idea that the day after my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made his speech on 24 September last year all the energy companies went out and bought up all their energy for the next four years does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny.
Let me be clear: if there is any evidence of suppliers colluding to inflate their margins, which I am sure the Competition and Markets Authority will monitor with great interest, and if this Government refuse to take action, we will. Of course, if we had greater transparency in the way energy is bought and sold in the first place, as Labour has proposed through our electricity pool and ring fence, the issue would be a lot clearer for everyone.
The final excuse we have heard is that nothing untoward could possibly be happening because the energy market is so competitive. Switching is up, we are told, and competition has never been more vigorous, but the facts speak for themselves: wholesale costs have fallen substantially, and over a sustained period; and not only has none of the major suppliers cut its prices, but none has even indicated that it has any intention of doing so. Indeed, some suppliers have actually ruled out price cuts this year. In its interim management statement, published last month, Centrica reported:
“No change expected in residential energy prices this year”.
However, as today’s motion notes, if competition was working effectively, we would expect wholesale cost reductions to be passed on as quickly and fully as wholesale cost increases, but we never see that. A report published by Ofgem in 2011 stated:
“We have found some evidence that customer energy bills respond more rapidly to rising supplier costs compared with falling costs.”
In its “State of the Market Assessment” this year, which led it to make a referral to the CMA, Ofgem again found that:
“There appears to be an asymmetry in how suppliers respond to changes in costs. We found that suppliers pass on cost increases more fully and more quickly than cost decreases.”
Furthermore, it observed that:
“The asymmetry we found was greater than when Ofgem performed a similar exercise in 2011.”
It is not just wholesale costs. It must be a bitter disappointment to the Secretary of State that four of the big six have still not passed on the full £50 saving to 3.7 million customers following the deal he struck with them on green levies in December.
This is not some passing trend that will correct itself in the fullness of time; it is a systemic problem in our energy market that is a result of deep-seated and fundamental flaws in its structure and regulation. Waiting for the CMA to report is not an option. Wholesale prices have been falling for the past six months, with no signs that consumers will benefit, and the CMA investigation, which has not even begun, will take a further 18 months to complete.
That being the case, the question raised is this: what should we do about it? In theory, there are two things that can protect consumers: competition, where companies compete on pricing and customer service to win and retain customers; and regulation, where consumers enjoy certain defined protections. But in the energy market competition is at best immature and regulation, at least on pricing, is non-existent.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr Sheerman
My right hon. Friend is very kind. Is there not another dimension to this? In the country, including my constituency, the consumer base is getting angrier and better organised, through social media and other ways. They will not put up with this for much longer.
Caroline Flint
Absolutely. People were told that technology—doing things online, for example—would always make things better, but that is not the case. The point applies to those who do not have the confidence to challenge and those with busy lives who just do not have the time. I seem to recall a previous Energy Minister admitting that he spent at least half a day trying to sort out his own energy bill. If he cannot do it, what hope is there for others?
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
Will the right hon. Lady give way?
Caroline Flint
No, I will not.
Let me get back to the issue of competitive pressures. As I said, competition in the energy market is at best immature and regulation on pricing is non-existent, which means that the normal competitive pressures that we would expect to restrain companies from increasing prices, or to encourage them to pass on falling costs, are weak, while regulation is unable to correct the situation. That is precisely the Catch-22 situation in which the Government have left consumers. The Government tell them that regulation is not needed because we have a competitive market, when all the evidence from the regulator, consumer groups and parts of the sector clearly shows that competition is not working as it should. We should not forget what consumers are saying. Research out from Which? today shows that complaints to the big six have hit a new record high, because the market is just not working for the public.
Today’s motion proposes a new back-stop power for the regulator to force companies to cut their prices when wholesale costs fall if companies do not do it first. I want to be clear about the nature and extent of the power. It is not a return to full-scale price regulation as existed in this country until 2002, including under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, or as it still exists in most member states of the European Union; it is a back-stop measure that empowers the regulator—not the Government, Ministers or anyone else—to ensure that all consumers can enjoy the full benefits of competition to which they are entitled.
If competition works and cost reductions are passed on, the power may never need to be used. Indeed, its very introduction may act as an incentive on companies to do the right thing. However, if in its view anti-competitive practices happen in our energy market that cause harm to consumers, the regulator should have the power not just to write to the companies to ask them politely to explain to their customers why they are being ripped off, but to do something about it.
That is what today’s motion proposes, and it is something that Members from both sides of the House can support. After all, what did the Prime Minister say before the last election? On 8 September 2009, on his Cameron Direct roadshow in Bedford, he said:
“I think we all feel that when the gas prices or the oil prices go up, they rush to pass the costs onto us and yet when we read in the papers that the oil price has collapsed and the gas prices are coming down, we wait for a very long time before we see anything coming through on our bills, and I think the first thing you’ve got to do...is give the regulator the teeth to order that those reductions are made and that is what we would do.”
I agree. Let me be direct: it is just a shame that, four years into this Parliament, that commitment has gone unfulfilled.
I tell the House today that if we are elected, alongside our price freeze and our market reforms, we will give the regulator that power. However, it would be far better for the Government to take action now rather than consumers having to wait another 11 months to see the benefit of falling wholesale prices. If the Government do, I guarantee them our support. Given the Queen’s Speech, if there is the will, time could be found. In that spirit, I commend this motion to the House.
Caroline Flint
The proposition is that we should, across the House, recognise that when wholesale costs fall they are not passed on quickly enough. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that leaving things to the market does not achieve that and that the proposition that a regulator should have the power is the way forward—yes or no?
Mr Davey
I have already said that I believe that there is a problem—Ofgem and the competition authorities told us that in the report I commissioned. I think there is a need for intervention—that is what I have been saying. The question is: what is the right intervention? Is it the price regulations proposed by Labour—the quite big interventions that I shall explain when I describe how they would work—or is it to ask the independent experts from the competition authorities to ensure that our markets work for consumers. The latter is what we are doing, and I think it is the right approach.
The Leader of the Opposition tells the Government all the time that we should stand up to the energy companies. That leads me to the not unreasonable conclusion that he must have stood up to the energy companies—that he must have a proud record of taking on energy firms at some stage. So I did some more research to find out what tough action the leader of the Labour party took. I was convinced that he of all people, faced with much larger falls in wholesale prices than we face today, would have acted. I therefore commissioned the research on what action Labour’s leader, when Energy Secretary, had actually taken on wholesale energy prices—what announcements he had made.
The research has come back, so let me read it:
“You asked for any statements of information provided by the last government on the link between wholesale and retail energy prices”—[Interruption.]
The right hon. Lady should listen to this:
“I’m afraid there was no substantial policy in this area by the previous government and as a result no announcements.”
There was nothing. The Leader of the Opposition simply did not have the same great ideas as the right hon. Lady.
Perhaps I am being too harsh. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition was not advised to take the various actions we have taken, such as our support for a reference of such problems to the independent competition authorities—in other words, the experts. My research, however, suggests that the Labour party was told to act when he was doing my job. In fact, we have found that he was told to act on at least three occasions.
The Leader of the Opposition was asked three times to refer the issue of energy prices to the Competition Commission, and three times he refused. On 5 March 2009, he said:
“I do not think that at this stage a referral to the Competition Commission is the right way to go”.—[Official Report, 5 March 2009; Vol. 488, c. 983.]
On 7 December 2009, he said:
“It is better to look at policy options…rather than at a lengthy Competition Commission investigation.”—[Official Report, 7 December 2009; Vol. 502, c. 45.]
Of course, he did not actually take any policy options. On 25 February 2010, he was still in denial:
“I am not in favour of referring these matters to the Competition Commission”.—[Official Report, 25 February 2010; Vol. 506, c. 444.]
That is what Labour’s then Energy Secretary said, so my advice to the right hon. Member for Don Valley is this: stop embarrassing your leader.
For the sake of debate, let me accept another Labour U-turn on energy policy. Let me imagine that the Labour leader has thought more about it, listened to the right hon. Lady and changed his mind. Let me examine their proposals for two new price controls and how they would work.
As set out in the motion, Labour now has two competing ideas. The first is a temporary energy price freeze for 20 months, which is a policy to lock in a price, regardless of what happens in the wholesale markets. If wholesale prices go up, the smaller energy suppliers that cannot soak up the losses will go bankrupt. We have never received an answer to that. If wholesale prices go down, companies hedging against the freeze will have to maintain their prices and customers will lose out. The right hon. Lady is shaking her head, but companies that hedge against a freeze will lose money and potentially go bankrupt under her policy. She does not understand how markets work.
Mr Davey
I am grateful for that intervention because it shows that Labour has not even looked at what is happening to the economy. Employment is going up and unemployment is going down; inflation and the deficit are going down, and growth is up. The hon. Gentleman ought to notice that.
Let me ask a few questions about Labour’s latest policy. How would Labour’s bungee-jumping energy price regulation work? Let us try to get our heads round what is proposed—Labour wants to be in government in under a year, so I am sure it has thought through the detail. Would Labour legislate to force companies to pass on each and every cut in wholesale prices? Would it give Ofgem that power? How frequently would the link between wholesale and retail prices be made, and which wholesale price would Labour choose for Ofgem to intervene with? The day-ahead or the month-ahead price, or perhaps something else in the futures market? I think we should know. Which all-seeing, all-knowing official in Labour’s new energy Gosplan regulator would work that all out?
Caroline Flint
I understand that Ofgem—the regulator —wrote to all energy companies last week to say that they should pass on reductions in wholesale costs. Has the Secretary of State had a word with Ofgem about its expectations of how that should be achieved?
Mr Davey
I have spoken to Ofgem’s chief executive, Dermot Nolan. He is worried because the Labour party wants to get rid of Ofgem, even though it is doing this fine job and talking to energy companies. Ofgem is worried that Labour wants to undermine the regulatory system. Interestingly, who set up Ofgem? The Labour party. Who reformed Ofgem just a few years ago to make it more effective? The Leader of the Opposition. There is no consistency or coherence about anything on energy policy from Labour.
Let us consider some more basic questions—Labour Members will have to answer them at some stage if they are to be vaguely credible. If the regulation forces energy bills to drop immediately when day-ahead wholesale prices drop, what will that mean when wholesale prices rise? Will the regulation be exactly same both ways? If regulation forces retail prices to track wholesale prices, how often will a consumer’s energy bill have to be recalculated and what will be the cost of that? Who will be the genius who second-guesses companies’ forward buying strategies, and decides whether they are good or bad? Will all suppliers have to purchase at the same time for the same contract period in Labour’s brave new world?
The logic of the massive state price control that Labour is proposing is clear: Labour wants to destroy the forward energy markets. It wants to end competition between companies, which is based on who has the brightest and best purchasing strategy to deal with things such as events in the UK or in Iraq, and manage those sorts of problems. If we end that competition, who will lose when the risks are greater? It will be consumers who pay in higher prices.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
This has been a welcome opportunity to debate yet again one of the biggest questions in British politics today, and there have been lively contributions from both sides of the Chamber. Energy bills are at the forefront of everybody’s minds, and the coalition is acutely aware of the impact that a combined heating and electricity bill can have on a family budget. That is why, unlike the 13 long years of Labour drift, dither and dawdling, and ducking a referral to the competition authorities, the four years of the coalition have been characterised by reform, grip and clear direction, with energy consumers at the heart of our agenda. We have passed two Acts in four years and carried out the biggest market reform since privatisation, and a determination from the very top to get a better deal for consumers has translated into action to drive down bills, promote choice, spur innovation and increase competition.
Unfortunately, the Labour Opposition seem to believe that they can make up for the Labour Government’s pitiful lack of action to help customers and total failure to reform the energy market successfully during their period of office by advocating a series of ill-thought-through soundbites and poorly conceived policies that would take the British energy sector crashing straight back to the 1970s. That goes to the heart of the debate on the future of the energy market and the debate that has been rehearsed in the Chamber today.
Do we go forward to a world of empowered consumers, of customers exercising greater choice, of driving healthy competition and of reaping the rewards of market innovation and new technology, or do we retreat three decades, and go back with Labour to a world where the energy sector is entirely run from Whitehall, where prices are set by bureaucrats, where innovation is choked off by regulation and where investors are driven away by reams of anti-business legislation?
At a stroke, Labour’s arbitrary proposals to impose 1970s-style price controls would torch the investment we so desperately need. It would hobble consumer choice and put the clock back decades. Labour’s energy policy is pure British Leyland economics, from the most left-wing Opposition since Michael Foot—[Laughter.] Labour Members can laugh, but Labour’s ham-fisted price controls would create the single-biggest barrier to new entrants and innovation since the industry was denationalised.
The fact is that many Labour Members know that Labour’s policies could not work and are based on nothing more than a shallow soundbite. Like the British public, Labour Members know that the price freeze is a cruel gimmick and a price con. In private, many on the Labour Benches will say exactly that. Rather than help consumers get a better deal, Labour’s price controls would drive up barriers to entry and lock in the big six, created when Labour was last in government. In fact, if Labour Members get their way, I would not be surprised if the big six decided not to stick it out. If Labour wins, Labour’s big six could become the big five or even the big four. Far from being a fix for a broken market, Labour’s prescription is the very antidote to competition.
Caroline Flint
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with the statement made by his right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in September 2009? Commenting about the fact that reductions in wholesale prices are not passed on to consumers, he said, “The first thing you’ve got to do is give the regulator the teeth to order that those reductions are made and that is what we would do.” Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with what his Prime Minister said in 2009?
Gregory Barker
I make it a policy always to agree with my Prime Minister. I can tell the right hon. Lady what we said in 2009: we called for a competition inquiry. I can also tell her what the current Leader of the Opposition did: he declined it. He ducked it—he was frit. When he was in power, standing at this Dispatch Box, he sang the tune of the big six and ducked a competition inquiry. The British people have had to wait for the coalition for a comprehensive assessment by the competition authorities.
In contrast to Labour’s lurch back to the 1970s, the coalition wants to unleash disruptive new entrants and the exciting new breed of energy entrepreneurs. We do not want to lock in Labour’s big six; we want to replace them with the big 60,000, unleashing British entrepreneurial spirit. In addition, huge steps forward in consumer-friendly technology, coupled with our smart meter roll-out programme, mean that we could be on the threshold of an exciting age of far more empowered consumers and a decentralised energy sector, with a proliferation of new, young companies vying for consumers.
However, the Government do not pretend either that there is not much more to do or that we cannot improve the market further. There is indeed more to be done. Our job is by no means finished. As the Secretary of State clearly pointed out in reply to the opening of the debate, the Leader of the Opposition may have been in denial about the behaviour of the energy companies, failing to pass on falls in the wholesale gas price while he was in office, but we are not. A sensible, objective, dispassionate and thorough investigation by the independent Competition and Markets Authority is the way to get to the bottom of whether customers are being short-changed by energy companies.
Objectively policed and well regulated markets serve the best interests of consumers and deliver substantially and sustainably lower prices, not a return to the failed economic models of the 1970s. That is the nub of the choice before the electorate: break the grip of the big six by unleashing unprecedented competition and innovation, ripping down barriers to entry and unleashing a robust and thorough market investigation; or go the Labour way, suffocating the industry with red tape, driving away competition, snuffing out the challenge from the new entrants, torching investment and wasting valuable years creating yet another Labour quango. It is a pretty simple choice: the future or the past?
My hon. Friend the Member for Rossendale and Darwen (Jake Berry) was clear: we choose the future. He was right to point out that fuel poverty doubled in the last Parliament, when Labour was in office, between 2005 and 2010. He put himself firmly on the side of disruptive new entrants such as Ovo and ambitious 24-hour switching. My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) was right to point out that the big six were Labour’s creation. Every time the Leader of the Opposition opines on energy, he drives up the cost of capital, and it is consumers who pay the price.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) made a thoughtful and well informed contribution, like his previous contributions. Sadly, we have to conclude, like him, that Labour has nothing serious to say. My hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) comprehensively demolished the Opposition policy. He is absolutely right to point out that price controls stifle investment and kill competition.
As for Opposition Members, the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) made a rather ideological speech about nuclear power, which contrasts with the pragmatic and considered investment in our nuclear programme announced today by China. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) made a rather sanctimonious speech, but the policies he supports would actually hit the people he professes to help and result in fuel poverty soaring, just as it did during the last Parliament. He is also in denial about the progress we are making. The hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) might be sincere in her beliefs, but she is in cloud cuckoo land when it comes to investment. Under the coalition, investment in renewables has gone up sharply. In this Parliament, average annual investment in renewables is up to nearly £7 billion per annum, compared with £3 billion per annum in the last Parliament.
The fact is that the coalition has a plan. We have a long-term economic plan and, what is more, we are delivering for British consumers. The Labour party, by contrast, has not got a clue, and it is British consumers who are paying the price.