Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill (Third sitting)

Debate between Caroline Flint and Alan Whitehead

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 15th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Caroline Flint]

My hon. Friend is making an important point. To sum it up, the big six are both generators and retailers. The case is that they generate energy, sell it to themselves and then sell it on to us, without us really being clear about what the true price is. But does he agree that the advantage of a more transparent pool is for those independent generators to have a marketplace in which they can sell their energy, as well as those smaller retailers that would like to operate in a much more open and transparent way? I am glad to say that that was the policy when I was shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. If, like other policy areas, it seems to be more popular these days, more strength to his elbow.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that encapsulation of how the pool works and for her important point that a pool system would allow independent generators to trade on exactly the same basis as those vertically integrated generators, and, equally importantly, independent retailers bidding into the market would be able to bid in transparently, on the basis that they would know what the price was at that particular point. There would be hands on the table and the price would be clear for everybody. The whole trading process would be thoroughly transparent, to the particular advantage of how the market works in its new incarnation as a large number of independent retailers and generators operating alongside the more integrated generators and those large inheritors of customers from, essentially, the days of the Central Electricity Generating Board.

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[Caroline Flint]

It is worth exploring what might happen down the road when the temporary price cap ends. I am in favour of an absolute price cap rather than a relative price cap. I am listening very carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying and I have read the new clause, but may I say this to him in a friendly way? My concern is that there is a danger that what he is putting forward may inadvertently create a relative price cap and I am against that because a company could set its highest tariff very high so that, even if there were a 6% differential, it would be a differential between a high tariff and a really high tariff. I am totally at one with him on ensuring that another set of bad practices does not come in when the temporary price cap ends, but is there not a danger that that might be the unintended consequence of his new clause?

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that important point about trying to look at the consequences of what may happen when the price cap ends. Indeed, the new clause considers precisely what circumstances will be in place at that point. In essence, its purpose is to require the Secretary of State to produce a report on what might happen to relative tariff differentials in the period after the price cap ends. I suggest that that may be one of the pillars of a return to reasonable market conditions when the cap ends. If that pillar and other matters relating to the market working well were in place, and had been franked by Ofgem as being in place, the relative tariff range limitation device might come into place at that point.

In those circumstances, it would make no sense for an energy company to start with a very high tariff, because it would simply lose a whole pile of customers. Indeed, in circumstances where companies have done that, for various reasons, they have bled a very large number of customers. We can see that in some of Centrica’s activities, for example. It seems to me that in circumstances where the market was otherwise working reasonably well, the market itself would determine whether companies could hoick their original offer tariff really high to take advantage of a restricted tariff level. That may simply not be a viable strategy for them to adopt under those circumstances. At the same time, however, companies that had offered a competitive tariff would not have the option of transferring customers to a non-competitive tariff if they did not switch.

That is particularly important given that all the evidence we have so far shows that, whatever we do and whatever remedies or new instruments are put in place, it is unlikely that we will ever have a market in which everyone actively switches. It is extremely likely that the system will continue to operate on the basis of a majority of people one way or another not switching and a minority of people switching, sometimes very actively. Yes, perhaps that switching would keep the market in order, but the market nevertheless would still carry a large number of people who did not switch.

In the past, people not switching has led to the maintenance of SVTs and default tariffs. Even when measures are applied, such as Ofgem’s experiments with getting people to switch on the terms of the CMA’s recommendations—a number of pilots have been carried out, including letters from energy companies or from Ofgem informing people about how they might switch —a good number of people do not switch. We have a reasonable responsibility—indeed, a duty—to consider what will happen to that body of people even after we apply all the other remedies to the market. It seems to me that this particular remedy for the period after the absolute price cap ends may actually address that issue of sticky customers continuing not to switch.

Let me give hon. Members an idea of what is happening in the market today. As we might expect, among the 60-plus companies making a tariff offer in the market, there is an upwards curve in basic tariffs. The annual cost of a dual fuel tariff ranges from about £800 to £1,200 for some of the green tariffs we discussed. If we look at those companies’ tariff ranges—I will not mention names—we see that one company that starts at the lower end with an initial tariff offer of a little over £800 has a tariff range of up to £1,150, another company that offers an initial tariff of just over £900 has a tariff range of up to £1,200, and a company that starts at just under £900 has a tariff range of up to £1,150. That indicates that, at the moment, the slope of a company’s initial tariff bears no relation to its tariff range. Indeed, some companies have very good tariff ranges—Members might be surprised to hear some of their names—whereas other companies, which Members might have a rather more benign view of, actually have huge tariff ranges. So the question of tariff range and how that may affect sticky customers is a question not just of there being bad companies doing this and good companies not doing it, but of it being reasonably endemic across the range of companies offering a relatively low initial tariff but having a very high tariff range structure in their arrangements.

Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill (Second sitting)

Debate between Caroline Flint and Alan Whitehead

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th March 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is quite useful to discuss this at the start of our Bill consideration, because our constituents will want to know that, in truth and earnest, we are going to push, in whatever way we can, to ensure—let us hope we do not have as bad a winter as we have had in recent weeks—that we get this cap into place? It is worth while to have this discussion. I hope the Minister can give reassurance in her response that it is up to all our endeavours to ensure that the cap is in time for when those winter bills drop on our mats.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention underlining the thrust of what I have to say. Although we may take serious account of Ofgem’s earnest intentions, which we heard about this morning, we are not legislating for the good side of earnest intentions, but for what we want to happen in the end with the Bill. To put in the Bill what we actually want to happen clarifies matters for the future, rather than spreading confusion. We will have declared—I use that word because we cannot entirely proof ourselves against the possibility of an unexpected legal challenge, although, if I can be congratulatory to the Bill’s constructors for a moment, they have done a good job of ensuring that it is as legally unchallengeable as it can be—

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[Dr Whitehead]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. I have tried to think about this point precisely on those sort of lines. It is difficult, in looking at such tariffs, to see the circumstances under which a company offering not a wholly renewable tariff is protected from a slippery slope—from going right down that slope and saying, “Well, as long as there is something in there that is renewable, we can call it a renewable tariff.”

I was about to make a point about the circumstances under which companies trade. Normally, because of the extent of renewable penetration into the energy system, most companies will come across a renewable supply as part of their trading arrangements. As I said, it is pretty difficult to avoid that, so we can imagine how relatively easy it is in principle for someone sitting in a company boardroom to say “How can we produce a tariff that looks like a green tariff but does not give us any sort of problem in producing it? Why don’t we just set aside what we have come across by chance, as far as our energy supply is concerned, say that it is our green purchase and put it in a tariff? Then we will have a green tariff and will be fine.” No work would have been done to distinguish that tariff from anything else, and the company would have no intention of doing anything within their tariff offer but trade in the ordinary way. That is a worry.

[Caroline Flint]

This is an important area of the Bill. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a requirement on energy companies to source renewable energy—quite rightly—and those costs are already spread across all bill payers? Why should there be a premium on top?

[Dr Whitehead]

The point that my right hon. Friend makes is, I think, taken into account by the circumstances that now apply across the board for energy sourcing. As she and I know, having talked about this for years, the process of the renewables obligation did impose a particular obligation for a proportion of energy purchased to be green. Then there was a system of trading those obligation certificates. Those people not directly purchasing green energy would have to purchase certificates, which could be traded from those who had actually traded in green energy in the first place, so that those involved had, in one way or another, carried out their obligation. The overall design of the renewables obligation system was to encourage the production of green energy, because the beneficiaries of the certificates when they were traded in cash would be the producers. That was a system that very much incorporated in it an incentive to trade in green energy in the first place.

Now, of course, the renewables obligation is no more. It continues as a ghost trade system and will continue on a declining basis, I think, until 2027, but as of March 2017 no more renewables obligation certificates are being issued. They are being replaced by the contracts for difference system, which does not impose an obligation to purchase green energy in the same way as the renewables obligation system did. The prospective system does not, as my right hon. Friend suggested, provide a universal underwriting of green energy production. She is right, of course, that the system overall encourages renewable energy production, but not in the same way as the renewables obligation.

I do not think that that particularly detracts from my right hon. Friend’s fundamental point, but it puts us in a position where we can properly consider the idea that a number of energy companies might accidentally, as it were, purchase green energy that does not, otherwise, have an obligation attached to it, and introduce it as part of a green tariff that is not really a green tariff. I suggest that companies wholly in the business of producing renewable energy, or those that produce it from their own sources or sources guaranteed through a power purchase agreement, or something similar, with the operator, are in a different category. I want to emphasise that difference with respect to the purpose of the amendment.

Smart Meters Bill

Debate between Caroline Flint and Alan Whitehead

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

We have had a very good debate this afternoon, with informed and engaged contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House on a wide range of issues relating to smart meter roll-out and, in some instances, going a little beyond that. However, the contributions have all been relevant to a debate about a Bill with some very specific and relatively narrow elements.

Two of the clauses are very specific. One relates to the extension of the termination period during which the Secretary of State has powers over activities connected to smart meters from an end date in 2018 to an end date in 2023. The second addresses the lack in legislation of a smart meter communication and licensing administration regime by establishing one.

If we look very narrowly at the Bill, we might ask two important questions: why did the Government decide in 2014 that there should be a 2018 termination date for Government control over the smart meter roll-out, and why is that date now being extended to 2023? Is it being extended because, as hon. Members have said, the Government do not think the smart meter roll-out will in fact be completed in 2020, or are there other reasons for the extension? We might ask why, if there is a real risk of the roll-out being delayed by the Government’s inability hitherto to wrestle the operation of the DCC from possible paralysis—should it, or presumably the company to which it has been outsourced and of which it is now a wholly owned subsidiary, go bust, or should payments not come in to that company—these operations have apparently been conducted with no such safeguard written into legislation for almost four years since the establishment of the DCC in 2014.

Both questions, unless they have particularly good answers attached to them, demonstrate a certain, shall we say, laxity in the Government’s approach to the oversight of the roll-out of smart meters, and might prompt further questions: what else is possibly in the woodwork that may be impeding the progress of the smart meter roll-out to a successful conclusion, and are there further things we might do to ensure that the process works well in moving towards that goal?

Hon. Members have raised a number of those possible issues this afternoon. In an intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) talked about dumb meters being replaced by smart meters and about what would happen to them. The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), in a very thoughtful contribution, raised the issue of what we should do about energy efficiency in conjunction with smart meters, and talked about how those two issues might go hand in hand. My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North—

[Caroline Flint]

Don Valley.

[Dr Whitehead]

I am very sorry—it’s Don Valley now, isn’t it?

My right hon. Friend talked about the continuing imbalance of benefit in the roll-out of smart meters, with the benefit appearing to be accruing to energy companies, as opposed to customers. For our part, we support the idea of introducing smart meters across the country to replace the dumb meter system that serves the customer very badly and has historically done so, and is certainly not fit for purpose for the requirements of the different ways of supplying, using and measuring power that are coming our way with the energy revolution that is upon us.

The gain not only to customers but to our energy systems as a whole of having collectively installed, sufficient smart meters across the country to bring in new ways of measuring and predicting use of associating smart meters with smarter grids, thereby saving enormous amounts of further future expenditure in grid strengthening and capacity additions—all to the benefit of a smarter, more resilient, more efficient energy system for the future—suggests that supporting smart meters is right thing to do.

But then we come to the process by which smart meters are rolled out, and there is much to raise an eyebrow about. First, there is the Government’s original choice of who should undertake the roll-out—the energy companies: a model not adopted by any other country managing a smart meter roll-out programme, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) pointed out. Secondly, there is, as a number of hon. Members have mentioned, the high overall costs built into the roll-out—costs that will eventually land on consumers in the shape of bills on their doormats. Thirdly, there is the truly lamentable performance so far in getting the DCC—the communications company responsible for making smart meters communicate well and on an interoperable basis—up and running so that smart meters, once installed, really can communicate with other and with the system. That communications company has now only just gone live, at the very end of the window for doing so before serious repercussions arise. Fourthly, there was the decision, halfway through the roll-out, to transition from one type of smart meter to another—a process akin to trying to change the wheel of a car while it is driving along the road.

All these issues raise legitimate and far-reaching questions about whether the goal of having a critical mass of smart meters in place by the end of 2020 is likely to be achieved and whether, in the short time available to us, moves can be made to get us back to that goal. The recent reports in the 2016 impact assessment suggest that we are not doing very well on installation—that we are set for an almighty bunching of installations in late 2018 and 2019 that is very daunting, even if vans of installers are not starved of meters to put up because they have been told not to install the old ones and are awaiting supplies of the new ones to install. I welcome the consultation on methods of resolving the possible hiatus in supply during the changeover from SMETS 1 to SMETS 2 meters. However, I am minded—I think the Government will have some difficult decisions to make in this regard—of what we need to do by 2020 in populating the country with smart meters to the extent that we can really make these changes possible, for our collective good, given the sheer number of smart meters that have been installed across the country.

We need to judge the very modest changes to the smart meter roll-out regime in this Bill against that wider background of decisions and progress made in the roll-out itself, and of how far away we are from the goal of having a national smart meter presence that makes all the other energy innovations—and cheaper energy and gas—possible, and to decide whether we should take the opportunity to add further elements of “getting on with it” into the Bill as it progresses through Committee.

We will not oppose this Bill on Second Reading. However, I place the Minister and the Government on notice that in Committee we will closely scrutinise the roll-out provisions currently in place to look at ways in which we can make amends for some of the frankly sloppy decision making that has occurred in the progress of the roll-out, and stiffen the sinews of the programme so that it works as well as it can. It is perhaps no coincidence that the—

Energy Prices

Debate between Caroline Flint and Alan Whitehead

Thursday 16th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Whitehead]

Indeed. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the relationship of the customer to those transactions. However, with vertical integration, those transactions could cause money that should go to the customer to be siphoned off into different areas as a result of those opaque trades, and that is important to the customer in the long term. That is why we need full transparency in all those market trade arrangements.

[Caroline Flint]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the vertically integrated nature of these companies. In this dark, dark world of electricity generation and supply, is it not the case that the big six generate energy, sell it to themselves and then sell it on to us? That not only impacts on the fairness of pricing but excludes others, including independent generators and retailers, from coming into the market to put downward pressure on prices.

[Dr Whitehead]

My right hon. Friend’s point is spot on. It demonstrates the need to understand a lot more about how those trades work, who is doing what to whom and, sometimes, who is doing what to themselves. This is a complicated picture, involving trading right up to closure and trading in times of scarcity. There has been a suggestion that traders can pull back on their generation in order to trade when the generation becomes more scarce in order to get more money. The lack of accountability in those companies and the opacity of the system mean that we are badly served in regard to knowing what money goes where and who is benefiting from it, and what is happening to the customer in the end.

We need to open up the market to full transparency but we need to go still further and introduce a pool system of trading, so that all trades into the pool and all trades out of it are conducted transparently and, most importantly, on a level playing field for all suppliers. This works in other European countries—Scandinavia has the Nord Pool, for example—so why can it not work here? That does not mean that companies cannot make money. As Ofgem says, if companies have a good purchasing and hedging strategy, they can make money. What they will not be able to do is pass benefits on to themselves that otherwise ought to go to the customer.

We need urgent action, which is perhaps a little ironic. My right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley will recall that we have between us been through several Bills, now Acts, and reforms that have passed through the House under the heading of energy market reform. We have seen a great deal of reform, but we certainly have not seen reform of the energy market in all that time. It is time that we got serious about reform of how the energy market works, of its opacity, and of how it does not serve sticky customers properly, victimising and demonising the majority of them. We need urgent action on that. Otherwise, we will be condemned to the same old cycle of price rises, muttering, remedies being tossed around, commissions being engaged, remedies gathering dust on shelves, and then another round of price rises. I commend the motion, but it should herald the start of a serious look at how the whole market works and how the customer can finally be brought into its centre. It is a fine start, but we need to follow it through to the end.