Fuel Poverty

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fuel poverty.

I hope that no Members will leave the Chamber during such an important debate. I have just spilt a glass of water over the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and I apologise. [Interruption.] Yes, it is not the worst thing that has happened to Members today from what I have heard.

Fuel poverty is debated annually in the House. Let me give some background to that. Our 2015 fuel poverty strategy for England committed us to ensuring appropriate parliamentary scrutiny as we take action to tackle fuel poverty. That commitment to transparency is why we created the Committee on Fuel Poverty and why we hold the annual debates.

The problem of fuel poverty crosses party lines and needs action from many different stakeholders. I welcome all contributions today and the positive way in which I know they will be made. I am looking at the shadow spokesman when saying that and pleading with her to show her usual grace and dignity in opposing me.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I am afraid that the Minister cannot expect quite so much grace and dignity from me—I apologise. To be serious, there is good reason to be deeply concerned about the fuel poverty statistics because we have just heard from the Office for National Statistics that last winter, the figure for premature winter deaths exceeded 50,000— the highest for more than 40 years. With respect, the Government are not doing anything near enough on fuel poverty, and I want to put that on the record at the beginning of the debate.

[Richard Harrington]

I would ascribe grace and dignity to the hon. Lady’s usual contributions. This is a serious matter. The hon. Lady is right that last winter’s severely cold weather included wind-chill factors of minus 10° C and I accept what she says about the statistics. However, I do not accept her assertion that the Government have done nothing about that. If she will bear with me for the rest of my contribution, I will answer her point, and if I do not, I am sure that she will intervene.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

I agree with the hon. Lady. The Government have many different strategies, and energy efficiency measures are one of them. The importance of working together with the devolved authorities on this issue was never in more evidence than during last winter’s beast from the east—I see the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) is not in his seat. As temperatures plunged, many households throughout the UK faced broken boilers and frozen pipes. The sustained cold weather made it even more difficult for those on the lowest incomes and in the worst properties to be able to heat their home.

As has been mentioned, last month the Office for National Statistics reported there were 50,000 excess winter deaths last winter. The figure was said by the ONS to be unusually high because of multiple causes, including the virulent strain of flu, the relative ineffectiveness of the influenza vaccine and the colder than average winter temperatures. However, old, inefficient and cold homes, combined with occupants who are vulnerable to the impact of living in a cold home, certainly have been a factor.

The fabric of our building stock cannot continue to be a source of ill health. We have put in place an ambitious framework to tackle this issue, based on energy efficiency being the best long-term solution to tackle fuel poverty.

[Caroline Lucas]

I do not know how the Minister can say he has put in place something that is so ambitious when no public funds are going into domestic fuel poverty and energy efficiency, for the first time in years. In the past we had Warm Front and other schemes, but right now the Government are putting no taxpayers’ money into these schemes.

[Richard Harrington]

I respectfully disagree with the hon. Lady, and I will outline the £3 billion-worth of Government help.

Our 2017 clean growth strategy sets an ambition of improving as many homes as possible to energy performance certificate band C by 2035, wherever practical, cost-effective and affordable, but the truth is that the most vulnerable must be helped first. We are committed to improving the homes of the fuel poor to band C five years earlier, by 2030, and we have set interim milestones to keep us on track. As many fuel-poor homes as reasonably practical will be improved to band E by 2020, and to band D by 2025.

A key way in which we are delivering energy efficiency measures to meet that ambition is through the energy company obligation, which has led to energy efficiency upgrades to nearly 2 million homes across England, Scotland and Wales since 2013. Recognising the need to support low-income and vulnerable households first, we have taken action to ensure that ECO is targeted at those who need it most.

When the scheme was first introduced in 2013, 30% of ECO spending was focused on addressing fuel poverty, and by 2015 it had been increased to 70%. Today 100% of the energy company obligation is focused directly on low-income and vulnerable households, and we have introduced a new innovative element that will bring down the long-term cost of low-carbon measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

If ever we needed an example of how the Brexit omnishambles is squeezing out time for important debates on issues that matter to our constituents, this is a perfect case in point. There is so much to say. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on fuel poverty and energy efficiency, I wish we had more time.

For example, a report published by the Institute for Public Policy Research in June showed that the Government are set to miss their fuel poverty targets by 60 years. It is not that the Government do not know how to reverse the situation—indeed, they have even set a goal to do so, in both their manifesto and their recent clean growth strategy. The tragedy is that in recent years the Government have scrapped, reversed or shelved many of the measures that could actually have helped. It is truly shocking that, for example, we are in the absurd situation where the UK Government are not investing any public funds in improving domestic energy efficiency through insulation, particularly in England. In 2018, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, that is nothing short of a moral failure.

The frustration is that many of us know that tackling fuel poverty by investing in energy efficiency could be a real win-win, bringing people’s fuel bills down, tackling climate change and creating jobs. Despite clear evidence of that win-win-win, the funding for energy efficiency in this year’s Budget was zilch. Quite why the Government can find £30 billion to fix potholes and improve roads but not to keep people warm is beyond me.

Many of us had hoped that the Government would use their response to the national infrastructure assessment to make progress on this issue. They did not. Published quietly alongside this year’s Budget, it did not even make reference to the Government’s statutory fuel poverty targets, let alone commit to the additional investment needed to meet them. The impact of the Government’s complacency will be felt long beyond the effects of fuel poverty today. As we know, a few months ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its latest report, saying that we have just 12 years to halve global emissions if there is to be any chance of meeting the 1.5° threshold.

The Committee on Climate Change has repeatedly made it clear that improving energy efficiency through better insulating our homes is crucial to our existing climate targets. We need those policies now, well before the long-term targets of the Climate Change Act 2008 are amended in line with the latest IPCC report and the Paris climate agreement. The withdrawal of incentives has cut home insulation installations to 5% of 2012 levels. That is a shameful failure, and it has to change. We need a massive programme of home insulation if we are to make a meaningful contribution to the global project of protecting our planet and our children’s future. We also need to have not just the big six energy companies, which are profiting from this situation; we should have 60,000 energy companies and more, as they do in Germany. We should have real community energy, not as a “nice to have” but as a genuine, essential measure.