David Wright
Main Page: David Wright (Labour - Telford)Department Debates - View all David Wright's debates with the Department for Transport
(12 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
I am grateful to the Opposition for selecting a debate on the cost of living, which is a very important issue. There can be no doubt that many people in our country have been through, and are going through, some tough times, not least because inflation has cut into their living standards. I am sure that all of us pick that up in our constituencies. I do two advice surgeries a week for my constituents, and the cost of living comes up frequently.
When we talk to and listen to people, we find that the rising cost of electricity, gas and fuel has been hurting the most. We should all be concerned when we see pensioners and families worrying about basics such as food and fuel, groceries and gas. Despite the rhetoric that we have just endured, infused with the memory of an amnesiac, I wish to make it absolutely clear to the House that this Secretary of State and this Government understand those worries, share them and are acting to relieve them. Labour sometimes talks as though it had a monopoly on compassion and caring, but it never has, it never will, and to boot it does not have the record to show that it ever did.
The Government are committed to helping households cope with rising energy bills. We cannot control volatile global energy markets, and I think reasonable people understand that. However, we can act, and are now acting, to ease the pressure on consumers. In the short term, we are making it easier for people to get a better deal from their energy suppliers, about which I will say more shortly. In the medium term, we are making it easier for people to save money by insulating their homes. In the long term, we are making it easier for investors to build clean power plants here in the UK, protecting British consumers from global wholesale energy prices.
I want to set out the short, medium and long-term policies that are helping, and that will continue to help, consumers with their energy bills, not least by explaining the purpose of the energy Bill, as contained in the Gracious Speech, before its publication, which will come shortly. However, before I do so, it is only right to respond to the amendment and the speech of the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). The key thing I have learned in my first few months as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change is that energy and climate change policies take a long time. They involve big infrastructure, huge shifts in the structure of the economy, and changing behaviours that have developed over years. Therefore, to get results, we must act decisively and strategically. This Government have been doing just that for the two years we have been in office.
We are introducing some of the most innovative and ambitious policies to bring forward billions of pounds of investment, which will be essential for our country over the next few decades. Such investment will help our growth, from the green investment bank to electricity market reform, and enable us to decarbonise our economy, especially our electricity generation sector, so we can tackle climate change.
The problem is that the previous Labour Government did not act decisively or strategically, but lurched from one White Paper to the next consultation document. Unable to make up their mind, they delayed and dithered. This Government have been left to pick up the pieces.
However, let me give the previous Government credit. They were very good at setting targets; they just never hit them. Even on fuel poverty, they set a target. However, Professor John Hills has examined their fuel poverty targets in detail, and it turns out that they could not set a target for fuel poverty competently—they could not even measure fuel poverty properly. This coalition will clear up the Labour Government’s legacy on energy as well as on the economy.
Let me therefore explain to the Opposition why living standards have fallen in the last year. It was partly down to high world prices for oil, gas and food, but it was also partly because they left the country poorer and borrowed to hide the truth. When the economy contracts in one of our country’s deepest ever recessions, when the country’s national income falls by 7%, and when the Government borrow to compensate, there must be a day of reckoning. The problem is that the Opposition are incapable of admitting that.
The right hon. Lady and others make out that the problems are all the Government’s fault because of the cuts to feed-in tariffs or because of lower take-up on Warm Front, but they simply do not understand their legacy or the changes we are making.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
I have been in the House for 11 years and have watched the right hon. Gentleman progress in his career. I remember him sitting on the Opposition Benches and consistently calling on the previous Labour Government to spend more. It is interesting that he now completely ignores that fact. What are his targets for reducing fuel poverty and how will he deliver them?
Mr Davey
I must remind the hon. Gentleman that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury of the previous Government left a message to say that there was no more money. That is the legacy this Government are dealing with. We will take fuel poverty seriously. My predecessor commissioned a report to ensure we have proper targets and measurements of fuel poverty. John Hills has produced a welcome report, on which we will consult—[Interruption.] We have plenty of policies to tackle fuel poverty and I will come to them, but we want to ensure we are tackling the real thing, not the fake one.