Fuel Poverty

Debate between Derek Thomas and Baroness Ritchie of Downpatrick

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered fuel poverty.

I am grateful for your arrival, Mr Streeter. “My home lets out the heat. My heating fuel is expensive, and I can’t afford it. I am in fuel poverty.” That is the personal testimony of more people in my constituency than anywhere else in England, and the UK is the leakiest country in the EU, so homes in my neck of the woods could be among the leakiest in Europe. This is a national issue, not an isolated problem for the west country. Fuel poverty affects 10% of the population of England, and the situation is even worse in Scotland, Wales and Northern—may I say that I am so grateful to everyone who has turned up this morning to support and take part in the debate?

Jenny Holland, from the Association for the Conservation of Energy, said this just before the spending review:

“Of the 26 million households in the UK, four out of five have poor levels of energy efficiency, rated band D or below. As today’s findings clearly show, this places our nation right at the bottom of the European rankings for housing and fuel poverty and represents an energy bill crisis for UK consumers. Ministers must now embrace the opportunity for a national energy efficiency infrastructure programme”.

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining the debate. As an MP representing a constituency in Northern Ireland, I concur with his viewpoint, but does he agree with me that opening up infrastructure funding for energy efficiency improvements has massive potential both to improve lives by reducing fuel poverty and to save the taxpayer money by reducing NHS winter costs?

[Derek Thomas]

Certainly. I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. She is absolutely right. Reducing the impact on hospitals in terms of admissions, but also creating skilled jobs and reducing emissions, are good reasons to use the infrastructure money to tackle and solve this problem.

I congratulate successive Governments on initiatives that they have introduced to tackle fuel poverty. I also congratulate the many MPs who have addressed this issue in this place. There have already been many Westminster Hall debates on fuel poverty, including one just a few weeks ago. However, my constituency demonstrates that not enough has been achieved. My constituency has more leaky homes than anywhere else in rural England. Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly are in the top three areas in England for homes without central heating; 14% of homes in Cornwall do not have central heating and 22% of homes in the Isles of Scilly, which is also in my constituency, do not.