Prepayment Meters

Hilary Benn Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

Suppliers are required to provide emergency and friendly hours credit to all prepayment meter customers, and where a supplier identifies that a customer in a vulnerable situation has self-disconnected or is self-disconnecting, it must offer them additional support credit where it is in the customer’s best interest to do so. Ofgem warned suppliers way back in June 2018 that PPMs should only be installed as a last resort for debt collection and banned forcible installations for vulnerable consumers in 2017. We are watching to ensure that we have the right steps in place and will take further steps if required to make sure that suppliers live up to their obligations.

[Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)]

What possible justification is there for forcing people to sit in the cold and the dark because they have been required to have a prepayment meter connected that they cannot afford to top up? Twenty-five years ago we had the same debate over water disconnections, and society decided it would no longer be lawful to deny any human being access to water. Have we not now got to the point where, similarly, our constituents should be entitled in all cases to light and to warmth?