Jim Cunningham
Main Page: Jim Cunningham (Labour - Coventry South)(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Roger Williams
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that point, but I am not in a position to answer his question. I suspect that different local authorities might have had different standards in building houses. Whether they were better or worse than the private sector, I guess, depended on the developer.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. We have had lots of debates about fuel poverty, and Government spending on fuel poverty is down 25% on 2010. Having said that, should we not learn a lesson from the past and look at the possibilities of improvement grants, which were often used—certainly in the late ’60s and ’70s—to deal with this sort of problem and for when people lacked amenities, such as toilets?
Roger Williams
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Finding a way forward to get improvements in heat efficiency will be key to solving the problem. The Energy Bill Revolution believes that the quality of the housing, rather than other aspects, is key to the problem.
Roger Williams
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I would join him if he made such a proposal. At the height of concern about the lack of competition in heating oil, we looked at a price comparison site that was available to my constituents, which appeared to show four potential suppliers of oil. When we looked into it, however, those suppliers were all the same company pretending to provide competition and offering marginal differences in oil price. That was undoubtedly illegal, and I believe that the company concerned has been prosecuted.
Mr Jim Cunningham
I sometimes think that the suggestion that poor families should shop around for cheaper fuel is a cop-out. We should, as I said in a debate in this place about three years ago, carry out a proper investigation into the companies involved, because they are frankly rigging the market. Some years ago when I was in Cornwall, I saw five fuel tankers lined up for about three weeks to force the price up. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is time we had a proper inquiry into the industry to break those companies up?