Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

Fuel poverty varies a great deal around the UK. The rate in Northern Ireland is 44%, which is explicable by the lack of gas up the pipe—more people are off-grid. The rate in Scotland is 28%, in Wales 26% and in England 16%. The Bevan Foundation estimates that fuel poverty in Wales is high, with 332,000 households in fuel poverty. Figures are also available for the regions of England. Fuel poverty hits rural England very hard indeed, but it is interesting that the rate in the south of England is 11.5%.

Wales is disproportionately hit by higher fuel bills. Incomes in Wales are lower and the percentage of people’s incomes devoted to energy is higher, and that, of course, leads to fuel poverty. We are also hit hard by Government policy on benefits. If benefits are to go up by only 1%, including, I might add, benefits for hard-working families, fuel inflation will, clearly, be much higher. That is not unique to Wales, but it is hitting us particularly hard, given the level of wages in Wales and the number of people who are dependent on in-work benefits.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Some 86,000 pensioners in the United Kingdom fail to claim all of their pension credits, 12,000 fail to claim their full housing benefit and 24,000 died in the last calendar year owing to cold-related illnesses. Is it not time that the Minister, along with the Department for Work and Pensions, make every effort to ensure that all those moneys that are not claimed are claimed by those vulnerable people who need it most?

[Hywel Williams]

That is a very good point. I hope that the Government’s pension policy will address some of that under-claiming. I will refer later to a particular aspect of this question—namely winter payments—which the hon. Gentleman will certainly be interested in.

There is less availability of mains gas in Wales, Northern Ireland, Scotland and rural England. That leads to rural areas being dependent on off-grid fuel, which is a point that I made to the Secretary of State earlier. People have to adopt and then pay for alternatives that are, of themselves, much more expensive and, of course, they have to pay up front. I came across a case last week of a pensioner who had been saving hard all year, essentially to put £600-worth of fuel into a tank in her garden. It was quite a strain.

Delivery in winter, particularly of gas, can be difficult, as we found in north-west Wales two years ago, when some households with pensioners could not heat their houses because the lorry could not get up to the house and they could not afford to put money up front earlier in the year. It is all very well to talk about switching and getting the best deal but, as I said earlier, pensioners would be much better off if they could spend the money given to them by the Government earlier in the year, when coal and gas are cheaper. They would get more bangs for the buck—I am sorry for that particular remark, but they would get more for their money.

There is limited potential for switching because of the cost. People cannot change the equipment easily if they are off-grid. For example, converting a solid fuel stove to gas costs a great deal of money. Switching suppliers is less common among those with off-grid fuel than for those with electricity or mains gas. The Office of Fair Trading figures for 2011 show that 3.7% of people with such solid, liquid and gas fuels switched supplier. People who depend on cylinder gas, although I concede that they are very few, are in an even more difficult situation.

I was glad that my hon. Friend the Member for Angus (Mr Weir) introduced a private Member’s Bill to allow winter fuel payments to be made earlier in the year, but it was blocked. I hope that the Government will look at that idea sympathetically.

Wales is in the bizarre situation of being rich in mineral and renewable sources of energy, but having one of the highest levels of fuel poverty in the UK. We are energy rich and fuel poor. According to the Welsh Government, we have the potential to produce double the amount of electricity that we need. According to the Department of Energy and Climate Change here in London, Wales is a net exporter of electricity, and yet energy prices in Wales are among the highest.

We in Plaid Cymru have called for planning decisions on energy to be devolved. It is our belief that that would improve the situation markedly. Last year, my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) presented a simple and reasonable Bill to devolve energy planning policy to the Welsh Government.