Electricity

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I welcome the statutory instrument this afternoon to extend the warm home discount for another year. Indeed, what is there not to like about extending the warm home discount for a further year at least? It has been a very successful scheme. It is now coming up to its 11th year, and, as the Minister has mentioned, it provides £140 guaranteed for those in fuel poverty and in vulnerable circumstances to help with their fuel bills.

I have a sense that the SI is a little Augustinian. It is a little, in the saying of St Augustine, “Oh Lord make me good, but not now.” [Interruption.] Sorry, “not yet”. I should look at my “Dictionary of Great Quotations” a little more assiduously.

The Minister has mentioned the suggestions in the energy White Paper about the future of the warm home discount and the proposals not only to continue it beyond next year but to at least 2026. However, that is not addressed in this particular piece of legislation today. I assume that is because, as the Minister said, consultations need to be undertaken in order to refashion the longer-term warm home discount into a slightly different form. Indeed, in the energy White Paper, there is mention of what might be in store for us as far as that refashioning is concerned. In particular, it includes an increase in the envelope so that there is a substantially larger amount of money in the pot for extending the scope of the warm home discount; an increase in the size of the rebate, with a suggestion that it goes to £150, rather than £140; and a consultation on a reform of the targeting of the warm home discount so that it faces rather more towards fuel poverty than is presently the case.

All those things appeared in the White Paper, albeit in a fairly sketchy form, but more than some of them could have been done earlier. They need not have been put off to next year. I assume that a further piece of secondary legislation will be introduced to extend the scheme beyond one year. By the way, it is important that we have some certainty about the longer-term arrangements for the warm home discount so that we are not constantly hopping from one year to the next; we must have a longer-term view of the future of the scheme.

Not only could some of the things signalled in the White Paper, but not detailed or actioned, have been brought forward and put in this year’s extension, but there are further problems with the warm home discount scheme—I think the Minister is well aware of them—that have not been addressed in this year’s suggested extension. It is certainly true that there are a number of welcome things in this SI that relate, for example, to the way that the supplier of last resort arrangements are dealt with. It provides more certainty that a failed supplier’s warm home discount obligations do not disappear with the failure of the supplier and are carried over to obligations going to the supplier that is taking over as the supplier as last resort.

That welcome enhancement of the scheme does not resolve one of the fundamental problems relating to obligated suppliers. The Minister mentioned that she does not wish to change the threshold for next year’s WHD arrangements, but I am sure she is aware that the obligation level leads to the continuing problem of what happens to someone’s entitlement to the warm home discount if they switch during the year from a supplier that is above the threshold to one that is below it. Although I accept that the threshold has been reduced, there is still an issue of the loss, potential or actual, of that entitlement to an obligation on switching. The customer, of course, does not know which supplier has 150,000 customers or fewer than 150,000 customers when they do that.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I declare an interest: I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for healthy homes and buildings. I understand that the scheme the Minister is proposing is important for people who need to improve their homes. Does the shadow Minister believe that the funding is in place to ensure that the finance is there for all those who wish to have their homes brought up to a certain standard?