Energy Market Reform

John Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint]

Of course, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition did make some changes to Ofgem, but we have given more consideration to this over the past two years and, as I will explain later, we now feel that we need to take a more radical look at it.

On Tuesday last week, in response to a question from my noble Friend Lord Kennedy, Baroness Verma, a Minister in the Department for Energy and Climate Change, told the other place:

“What we cannot do, of course, is tell big energy companies what prices they should set.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 16 October 2012; Vol. 739, c. 1368.]

On Wednesday, though, the Prime Minister directly contradicted her when he said:

“we will be legislating so that energy companies have to give the lowest tariff to their customers”.—[Official Report, 17 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 316.]

By Wednesday evening, a spokesman for the Department had told the Financial Times that energy companies would not in fact be forced automatically to put all customers on cheaper tariffs. By Thursday morning, the Minister of State, the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), was reduced to taking the ridiculous line that the Government did still want to use legislation to get people lower tariffs but could not explain how they were going to do it.

All the while, the Secretary of State, the man responsible for this country’s energy policy, had gone AWOL, leaving an empty chair on “Newsnight”, refusing to answer questions from the media, and sending his deputy to answer my urgent question. The Minister put in a valiant performance of which he should be proud; those of us who were there could say that it was parliamentary comedy gold. However, what did we actually learn from last week’s urgent question? We learned, in the words of the Minister, that

“DECC has a wonderful relationship with…the Treasury and No. 10”

which

“has improved since my arrival.”—[Official Report, 18 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 493.]

Despite that wonderful relationship, we also learned that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is not told about announcements on energy policy until after they are made. We learned that one of the options being considered is a change to the law to require the energy companies to write to people to tell them what the cheapest deal is, even though the Government already announced that back in April and the Energy Act 2011 already gives the Secretary of State the power to force energy companies to provide information about the lowest tariff.

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

What kind of relationship does my right hon. Friend think that DECC has with the Treasury? When the Treasury was asked to give evidence to the Energy and Climate Change Committee, it refused to do so. Not only did it not give evidence; it did not inform DECC of the information required.

[Caroline Flint]

It was a very bad decision by the Treasury to refuse to attend the Committee. We know how important energy policy is for DECC, but it is also a cross-cutting issue for Government. Decisions and influence from the Treasury, and also the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, for that matter, are essential to the perception of how our energy policy is being developed. That decision was a great shame, but I am afraid that it is just another example of a lack of joined-up government, which is to the detriment of such an important policy area.

We also learned that the Government have been working on the proposals for months and that we should expect them to feature prominently in the forthcoming Energy Bill, but there is no mention of them at all in the draft Bill, the White Paper, the technical updates or the impact assessments. Perhaps the only real thing that we learned last week was that when it comes to energy bills this Government are not just out of touch, but completely clueless.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is very good with a brief in front of him but very poor when he comes before the Select Committee, where he has to answer questions. He beats around the bush and never answers a question, and I congratulate him once again on doing the same thing.

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) on her motion, although we would probably disagree on a couple of things.

A month or so ago I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on prepayment meters that would change the amount of debt that customers build up from £200 to £350 and give 200,000 people the opportunity to reduce their debt. Since then, Ofgem has announced that it wants the limit to be increased to £500, taking 400,000 people out of debt. I congratulate Ofgem on not only listening to me but going further than even I had suggested—I cannot have a go at it about that. I also worry about the 68 people it employs in Glasgow and, of course, the 722 staff in London who do the best they can with the rules they are given.

Ofgem and many other regulators such as Ofcom were introduced at a time when we wanted light regulation. That was a particular request shouted by those on the Opposition Benches while we were in government and we gave them that, but unfortunately times change. We are in a double-dip recession and things are harder. Many people in my constituency worry about whether they will be able to pay their bills this winter. The Secretary of State talked about helping people with energy efficiency, but how can we offer someone who lives in a multi-storey concrete block energy efficiency when they spend the summer cooling down the concrete walls and the winter heating them up? How can they have energy efficiency? They cannot. Those people do not have computers; they cannot switch providers.

I wrote to the energy companies three weeks ago and asked them to outline how they identify vulnerable people and what they do to try to help them. I have had three replies and three companies—E.ON, EDF and SSE—have not bothered to reply. They might not have quite got round to it or they might have been too busy counting money, but I want to know how they identify vulnerable people and, more importantly, how we can reach those people. No energy company has ever come to me to ask where I think the vulnerable people are in my constituency. I think I probably know better than those companies what happens in my constituency, given that I have lived there nearly all my life, yet they will not talk to me about these matters.

I asked about the cheapest tariffs—perhaps the Secretary of State could try this for his own house. People wanted to talk to me about that—not because I was a member of the public but because I was an MP, so they thought that the companies would give me some attention—but even they could not tell me the cheapest tariff. If they cannot tell me what the cheapest tariff is, what are they telling people outside this place?

The Secretary of State talked about four tariffs. If I pay by direct debit, will I get a lower bill? Yes. We have now doubled the four tariffs to eight. If I pay by cheque, will it be cheaper than a payment by standing order? Before we know it, there will be 20 or 30 tariffs rather than four. It is ridiculous, however, that we have 400 tariffs, and I raised that question in my Select Committee when the previous Government were in power.

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

Is it not also a problem when we try to compare different tariffs from different companies, as they are not always trying to sell the same thing? We need identical tariffs—perhaps four of them—across the companies because otherwise it is meaningless.

[John Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, but I would go even further. I met Which? this morning and its representatives said that they wanted energy to be like petrol and diesel. We are given a price for petrol and diesel and we know how much we are paying per litre; Which? wants to do the same for units of energy. Different companies can charge different prices. I do not have a problem with companies making a profit, but if they make an obscene profit I expect the next Labour Government to consider a windfall tax. We let these companies run as businesses and we want them to act responsibly, but if they make obscene profits on the backs of people, particularly poor people, I would expect my Government to consider that and to tax them accordingly.

I have to agree with the Secretary of State on the question of the over-75s. I would bring the minimum age down to the retirement age. As the retirement age is going up, 75 might not be off the mark in a few years’ time, but at the moment it is 67. If I retire, I will be 65, fortunately, so it would be nice if that age limit was 65.

That takes us back to vulnerable people. There are many single parents and disabled people, and we forget about them at our peril because they sometimes need more help than the elderly. As we move towards becoming the next Labour Government and proposing our own energy Bill, we need to consider these matters as they are very important.

In Prime Minister’s questions today, the Prime Minister was asked about his previous statement on tariffs. As I said earlier, no one really knows what those tariffs are. The Department of Energy and Climate Change told our Select Committee that it could not intervene and that it was down to the companies, but now it says it can intervene.

The regulator is, unfortunately, very poor at delivering. It is not that it does not want to do the right thing—it does—but the Government set the agenda for Ofgem. If the direction is poor and the regulator is not given the power to impose fines—[Interruption.] If the Secretary of State listened for a second, he might learn something.

There is an imbalance in how the generating companies spread energy about the country and it seems to be a bit of a rip-off. We pay the companies to shift electricity from one side of the country to another and it costs the taxpayer more than £340 million. It used to cost only £35 million, but it is now closer to £350 million, so why have the Government and Ofgem, who know that that fiddle goes on, not taken any of those companies to court to try to get the money back? I am told that one of the worst areas for that double dealing is the Cheviot hills, which are only about 20 miles from my house.

If wind farms are part of the problem and are being paid to close down, there is something wrong with our energy policy in this country. We need to look at that. I believe that Ofgem does a reasonable job but could do better and a reorganisation would be the best way forward, as we cannot reinvent the wheel once we have it. The Secretary of State also needs to get on top of his job and portfolio so that he can help people as he is supposed to, rather than engaging in stupid political point scoring from the Dispatch Box.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

I have no great problem with the motion moved by the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint). I might even vote for it—despite the fact that she would not take any of my interventions. I would, however, like to comment on one aspect. The motion is headed “Energy Market Reform”. In fact, both Front-Bench spokesmen entirely concentrated—apart from one brief mention from the right hon. Lady—on the big six in the electricity and the gas markets. As often happens in these debates, they totally failed to address the problem of those who are off the gas grid. To their credit, this Government brought forward the Office of Fair Trading review of the energy market. To almost universal disbelief, however, it was decided that the market was working fairly.

The Secretary of State spent a good deal of time talking about competition and how he was going to introduce it; again, this seemed to be focused on the electricity and gas markets. However, those who are off the grid have faced some of the highest price rises over the past year. The OFT said that that market was working okay because there were plenty of suppliers in it. I should like to think that that there are plenty of suppliers, because many of them are connected with each other, but does that not illustrate the difficulty of dealing with the issue if we rely on competition? Competition has failed in that market, and, indeed, in the bigger market as well.

There has been much talk about switching. There are several problems with that. For instance, when one of the energy companies puts up its prices, there is a follow-my-leader process: over the next month or two, the rest start to follow suit. People who have switched have found themselves in a worse position, because although the company to which they switched was giving a better deal at first, suddenly it is not a better deal any more.

The Secretary of State spoke said that the community base must include the fuel-poor. That is true, because they are the only people who will really benefit from switching. When I joined the Which? campaign, I looked into whether it was worth my while switching. However, I am still using the former monopoly supplier in my area, which was much derided earlier in the debate. When I received the figures from Which?, I concluded that switching would not be worth my while because the savings would be so low, and in view of the hassle that would be involved in switching, I did not bother.

The hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) mentioned his private Member’s Bill, which deals with pre payment meters. People with pre payment meters will make significant savings only if they are on a very high tariff. Those of us who have made the effort to reduce consumption and become more energy-efficient also find that it is not worth switching, because we are not using enough energy for it to be worth while. The real problem is that energy bills continue to rise, and that hits everyone.

[John Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman was an excellent member of the previous Energy and Climate Change Committee, although we did not always agree, particularly when nuclear matters were being discussed. Does he agree that those who would save the most money by switching are the ones who do not receive the necessary information, or even have an opportunity to switch?

[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman is right. There are many reasons for that, but one of the most basic is the digital divide. Many people who might otherwise benefit have no access to these deals, because many are online. They find it very difficult to obtain information. Furthermore, they tend not to have bank accounts.

Let us be honest: the energy companies are not interested in those people. They are the customers who may run up debt, and the energy companies do not generally want to take them on. They make sympathetic noises now and again, but the customers they want are people such as the hon. Gentleman and me, who are relatively well off and can pay by direct debt. I presume that the hon. Gentleman pays his bills on time; I would certainly expect him to. Those are the people whom the energy companies are after, and those are the people who are being targeted for the purposes of switching.

The Secretary of State is right—it will make a great difference if we can get community switching on the go and target the fuel poor—but he will have to change the energy companies’ thinking, and ensure that not just the well-off but the fuel-poor are taken on board. Unless that happens, community switching will make no difference. However, I do not oppose what the Secretary of State said. It interested me, and I should like to see how it works out.

Let me return to the issue of off-grid gas, which affects my constituency and, indeed, much of rural Scotland. While 15% of the households that are on the gas grid are in fuel poverty, the figure rises to 32% for those that are off grid. The Government should think about ways of getting into that market and doing something about it. In my own private Member’s Bill, I suggested that one way of helping everyone quickly, particularly pensioners, was to bring forward the payment of the winter fuel allowance. My suggestion was never debated, because the Tory Whips objected to it for their own reasons, and the previous Bill was talked out. I have raised the matter time and again in the last Parliament and in this one, and I am still waiting for a member of the past or the present Government to explain why my suggestion cannot be considered or even debated.

It is not always the huge changes that make a difference; we can make a difference by means of small, incremental changes. They may not be revolutionary, but they will help, and any help during the coming winter will be very welcome to pensioners and those in fuel poverty. Although the great schemes all sound grand, it may be years before any of them actually makes a difference, and people are suffering from fuel poverty now. As a Labour Member pointed out earlier, a cold snap is predicted for the end of this week. Winter is approaching, energy bills are creeping up, and people are worrying about how they will pay them.

Rather than talk of, for instance, getting rid of Ofgem, we need action. As I have said, small incremental steps can make a difference, but the Secretary of State—the Government—should tell the energy companies that unless they address the problem, there will be stronger action. The Prime Minister promised legislation to put people on to the lowest tariffs, but that seemed to unravel in hours rather than days, and we are still none the wiser about what will be in the Energy Bill. Ofgem’s proposals at least had the benefit of being better thought out, but they too rely on switching and making tariffs simpler. Unless we reach the people who are suffering from fuel poverty and who are at the bottom of the heap as far as the companies are concerned, those changes will make no difference.

I urge the Secretary of State to speak to his colleagues in the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, and to consider measures such as bringing forward the winter fuel payments for pensioners off grid. Such small steps will make a difference, and they will make a difference now.