Warm Home Discount Scheme (Northern Ireland)

Lady Hermon Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)]

I was delighted to secure this very important debate on the extension of the warm home discount scheme to Northern Ireland. I am pleased that the Minister is in her place to respond. The rate of fuel poverty is higher in Northern Ireland than in any other part of the UK, representing 42% or 294,000 homes, with the figure rising to 62% for elderly people. I would like to outline the extreme toll that fuel poverty takes on people.

Only last week, I received an e-mail from the Contact a Family organisation. It told me that Ellen Johnston from Belfast, whose six-year-old son Cole has global developmental delay, low muscle tone, epilepsy and cannot speak, said:

“People don’t realise that it can cost so much more if you have a child with a disability or special needs. I used to work before Cole was born and tried to work from home but it was just too difficult to do this and deal with Cole’s needs and medical appointments at the same time.”

That serves to illustrate the cost and the burden on that poor lady of heating her home, particularly with a disabled child and particularly when she was relying on benefits and had no other source of income.

Many of us take a warm home for granted, but many people, particularly the elderly, do not have the comfort of a well-heated home. It is also worth noting that retired people are for obvious reasons at home much more of the time and therefore require the heating to be on for much longer periods than those still in work do. For them, heating their home becomes an enormous financial pressure, leading many to be left with the reality of living in extremely cold conditions. This is not just a matter of simply adjusting the thermostat or putting on a jumper, as a previous Energy Secretary suggested—it is often a matter of life and death.

Under the Government’s own criteria, an estimated 6 million households are living in fuel poverty, and this winter a reported 40,000 extra winter deaths occurred in the UK—a rise of 29% on the previous year. According to the Office for National Statistics, from the beginning of December until 16 January this year, there were 8,800 more deaths than the average of 25,000. The rate rocketed by 33% in the week up until 16 January, when there were almost 15,000 deaths as an extremely cold spell took hold. An additional 3,000 deaths are expected and by March 31, the end date for Department of Health winter death totals, numbers will have surpassed the flu-hit toll of 36,450 in 2008-09, making it the worst since the peak of 48,440 deaths in 1999-2000.

The figures for Northern Ireland are at least as grim, if not worse, with approximately 600 excess winter deaths recorded in 2013-14—up by about 20% from 2012. It is important to note that not all those deaths represent the “very elderly”, with approximately one in five under-75s and one in nine under-65s in the last year for which records were available in Northern Ireland.

Low interior temperatures also lead to a range of other medical conditions, from bronchitis and other respiratory diseases to heart problems, not to mention the extra psychological toll that they can take. The World Health Organisation recently reported on the extreme danger that cold and damp homes, which often have poor or shoddy insulation, can pose to people’s health by causing respiratory illnesses. One of my party’s councillors, Brian Heading, has taken a great lead on the issue, and is trying to raise awareness of it in councils in the UK and in Ireland. It puts enormous pressure on an already hard-pressed health service and on individual families.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

Fuel poverty is a very serious issue in Northern Ireland. I should like to know why Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom to which the warm home discount scheme does not extend. Did the Westminster Government not pay for it, or was money allocated but not spent in the proper way by the Northern Ireland Executive?

[Ms Ritchie]

I may be able to explain that later in my speech, but suffice it to say that Northern Ireland is the only region to which the scheme does not extend and in which there are particular market conditions. Our climatic conditions are probably similar to those in Scotland, and we have similar levels of fuel poverty, but the war home discount scheme extends to Scotland and not to Northern Ireland.

I understand from Age Sector Platform that the scheme could be administered centrally by the United Kingdom, and that the costing could be executed by the utility companies. In fact, one of the utility companies that operate in Britain, SSE, also operates in Northern Ireland, through its agent Airtricity. I imagine that if the Minister approached the Northern Ireland Executive and, in particular, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Investment, as well as the utility regulator and the other utility companies, a resolution might be found.

In Northern Ireland, the problem of cold and damp is exacerbated by the fact that people have no access to the warm home discount scheme. The scheme was introduced in April 2011 by regulations made under section 9 of the Energy Act 2010. It provides a £140 rebate on household energy bills for eligible groups, namely pensioners receiving guarantee credit, who are known as the core group, and other low-income households, who are known as the broader group. Some further payments were made on the basis of other criteria.

More than 2 million low-income and vulnerable households in England, Scotland and Wales have been helped each year, and total payments were expected to reach £1.1 billion by March 2015. The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that approximately four out of every five households claim this entitlement. While it is obviously desirable to maximise the figure and promote better awareness of the scheme here, it is worth repeating yet again that no one in Northern Ireland has access to it. The hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) made that point a few moments ago.

The scheme is administered by Ofgem. The Department for Work and Pensions has a monitoring role, and the administration costs are carried by the UK Government. Could the arrangement not simply be transferred to Northern Ireland, with the administration being carried out centrally here in Britain? It is financed by levying around £11 per annum on consumers, and Age Sector Platform has estimated that Northern Ireland could be covered by the scheme with the addition of just £1 per customer per year. This scheme was designed specifically, in the words of the Department of Energy and Climate Change,

“to reduce fuel poverty in the UK”,

with no mention of excluding Northern Ireland, and indeed has been set up with a mechanism to ensure that no supplier is left footing a disproportionate burden owing to the uneven spread of fuel poverty across the UK. Surely the north of Ireland should not be excluded from this.

While the Minister in response to written questions has maintained that fuel poverty is a fully devolved matter, in DECC’S own fuel poverty statistics guide it is described only as a partially devolved matter and it is acknowledged that devolved Administrations do not have the capacity to

“affect certain aspects of fuel poverty policies”,

such as incomes and market conditions. Fellow Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies who are present tonight will recall that we met Age Sector Platform in this building on 4 November and it referred to that specific point. We were under the illusion—including me, a former Minister for Social Development—that it was a totally devolved matter, but that document from DECC clearly shows that it is only partially devolved and therefore the UK Government centrally do have a responsibility in this matter. It is on that point that I and other Members representing Northern Ireland constituencies are seeking answers.