Smart Meters Bill (First sitting)

Laura Smith Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st Sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st November 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Matt Western]

Q Have you withdrawn the licence from anyone so far on the basis of malpractice?

Rob Salter-Church: We have a range of tools if we see problems with licence compliance, including ultimately running an enforcement action and imposing fines. We have not had to use our enforcement powers in relation to smart metering as yet.

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

Q Matt just asked my question, but I will add to it. I could possibly be the only person in this room who has had to survive on a pay-as-you-go meter, and I have also lived through then being targeted with high tariffs by energy companies—they come to the estate and sell those things, knowing that they are going to make money out of the poorest in society. I struggle with the transparency of this. Data protection and customers’ privacy, in terms of information about how they are using their energy, is a real concern for me. I just do not personally buy the argument that it is all for the consumer, when there is money to be made out of people. So that is an issue.

The roll-out is also an issue. We have touched on the fact that it is obviously delayed. Is it going to happen or is it another initiative that is going to cost an awful lot of money? Who is going to end up paying for that? Will it ultimately be the consumer once again? Those are my two main points, before I get on my high horse.

Rob Salter-Church: You talked about having a traditional prepayment meter and some of the poor quality of service that results from that. One of the most important things that the smart meter roll-out will do is end the prepayment disadvantage, in terms of both cost and quality of service. That is absolutely key and there are real benefits for consumers.

You talked a little bit about privacy. There are very clear rules in place for suppliers; they must obtain customers’ consent if they want to have any data from them.

[Laura Smith]

Q How easy and transparent is it? We sometimes say that we are making things easy, but how accessible is the information that is given to customers and how is it being rolled out?

Rob Salter-Church: That is a good challenge. We gather regular information by engaging with Citizens Advice, which is a good source of information if people are raising concerns or complaints about their smart metering installation. As I mentioned before, we also gather information from the smart metering installation code of practice survey. We gather information from a wide range of sources. If we thought there was a systematic problem and suppliers were not being clear to customers about information consent, we would absolutely do something about it and use all the powers that we have to crack down on those suppliers and make sure that consumers are protected. I hope I can reassure you that we have both the practical arrangements in place to get the data and the will to do something if we see that there is a real problem.

[Dr Whitehead]

Q Mr Flett, we heard from previous witnesses that there may well be a hiatus in the roll-out and that vans may go out empty, with no meters. A number of people have suggested that that hiatus may be due to the fact that the DCC did not go live until the very edge of the penalty period in which it was supposed to be fully functional. Even when it went live, it was not fully live; there were a number of workarounds in the report that went out about it going live. What is your view of those severe delays, and what would you say about the DCC’s state of liveness—if that word exists—in terms of the challenges that SMETS 2 will bring us in the near future, particularly with end-to-end testing?

Angus Flett: I can reassure the Committee that DCC is fully operational and ready to scale. If we look at the facts, DCC was born in 2013. Our first release was due in December 2015 and was actually delivered in October 2016—the following year. The latest release, which was due in November, we delivered bang on track. There are subsequent releases to unlock functionality such as prepaid and so on.

We run regular “ready to scale” forums with our suppliers and customers. The forecasts that are coming through from my main customers indicate that I will be doing well over 200,000 installs a week next year, and that number is growing. In fact, one of my main customers issued a press release saying that it was the first to go live with the installation of SMETS 2. We are also putting in place incremental measures to ensure that, as we cut over from SMETS 1 to SMETS 2, we carry a buffer stock of communications hubs so that my customers can ramp down their old stock and ramp up the new stock. We are confident that we can deliver against the scaling requirements.