Smart Meters Bill (First sitting) Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLaura Smith
Main Page: Laura Smith (Labour - Crewe and Nantwich)Department Debates - View all Laura Smith's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(6 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesQ
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.
Q
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.
Q
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.
Q
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.