Lord Barker of Battle
Main Page: Lord Barker of Battle (Conservative - Life peer)(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Caroline Flint
No. I am going to make some progress. I shall say more about consumers later, and there will be plenty of time for interventions then. Let me begin, however, by saying something about energy efficiency.
There is agreement on the fact that the best way in which to protect people from rising energy bills is to make their homes better insulated and more energy-efficient. The Government’s flagship programme is the green deal. It replaced the Warm Front programme, which helped more than 2 million families to insulate their homes under the last Labour Government.
Members may recall that the last Secretary of State said that the green deal would help to insulate 3.5 million homes. Clearly a great deal has happened since that statement, and it would be understandable if Members took those words with a pinch of salt. However, the Prime Minister told the House that the scheme would be “bigger and better” than any schemes that had preceded it. It would be groundbreaking, revolutionary, and the envy of countries all over the world. When it was launched earlier this year, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) told Radio 4 that he would be having sleepless nights if fewer than 10,000 people had signed up for it by the end of the year.
Eight months in, how many people have actually signed up for a green deal package? Has the number hit 8,000, or 4,000? Can the Minister look forward to a good night’s sleep before the end of the year? I am afraid not, because so far just 132 people have signed up. Therefore, almost five out of six hon. Members in this House do not have a single constituent who has signed up for the green deal. The saddest thing is that this was all so predictable. For the last three years my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and I have warned that interest rates of 8% or even 9% would put people off, that hidden charges would put people off, that penalty payments would put people off, but this Government are not good at listening.
The Secretary of State will no doubt claim that it is still early days, and I really wish that were the case. On the latest count over 58,000 people have had assessments. That shows that the public are interested in making their homes more energy-efficient, but the problem is that once they have had their assessment, 99% of people say they do not think it is a good deal and are not signing up.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
There is absolutely no factual basis for that assertion. The latest DECC polling shows that over 70% of people who have had a green deal assessment have said they either have work in progress or intend to or are likely to have work done.
Caroline Flint
The facts speak for themselves. There were 58,000 assessments, but only 132 people have signed up. I am sure Government Members will do their best to defend the green deal this afternoon, but they might want to ask themselves why their constituents do not want it if it is such a fantastic scheme.
Alongside the green deal is the energy company obligation, which is a successor scheme to the obligations on the energy companies that we put in place. Again, in principle it has our support. However, when support for people in fuel poverty has been cut by half, the help that is available should be targeted where it is most needed, yet under ECO 60% of the funding could go to households who can already afford to pay, not to people in fuel poverty. When times are tough and money is in short supply, that is simply indefensible.
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
This has been an interesting and timely debate. As we head into the autumn, I know that colleagues across the Chamber share their constituents’ worries about the rising cost of living and the strain that energy costs in particular can put on tight family budgets. That is why the coalition is determined to do everything it can to help hard-working families with their energy bills.
Sitting here this afternoon listening to the Opposition Front Benchers, I could not help but recall the words of Marshal Talleyrand 200 years ago. When the ancien régime was briefly restored to the French throne after the defeat of Napoleon, Talleyrand famously said of the old, backward-looking, clapped out Bourbon royal family, “They learned nothing, and they have forgotten nothing.” Put another way, the old regime singularly failed to understand why they had been deposed by the people in the first place, or to learn from any of their previous mistakes.
Is that not just old Labour all over? Labour, which saw heating bills more than double during its time in government. Labour, which in 13 years of government allowed real competition in the market to shrivel. Labour, which in 1997 inherited a diverse range of 14 competing companies and turned them into the big six. Labour, which drove British energy into the ground and failed to build a single nuclear power station. Its record on renewables was little better. After 13 years in office, Labour left Britain third from the bottom of the European league table for deployed renewable energy. It was Labour that allowed the cost of its green energy programmes to spiral out of control but failed to take real steps to decarbonise the sector; Labour that, after 13 years in power, left office with nearly 5 million vulnerable people living in fuel poverty; and Labour that, in the last Parliament, saw fuel poverty rise in every single year of the now Leader of the Opposition’s tenure as Energy Secretary.
So what is the big idea that Labour has brought forward to the debate to help hard-pressed consumers? It has three ideas—hardly an energy revolution, but let me remind the House what they are. The first is to abolish the regulator that Labour created in 2000 and replace it with—yes, you’ve guessed it—another quango. It also wants to bring back the electricity pool, the same pool that it abolished back in 2001, and put all over-75s on the cheapest tariff—hardly a groundbreaking idea when we are already acting to do that, but for all consumers, not just the oldest 8%, so that all our constituents can benefit from a better deal.
I will not pretend to the House that there are easy answers, simple solutions or quick fixes to driving down fuel poverty, driving up competition in the sector or delivering a better, fairer deal for hard-pressed consumers. However, unlike the Labour Government’s drift, inertia and failure to deliver, the coalition has rolled up its sleeves and is making a real difference.
I want to spell out some of the bold, practical measures that the coalition is taking to help hard-working families, but before I do that I will address some of the important points that colleagues have made. We have heard from the hon. Members for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir), my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Mr Spencer), the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), the hon. Members for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) and for Glasgow North West (John Robertson), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) and the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Sheila Gilmore).
It was striking that not a single Labour Member spoke in favour of the Opposition’s proposal to abolish Ofgem, but two clearly disagreed with it. It was notable that my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood made a thoughtful and constructive speech, and he was right to address both the causes of, and possible solutions to, our energy challenges. The hon. Member for Angus was also thoughtful, and I assure him that our simplification of tariffs is already having an impact. I also take on board his important points about prepaid meters.
I wholeheartedly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry about the need for bill simplification. We get it, and we are on it, but our entire grid is crumbling and requires big investment, whatever energy source we put into it. This year, onshore wind added just £9 to consumer energy bills. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn, the second Labour Member to disagree with Labour Front Benchers about abolishing Ofgem, made sound points about off-grid customers. We are looking carefully at the Committee report to which he contributed. My hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth spoke with great authority and gave a balanced approach to the complex issues we face.
The coalition does not have a magic wand, and Labour’s legacy of debt, deficit and economic failure casts a long shadow over all Departments. Despite the imperative of dealing with Labour’s debts, we are taking action and setting a new radical and ambitious energy agenda. Unlike under the previous Government, there have been two energy Bills in three years. The green deal might be in its infancy—I listened to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East—but it is already building a new market in energy efficiency, and bringing far greater competition to the market and new choices for consumers.
Gregory Barker
The hon. Lady was not actually here for the debate. We are taking action to give more teeth to the regulator and compensate energy consumers who have been badly treated. We have embarked on radical market reform to unleash investment in modern clean energy, building our energy security that was so perilously ignored by Labour. We are also offering immediate help for our constituents. For example, Labour put the whole cost of the renewable heat incentive on to consumer bills. We have removed it, saving consumers £120 million a year collectively. Labour refused to cut solar feed-in tariffs, despite fixing them far too high. We took the tough decision to cut those tariffs. We were right, they were wrong. Solar deployment is up, costs are coming down, and the consumer is better off.
Luciana Berger
Will the Minister tell the House what the additional amount will be on all our bills from the Government’s miscalculation of the energy company obligation?
Gregory Barker
We have not miscalculated the ECO. It is coming very close indeed to the impact assessment that we published last year. I am happy to tell the House that costs of the ECO are continuing to come down, and we are seeing a number of technologies deployed far more cost effectively than under the poor Warm Front scheme that the Labour party put together, and which so many Members from around the House wrote to me to complain about. We are doing other things to help consumers. Our warm home discount means £135 this winter for more than 2 million poorer households.
Gregory Barker
No, I will not.
The winter fuel allowance is helping 12 million pensioners with up to £300 this winter. Cold weather payments have been permanently uprated to £25 per week, and the green deal ECO programme has already made more than 100,000 homes warmer and cheaper to heat and run. The first proper, independent, thoughtful review of our fuel poverty strategy for decades was completed this year. We are targeting finite resources at the most in need in the fairest, most cost-effective responsible way.
Where Labour shrunk the domestic energy market and presided over massive corporate consolidation, we are unleashing a decentralised energy revolution on new distributors of energy on an unprecedented scale— 2.5 GW of solar alone under this coalition. Community energy, distributed energy and heat networks—all are on the up. At the same time we have begun the first new nuclear programme in a generation. Our green investment bank, created by this coalition, is now up and running and transforming the energy investment landscape. No wonder Ernst and Young last week moved the UK from fifth to fourth in the global league table for renewables, and called the UK the best place in the world to invest in onshore wind.
Mr Alan Campbell
(Tynemouth) (Lab): claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.