Energy Prices Bill

Lord Geddes Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 24th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, before calling Amendment 8, I must advise the House that the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, will be taking part remotely.

Amendment 8

Moved by

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, we come back to a subject we always discuss in energy Bills, whether the dormant Energy Bill or the Energy Prices Bill in front of us today: energy efficiency and demand reduction. Whatever the Government say from their Front Bench about what is being done, it is quite clear that this is not seen as a priority in reality. Indeed, as far as I have noticed, it does not feature to any significant extent in this Bill. However, although I accept that the Bill is very much about short-term measures, we still have to look forward to the medium and longer term and how we make sure that, after the payments we are making and the Bill intends to make into the future—which are substantial, with estimates varying from £40 billion to £100 billion, depending on how long these measures last—we do not go back to square one whenever such a crisis arises again, despite having spent literally billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money.

This is a very mild amendment. We are being modest because we hope that the Government will accept that we should have at least something in the Bill about energy efficiency. We are asking for a proper and comprehensive review of costs to do with energy efficiency within six months of the Bill being passed. As noble Lords can see from the amendment, we are asking for a review of the impact of

“the number of homes and business properties which have increased their EPC rating … fitting … solar panels, and … replacement of gas boilers, … increases in renewable energy sources, and … public messaging campaigns”.

I would be interested to understand where the Government are on public messaging campaigns at the moment. I understand that the almost-past Government very much resisted them. Can the Minister give us more of an idea of where we are now?

What I am emphasising here is that it is essential that energy efficiency and demand reduction should be at the top of the list of tools of energy policy as a way forward. We clearly need some reference to them in the Bill, while we are making these huge payments, to make sure that businesses are able to continue in the future and that households can afford their energy bills without going into debt—although I fear that many will in any case. That is the core of this amendment and we take this very seriously. We believe that the Government have not performed sufficiently on this during their time in government.

I will also speak briefly to Amendment 9, and I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, who is not in her place at the moment, for her support. Amendment 9 looks forward to where we go after this major splurge of public expenditure. I think a consensus is coming—from consumers, consumer groups and energy companies themselves—on how we need to treat energy Bills in the future, in that we have to move to a different place. One place we could move to is a social tariff. Nothing is perfect in this world. We know that in a situation where people move out of the definition of qualifying for a social tariff, it can have negative effects on income or whatever.

A social tariff would mean those households in fuel poverty being able to solve that issue by paying a different tariff on their electricity from those not in that degree of poverty. We all know that, even without the current crisis, many millions of households are in fuel poverty. This has not been solved by Governments over the years. The long-term way is energy efficiency and demand reduction but, in the medium term, surely we should start planning now for something of the order of a social tariff. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, is taking part remotely and I invite her to speak. She does not seem to be technically available at present; it is therefore open to any other noble Lord to speak to this amendment.

[Baroness Brinton (LD)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for being unable to be present at Second Reading. I am speaking to Amendment 12, which my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester has also signed. It sets up the mechanism for the Secretary of State to have a strategic plan for very vulnerable people who would be extremely adversely affected by power outages—for some, probably resulting in death—and for the requirement on energy suppliers to work with the local resilience forums, which are tasked with delivering local emergency plans in communities.

I read the impact assessment with interest. On page 28, paragraph 70, headed “Disability or vulnerability”, states:

“Of those surveyed … by the ONS Wealth and Assets Survey, over 40% of adults in Great Britain have a combined financial and property wealth below £23,249. Of those poorer households 41% have a physical or mental disability ... Furthermore, households with energy-using health equipment will typically be associated with higher energy use and stand to benefit more from the volumetric scheme”.


The Minister may remember that I raised the issue of ensuring electricity supply to the most vulnerable disabled and seriously ill people, who may die if their home electricity supply is not maintained, on 11 October 2022 when the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of Cradley, asked a Question on energy pricing. I cited our family’s experience when my granddaughter, then aged two, who had to use a ventilator and a heart monitor faced a power outage on her south London estate. I thank the Minister for his response to my question and his being keen to reassure me and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff, but I was concerned that BEIS Ministers may not be aware of what is happening in practice and how serious the problem is.

Since 11 October, I have talked to others who rely on ventilators, dialysis machines and other equipment at home. It is clear that the reality of what happened to my granddaughter in a small-scale electrical outage in south London about four years ago is, in practice, not unusual. Let me explain the process. On the advice of the consultants at the Evelina London Children’s Hospital, and as a condition of her being allowed to leave hospital for the first time aged 11 months, my son had brought her home and registered with their energy supplier that she required ventilation and a heart monitor for about 17 hours out of every 24. Without it, she would have to be taken back to the specialist hospital as her lung capacity put her at high risk of death as her oxygen levels would plummet quickly.

My son had understood that the supplier would ensure that there was an alternative supply as soon as possible. On the evening of the outage, my son called the emergency line, who were encouraging: they were on the list for an emergency generator to be delivered to their house. After one hour, it had not arrived. They were told that it could take another two hours. At that time, and because my granddaughter was still quite small, he bundled her and all her medical kit—believe me, a carful—and drove to our house, an hour away. Believe me, if you have watched a small child struggling for breath, you do not hang around.

There is absolutely no doubt that the register of vulnerable users is helpful. However, the reality of a power cut means that the small batteries in those items that they have as a back-up will not last for many hours, especially if the outage is not planned and people do not know how long it will last for. That is why the suppliers knew that they had to get a generator to my granddaughter’s house. But they failed.

My concern is that, in the event of mass outages in the cold months of January and February next year, however unlikely, much larger swathes of the country will lose electricity in a number of hours. National Grid was predicting even worse last week—even if that is also deemed to be highly unlikely—and it might mean that the whole country would be without power from late afternoon until late at night for a number of days a week in January and February.

The Disability News Service picked up on the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay, and I asked. John Pring at the DNS has been investigating current practice and how large outages would be handled by the energy suppliers, so he rang them. They said, “Talk to the Department of BEIS”, so he rang BEIS, which said, “Talk to the Department of Health and Social Care”—I have no idea why. The DHSC has not even replied, probably because it is not involved in emergency provision planning.

Many disability groups are very concerned about this coming winter too, as they, like my family, have experience of support in an emergency not being quite what was expected. Neither BEIS nor the DHSC seemed aware that the energy suppliers should be talking to their local resilience forums, run by each local authority, which have a statutory duty under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to deliver their local emergency health plan in the event of such an incident. However, directors of public health whom I have talked to, who are jointly employed by their authority and by the NHS, are core to LRFs, and they say that talking to energy suppliers is extremely difficult.

It is important to be clear that not all help for those whose lives depend on electricity will be on the register. Those registered with suppliers will include the elderly and the frail who must be kept warm, but they do not need individual generators at home. The LRFs need to plan with energy suppliers where generators will go in community halls or other planned venues and how vulnerable people will be taken to that venue. The current advice from suppliers to disabled people on their helpline is—wait for it—get a thermos and more battery packs. I have to say that that is causing alarm, and it tells me that proper planning is not going on, and people who are supposed to be giving advice do not know what it should be. That is also confirmed by the directors of public health whom I have talked to.

Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, local resilience forums are level 1 responders, and energy suppliers are level 2 responders. Energy suppliers keep the register and must liaise with them. The problem is that at the moment the LRFs are entirely reliant on the energy suppliers communicating with them. As with Covid, when the local resilience forums played a fantastic role as we went into lockdown in their communities, the possibility of a serious outage means that there needs to be real planning now because, otherwise, people will die in a power cut. All the elements needed are available through various duties on differing people; the problem is that they are not joined up. Hence my amendment, which is to try to join up the key partners at a national level through the powers of the Secretary of State to create a strategic plan, while ensuring an action plan at a local level which gives a duty to energy suppliers to maintain contact with their local resilience forums.

I ask the Minister: what formal arrangements should be in place, because they are clearly not working? Does he accept the need for a strategic plan owned by BEIS as well as energy suppliers, working with local resilience forums to ensure action plans in the event of future large-scale outages? Will he agree to meet me, my noble friend Lady Thomas of Winchester and representatives of disabled people’s groups to provide us with not just reassurance but detailed evidence of how this will work, if needed this winter?

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Geddes) (Con)]

My Lords, I am glad to say that the technical gremlins have now been slain, and the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, is online. I therefore invite the noble Baroness to speak.

[Baroness Thomas of Winchester (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Brinton for tabling the amendment, to which I have added my name.

There will be a lot of severely disabled people who, like me, are terrified of power cuts. We rely through the day and night on electricity to keep us alive. We are not talking about just hot drinks and hot water bottles. In my case, I am talking about a feeding pump, ventilators, riser lavatories, an electric hospital bed, two lifts, a door opener and a wheelchair that needs charging—and, of course, heating and light. There are many others much worse than I am.

In answer to my noble friend’s question on 11 October, the Minister said that the Government would do

“all we can to protect the most vulnerable.”—[Official Report, 11/10/22; col. 662.]

Can he be a bit more specific about exactly what the Government will do? The energy companies are not exactly strapped for cash at the moment, so I hope that, between the energy companies and the Government, there will be proper, practical planning for the most vulnerable customers if outages occur, which could literally make the difference between life and death.

We need reassurance on this; otherwise, we will be fearful of every winter storm. Can the Minister give us this reassurance?