Energy Bill

Lord Haskel Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Grand Committee

This group of amendments attempts to give purpose and effect to a Secretary of State’s interventions. It does not require the Secretary of State to intervene or say that the best way of dealing with this is for him or her to intervene every five minutes. However, if we are to adopt a new strategic approach to the structure of tariffs we have to be clear what our objectives are: that is, a regulator who has to operate on a rather different basis from that operated during the past 15 years by Ofgem and its predecessors and a structure of tariffs at the far end which is clear, transparent and understandable to the consumer. The amendment we shall discuss next in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, says that in rather fewer words. Nevertheless, that is a key outcome underpinning everything that I have said. Only if we do that can we begin to tackle the dual problem of rising and unclear bills which are often based on the mis-selling of different tariffs—we have had a good number of scandals on that front—the outcome of which is that all consumers are disgruntled and mistrust energy supply companies and a very large proportion of them are in dire fuel poverty. I beg to move.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Haskel)]

I have to inform your Lordships that in Amendment 50H, which is part of this group, there is a misprint. It should read:

“Page 99, line 41”,

not “line 40”.

[Baroness Maddock]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for tabling these amendments and have a great deal of sympathy with the points that he made. One of his opening questions was on why we are having to change the system and give the Government more powers, and perhaps change the role of Ofgem. The answer is because competition has not worked in the interests of consumers. That is what we are trying to grapple with to see whether we can do something better. Let us hope that we can.

I am also grateful to the noble Lord because, when these amendments were introduced in the Commons, they were accepted with little or no debate. Therefore, it is important that the Minister here is given more opportunity to tell us how they will work. I wish to ask one or two questions. Interestingly, some of them, and the points that I shall make, arise because I was speaking in Newcastle last Friday morning at a conference of CAN, the Carbon Action Network, which grew out of the HECA organisation that came from the Act of Parliament that I got through.

Some interesting points were raised at the conference. One of them, made by a lady, was that people think that we are asking energy suppliers to offer the cheapest variable rate; but she also made the compelling point that some customers would like the cheapest fixed rate. This lady works with clients trying to help people get a better deal. She said that since last winter, which went on for ever and during which we all burnt more fuel, older people in particular have become even more concerned than before about their bills. She thought that we should have a measure on this point in the Bill. I am not a lawyer and cannot always understand the jargon in the Bill so I am not clear whether it enables that to happen. I hope that the Minister will explain whether it does.

The lady tackling me on these issues on Friday is the energy and affordable warmth officer in Redcar and Cleveland. The other interesting point that she raised was how the change in demand for certain types of tariff will work, particularly the warm homes discount. She spends a lot of time working with clients, many of them in fuel poverty, trying to help them get a better deal. She said that this year there were huge differences in the criteria that the energy suppliers were using to decide whether people would get the warm homes discount. She has found that the big six have all changed their criteria. Some cover low income and others means-tested benefits only, such as income support, jobseeker’s allowance and employment and support allowance. Some look at non-means-tested disability benefits or personal independence payments while others look at things such as eligibility for school meals and maternity and medical exemptions. Again, I would be interested to know how the Minister sees these proposals working with other things that the Government have proposed such as the warm homes allowances under ECO. At the conference there was somebody from E.ON who tried to explain how this worked. I am hoping that either today or at another point the Minister will be able to help us understand exactly how these proposals work with other things.

From what I have managed to look at in the fuel poverty booklet that I picked up today, it may be appropriate to discuss some of these issues when we come to discuss the fuel poverty amendments because some of those issues are mentioned in the booklet. One of the things that the Secretary of State is looking at in proposing to take fuel poverty more seriously is the way that everything interacts together. I did not know before we had this debate today, or in what happened on Friday, that today we would have a whole booklet about fuel poverty so I am quite happy if the Minister does not answer all the points now because there will be an opportunity when we get to the fuel poverty amendments.