Smart Metering: Electricity and Gas

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

Thank you, Mr Turner, for calling me to speak, and I also thank the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock (Stephen Metcalfe) for introducing this debate.

I have always been very supportive of the programme to install smart meters. I always believed that smart meters gave consumers control over, and information about, the energy they are using, in near to real time. Smart meters enable the transmission of readings for the amount of gas or electricity being used in each property, as well as the transmission of information from suppliers to consumers, such as current tariff rates. What could possibly go wrong? An in-home display, or IHD, connects with the smart meter and shows consumers exactly how much their bills will be. The Government’s smart metering implementation programme requires energy suppliers to offer 53 million meters to homes and small businesses in Great Britain by 2020. For all these reasons, I was always very supportive of this initiative.

I had understood that high levels of satisfaction with smart meters had been recorded and that consumers were using the technology to help them to gain some control over their energy consumption. I believed that smart meters supported households as they tried to change their behaviour and conserve energy, which would be good for the environment as well as the purse.

Smart Energy GB found that 82% of smart meter users had taken at least one step to use less energy, that 80% of smart meters were checking their IHD regularly and that 81% of users said they would recommend smart meters to other people.

Smart Energy GB’s campaign seemed to be creating a positive shift in the levels of understanding of smart meters and the propensity to have them installed. Research suggested that the number of people who understood in detail what a smart meter was, what it did and what it could do had risen to 33%, and of those people 71% said that they would be interested in having a smart meter installed if they did not have one already.

However, like the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock, who spoke before me, I have learned—with some concern—that the Science and Technology Committee has found that the Government do not appear to be clear on the benefits of smart meters. The Government listed 11 different objectives for the project, including saving customers money on energy bills, and yet the amount of money saved by individual consumers is, it seems, expected to be small.

The Committee’s report said that the Committee would continue to monitor the implementation of the smart meter programme. I am very interested in longer-term monitoring of it, because the contradictory pictures that are emerging are confusing for consumers. I have been deeply alarmed by some of the findings of the report, which has pointed out that the cost of providing smart meters, some £10.9 billion, is being borne by consumers through their energy bills—an average of £215 per home, including installation costs.

Concern has also been expressed that the smart meters currently being installed are not of the highest specification in terms of function and data security. Indeed, the Committee took evidence that

“the smart meter network is being installed before its requirements as an Internet-connected energy system have been fully determined”.

In addition, in March last year the Financial Times reported that GCHQ had “intervened” in smart metering security and that the agency had discovered glaring loopholes in meter designs. That poses real questions, and consumers need to be reassured that their data and security are robustly protected in the course of this roll-out.

In Scotland, the priority of the Scottish Government is to press the UK Government to ensure that the programme is delivered to the greatest number of Scottish consumers at the lowest possible cost, while enhancing the benefits to the most vulnerable in our communities and those at risk of fuel poverty.

Concerns have also been addressed that the smart meter roll-out may be hindered by a lack of focus and clarity about its purpose. At the heart of this programme, we need consumer satisfaction and a genuine, hard commitment to tackling fuel poverty. If the documentary referred to by the hon. Member for South Basildon and East Thurrock is correct that the biggest beneficiaries of smart meters are the power companies themselves, that would be most alarming.

Of course we want consumers to be more energy wise, to be more informed and to have greater control over their energy use, and we want to use all the means at our disposal to tackle fuel poverty. However, this report by the Science and Technology Committee on the costs and benefits of smart meters for consumers can only be described as alarming. It is to be hoped that the recommendations of the report are acted upon as soon as possible.

If smart meters genuinely empower consumers, help them to save money and help to tackle fuel poverty, we await longer-term independent analysis, which will help to illustrate these things unequivocally. I hope that analysis is forthcoming. Consumers are waiting; we are all waiting.