Cost of Living: Financial Support for Disabled People

Debate between Paul Maynard and Liz Twist

Monday 22nd May 2023 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard]

I share the hon. Lady’s view about the reality that her constituents, and indeed mine, are facing. I share some of her criticisms of the energy companies themselves. The Retail Energy Code Company is trying to provide an answer, which I hope the energy companies will listen to and I hope might just persuade her that it is worth a second look, but I do not know. Time will tell, perhaps.

When coming up with proposals for the disability sector, many charities emphasise the broadness of eligibility and auto-enrolment. That is entirely logical and sensible for them to do. They have learned from the reality of the priority services register. In my constituency, I find that the people who really ought to be on that register are the least likely to be on it, so charities are right to be concerned about whether some sort of voluntary enrolment would actually get to where we want it to go. At the same time, they are missing out the potential for a more tailored scheme, which goes back to my earlier point. Everybody’s energy costs are going to be different, and one-off payments do not necessarily meet that challenge.

[Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very thoughtful speech about a complex issue. Does he accept that having some money, while imperfect, has to be preferable to being left without that amount of money?

[Paul Maynard]

Something is better than nothing. However, part of the art of speech making is building an argument, as I hope the hon. Lady understands. I have not yet culminated my argument in what I think we should do. By all means, she can agree or disagree with my critique of what is being proposed, but I am about to come on to what I think should be done, which I hope might just persuade her yet again.

Mr Mower looked at what is being done in the Australian states. They have gone into great detail on this topic, looking at all the different forms of medical equipment that people are using and their energy intensity. Each piece of equipment has a different energy consumption rate. It cannot just be measured by minutes or hours; some of them are more energy intensive than others. Australian states have done calculations enabling them to oblige energy firms to discount the energy at the point of consumption. There is then no need to request a rebate from an energy company, or some supplementary top-up, because it occurs at the point of consumption of that energy. That helps to solve the problem of how we support those with energy-intensive equipment needs. However, I agree it does not meet the needs of those who have to heat their properties generally for their own health benefits.

The hon. Member for Battersea briefly mentioned the issue of the warm home prescription, which the Energy Systems Catapult has been introducing. It has had a limited roll-out in Gloucestershire, and I think it is now operating in four areas as a pilot. It has great potential, but where I issue caution is that we need to understand, if we do not already, whether it is actually saving the NHS money. The idea is that a social prescriber looks at a person’s energy consumption, the insulation in their home and their energy needs, and works out whether a form of prescription to help with energy prices is a way of forestalling more expensive treatment for more severe health conditions at some future date. That is quite hard to capture in a short period of time because we have not seen the long-term consequences yet, but that measure seems positive to me. It would deal with the issue of people needing to warm their homes over a longer period of time, so it is a twin-track approach.

I have tried to put Mr Mower’s report into my own words and not read it out verbatim, because that would be a boring way to make a speech. In his conclusion, he said that the electricity costs of these consumers—in other words, those who rely upon equipment—would best be met through a scheme that can tailor support to the needs of each eligible consumer, rather than a policy targeted at a wider range of vulnerable consumers, so that they can have full confidence that the costs of the relevant equipment are being met. To me, that is the key word in this debate: confidence. The hon. Member for Battersea mentioned it, as did other Members in interventions. Individuals with severe health conditions who do not continue to heat their properties and run their equipment are running the risk of disadvantageous health outcomes because they do not have the confidence that they will be able to afford their bills.

I urge the Minister, and the Minister for Energy Consumers and Affordability, who was present briefly, to really engage with the Retail Energy Code Company and look at the matter in great detail to bring together the NHS and the Social Prescribing Network—I know that social prescribing is the answer to everything in life these days, but in this case it might just be—and try to work out with Ofgem whether the twin-track approach could solve the problem that we are seeking to solve.