Fuel Poverty

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

Fortunately, I speak very quickly, so I hope that I can manage to say what I want to in three minutes.

I speak as the co-chair of the all-party group on fuel poverty and energy efficiency, formerly the warm homes group, which tries to tackle the trilemma of fuel poverty, namely high energy prices, low incomes and the very poor energy efficiency of our domestic housing stock.

We saw energy bills falling early last year, with all the major suppliers passing on to their customers—to some extent—savings from the lower global wholesale gas prices. That should have helped many householders make their finances go a little further. I am pleased to say that the Government were also able to reduce energy bills by an average of £50 per household by reducing the green levies that had been placed on bills. However, we must go much further, as hon. Members have highlighted this morning.

I draw Members’ attention to a report by the Turn2us charity, which has highlighted people’s lack of awareness of the financial help and support that is currently available for households. There are many schemes that can provide support for people who are struggling to heat their home, whether directly through their energy supplier or by encouraging people to seek information from the many excellent campaigns, such as the “No Cold Homes” campaign, which ran last December, and the Home Heat Helpline, which I regularly recommend to my constituents—I believe that many hon. Members do the same.

This is cold homes week, when we will consider action on fuel poverty and excess winter deaths. Publicising excess winter deaths is a good way of raising the issue in the papers and getting headlines, but the reporting of such deaths does not cover the whole story. The truth is that cold homes cause excess morbidity and have a personal cost both for young people, who suffer many extra illnesses as a result, and for our older people, which causes extra admissions to our hospitals. The cost to the NHS and our social services must be enormous, and for some reason we never seem to manage to take those two different cost streams for the Government into account. One doctor commented to me, “If only I could prescribe insulation to my patients, rather than expensive drugs. How much more cost-effective that would be, and how many fewer admissions I would have to hospital and my surgery.”

When it comes to measures to tackle fuel poverty and home energy efficiency, one group of people is persistently overlooked, and that is park home owners. I have the biggest park home in the country in my constituency, Kings Park, and I was recently handed a petition by residents calling for park home owners to receive the same home improvement grants as other homeowners. I duly passed it to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for a response. Park home owners are overwhelmingly older people on fixed incomes who have often lived rather beyond their savings. It is a superb way of downsizing and a marvellous lifestyle for older people. If we could have more older people in low-rise accommodation such as park homes, it would be a great blessing for social services and all the rest of it, but their issues must be addressed. Park home owners have told me that they are not eligible for the energy company obligation. Frequently, when they apply for it, the companies refuse them.

I conclude by saying that I will not offer any solutions. My hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) and the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) have offered suggestions, and it must not be beyond the wit of man to sort the problem out and end the need for an all-party group on fuel poverty.