Russell Brown
Main Page: Russell Brown (Labour - Dumfries and Galloway)Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Roger Williams
My hon. Friend makes a good point. However we cut the cake, heating a property with LPG is almost twice as expensive as doing so with mains gas. I am sure that consumer groups can achieve a 10% reduction, which is valuable.
My hon. Friend leads me on to say—this point was also made by the hon. Member for Angus—that although off-grid energy consumers often live in very isolated properties, sometimes their communities have never been connected to the gas mains for some reason or another. Certainly in my constituency, old coal-mining communities where there used to be deliveries of free coal to miners or their widows seem to have been left off the mains grid. As I understand it—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) will correct me if I am wrong—the number of people off-grid in Northern Ireland is much higher than in the rest of the country. Yet, work is going on there to get more people on to the gas mains, which will give them huge savings on their energy consumption.
Whenever I have tried to inquire about getting communities such as Llangynidr and Abercraf on to the mains supply, the cost—as the hon. Member for Angus said—was so enormous that taking that forward was impossible. There is not just the cost of the infrastructure, but people have to be made to commit to taking mains gas, which is a question not only of putting in a connection, but often of having appliances changed for mains gas. In the old mining communities in my constituency, some people are particularly vulnerable and certainly do not have the spare cash to make that type of investment in their properties. I believe that the Government should have some system for making mains connection more affordable for communities, because at one stroke that would make a great impact on fuel poverty. I am not sure what the arrangements are in Northern Ireland, but I would be pleased, perhaps after this debate, to talk about that with the hon. Member for Strangford.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
I do not think that any of us denies that it would be good to get more and more people on to the grid. However, does the hon. Gentleman see any dangers in that for those still left off-grid, with the potential for volatile pricing and many of the problems highlighted in the all-party group’s report?
Roger Williams
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but there will always be people left off-grid. We will not reach a situation in which everyone is on mains gas. Where there is an opportunity to take a larger step forward in access to the mains supply, we should look at ways to achieve that because, as I have said, it would make a huge difference to fuel poverty in such communities.
To conclude, we are told that the green deal will make a huge difference to the heating efficiency of homes, and I have already seen that in my constituency. None the less, the person who lives in an off-grid property might be at a disadvantage, because the golden rule of the green deal, which is that the savings will be paid for by the reduction in the energy demand, will be harder to meet. It has already been said that off-grid properties tend to be old and difficult to insulate. Will the Minister tell us how the green deal will be made available to people who live in such homes and what will be done to address their needs?