Sarah Newton
Main Page: Sarah Newton (Conservative - Truro and Falmouth)Government Levies on Energy Bills
Sarah Newton Excerpts
Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)
I am sure we can all agree that delivering an energy policy that guarantees security of supply at prices businesses and people can afford is an essential and challenging task, especially after years of procrastination under the previous Government. This Government’s energy policy, based on a mixture of generating capabilities, is vital to our national security. The more energy we can produce on our own shores the better. The current situation unfolding in Ukraine is very worrying in many ways, but it is a timely reminder of the risks of relying on imported gas.
The Government are right to back renewable energy. It is particularly important to look at marine renewable and geothermal. As a Member of Parliament representing the south-west of England, hon. Members would expect me to say that. I was absolutely delighted when the Government set up the South West Marine Energy Park. I can perhaps give the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) some of the evidence he was asking for, on the positive impact of the Government’s policies on renewable energy, from my experience in my constituency.
As a result of the announcement before Christmas of the strike prices for renewable energy, we have seen a huge increase in interest from overseas investors into marine renewable energy in my constituency. We are the home of the Falmouth bay test site, the FaBTest site, which is a very innovative partnership between the university of Exeter, the Falmouth Harbour commissioners and local businesses. It is an excellent site to pilot and test marine renewables which enables developers to understand how much energy can be created and the economics of it, which can then be scaled up to fully deployed devices on the wave hub. We have seen investment already, from Scandinavian countries, to build new devices that are currently being deployed, with a great pipeline to come. It is attracting not only investment but a great deal of new, high-quality engineering jobs to my constituency, all of which is to be welcomed.
Dr Whitehead
I underline the hon. Lady’s point that wave, tidal and other new forms of energy are beginning to secure a lot of investment, and invite her to attend the all-party group on renewable and sustainable energy meeting tomorrow on precisely that topic. We would be delighted to see her there.
Sarah Newton
I welcome any opportunity to draw attention to the fantastic and innovative work of companies in my constituency to create wealth, prosperity and new jobs, so if I can find time in my diary I will certainly come along.
I have seen evidence of the substantial impact of the new strike prices for renewable energy in the short period since they have been announced. Among all this good news, however, there are a few issues I would like to draw to the attention of the Minister.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh), who is no longer in his place, made some very good points on the impact of the changes to ECO announced in the autumn statement. The reduction of people’s energy bills by about £30 to £35, as a result of those changes, has been welcomed by households across my constituency and, I am sure, across all hon. Members’ constituencies. However, some of the measures—particularly the reduction in the carbon emissions target for hard-to-treat homes by a third and the extension of measures to include cheaper options such as loft and cavity wall insulation—have had an impact on off-grid customers living in fuel poverty in my constituency, and have made the introduction of soluble insulation to low-income households virtually impossible.
Why is that important? The changes are having a disproportionate effect on constituencies in rural areas such as mine, where 35% of homes have solid walls compared with 22% nationally, and 48% of households are living off the gas grid compared with just under 15% across the country. As we all know—we have debated it many times in this House—people living off the gas grid pay much higher energy bills than those who are on the grid. Under the Hills definition of fuel poverty, that affects about 10% of households in my constituency, and that figure will be replicated across other rural areas. The Minister has taken great care to listen to MPs representing areas such as mine, and has taken real steps to try to tackle fuel poverty in off-grid households. Will he consider taking two further steps that could have an important impact?
The Minister created the off-grid ministerial round table, which is already proving to be a very valuable body that has made improvements for the group of people concerned. At the next meeting in May, I would very much like him to consider evidence from members of that round table, such as Community Energy Plus in my constituency, on the impact of the ECO changes on its ability to tackle fuel poverty in off-grid households. There might be some very simple tweaks, without extra cost, that could be made to the programme to enable us to help people who are particularly hard hit by the changes.
Secondly, will the Minister consider inviting the head of Public Health England to join the round table? Public Health England has rightly identified the reduction of fuel poverty as an essential health outcome. As we all know, living in cold homes exacerbates existing health conditions. It can often lead to unplanned emergency admissions to hospital and lead to a delay in people going back to their homes, because of the detrimental impact of allowing them to move back home. We live with the blight of excess winter deaths. The national health service has ring-fenced budgets, as do public health bodies and local authorities, and I think that they have an important role to play in driving down fuel poverty. Community Energy Plus in my constituency has been working with health officials and with me to develop an evidence base and a toolkit that will enable public health commissioners to fund insulation and other measures that would allow people to live in warmer homes. It would be excellent if work of that kind could be shared at the round table, and if Public Health England took up the challenge to provide an evidence base that would enable people working on the energy company obligation and on improving the energy efficiency of homes to work alongside health officials around the country in driving down fuel poverty.
I welcome the Government’s approach to energy policy and to tackling fuel poverty. I hope that the Minister will consider the simple steps that I have described, because I think that they could make a positive difference to the health and well-being of my constituents and others throughout the country.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo) and his Committee for their report on parliamentary oversight of the levy control framework. It has been an important underpinning to this debate, and many of the issues it raises have been mentioned by Committee members and other hon. Members who have spoken. I hope that the Minister, if I give him enough time, can respond to those points before we conclude the debate. I am sure that he has paid attention to, and will want to respond to, the concerns raised by those who have spoken, and to the reflections of wider concerns expressed in recent months by several bodies and individuals, notably the National Audit Office. We have heard a refrain from some Members about the costs of so-called green levies. However, this has been a constructive debate and the more misleading aspects have not taken up much of our discussion.
A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) at the start of the debate, spoke about the scale of the levies as a proportion of consumers’ energy bills. He said that more than half the cost of the levies goes to support pensioners and people on low incomes who need help to pay their energy bills.
My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) has just described powerfully the immediate impact that the changes to the ECO scheme have had. She rightly said that we are yet to see an impact assessment from the Government. I wonder whether the Minister will enlighten us on when we will see the impact assessment of those changes, which were announced three months ago.
It is important to reiterate that that help focuses on improving energy efficiency, which can help to reduce consumption and minimise increases in bills. I would expect most hon. Members, whether they are here this evening or not, to sign up to that as a common-sense proposition. The housing stock in the UK is among the most energy inefficient. Much of the stock in the private rented sector, which has many of the poorest tenants, is the most inefficient of all. Improving efficiency is a sensible step, to help keep people warm and to ensure that we are not just heating the streets outside the windows and the air above the roofs. It also has the positive economic benefits of creating jobs and controlling the amount of generating capacity we need to invest in, which I hope will be well recognised.
Members will be aware that levies have been applied to bills for various schemes. When the Government introduced the ECO scheme, the enthusiastic Minister of State at the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) proclaimed it to be “transformational”. So transformational has it been that it has led to schemes, such as the one in Nottingham that we have just heard about, being abandoned. He has presented the cutting and spreading over time of ECO as though it is extending the scheme. That feat of verbal dexterity has not been surpassed in this debate so far.
The number of contributions from hon. Members from all parts of the House this evening has demonstrated the level of interest in and concern about these issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West, who has a strong, consistent and unrivalled record of standing up for the fuel-poor in his constituency, in Scotland and across the UK, set out powerfully the way in which some people have used the debate over levies as a diversionary tactic to distract attention away from the need for reform in the retail and wholesale energy markets. I think that I heard him say that he is now convinced by the case for reform that is being set out from the Opposition Front Bench. I take that as a gain. I am sure that he will support our proposals in future.
The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) highlighted concerns about the delivery of aspects of the ECO scheme, which was introduced by this Government, and the impact on his constituents and businesses that are involved in replacing boilers.
My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), who is a distinguished and long-serving member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee, underlined in his usual thorough and comprehensive way which levies are included and are not included in the levy control framework. I got the sense that he anticipates with keenness the forthcoming secondary legislation on the Energy Act 2013, which I hope we will see shortly. Indeed, I think he anticipates it almost as keenly as I do.
The hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) highlighted the importance of energy security and a balanced energy mix, given the impact of geopolitical events on the price of imported energy. She also referred to the potential of wave and tidal energy in her constituency and throughout the south-west more widely. Last week, I was fortunate to be in Belfast to speak at RenewableUK’s wave and tidal energy conference and had the chance to meet and to speak to representatives of companies, universities and other bodies in her area. The local enterprise partnerships in the area have joined up to create almost a regional development agency, after the RDAs were abolished, to ensure that they get the best possible benefit from that huge energy potential.
Sarah Newton
The Government created the South West Marine Energy Park. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the LEPs joined together to enable them to benefit from that very good Government initiative.