Domestic Heating Oil

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely. Indeed, another constituent, Mrs Green, told me:

“The cost of heating oil is now nearly 100% higher than just two months ago yet oil prices have increased by just 10%. How can this be justified?”

The answer is that it simply cannot be justified. Indeed, when I and other Members started to ask questions about this issue, I was contacted by a number of people working in the heating oil industry who told me that their employers were telling them to refuse to accept orders of less than 1,000 litres. That meant that members of the public were being refused deliveries unless they were prepared to pay £800, plus the cost of delivery, and let us remember that this was just before Christmas.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. Does she agree that that also applies in rural Somerset? We even have oil co-operatives in rural Somerset, members of which were running out of heating fuel as the winter months came on and the weather got bad, yet they were being charged the same excessively high prices when they were taking the trouble to drive on snowy roads to collect the oil, in containers that they had to purchase for £6 or £7 a piece. Therefore, even people who were not paying delivery charges were paying the equivalent sum, which did not include delivery.

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tessa Munt]

I would like to draw attention to some of my constituents who took the trouble to join an oil co-operative in a rural area, but still got hit by this problem. I was contacted, and I would like the Minister to look at the letter that I forwarded to his office. It was from a couple of pensioners who wrote to point out that they would have had to spend between three and three and half months’-worth of their pension money on fuel over the year. That makes a mockery of what is happening in this market.

[Charles Hendry]

I will certainly look into those matters, and I hope that the hon. Lady has also referred them to the Office of Fair Trading, because that would provide exactly the sort of evidence that it is looking for to contribute to its investigation of this market.

I have been extremely concerned about the many representations that I have received from hon. Members on both sides of the House over the past few weeks, which clearly showed me that the market was not working as we would expect it to do. People who could not afford to pay those bills simply had to make a choice about whether to go without heating or without something else at a very difficult time of the year.