Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency

Tom Clarke Excerpts

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

This is one of the very few issues that can unite households across the United Kingdom. Labour Members have demonstrated that our party believes it is important to speak up for consumers, who are at the sharp end of ever-rising energy costs. Families and households are struggling to pay their bills. Let there be no doubt about the hardship that is being caused to millions of families and people, old and young, working and non-working.

Set against that background, it is important to understand that consumers have no appetite for rhetoric. They want Government intervention. They are demanding a fair price for the necessities of gas and electricity. We parliamentarians should be on the side of the consumers and be demanding transparency from the energy suppliers.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The energy companies have paid out £7 billion in dividends. Does my right hon. Friend agree that some of that money could have been used to lower energy costs for the needy in this country?

[Mr Clarke]

My hon. Friend has made an excellent point.

Just before our Christmas recess, I raised this issue with the Prime Minister when I said:

“let us be transparent…as one body has advised, approaching 9 million households suffer from fuel poverty, which is the highest since records began? Will he explain to the House and our constituents, as we approach Christmas, what the Government are prepared to do about the horrible scandal of fuel poverty?”

To be fair, the Prime Minister agreed with me in his reply, saying that I was

“entirely right that fuel poverty is a scandal and that it needs to be dealt with”.—[Official Report, 19 December 2012; Vol. 555, c. 851-52.]

However, he challenged my figures. Today, in common with my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint), I put on the record the fact that they came from the Government’s own advisers. The Energy Secretary must know that that is the case. If we are going to set the record straight, as I believe I have just done, we may learn what plans the Government have to help to reduce the horrendous levels of fuel poverty, which are clearly identified in the report I referred to and clearly understood by hon. Members on both sides of the House.

No fuel poverty figures are available on a Scottish constituency basis. Lanarkshire has two councils, and at this point I wish to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) for the excellent point he made about councils getting together—mainly Labour councils—to protect their constituents against the excesses of the prices being imposed on them. North Lanarkshire council has 37,000 households in fuel poverty, which represents 26% of the housing stock. The adjacent South Lanarkshire council has 45,000 households in fuel poverty, which represents 32% of the housing stock. Given those shocking levels of fuel poverty, my Lanarkshire MP colleagues are supporting an initiative that has resulted in my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) and I meeting the leadership of the North Lanarkshire and South Lanarkshire councils—again, that took place just before Christmas. I do not want to overstate the position, but the response from the Lanarkshire council leaders and the situation we have reached are deeply encouraging. Although it is important to hold the Government to account for their policies, it is now incumbent on Opposition Members to be more thoughtful and innovative. That is what my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish are aiming to do. Our duty is to offer alternative solutions, as we are doing.

On 23 January 2007, I said:

“It is my intention to explore every avenue with all relevant bodies. I have written to Ofgem—the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets—which has a duty to consumers, and to the Office of Fair Trading, which has a duty to ensure that, frankly, a cartel is not operating against the public interest.”—[Official Report, 23 January 2007; Vol. 455, c. 381WH.]

I am more convinced today than I was then about the probability of a cartel of energy companies being in operation. For example, I tabled three very simple parliamentary questions asking for facts that consumers are entitled to know, but not one was the subject of a reply. If we are talking about transparency, right hon. and hon. Members of this House are entitled to replies to the questions they put. If we are to hear from the Prime Minister information that is clearly wrong and if his Ministers give us the impression that they are living in another world, we are entitled to ask what the facts are. We are entitled to build on those facts, which we know because of our own experience in our constituencies. On the evidence so far, what is happening on fuel poverty suggests that it is time that this House asserted itself and said enough is enough.