Warm Home Discount

Tom Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I can commit to that. The Conservatives tell us that our fight to deliver clean power and our work to upgrade people’s homes is ideological. It is not ideological; it is down to bread and butter issues. We know that there are families struggling across the country. We were not willing to accept what we inherited as the status quo, so we are getting on with the job of reducing energy bills, because improving living standards and delivering the change we were elected to deliver is a core priority for this Government.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

The Minister is right that because the Conservatives left our country exposed to fossil fuel prices, people’s wages are being swallowed up by energy costs. It is right that we are sprinting towards clean, home-grown energy as a long-term solution, and the tensions in the middle east demonstrate why that is so important. We must also get support to people right now in Bournemouth East. I welcome the fact that 220,000 families across the south-west, including my constituents, will benefit from help this winter, but my constituents want to feel a bit of breathing room—to live, not merely survive. Will the Minister confirm that tackling the cost of living is our No. 1 priority as a Government, and set out the ways in which the Government are targeting the cost of living crisis?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about the cost of living. He is also right to point out that we have huge exposure to global fossil fuel markets, and at a point where we are seeing tensions and conflict in the middle east, energy security becomes so critical. So we will continue, despite the naysayers on the Opposition Benches, to sprint to deliver clean power, but while we do that we are taking action to reduce the cost of living. So, whether it is the expansion of the warm home discount, or the expansion of free school meals, or increasing the national living wage, or the action that we are taking to roll out breakfast clubs, or the action that we are taking to build record amounts of social housing, the Labour Government are committed to bettering living standards—not talking about it, but getting on and delivering the change that we were elected to deliver.