Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend has captured the position very succinctly. That is exactly the point. These remedies will introduce more competition based on technology, allowing consumers to have access to the data that will drive it. However, it will take a few years for that to come into effect, so the Bill is doing what my right hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Stephen Crabb) advocated—it is addressing the current problem with greater agility than the regulator has shown.

In 2016, the CMA’s minority report stated:

“These customers are exposed to the prospect of excessive prices on a scale which might amount of many billions of pounds of harm over the next four years”.

Experience has shown that the CMA was right. In the last few years, prices for customers on the standard variable and default tariffs have not declined; in fact, they have continued to increase, in some cases by double digits. There has certainly been no change in the behaviour of many of the companies.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I support the Bill, but does the Secretary of State not agree that, while it may tackle the so-called loyalty penalty for certain customers, more needs to be done to tackle the loyalty penalty in other markets, which, according to Citizens Advice, costs the most vulnerable and possibly the oldest customers about £900 a year?

[Greg Clark]

The Bill focuses narrowly on a problem that the independent inquiry has exposed as being very significant. As I have said, 10% of the annual expenditure of the poorest households is on energy. I recognise that we need to be agile in our regulatory system, and I hope that the behaviour of companies in other markets will reflect the fact that it is not acceptable to use information to ratchet up the amount paid by vulnerable consumers in particular. This is a regulated market with a regulator that is there to protect the interests of consumers, and I think it right for the Bill to focus on that.