Central Heating Installations: Consumer Protection

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I congratulate the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing the debate and on approaching it in a collegial way. He asked important questions on behalf of his belated mother—I extend my condolences to him for his loss—and raised important questions that cross the provision of better forms of central heating as well as, more broadly, telephone mis-selling and consumer rights. I feel qualified to answer some of his points but, in my summation, I will say how I will help to perhaps raise all of our understanding.

As the hon. Gentleman will know, the Government are committed to making energy bills more affordable, particularly for lower income or more vulnerable households. Of course, that involves working with industry in particular to improve both the targeting of schemes such as the one to which he referred and the process of delivering improvements in a way that benefits consumers. I will take a moment to talk about current protections and then address some of the hon. Gentleman’s excellent suggestions.

Reasonable levels of protection are in place for boiler installations. Indeed, all installations should be reported to a local authority building control, which is responsible for ensuring that such work meets building codes and regulations, not least because of safety questions. All installers of gas boilers must be on the Gas Safe Register—and, of course, they can be struck off. We have the highest energy efficiency standards for gas boiler installations of any European country, and we continue to raise those standards to ensure that consumers get the maximum heating efficiency for the minimum cost and carbon dioxide emissions. As with any other consumer contract, if consumers are dissatisfied with how the work has been delivered, they can appeal to their local citizens advice bureau or trading standards. In Scotland, people can appeal to Home Energy Scotland, which can provide free and impartial energy advice.

On the hon. Gentleman’s question about cooling-off periods, the installation of a boiler, as with any consumer contract, is subject to a cooling-off period, which I believe is 14 days. I will put that in a letter to him, which I will refer to later in my remarks.

As the hon. Gentleman noted, we also have the energy company obligation scheme to help those who are struggling with bills. Historically, that scheme has been split between helping those struggling with bill payments and reducing carbon emissions. I have decided to put as close as possible to 100% of that scheme into solving the challenge of fuel poverty, as part of the Government’s manifesto commitment to reduce the level of fuel poverty by 2035. The scheme is worth about £640 million a year—a large sum of money—and 10% of the households in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency have received measures under it, which might include electric storage heaters and oil boilers. I am sure that, like in my constituency, many of his constituents will live off the gas grid and be reliant on stand-alone heating.

The hon. Gentleman asked an important question about how we can ensure that these things are needed. I live in an off-gas-grid area in the middle of my constituency, and most weeks I go home to a flyer through my door suggesting that I apply for a new oil boiler. I do not feel that I am the target audience for these measures, and I have raised repeatedly with my team how we improve the targeting of this valuable sum of money towards those who need it most.

I hope the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that, in the latest iteration of ECO, we have increased the level of money that a local authority can spend with its discretion to 25%. We have also increased the level of money spent in rural areas such as those we represent to 15%, so there is now more of a local targeting element. On the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion that local authorities should know who has been approached, I am the least likely person to want to burden our hard-pressed local officials with more reporting requirements on behalf of central Government, but the local relevance of measures, as he said, is incredibly important.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned standards. Any ECO installation must meet building regulations and British installation standards, and insulation measures must have an appropriate lifetime guarantee—even tighter measures than for general installations

The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) rightly raised the question of renewable heat contracts sold to constituents that had indirect payments associated with them. In June, I introduced an assignment of rights so that people trapped in such contracts can assign them to another party, which should enable them to free up their homes for sale. One of my action points from the debate is to write to her with the details of that scheme to share with her constituents.

[Patricia Gibson]

I thank the Minister for promising to write to me on that, because it is important to many constituents. Given that we know that HELMS exploited constituents by mis-selling a Government-backed deal and that the Government backed the company, will the UK Government undertake even to consider a review of green deal loans proposed by that company, given the high volume of loans that have a payback period exceeding 20 years?

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady is not alone in raising the challenges of mis-selling under the green deal, and I have asked my officials to look at that. The green deal—I was on its Bill Committee—was designed to unlock the issue of persuading people to improve the energy efficiency measures of their homes. Currently, all contracts are covered by existing consumer protection, but as a second action point I undertake to go away and review this specific company and write to her with the state of progress on those conversations.

I mentioned the assignment of rights, and both hon. Members have raised the challenge of whether there should not be more trust in the system. We have a question of mis-selling, which I will address in my final remarks, but should households not be able to trust the installer phoning them up to offer what could be a valuable addition to their homes? We conducted a review called “Each Home Counts”, and one of its key recommendations was for an independent, all-encompassing mark of quality for both installation and customer service that consumers can rely on and trust. We will launch a more robust, Government-endorsed quality scheme through TrustMark.

[Jamie Stone]

This is a side issue to what I said earlier. Given what the Minister just said, there may be some evidence that wood pellet boilers are being proposed for households—particularly for the elderly—where that may not be the most suitable form of heating. I have heard stories of pensioners going out in the snow to shovel wood pellets.

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important question, and because of the changes to the renewable heat incentive, which were a driver for many domestic wood pellet installations, such things will no longer be supported. I agree, however, that we had a shortage of domestic pellets for much of the winter, and in my region we have a shortage of engineers to service those boilers. I do not suggest that people should rip those boilers out, because they play a valuable part and are supported historically under the RHI, but in future I would like homes in rural areas that are off the gas grid to be supported with things such as heat pumps and other technologies that are far less complicated and costly. That is part of the change that we are hoping to make to the RHI scheme and the energy compliance obligation going forward.

Let me return to the question of trust. We plan for all Government schemes such as the ECO to require installers to deliver those TrustMark standards. That will help drive out rogue traders—the hon. Gentleman is right to say that some traders claim falsely to be part of the Government’s scheme, when they are no such thing—and we will strongly support such measures, and encourage consumers to use only reputable traders. Consumers should be certain when they see a brand that they are dealing with a company that has the right technical competencies and is committed to customer service and the customer for the long term. The Consumer Protection Partnership has identified energy efficiency measures as a priority area, and it will be taking forward work to see how consumer detriment can be reduced in that area.

The hon. Gentleman raised other important points, which I do not feel qualified to answer, regarding the whole challenge of consumer mis-selling over the phone—that has now switched to mobile phones, since many of us decided never to answer our landlines to an unidentified number. He raised the question of rights for consumers under existing contract law, and my fellow Ministers have done good work in this area. I am afraid I am not prepared to give the hon. Gentleman the details, but I will write to him as a third action point to set those out, so he can be sure that the question of telephone mis-selling and consumer protection is being addressed.

I hope that that partially answers some of the hon. Gentleman’s excellent suggestions about independent bodies, local involvement, an accreditation system and cooling-off points. I have set out a number of actions for my team to follow up, and I thank the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran for raising such important points on behalf of their constituents.

Question put and agreed to.