Fuel Poverty

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this important debate. Alas, this is the second time in my short career as a shadow Minister that I have had to speak about fuel poverty. That underlines just how serious a problem it is. Today’s discussion has again been informative and shed light on many pressing matters. Alas, it is not light that millions of our constituents need, but heat.

Let me go through some of the points that hon. Members made. My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) spoke at great length about his frustration at the Government’s lack of action on energy efficiency. I, too, will touch on that issue shortly. Other Members talked about the fact that we have the worst fuel poverty in Europe with the exception of Estonia. I have been to Estonia, and I saw the 1950s Stalinist housing bocks that spread out across the country, so that is a sad fact if true.

Members spoke about prepayment meters and the fact that the very poorest—those least able to pay—are charged more for their energy. That is a perverse state of affairs, if ever there was one. In the highlands and islands of Scotland, some districts struggle with 71% fuel poverty, which is completely outrageous in the sixth-richest country in the world. The hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who sits on the all-party group on fuel poverty and energy efficiency, spoke about the trilemma of high energy costs, low incomes and poor energy efficiency. I was struck by the words of a doctor that she quoted, who said he wished he could prescribe insulation rather than medication. We must highlight that not investing in energy efficiency and not having proper fuel poverty strategies is a false economy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper) painted a moving picture of the grim reality that fuel poverty represents for millions of people across the country. The hon. Member for St Ives said that our nation has some of the oldest, leakiest housing stock in Europe. Fuel poverty saps people’s ability to work and study, and to get ahead in life. It affects people’s health and wellbeing. I am keen to hear the Minister address the question whether the Government will make affordable warm homes a basic human right that all people should be able to access.

[Ms Ritchie]

The hon. Gentleman is making some compelling points. Does he agree that we need to include energy efficiency in infrastructure spending to deal with the issue of fuel poverty throughout our housing stock, whether in the social or private rented sector?

[Clive Lewis]

Yes, I agree. I went to see the new head of the National Infrastructure Commission, Lord Adonis, with Frontier Economics and E3G, which have been quoted. We asked him whether energy efficiency could be made a priority in the National Infrastructure Commission’s first tranche of spending. I will not say we were given short shrift—he was very polite—but I understand that he will not make the case for such spending in his recommendations. I think that is a missed opportunity. Unfortunately, the Treasury still refuse to see energy efficiency spending as infrastructure spending. Frontier Economics made a compelling case when it said that the characteristics of spending on energy efficiency are exactly the same as those of traditional infrastructure spending on, say, transport or broadband. We will press Lord Adonis on that issue, and I will happily keep the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) informed.

I have worked on fuel poverty and participated in debates on that issue, and I am struck by how easy it is to get sucked into the statistics and detail. Other Members made that point, too. Clearly, the detail is an essential to understanding not only the scale of the problem and the sheer depth of the Government’s failure, but the resources required to turn the problem around.

Before I get into the stats, let me remind hon. Members that behind every percentile, every missed target and figure and every set of depressingly high numbers there is a fellow human being. Perhaps they are one of the thousands of people expected to die this winter as a result of living in a cold home. Perhaps they are over 65—an age group in which one person is expected to die every seven minutes because of fuel poverty. I am sure someone much better at maths than I am will be able to work out statistically how many will have died over the course of this debate. Perhaps they are disabled, unable to get out of their home, and reduced to living in one or two rooms for the duration of the winter because they fear racking up excessively high fuel bills. Perhaps they are one of the 1.5 million children living in fuel poverty across the UK. Perhaps they are one of the Prime Minister’s strivers, and are working as hard as they can but are still struggling to heat their home. There is somebody in work in more than half of the 2.3 million households in fuel poverty.

That is the reality behind the statistics. Those are the people who, this winter, will pay a heavy price for the Government’s failure to tackle this issue meaningfully. I see that failure compounded day in, day out. I sit on the Energy Bill Committee, and throughout our proceedings the Government have routinely used fuel poverty as an excuse for inaction or, worse still, for slashing the UK’s renewables industry. They claim to care so much about poorer consumers, yet by attacking the two cheapest renewables—onshore wind and solar—they damage investor confidence, increase risk, and push up the price of renewable investment and, ultimately, our energy bills. At the same time, they are setting an incredible strike price for nuclear-generated electricity and are happy to heap those costs on to consumer energy bills.

One of the most cost-effective ways of meeting our climate change commitments and tackling fuel poverty is to increase energy efficiency, which has been mentioned so many times today, but it is being fundamentally undermined. Any serious attempt to tackle fuel poverty will require serious action to improve our housing stock. Poor-quality housing and fuel poverty are almost inseparable. The figures speak for themselves: 73% of households in fuel poverty live in properties with the lowest energy ratings—E, F or G. Only 2% live in properties with the highest energy ratings—A, B or C. The Government’s goal of ensuring a minimum energy-efficiency rating of band C by 2030 is woefully inadequate.

[David Mowat]

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman is saying on renewables. Is his position on the speed and velocity with which we should go down the renewables route—ours is the fastest, certainly in terms of energy emissions targets, in Europe—the same as that of the Scottish National party, which regards its impact on bills as infinitesimal? Does he think that the Government and Opposition have a duty to match the speed of carbon reduction with cost, so that at the margin there are fewer energy deaths in the short term?

[Clive Lewis]

The Energy and Climate Change Committee is clear that the most cost-effective option for decarbonising our economy is set out in the carbon budgets. We have made it clear in the past few weeks that if we intend to decarbonise our economy, renewables will play a crucial part. Our problem with Government policy is that it is going backwards on renewables. Renewables will play a crucial part in ensuring that this country meets its climate change commitments and carbon budgets cost-effectively. We must have a balanced energy portfolio; the dash for gas and going all out for fracking is not the way forward. The Opposition are calling for a more balanced approach as the best way to achieve our commitments.

Between 2010 and 2013, only 70,000 fuel-poor households upgraded, leaving 95% still to be improved. As the hon. Member for St Ives said, at that rate the Department will miss its own target by 100 years. The Energy and Climate Change Committee estimates that investment of £1.2 billion to £1.8 billion per annum is needed to attain the Government’s fuel poverty strategy for England. The cheapest third of our approach to tackling our climate change commitments is the energy that we never use. Energy saved through efficiency is the cheapest. We talk about energy security, but energy that we never use is the securest. Funding for energy efficiency for the fuel-poor has been cut in real terms by a fifth, and the installation of energy efficiency measures has been cut by a third. As Members are aware, two new Government incentive schemes were introduced in 2013: the green deal and the energy company obligation. Two years later, the green deal has been stopped, and support for ECO is yet to be set beyond 2017 and no new funding is due to be announced until 2018.

Schemes aside, we come to the grim reality of this litany of failures. An estimated 43,900 excess winter deaths occurred last year in England and Wales—the highest number since 1999. Some 27% more people died in the winter months, compared with the non-winter months. It does not take a genius to understand that the situation will get worse the longer this Government refuse to have any semblance of a coherent fuel poverty strategy, and as long as growing inequality and poverty are at the heart of their economic policies.

The hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Callum McCaig) touched on that and we sometimes forget that fuel poverty is often just another term for old-fashioned poverty. Why? The vast majority of the 2.3 million households living in fuel poverty are also on low incomes. The link is inescapable, but rather than tackling it, the Government have opted to lower the bar and reduce their ambition. Dithering, inconsistency, U-turns and failure are the trademarks of this Government on this matter, and I look forward to hearing the Minister explain how they will tackle this most pressing issue.