David Warburton
Main Page: David Warburton (Independent - Somerton and Frome)(8 years, 3 months ago)
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David Warburton (Somerton and Frome) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I echo others in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Derek Thomas) on securing this timely and important debate. My constituency in Somerset has a huge number of homes in fuel poverty. That is very much part of the unwelcome trend whereby we see a direct correlation between sparsity of population and fuel poverty. That is pretty bad news for the people of Somerton and Frome, scattered as they are across 900 square miles and more than 130 towns and villages. That real sense of isolation is reflected in the way that fuel poverty is often considered a bit of an outlier in debates on energy, and subordinate to the two big issues of renewables and headline energy costs for consumers.
However, I share my hon. Friend’s guarded optimism that in tackling the issue, we also create opportunities. Properly insulated homes will reduce carbon emissions and hospital admissions, as well as creating jobs. I am sure that Members of all parties will have welcomed the Secretary of State’s recognition that fuel poverty is a particular problem for rural areas, and I very much hope that the consultation that is currently under way will consider how the Government can respond to that correlation sustainably and productively.
The past four years have apparently seen 375,000 people taken out of fuel poverty, but we have much further to go. Recent estimates suggest that a massive 2.3 million households still need to be supported. Fuel poverty is a problem that sprawls across many different areas: deprivation, carbon reduction, health, the cost of living and rural isolation. That makes it all the more difficult to address directly, but perhaps that overlap presents us with an opportunity to have an impact on a variety of different issues that reinforce and entrench disadvantage.
This debate is important, and it is right that we reflect on it and on the representations made by so many constituents, but it is important that we think practically and that solutions are found, whether they are a UK-wide needs-based formula, greater efficiency awareness, insulation drives or stamp duty incentives. Whatever the solutions might be, this is a real and powerful issue on which progress seems rather overdue.