Gloria De Piero
Main Page: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)Fuel Poverty and Energy Efficiency
Gloria De Piero Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Gloria De Piero
It is a particular outrage and a disgrace—call it what you will—that there is money left over given that I and, I am sure, colleagues across the House are being contacted by constituents, including vulnerable and elderly people, who are trying to get help from Warm Front, but who have been told that they must wait or have not had the answer that they need in these freezing temperatures. It is nothing short of a disgrace.
Caroline Flint
It is indeed a disgrace. I do not say this without thinking about it first, but I think this Government have basically driven the scheme into the ground.
It makes it even more unforgiveable that we find ourselves in exactly the same situation as last year, when, despite repeated warnings, the Government had an underspend in the previous financial year of £50.6 million in the Warm Front scheme. Instead of that money helping people to reduce their energy use and cut their bills, it went back to the Treasury—presumably to help to fill the holes in the Chancellor’s borrowing targets. Why were Ministers not on the case? They have known since October 2010 that Warm Front was due to end this Saturday. After last year’s debacle, if I were a Minister I would have been all over this issue and not waiting for another car crash. Indeed, if I can access that information through parliamentary questions, Ministers should have known about the underspend, the backlog and the thousands of applications still waiting to be decided on. If they knew there was a problem, why were they not on the sofas of “Daybreak” or “This Morning”, or out in the country promoting the scheme and ensuring that people knew the help was available? The Government are keen on performance-related pay; perhaps they should start with the pay of Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change.