Consumer Energy Bills: Government Support

Jim Shannon Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Luke Taylor]

Absolutely, and I will come on to the package that the Government outlined last week. It was very welcome, but we need to go further on immediate measures.

More than 12 million households are struggling with high energy bills today. It is not just the cold, but what creeps in with it: the damp and mould in children’s lungs and the reliance, for some families, on heating that produces dangerous carbon monoxide, which presents a threat to life and limb. Let us be clear: in parts of Britain where fuel poverty is all too common, we are at risk of letting one generation slip away slowly, sitting lonely in their homes, shivering, while we raise another forever stunted by a cold childhood.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing this matter forward; it affects everybody in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. About 39% to 40% of households in Northern Ireland are classed as being in fuel poverty, meaning that they spend more than 10% of their income on energy just to keep their homes warm. Those stats are significantly above historic measures, and many working families do not qualify for Government assistance. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the Government must do more. Does he agree that very little action has been taken to ease pressure on working families, and that more must be done to adjust thresholds so that those families are eligible for support and assistance?

[Luke Taylor]

The hon. Member highlights the gap between families who are eligible for support and those who just cannot quite make ends meet. Clearly, there is a challenge in making any measure completely comprehensive and ensuring that those in need get the support they require.

When Beveridge wrote of his five great evils all those decades ago, he had in mind specifically the kind of poverty that we are talking about here—not just in material terms, but in access to living conditions that make a higher quality of life possible. In the decades since, we have clung to the findings of his report while slowly letting the meaning of those words decay, assuming that things such as freezing to death in one’s own home were evils conquered by the “white heat” of revolution. We were wrong, and squalor, by means of poor housing, insulation and lack of warmth, is back in Britain. It is here, not just in the homes of the poorest and most vulnerable, but all too often in the suburban houses of middle-income families and in urban flats where young people raise kids.

That is to say nothing of parts of rural Britain, where very old, pre-modern insulation in housing is still the norm. For too many families and pensioners I meet, across neighbourhoods, ages and even incomes, this is the single most pressing issue in their lives. We do not need a new Beveridge report to tell us that—not that we are wanting for heartbreaking statistics. We can see it with our own eyes and hear it with our own ears, and we feel it in our bones when we knock on doors in our constituencies, time and again, day in, day out.

When an issue gets to the heart of people’s quality of life in such a huge way, the state has a duty to cut through the roadblocks, take the lead and do something about it quickly. This Government, however, have taken too long to do so. The announcement last week of the warm homes plan is welcome; we Liberal Democrats have been pushing for it for years. Many organisations working in this space, such as the MCS Foundation, are relieved to see it finally outlined.