Fuel Poverty

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I will see whether those figures are available and if they are, I will make them available to the noble Baroness. In my original Answer, I was trying to address the importance of the aggregate fuel poverty gap. We are seeing that come down over the years; the aggregate fuel poverty gap was of the order of £857 million in 2010 and it has now dropped by £25 million to £832 million.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, as renewable energy prices become more and more competitive with new technology, would one fairly simple way to ease fuel poverty not be to reduce the subsidy charge on electricity bills that has to be imposed to pay for green subsidies? Does my noble friend not agree that the energy gap Her Majesty’s Government imposed has not been a great success, since fuel bills are rising all round?

[Lord Henley]

On that last point, I assure my noble friend that we estimate that the price cap will save consumers something of the order of £1 billion annually on their bills. On his first point about setting the levels of subsidy for renewables, it is important to provide the appropriate subsidy to see that we get the appropriate developments in renewable energy. As my noble friend will be aware, we have seen a dramatic drop in the cost of producing offshore wind, for example; the same is true of solar and we hope those trends will continue.