Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his department are taking to (a) reduce fuel poverty and (b) prevent excess winter deaths in the winter of 2018-19.

The best long-term solution to tackling fuel poverty is to improve energy efficiency to bring the cost of heating homes down. That’s exactly what we’re doing through the Energy Company Obligation where £450 million of the £640 million per year scheme is currently directed towards low income and vulnerable households. We recently announced that we will focus the whole of the scheme on low income and vulnerable households from later this year. We also announced that we will increase the size of ‘flexible eligibility’, which enables Local Authorities to work with partners such as the health sector to determine which households are most in need of support. In addition, initially up to 10% of the scheme will be focused on innovation, bringing forward new technology that will help tackle fuel poverty over the long term.

In order to help low income and vulnerable households with the cost of keeping warm each winter, the Warm Home Discount provides over 2 million households with a £140 rebate off their energy bill. In addition, Winter Fuel Payments provide all pensioner households, who can be some of the most vulnerable to the impacts of living in a cold home, with a payment of between £100 and £300 each winter.

Also, the current Safeguard Tariff caps energy prices for 4 million pre-payment meter customers, and 1 million households in receipt of the Warm Home Discount, two groups who are known to be among the most vulnerable in society. The Domestic Gas & Electricity (Tariff Cap) Act 2018 will require Ofgem to temporarily extend these protections to a further 11 million customers on standard variable and default tariffs.