Energy Bill

My hon. Friend is quite right. This should have been a Bill that enjoyed cross-party support for keeping the lights on. The Secretary of State said that we need to work together to keep the lights on, but he seems to have shrunk from an important opportunity to do that. When average bills for domestic fuel are £1,200, high energy prices are a desperate problem for many families struggling with the consequences of the recession—especially now. There is an unsatisfactory delay in the publication of the fuel poverty statistics. As the Secretary of State knows, the last available figures, which were published in October, are for 2007 and show that 4 million households spent more than 10 per cent. of their income on energy bills. Since then energy prices have risen still further—domestic gas prices have doubled since 2004—and unemployment has risen. To use the Government's projections, it is thought that 6 million households—one family in every four—are in fuel poverty. We desperately need a strategy to address fuel poverty, but the Bill does not provide one. Again, it does not even set out the Government's plans; it merely hands over another batch of regulation-making powers to the Secretary of State to be used in the future. So, if the Bill is passed into law, only then will the Government come up with detailed proposals. No doubt Ministers will want to consult on them, too, before laying a draft order before Parliament. Not only is that the very opposite of the kind of urgency that is so badly needed, but, in all likelihood, vulnerable households will be lucky if they see a benefit by next winter, let alone this winter. A serious fuel poverty strategy, as everyone in the House knows, must be based on tackling the cause, not just the symptoms. Our housing stock is appallingly inefficient and yet the Government's approach to energy efficiency, which saves everyone money, is to ration it. The Government's approach is that we should ration energy efficiency improvements. The funding that is available through Warm Front, for example, is, as we discovered from the Under-Secretary, being cut by £15 million from the next financial year. Earlier, the Secretary of State briefly skated over his pay-as-you-save scheme. That is not surprising, because it amounts to an exercise in piloting an approach in 500 homes—only 500 homes, when we have a problem on such a scale. This must be the biggest and most gaping hole in the strategy.