I hope the hon. Gentleman will forgive my ignorance, but I am not fully aware of the devolved powers in relation to the energy market. I did not prepare to cover that in this speech, as I am very much focused on England and Wales, but perhaps the Minister will respond to that point. He probably has far greater knowledge of whether his powers extend to the Province than I do.
Alongside the measures I suggested, support to the green deal and the renewable heat incentive should continue. If implemented correctly over the coming years, both have the potential to assist off-grid gas households. The renewable heat incentive in particular could help off-grid households to install air or ground heat pumps, providing a new, cheaper and more sustainable energy source.
Having campaigned for some years on behalf of off-grid energy consumers living in my constituency, I am assured that Ministers appreciate how important the issue is. I am grateful for all the time that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), an off-grid energy consumer himself, has given and for the help that my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden gave in securing the initial OFT inquiry. I now urge DECC to take that appreciation of the issue one step further, take careful note of the further evidence revealed by the all-party group’s report and consider closely the all-party group’s recommendations, which could help to secure a fairer deal for off-grid customers. It is important to stress that many such customers form part of a group that Ministers are keen to prioritise: households in and at real risk of going into fuel poverty. One OFT statistic is telling: 32% of off-gas grid households in Great Britain are fuel poor, compared with 15% of those on-grid.
The Government are right to do what they can to help households struggling with rising energy bills, but that help will pass millions by if reforms to the mains gas network are not complemented by action on off-grid energy. The 600,000 off-grid households in fuel poverty will continue in fuel poverty, joined, no doubt, by many others, if an unreformed off-grid energy sector is combined with a return to winters like those of 2010 and 2011.
For the Government’s package of measures on energy bills to be fair, it must apply both to on-grid and off-grid households, and to be effective it must help the hundreds of thousands of off-grid households that have fallen into fuel poverty over recent years. For the Energy
Bill revolution to be meaningful, it must travel beyond the corridors of Whitehall and to all those beyond the edge of the mains gas grid.
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