My Lords, in moving this amendment I shall also speak to Amendment 12. I had better declare an interest on this: I am the chair of a small fuel poverty strategy. I do so because the Minister was, I am glad to say, present at the opening of our conference today, which I am very grateful for.
We come now to fuel poverty. I am not quite sure how many “lemmas” we now have in energy policy, whether it is a tetralemma or a quadlemma, but clearly one of the objectives of energy policy must be to rectify the detrimental effects that arise from fuel poverty on some of the poorest in our land. The House will be well aware of how important it is to regard tackling fuel poverty as one of the priority aims of energy policy. There will still be millions of households in severe distress this winter because they cannot heat their homes properly. As a result, there will be millions of pounds of expenditure by the NHS in treatment of cold-related diseases, and sadly there will be some thousands of premature deaths.
Because of this background and because of the inexorable rise in consumer energy prices since about 2004-05—whatever programmes existed then were struggling against a rising trend of prices—the original intentions to eliminate fuel poverty, set down as far back as 2000, were no longer achievable. It was therefore of some concern to many of us that when the first version of this Bill appeared in another place, there was no mention whatever of fuel poverty.
In Committee, the Minister herself produced the provision that attempts to rectify that situation. It was commendable of her to persuade her colleagues that this was necessary, and the Government’s commitment in Clause 145 to producing a new strategy for fuel poverty in a maximum of six months’ time was broadly welcome—and I still welcome it. However, many of us also considered that more detail was required to make clear the nature of this strategy. As colleagues will remember, a number of more detailed proposals for inclusion in this part of the Bill were considered both in Committee and on Report. The Government rejected all of those, unfortunately, but at least the strategy is there.
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The amendments before us today are much simpler in nature. They simply attempt to clarify what the strategy is about. I would have thought that the Government could simply accept Amendment 11. Clause 145 refers to the intention of the strategy as,
“addressing the situation of persons ... in fuel poverty”.
That is pretty neutral. Surely, at a minimum, the proposed strategy should be about either the elimination of fuel poverty or at least the reduction of the numbers of people in fuel poverty. That needs to be reflected in this clause.
I regret having to say this but the reason why it is so important that a reference to a reduction in numbers is included is that there is considerable scepticism out there about the Government's good intentions in this area. The Government started by closing down the only taxpayer scheme designed to improve the energy efficiencies of the dwellings of the fuel poor and, in effect, abandoned targets and sought to redefine the problem. Extreme cynics, some of whom I have met,
would say that the main thing that the Government have so far done to “address” fuel poverty in the terms of this clause has been to change the definitions—to statistically manipulate 2 million people out of the figures without anything actually having changed.
There were problems with the old definition, and in my view there are even greater problems with the new one. But whatever the merits of the change in definition, the combination of that with the Government’s abolition of previous schemes, the slow and somewhat expensive start of the ECO—which is supposed to address the problem of fuel poverty—plus the lack of a mention in the original version of this Bill, has led to some scepticism about the Government’s intentions. I am moving this amendment so that the Government can make their aim clear. This relatively modest amendment is as much in the Government's interest as it is anybody else’s. I hope that they will simply accept it and make clear what the intentions of this strategy will be in a few months.
Amendment 12 is also intended to provide clarification. It has always been the case, and is still the case under this Government, that multiple measures are needed to address the problem of fuel poverty. The tariff structures, which were addressed at an earlier stage of the Bill, and income enhancements such as winter fuel payments for pensioners, are also important. Most important of all, however, is the need to improve the energy efficiency of the homes of the fuel poor. That is also important for carbon reduction purposes. However, the need to address energy efficiency in buildings is not mentioned in Clause 145 or anywhere else in the Bill.
When the Government express the strategy in terms of targets in a few months’ time, I hope it will be clear that the targets are about energy efficiency improvements as well as the number of fuel poor. If that is the intention then it would be useful to have a reference to energy efficiency in dwellings inserted in Clause 145 to clarify that intention. That is what the second amendment does.
It is in the Government’s interest to clarify this, and it will certainly be in the interest of the consultation which they intend to hold on the fuel poverty strategy in a few months’ time. I therefore hope that the Government will consider these amendments positively. I beg to move.