My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend. I support his Amendment 82 and shall speak to Amendment 92, which is in a similar vein but relates to the warm home discount. I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who have other duties in the House and would otherwise be here.
It is my pleasure to speak to Amendment 92, which seeks to test the possibilities that Clauses 30 to 32 open up. For years I have been banging away at the Department for Work and Pensions to make proper and better beneficial use, in terms of client well-being, of the vast amount of data that it has on families. That, together with the data held by HMRC, and particularly the data generated when universal credit comes in, will give the Government as a whole immensely enhanced abilities to promote well-being, particularly in our low-income households. I warmly welcome Clauses 30 to 32.
I am listening carefully and correctly to some of the interrogation that is being properly directed at the Government, because we have to get this right; it is very important that the protections are there. Subject to those protections, I am an enthusiast for making use of these provisions. I am slightly surprised that there have not been more attempts—like mine and that of my noble friend—to prise open new opportunities as the Bill goes through. This amendment tries to test the willingness, enthusiasm and ingenuity of Ministers in seeing how they can expand public services to our citizens under Clauses 30 to 32.
Amendment 92 simply seeks to improve the use of data-sharing powers to extend the reach of the warm home discount. The provenance of this amendment is
work that I have been doing over months and years for the Children’s Society, and I acknowledge and pay tribute to the work it does with families, particularly with children in fuel-poor households. The Children’s Society has been making the argument to me about the importance and urgency of getting the issue of fuel poverty dealt with more adequately. We need only look at the announcement from npower last week, and indeed some of the wider economic indicators that are showing that this group of fuel-poor households is likely to find things getting a lot worse before they get any better. We need to pay attention to that.
I am told by the Children’s Society that, according to the Government’s own figures, families with children are now the biggest group affected by fuel poverty: 45% of households that can claim the warm home discount are now families with children under 18. The Children’s Society has some valuable survey evidence of a project that it carried out in Bradford and in other places, which indicates clearly the distress caused by fuel poverty. For instance, there is the fact that parents in these households are frightened to turn up the heating in cold winter months because they fear the level of the increased bills it would occasion. Some of those same parents believe that their children’s health is potentially affected by not doing so, so it is a real concern for the parents involved.
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The warm home discount, as colleagues surely know, is not a mainstream benefit but is of significant assistance to those who need it. The scheme is currently carried out for two groups. There is a core group, which targets low-income households beyond pensionable age. These are covered under the provision in the Pensions Act 2008 that set up an agreement between the DWP, HMRC and energy companies. It enables people who are beyond retirement age to qualify entirely automatically for the discount. It is taken from their bills and they do not need to apply for it at all. On the other hand the broader group, which is more discretionary and covers vulnerable children in low-income households, does not have that advantage. The Government introduced criteria in 2015 to help with this, which was very welcome, but access to their £140 discount is still patchy and discretionary. It is not automatic. The Children’s Society estimates that only one-third of children in fuel-poor households receive warm home discount at the moment—a matter of concern to it, as I am sure it should be to colleagues here in the Committee.
We need to add fuel-poor families with children aged under 18 to the core group for automatic eligibility for the warm home discount. That can now be achieved because we can get access to the data and share them with the energy companies. Clauses 30 to 32 could unlock the warm home discount for these families, so this amendment asks the Government to ask the DWP to endorse this approach and take the opportunity to make use of these clauses. In particular, will the Government commit to a consultation on how this could be done in the next six months, moving low-income families in fuel poverty to the core group of the existing warm home discount scheme?