State Pension Credit (Disclosure of Information) (Electricity Suppliers) Regulations 2010

My Lords, the regulations will enable us to bring into being the energy rebate scheme, which both delivers real help this year to pensioners and acts as a pilot for the future scheme announced in the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s White Paper, The UK Low Carbon Transition Plan. This represents a new way of working with energy suppliers, bringing together the information that we hold to deliver help with fuel bills to the poorest of pensioners. Fuel costs can have a big impact on household budgets, particularly in cold winters such as this, which is why we want to be able to identify, and target support effectively to, those households which need most help. The energy rebate scheme builds on the current voluntary agreement between government and energy suppliers. Under this agreement, made in 2008, energy suppliers agreed to increase the assistance offered to vulnerable customers through social programmes. The energy rebate scheme will be an important part of this programme. The voluntary agreement with energy suppliers comes to an end in March 2011. The Government have proposed that a mandated social price support scheme should follow. As I have just mentioned, this was first proposed in DECC’s White Paper. Legislation to facilitate this has been brought forward in the Energy Bill currently before Parliament. The regulations before your Lordships are made under Section 142 of the Pensions Act 2008. They facilitate data-sharing between the Government and energy suppliers. The energy rebate scheme will be funded by the electricity suppliers under the voluntary agreement with the Government. It will provide pensioners aged 70 years and over who receive only the guarantee credit element of pension credit a one-off rebate worth £80 on their electricity bill. This represents a significant additional contribution towards fuel costs for recipients, and it will be paid in addition to the winter fuel payment and cold weather payments in periods of very cold weather. To determine who will receive the rebate, certain data will be shared between the DWP and the energy suppliers. This will be done through a data-matching exercise carried out by a third party, HP Enterprise Services, the DWP’s recognised and authorised IT provider. The draft regulations specify the information that can be shared, the purposes for which that information can be used and an offences regime for unlawful disclosure of information. First, on the information that can be shared, the draft regulations permit the DWP to share the names and addresses of people who on 26 March 2010 are aged 70 and over. In the case of couples, the regulations also allow DWP to share the same details of any spouse or partner where one of them is in receipt of the guarantee credit element only of pension credit on the qualifying date of 26 March 2010. Secondly, the regulations cover the purposes for which the shared data can be used. The main purpose is to establish whether a person qualifies for the rebate. The draft regulations allow energy suppliers to share details of their domestic electricity customers, indicating whether they are on a discounted tariff. Energy suppliers may also contact customers who have received the rebate to offer energy efficiency measures and offer to place them on the priority register. Finally, the draft regulations set out an offences regime for unlawful disclosure of information. They set out offences for improper use as well as the penalties. This is aimed at strengthening the security of data handled and transferred. We have ensured that the regime complies with the Data Protection Act. Details about the scheme and how it will work in practice can be found in the scheme policy document, which is available in the Library. We will publish a final version of this document before the scheme comes into operation. It may be helpful if I give a quick summary of how the scheme will operate. The DWP and the energy suppliers will pass the relevant data to the data-matching organisation to perform the match. Where there is a match between the two sets of information, the energy supplier will be notified and will automatically award a rebate of £80 to that customer’s electricity account. We expect most people to receive the rebate without needing to do anything. The rebate will appear as a credit on their electricity bill.