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

My Lords, we welcome these regulations. They set up what will helpfully be a small, cheap and effective scheme to target support towards those who need it most. I thank the Minister for his helpful draft scheme policy document, which sets out the Government’s intentions in considerably more detail than it is possible to glean from the regulations themselves. We have all felt the cold in the past few weeks. This winter has been particularly harsh and it will add a significant amount to the energy bills of those least able to afford it. The Government have missed many opportunities on fuel poverty. They have missed all their targets and are likely to miss the next one, but this is a small step in the right direction, so that is something. Despite the explanatory document, I still have a few questions about the scheme. Paragraph 16 of the draft scheme sets out that the Government’s current intention is to exclude from the scheme those customers who are already receiving a discounted tariff for their electricity supply. This seems sensible and would avoid giving some people a double discount. However, the paragraph goes on to say that if the overlap is very large, the Government will ignore this policy intention and continue to offer a rebate in order to ensure, ""that the number of people assisted by the scheme is not so small as to make the administrative cost and effort required disproportionate to the benefits"." That seems a very strange way to offer support; to say that they have taken so much time and money to establish that you do not need help that they are going to give you some more money anyway does not seem the best use of public funds. Of course administrative costs should be kept as low as possible, but the way to achieve that should not be to expand the overall budget so that the proportion falls. Speaking of costs, can the Minister confirm how much he expects this system to cost? Ignoring the final sum of the rebate offered by the energy suppliers, which will depend on the number of matches found, how much will HP Enterprise Services charge for this year’s work? Who will bear the cost? Will it be the Government or the energy suppliers? The Minister in another place identified HP Enterprise Services as, ""the recognised and authorised information technology provider for the Department for Work and Pensions".—[Official Report, Commons, Ninth Delegated Legislation Committee, 13/1/10; col. 4.]" That unfortunately does not inspire as much confidence as it should. Can we be assured that we will not, once again, be presented with an example of the Civil Service’s inability to negotiate rigorous contracts with the private sector? What measures of success are being demanded to deliver this system accurately and cheaply? I am glad to see the criminal offence around unlawfully disclosing data in these regulations, but I would like to confirm that at the end of the year HP Enterprise Services will also be required to wipe its systems of any data. At the moment, the explanatory document confirms only that energy suppliers and DWP have to purge their systems of the information shared between them. I should like to address other areas that the Government should be looking at to help those suffering from fuel poverty. I do not expect the Minister to perform a U-turn today and accept the Conservative policy of providing a loan to home owners to upgrade the energy efficiency of their homes by simple means such as loft insulation and so on. However, does he not accept that many of those suffering from unaffordable fuel poverty would benefit enormously from such measures? Finally, I should like to push the Minister on what his department is doing to improve the worryingly low uptake rate of pension credits. In another place, the Minister claimed that the uptake rate was better at the lower levels of income, which is something, but unless the Minister thinks that pension credits are being offered to those who do not need them, it surely is not the point. Despite my wider concerns about the Government’s approach to fuel poverty, I welcome the regulations and I very much hope that they achieve the matching that they are intended to.