I would like to speak in favour of the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), and I apologise for having the floor before him.
There is a huge amount of noise about energy costs, with blame and accusations flying in all directions, but the basics are clear: the current approach to tackling fuel poverty is inadequate. According to National Energy Action, it is expected to reach just 5% of the fuel poor in England. Poorer households and individuals stand to suffer most from energy price increases, which they cannot afford. The most vulnerable people tend to live in the worst-quality and least energy-efficient housing.
Energy efficiency is the only serious solution to protecting householders from future price rises. We know that that is the direction that we have to go in, regardless of the discussion on the cause of rising fuel prices. We need a stronger commitment on energy efficiency and urgent action to deliver it from this and future Governments. An ambitious nationwide energy-efficiency drive would make a huge contribution to job creation and the economy, as well as being essential for carbon targets.
The amendment that I want to speak to sets out minimum energy-efficiency targets for homes occupied by low-income households. They would be an effective and lasting approach to ending the scandal of fuel poverty, and the reality that many of the UK’s poorest and most vulnerable individuals and families live in the coldest, most leaky homes. It would reduce seriously the health risks—respiratory and cardiovascular illnesses, mental ill health and depression—linked to cold homes, thereby reducing the burden on local health provision. It would make a significant contribution to the desperately needed cuts to carbon emissions from buildings.
The Energy and Climate Change Committee made it clear that there has been very limited progress on some measures, such as solid wall insulation, to cut emissions from existing buildings and called for new approaches to increase uptake. I am sure that DECC disregarded all that advice this week. I hope that we will not be there doing that again.
This effective and ambitious approach is needed because we urgently need action to stop the scandal that, in the 21st century, we still have people dying from the cold in
their own homes. It is literally a scandal that we had 31,000 excess winter deaths last year—an increase of 29% on the previous year. We are a relatively rich and not terribly cold country, but many people are dying because they cannot afford to heat their homes.
The hon. Member for Derby North clearly understands the enormous benefit of an approach to fuel poverty that is based on minimum energy-efficiency targets. What a shame that he no longer holds a shadow communities and local government position, and what a shame that the shadow energy and climate change team favours what seems to be a weaker and vaguer approach and has tabled its own amendment rather than supporting his.
In recent weeks and months, many of my constituents have written to me to call for ambitious action on energy efficiency to tackle the scandal of cold homes. Many of them have moving personal stories to tell. Many of them have written about the Energy Bill Revolution campaign and the no-brainer of recycling the billions of carbon tax revenues received by the Treasury into a mass home energy efficiency scheme. Having clear fuel poverty and energy-efficiency objectives in primary legislation is a crucial first step to driving the nationwide housing upgrade that we need. Without such targets set in legislation, our constituents have no guarantee that this or any future Government will take the necessary action on fuel poverty.
I just want to say a few words about my amendment (a) to Lords amendment 76, which concerns the information that energy companies provide to their customers. Lords amendment 76 makes provision for the Secretary of State to require a licence holder to provide information to domestic customers to allow them to see for themselves whether any bill increases are due to an increase in company profit, or due to increases in other costs.
My amendment would make some modest additions to that welcome proposed increase in transparency. First, in relation to profits, it would allow customers to see how much UK corporation tax their energy supplier has paid in the past three years as a total and, crucially, as a proportion of its profits. The Minister said that that was not necessarily fair because there was not a direct correlation between corporation tax paid and overall turnover, but none the less it would be useful for people to have that figure when deciding to switch between energy companies.
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The Government make big play about the importance of information to enabling customers to switch and use their power of choice. If they are to have that power of choice, they need information, and I think that this would be a useful and easily accessible piece of information for them to have. Earlier this year, the Energy and Climate Change Committee uncovered the disturbing reality that some of the big six were paying little or no corporation tax at all, despite making major profits, and other hon. Members on both sides of the House have made clear their complete dissatisfaction with that.
Secondly, our constituents have a right easily to access information on fuel mix. The Minister tried to reassure me by saying that, because of the existing fuel mix disclosure obligation, that part of my amendment was redundant, but there is no point hiding away this
information on a website. It needs to be in bills, so that people can make better judgments, and we need more than just one year’s information. To see trends and trajectories and to make proper comparisons, we need several years’ information, and it needs to be presented so that meaningful averages can be compared.