I rise to support my fellow vice-president of National Energy Action. I should perhaps have mentioned that before, because I touched on fuel poverty in a previous intervention and did not declare my interest.
It is important that this issue is brought to the attention of Ministers at this stage, because I think that it is fair to say that the Green Deal has not been a great success so far. It may well be transformed over the summer, but, as far as improving the quality of energy-inefficient households is concerned, it has yet to make the impact that some of us were not sure about but others had perhaps undue faith in. None the less, it is at the moment the only government-led initiative on energy efficiency and it ought to have an impact on those households where the quality of the fabric of the house is a major contributor to what we call fuel poverty. Fuel poverty is currently defined as households in which more than 10% of the income is accounted for by energy prices. This may be subject to redefinition in the next few months, but, even if the definition were radically changed, I do not think that fuel poverty would disappear before 2016.
Much has quite correctly been made of the fact that all households will be paying for a lot of the green measures being taken. These green measures fall on electricity consumption. At the moment, some 8 million of the 26 million or 27 million households in the United Kingdom do not have gas. That means that, for the purposes of heating, they are dependent in the main either on electricity or on oil. They therefore pay a disproportionate amount of their energy costs in supporting these so-called green measures. We should give notice to the Minister that this will be a recurring theme, because households that are outwith the gas grid are disadvantaged at the moment. Those households are doubly disadvantaged because they have to pay what seems to be a disproportionate amount of money as far as electricity is concerned. This has been mitigated somewhat. At one time, there was an almost poll tax-style arrangement whereby every household paid the same amount; it is now going to be measured on consumption of units of electricity, so that is a slight improvement. However, there is a long way to go on this.
Those of us who are not antagonistic to this legislation—we may be in the Opposition, but we realise that many aspects of it are necessary for a variety of reasons—will nevertheless not look idly or sympathetically at it if it fails to address a number of glaring examples of bureaucratic mistakes and unintended consequences. We spoke earlier today about the need for investment. There will be a series of leitmotifs at the back of this legislation. One of those will be the
disadvantage to which certain types of household are put, through no fault of their own, as a result of having to pay a disproportionate amount of money to fund a lot of the green initiatives involved in this legislation. Sometimes, such disadvantages are a consequence of previous legislation, but we need to keep this at the forefront of our minds.
I realise that, at this stage at least, this is a probing amendment. Aneurin Bevan once said that silent pain evokes no response. We have to remain mindful of the fact that a number of households in this country are suffering a great deal because of energy prices that have been rising, which are likely to rise even more and which, at present, we are not confident will get the kind of mitigation that we had hoped would come from the Green Deal because of the low take-up and the almost total indifference to it of the private landlord. Of all the disadvantaged groups, those in privately rented accommodation seem to get the roughest end of every stick directed at them.
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