Thank you to those constituents who contacted me regarding the Government's Warm Homes Plan and asking me to attend the debate on the 12th of February. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend due to prior parliamentary commitments, however, I did study the debate transcript with interest and have provided a link to it here:
Fuel Poverty: England - Hansard - UK Parliament
The key priority of any government’s energy policy should be ensuring that people have access to secure, reliable, and affordable energy to stay safe and warm.
The previous Conservative Government made significant progress in improving the energy efficiency of homes. In 2010, only 14 per cent of homes were well insulated; today, that figure has risen to around 50 per cent.
For social housing, just 24 per cent were well insulated in 2010, compared to approximately 70 per cent now. Additionally, the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund, established by the previous Government, provided 8,800 homes with free efficiency upgrades, saving households an average of £400 per year on energy bills.
Reducing energy costs remains the most important step to help people stay warm and secure. As my colleague, Nick Timothy MP, said in the debate,
‘The challenge of fuel poverty affects people of all ages throughout the country. Rather than just creating new benefits and schemes to address the high cost of fuel, we need to resolve the root causes of energy costs more generally. Here, the Government are taking the country in a very worrying direction. The Energy Secretary promises to decarbonise the grid by 2030, and the Business Secretary wants to ban petrol and diesel cars by the same year. Tough standards on aviation fuel are being enforced; heat pumps are expected to replace gas boilers; expensive and intermittent renewable technologies funded by huge and hidden subsidies are favoured; and oil and gas fields in the North Sea are abandoned, left for the Norwegians to profit from what we choose to ignore.
The Energy Secretary has made much of the National Energy System Operator’s report on decarbonising the grid. He says that report shows that he can do so by 2030 without increasing bills, but in fact the report does not say that—and even then, its calculations rest on a carbon price that will rise to £147 per tonne of carbon dioxide. It is no wonder that, in reply to a question I asked him last week, the Energy Secretary would not rule out having a higher carbon price in Britain than in Europe. That will be terrible for families struggling with the cost of heating their home, but it will hurt them—and indeed all of us—in other ways.
As long as policy runs faster than technology and other countries do not follow our lead on climate change, decarbonisation will inevitably mean deindustrialisation. That will mean a weaker economy with lower growth, fewer jobs, and less spending power to help those who we have been discussing today—those who need support the most.’
Like my colleagues, I am concerned that the current Labour Government’s target to decarbonise the entire electricity grid within just five short years is likely to drive up energy prices. Achieving this goal requires building more offshore wind capacity in the next two years than has been constructed in the past five and doubling grid and pylon infrastructure over the next five years compared to the past decade. The costs for these ambitions will inevitably be passed on to consumers through higher energy bills.
In addition, there are a number of households in East Grinstead and Uckfield who are not connected to the gas grid and who can pay over the odds for their heating. This is because, particularly in rural areas, certain types of house types are often much more difficult to heat due to much older building materials and a lack of insulation.
I look forward to reviewing the details of the Labour Government's Warm Home Plan and hope it will build on the positive work of the previous Government, providing vital support to families who are less well-off, including those who live rurally, in heating their homes. However, it is clear ensuring energy efficiency and reducing costs should be a priority.
