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Fuel Poverty

I have only a few minutes, so I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not do so. Ofgem's rules are set by the Government. If it is not doing enough, why do the Government not make it do more, as that is where the buck stops? How do we ensure that more effective help is given to vulnerable groups? The Minister's experience goes back a long way, especially in matters of social policy, and he will remember that at the start of the 1980s there was something called certificated housing benefit. In other words, people on income support, or supplementary benefit, as it then was, received a certificate that entitled them to have their rent and rates paid in full. The problem in the fuel market is that the utility companies often do not know who are the right people to allow on to the social tariffs. British Gas, in its briefing to hon. Members, talked about"““the huge wasted effort...from searching for eligible customers””." However, the Government know who those people are, so why do not they ensure that individuals whom they believe to be vulnerable to fuel poverty have a certificate or an equivalent document, whether they are vulnerable pensioners, severely disabled people, or, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer), families with young children? Why do the Government not ensure that those people have a voucher or certificate to give them the power to choose the best provider of insulation, home efficiency or whatever is relevant, rather than expecting the private companies, which have been deregulated and sold, to go round Britain trying to find out which of their customers are eligible? It is nonsense. The Government have the information, and they should use it to the benefit of those individuals. The root problem—and I think that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test hinted at this—is that the business of energy companies is to sell as much as they possibly can. We should oblige them to adopt a goal of selling less energy. Their goals and incentives, over time, should be the emission of less carbon, the selling of less energy and the wasting of less fuel. However, at the moment, if I buy a new flat screen multi-whatever digital high definition telly, and use lots more energy, that is great news for the electricity company, because my electricity bill shoots up. The incentives are all wrong. We will get action only when the incentives for the private companies that have rightly been criticised by the right hon. Members for Islwyn (Mr. Touhig) and for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr. Clarke)—the wrong incentives of selling us more and more to make more and more money—become instead the incentives of delivering energy more and more efficiently. A cap is needed—there has been talk about capping emissions—and if there were a cap on the emissions that energy companies could generate, they would have a strong incentive when selling to customers to ensure that those customers used energy more and more efficiently. Until we turn things around, and adopt a new way of thinking about energy supply, we shall not get the right incentive structure. We have heard that the npower increase averages 15 per cent. or so across gas and electricity, and if it is mirrored by other suppliers it will add 500,000 to the fuel poverty figures. We have heard that the number of households in fuel poverty go beyond the figure of 4 million a year or two ago. It is not just a question of our missing the target: we are going in completely the wrong direction, and the scale and scope of the Government response is wholly inadequate. The new energy Bill must include firm action on social tariffs, and it is worrying that the Government have gone rather quiet on that. Leaving the matter to the companies and expecting poor and vulnerable households to shop around and choose between all the different social tariffs is not good enough. As an ordinary hon. Member trying to deal with constituents, I am baffled by the range of tariffs, schemes, grants and initiatives run by the Government, let alone those run by the companies. National Energy Action has said that although some social tariffs are genuinely advantageous,"““this constitutes a form of 'postcode lottery'””—" because of course different suppliers operate predominantly in different areas—"““that is restricted and inappropriate as a means of resolving a major social problem””." I agree that that is the case. The strength of feeling in the debate, particularly in the brief but excellent speech of the hon. Member for Selby (Mr. Grogan), is right. The situation is scandalous. Leaving things to the market is not good enough. Leaving things to different initiatives by individual companies is not good enough. The Government have the levers of power in the market, and they should use them.