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Fuel Poverty Bill

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is one of the tragedies at the moment that some of our poorest constituents end up paying the most for their fuel. They do so via tariff systems, and prepayment meters are part of that. I do not think, however, that we can draw an easy equation between those buildings with prepaid meters and the people who are poor. It is not as simple as that. It is true that a lot of people who are in poverty have prepaid meters, but many people who are not in poverty have prepaid meters, particularly in London where many private sector landlords install them as a matter of course. Often yuppies who work in the City live happily in those flats—perhaps we should call them the new poor, but I do not think they are poor yet. The equation is, therefore, not quite that simple, but my hon. Friend is right that this issue needs to be addressed as part of the social tariff arrangements. The Government are discussing social tariffs with the Ofgem-regulated electricity and gas companies, but, as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn said, a lot of people in this country do not heat their houses with gas or electricity—gas because they cannot get it, and electricity because that is not the way they have traditionally heated their home. They rely on liquefied petroleum gas, fuel oil or solid fuel, and those fuel sources have increased in price the most over recent years. People who rely on them are now having the greatest difficulty in paying their bills. I should declare an interest here: my rural hovel relies on fuel oil and the bill has gone up enormously this year compared with last year. I can just about pay the bill, but I recognise that others will be in great difficulty. There is a permissive element within the social tariff part of the Bill that permits the Government to bring other fuel sectors into the equation if they can— although I am not sure if it is possible. I would not necessarily want those sectors to be brought within the Ofgem bureaucracy, because that may result in more regulation than is required, but if we can find a way of extending the social tariff to non Ofgem-regulated fuel sources, that would be of great benefit.