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Fuel Poverty Bill

I congratulate the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) on introducing the Bill and support its general tenor. I shall make a few succinct points, which I hope the Minister will take into account. I have the honour to sit on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee which, as she knows, is concluding its inquiry on fuel poverty. We have heard evidence, both written and oral, from a wide range of sources. My plea to the Minister and my hope for the Bill is that it will inculcate and engender a greater sense of coherence and focus in the various and often laudable measures being taken by the Government to combat fuel poverty. I am aware that in the Chamber today there may be a disproportionate number, at least among those who originally attended the debate, from rural constituencies, and I am one of that number. Representing a rural area, one cannot fail to become conscious of the great amount of the housing stock that does not fulfil any reasonable specification for energy efficiency. That, as other Members have commented, is because the houses are often old and rubble-built, with solid walls, and are often in remote and isolated places. In representing my constituency, it has occasionally been my sadness to come across some extreme cases of fuel poverty, in which I have done my best, as any constituency MP would do, to resolve them. As the Minister knows, the main instrument of the Government's targeting of those who are fuel poor is the excellent Warm Front initiative. She knows what I am about to say because she has heard it before while she appeared before the Select Committee. I do not know what is happening in urban areas, but there is a serious flaw in the Warm Front initiative, at least in relation to a proportion of those who take up the scheme. In 2007-08 some 20,400 households, although they had advanced towards taking up the scheme, did not in the end take it up. More than 6,000 households withdrew from it, and nearly 15,000 households did not progress it. In its report last month, as the hon. Lady knows, the National Audit Office commented on those 20,000 households. It is important to compare that to the fact that 129,000 households did take up the scheme in 2007-08, but 20,000 households is a worrying proportion, as I hope she will agree. The National Audit Office suggested that among those households must be a sizeable proportion that did not take it up because of the top-up payments that the grant still requires. The top-up payments seem to be disproportionately impacting people in rural areas largely because, if I may hazard a guess, people in rural areas are separated from the gas main and therefore have to install oil boilers. There is no doubt, and again the NAO commented on this subject, that when oil-fired heating is installed, eaga is at the higher end of the scale—that is, the least competitive end of the scale—for the installation of that kind of equipment. So in the rural part of Devonshire that I represent, Torridge and West Devon, people come from great distances to install the equipment, the equipment itself is at the higher end of the scale in terms of competitive price for eaga, and households have to stump up large top-ups. Mrs. Yvonne Smalldon in Buckland Brewer has waited longer than two years simply to be able to take a shower in her house in that village. She would visit her sister several miles away. She has shivered in the cold and sometimes in anxiety and fear at the prospect of another winter. Because a number of charities rallied round, including Torridge council, to help her with the top-up, she has, I am glad to say, been able to install her oil boiler. She is now able to run hot water, have a bath and feel warm in her home. That has been achieved only because of the charitable help and the extraordinary efforts of many people to scramble round and raise that top-up. Before those people could manage that, Mrs. Smalldon waited two and a half years in those uncivilised and primitive conditions.