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Fuel Poverty Bill

My hon. Friend has not been present for most of the debate, but earlier we heard about the efforts that the Government have made, and the billions of pounds that have been spent on dealing with fuel poverty. I think that the figure for what has been spent so far is in the region of £20 billion, although I stand to be corrected. That is not peanuts; that is a significant amount of money to spend on eliminating fuel poverty, yet we still have not achieved the target. That is because of the issues that have come out in this debate, and because it is a moving target. That is the real difficulty with clause 2(1); it sets an absolute target, which does not reflect the fact that fuel poverty is a moving target. One of the issues that we will face when we come to consider the child poverty Bill is how child poverty is defined in it, because child poverty is potentially a moving target, if we define it in relative terms, rather than in absolute terms. We will have to wait and see what is in the Bill. The problem with fuel poverty is that it is a relative, not an absolute, target. That is inevitable when there are different factors in play that affect who is, and is not, in fuel poverty. I do not quibble with the definition in the Bill, which I think is reasonable: it is when 10 per cent. of disposable income has to be spent on fuel if the temperature thresholds are to be reached. The problem is that people's disposable income changes. As my hon. Friend the Member for Chorley (Mr. Hoyle) said, what happens if somebody loses their job? Their disposable income plummets, so someone who is not in fuel poverty one day falls into fuel poverty the next. On the other hand, as we discussed, if the price of fuel rockets, people who are low-paid, but who are not in fuel poverty because their income is sufficient to ensure that they do not come within that 10 per cent. bracket, may be pushed over into fuel poverty. When fuel prices come down, they come out of fuel poverty again. The same is true of someone who gets back into work. It becomes a moveable feast. If we set an absolutely definite, specific target in clause 2(1), it will fail to reflect the fact that the target is moving and changing. The reason why the number of people in fuel poverty has gone up in the last couple of years has nothing to do with the Government not making an effort or commitment, or not spending on the issue. It is to do with the fact that fuel prices have gone up, as my hon. Friend said. That is the real reason why more people have fallen into fuel poverty in the past couple of years, although there are still fewer people in fuel poverty than 10 years ago. No doubt, as fuel prices come down, people who are currently in fuel poverty will cease to be so. Prices are coming down, albeit not as fast as my hon. Friend and I would like. Earlier, we discussed what the remedies for that might be. At the same time, other people may enter fuel poverty because of the rise in unemployment. That makes if very difficult not only to meet the target set out in clause 2(1), but to identify the target that we are aiming at in the first place. It is like asking somebody to do archery blindfolded when the target is moving from left to right every day of the week. How on earth is one supposed to hit the bull's-eye in those circumstances?