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Fuel Poverty Bill

May I begin by apologising for not being able to be here earlier today? I had a surgery in my constituency at the Golden Lane campus, a new school that was opened yesterday by Princess Anne. Some of the people who came to see me at my surgery wanted to talk about this particularly important issue. I do not know whether one woman who came—she lives at Quaker court—would fall under the definition of being in fuel poverty; certainly, she feels that she does. Hers is a very good example of how complex the fuel poverty issue can be. Her problem is that she is in a three-bedroomed flat in Quaker court, shares a bed with her four-year-old son, has two other sons in another bedroom and a teenager in the third bedroom, and their water-heating system is not big enough for them all to have a shower. She contacted the energy companies and asked for some assistance, and was told that if she wanted to get a new combi boiler, it would cost £3,000. She simply does not have enough money to ensure that she has enough hot water to keep her children clean. Of course, an associated problem is that this person's household is simply too large for the flat into which she has been put. As some in the House may know, Quaker court overlooks the site of what used to be a school, but which unfortunately my local authority recently sold off. Instead of its building larger homes for people such as her, there will be yet more student accommodation. This person, this victim of fuel poverty, seemed to me a very good example of how the causes of fuel poverty can be very complex and varied. Fuel poverty is an issue of huge importance to my constituents, particularly after the very difficult winter that we have all been through in the south of England. Many of them have been contacting me about fuel poverty and—again as a result of the weather—about the huge amount of flooding that has occurred and the dampness of flats. All of us agree that people should not continue to suffer from fuel poverty in this day and age. I feel very strongly about this issue. When I was a child, we lived in a very large house. My mother was on benefits and we had a great shed next door where we used to keep our coal—until it ran out. However, we did have 2 ft of coal dust, and my mother used to try to keep the fire going with it. She was always worried that we would run out of coal dust before the winter finished. We used to keep our coats on in the house, and ice used to form on the inside of the windows. In the end, our problem was solved for us: the bailiffs turned up and chucked us out, so we went into social housing—a smaller house that, thankfully, had a better heating system. The issue of children in fuel poverty is one that I feel very strongly about. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Stephen Pound) pointed out, this debate is about not just fuel poverty, but what we are going to do about it. It is not an issue on which it is of any assistance to any of my constituents for us simply to grandstand. We need to know what it is that we can actually do, and we need to be involved in real politics to make real change for people and to ask what the best ways are of tackling fuel poverty. The common way of approaching the problem is to think of the three forces that drive it: low incomes, high prices and poor energy efficiency. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) talked about social housing as a possible solution to the problem in itself, but I am afraid that my experience shows that that is not necessarily the case. A couple of women came to see me who are in social housing in 67 Graham street—in new build built by the Notting Hill Housing Trust. I wrote to the trust asking why they had such huge bills, and was told that the properties passed the decent homes test and other tests relating to the thermal comfort criteria within the decent homes standard. Nevertheless, the women came to speak to me about their huge bills and those of their neighbours. For example, a woman in a one-bedroomed flat is paying £40 a week for her heating. Another woman in a four-bedroomed flat is paying £50 a week for her heating. She says that she has turned off her heating, yet her weekly electricity bill is still £50. People in those flats are switching off their heating so that they are able to pay their electricity bills. The problem with the heating in those flats is that they have what is called a ceiling heater. The heat hits the top of the flats but does not percolate down to the people at the bottom. That means that people in that block have bills of, for example, £40 a week, or £50 a week not including the heating. One resident pays £40 to £50 a week and says:""We have switched the heating off. We only use the cooker."" Another, who has a bill of £25 a week for a one-bedroomed flat, says""but we're not using the heater."" Another resident pays £50 a week and says that that does not include heating. In another flat in the same block, the resident pays £40 a week and comments:""Can't heat up the flat. Only do it on Saturdays."" In a one-bedroomed flat where only one heater is on at a time, the weekly electricity bill is £55 a week. In other one-bedroomed flats, people are paying £25 or £30 a week for electricity but, again, that does not include heating. It seems that despite the snow and the temperatures over the past winter, people in an entire block have not been switching on their heating, yet they continue to get huge bills. I wholeheartedly support the Bill's definition of fuel poverty, which is:""A 'household in fuel poverty' is a household that would need to spend at least 10 per cent of its disposable income on all fuel use in order to achieve a temperature of 21ºC"." The people in the new build social housing that I have described must spend a great deal more than that, which tends to show that the problem is more complex.