---

Energy Security

It is extremely unfortunate that the claim about there being eight days of gas supply left will fall into the same category as people being 45 minutes from extinction by Saddam's nuclear weapons. I say "unfortunate" because there is a crisis in energy security that has to be addressed. However, it needs to be addressed over the next eight years, not the next eight days. The 2008 House of Lords report on energy security is a benchmark to which we all ought to refer, because between 2012 and 2017 energy capacity margins in the UK will fall below the 20 per cent. security margin to which we have become accustomed. We need to have a debate, and it needs to take place now, but it should be about what we do over the coming eight years. There are two types of security crisis. The first is a crisis driven by the supply levels and the second is a crisis of security. It is important to recognise that the affordability issue in connection with energy security is sadly epitomised by the deaths of Jean and Derek Randall, who froze to death in their own bungalow last week. They are just two examples from among the 5 million households in Britain living in fuel poverty, for whom energy security is a day by day, week by week, winter by winter crisis that they have to get through. Those households are the most severely affected by the fact that household average energy bills have risen to £1,225 a year—more than double what they were in 2003, and a 33 per cent. increase from what they were at the beginning of 2008. There is an ongoing crisis in energy affordability that households across the UK have to face. The Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs assessed what it would cost us if, as a country, we were to commit ourselves to eradicating fuel poverty in housing by 2016 or 2017. The estimate was that it would involve an extra cost of about £3 billion a year. If we were to do that, 83 per cent. of the households in Britain would be taken out of fuel poverty by that time. In energy security terms, one of the most critical results would be a reduction of household domestic energy consumption by 56 per cent. The first of the measures that we can take that will dramatically change both quality of life and energy security is related to demand reduction. The second issue that the Government need to address concerns the shift into renewables. I know that the Secretary of State has been putting up a heroic battle over the feed-in tariff framework that he is about to announce at the end of this month or the beginning of next month. I have to say that my understanding is that he is not winning that battle.