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Warm Home Discount Regulations 2011

You see, you learn so much in these debates, don’t you? I am so glad that the noble Baroness opposite showed me that she knew exactly what we were talking about, whereas on these Benches we have to be educated. That takes me away from the thrust of his real question, which was how suppliers identify households in the criteria. As he rightly says, if you read the document, page 18, Part 1, Schedule 2 outlines how we have got to the criteria— I sound like the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, now, because he normally quotes references from here. Are we going beyond the state pension households? Obviously, we would like to. It is very important to await the findings of Professor Hills to find out what the fuel poverty criteria is going to be, because that is where our focus and attack has got to be. I am grateful for the support from the Benches opposite, and I am delighted that we will listen to what Lord Hills—not Lord Hills, not yet—Professor Hills has to say before we really attack this subject. Again, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for pointing out the table— although I have lost it now among all this paper—which clearly shows the application of funds. I will be very happy to provide that to anybody who has not seen it because it shows quite clearly the distribution of funds to these groups. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, asked four or five questions, but fundamentally whether this will this pick up the fuel poor. I refer to the remarks I have just made: clearly, the whole point is to take people out of fuel poverty, to stop this figure of 4 million, which is running slightly out of control at the moment, and grind it to a halt. Her first question was about the identification of the core group in terms of the collection and protection of data. We have a data-matching organisation on hand to carry out a comparison of names and addresses, energy suppliers and customers. Names and addresses would be held by the DWP on pension credit recipients. Where the data matches, each energy supplier would be told which of their customers have matched and are therefore eligible for the rebate. The purposes for which this shared data may be used are set out in the scheme’s regulations. I hope that helps answer that question. The core group is of course focused on pension recipients. These are some of the poorest pensioners. We know that over half the fuel poor are pensioners and over 89 per cent of the fuel poor are in the lowest three income deciles, which is very useful information to bear in mind. The noble Baroness then asked for information about the reconciliation mechanism. The mechanism will be necessary only to share the costs of providing help to the core group. This is because each supplier will have to provide help to all its eligible customers identified by the Secretary of State thorough the data-match and suite processes, and the spread of customers is unlikely to be equal. We then moved on to identification of the border group and why the terminally ill were excluded. The regulations are clear that the suppliers should target those in fuel poverty, as we have just said. That should include low-income families but we should also be very mindful of the terminally ill, the disabled or the long-term sick because they are the ones who find it most difficult to cope with this problem, and I can give the noble Baroness an assurance that that is very much in the forefront of our mind. There was a very good question on voluntary agreements. We put voluntary agreements in place to allow suppliers to continue providing benefits to customers receiving help under the voluntary agreement through the legacy spending section of the scheme. However, we believe that the core and broader groups will take more people out of fuel poverty as well as providing clearer and more predictable benefits. We therefore propose that the legacy spending should be transitional and that suppliers should have to manage their spend over the scheme period. The noble Baroness’s final point was about two people living together who were not married or in civil partnership being eligible. The rebate will be paid to either member of the couple where one of them satisfies the eligibility criteria and is also the electricity bill payer. The regulations set out the meaning of the word ““couple””, which is well worth knowing. The definition is that generally used for benefit purposes: two people are treated as a couple if they are married, not married but living together as husband and wife, in a civil partnership or not in a civil partnership but living together as if they were. And if you can get to the bottom of that, you will be much the wiser. The question of pre-payment meters is a valuable one. Over 80 per cent of the fuel-poor use the pre-payment method, so it is very important that we work with that. The pricing mechanism is a matter for Ofgem, which has recently produced a review that is available. I am happy for our department to put one in the post to the noble Baroness for some light bedside reading when she is enjoying a weekend off. Sorry, did I say that the fuel-poor used pre-pay meters? Over 80 per cent of the fuel-poor do not use pre-payment meters. I am grateful to noble Lords for their input, as always, and it is fundamental, as we have said in many occasions, as those who have listened to our energy debates in the past will know, that we should focus on getting people out of fuel poverty. This Government, , are determined to concentrate on that issue, as I know were the previous Government. That is where the warm homes discount can make a difference. I commend the order to the House. Motion agreed.