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Energy Prices

My hon. Friend is absolutely right when he says that, for many, high energy prices mean a choice between eating and heating, and, in some cases, a choice between life and death, particularly in a harsh winter. The second way in which the Government are failing is that they are scrapping some of the important Labour schemes to make homes warmer and bills lower, particularly the Warm Front scheme. You will know as well as I do from your experience in the Treasury, Madam Deputy Speaker, that over a decade, the Warm Front scheme helped more than 2 million households with their bills and insulation—it helped to make their homes greener, warmer and cheaper to run. This year and next year, that scheme will have a third of the budget that it had under the previous Labour Government. From 2013, it will be scrapped altogether. In my constituency of Wentworth and Dearne, more than 3,000 households have benefited from that scheme in recent years, including pensioners, disabled people and young working families. One of my most recent visits was to Nicola Savage and her partner, Dan, who have two young kids. They had problems heating their home in Swinton, but the Warm Front scheme helped to replace an old back boiler with a new condensing unit. As Nicola told me at the time, ““This makes a huge difference to us. When you switch it on, the house gets warm quickly and it stays warm.””