Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill
During a debate on the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill Brooks Newmark argues in support of a clause that should alleviate households in fuel poverty and champion's Braintree Council's £100 council tax rebate to those who insulate their homes.
Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): I remain in awe of my right hon. Friend's forensic analysis, but I would like to help to connect the dots. He referred to the responsibilities of local government, and one of those is to look after the welfare of the elderly. In that respect, fuel poverty has to do with the relative amount that pensioners pay for fuel. In connection with the concerns that my right hon. Friend mentioned earlier, microgeneration, the insulation of housing, and the responsibilities of local government with regard to that, can help to alleviate fuel poverty.
Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend-I think-but I shall come to that subject later, because I shall talk about means-testing. My hon. Friend has fallen into the trap of talking about the elderly and fuel poverty. Most elderly people these days are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. They are well housed and have good incomes, because they have pensions and other assets. They get support. Therefore, simply to say that elderly people may have a problem with heating their homes is a questionable concept. Later I shall come to the individual choices that people, elderly or otherwise, make about their spending priorities within their households. I would want to know about those-or at least I think I would, because this takes us into means-testing which I shall explore in a moment. It takes us into asking legitimate questions of people who claim that they cannot afford their heating bill, about what else are they spending their money on, before we get too worried or rush to help them with a windmill on their roof. We must go through this argument one stage at a time.
Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con): I have some sympathy with the point my right hon. Friend is making, but he rather overplays his hand. Surely he will accept that for elderly people and the disabled there are physical and medical reasons why they may need to spend more on heating than other groups in society.
Mr. Forth: Of course there are, as there are for people with very young children. Of course there are groups in society that have different priorities and different needs, but that does not mean to say that we should bring out a blanket definition of something such as fuel poverty and then apply it indiscriminately across the board. Later, I shall come to regional considerations. Will we say that someone who has the joy of living on the Isle of Wight, for example-the southernmost part of our wonderful country-will have the same needs as someone living in the extreme north of Scotland? Of course they will not. Therefore I believe that we must start taking account of climatic conditions, whether they are affected by climate change or not, the Gulf Stream, prevailing winds or whatever it may be. Catch-all definitions such fuel poverty, which we are dealing with here, will not do. We must have a better understanding of what people need, why they need it and what we should do to alleviate shortcomings.
Now I shall go back to the point that I was making-asking why we do not talk about food poverty, clothing poverty or people's inability to pay for other aspects of their lives, and how essential we think those things are compared to fuel or heating. My hon. Friends have said that they think there is a serious problem of elderly people being unable to warm their homes. But what about elderly people being unable to eat or to clothe themselves properly?
Mr. Newmark: My right hon. Friend is digressing. We are talking about climate change. Fuel poverty relates to climate change and people keeping warm. I agree that food poverty is an issue, but it has no relevance to the Bill, which is why we are talking about fuel poverty in this context.
Mr. Forth rose-
Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is for the Chair to determine what is relevant. The right hon. Gentleman has been going rather wide in his remarks. I am sure that with all that is in the new clause, he will now be able to address the Bill in an appropriate manner.
Mr. Forth: I am addressing my amendment, which seeks to delete the term "fuel poverty" from the Bill, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is why I am giving some consideration to the concept. I am rather surprised at my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark), because I thought that the alleged worry was climate change and global warming. If we are going to have global warming, why on earth are we talking about people being unable to heat themselves? This is getting us into intriguing territory, and I want him to think about that before we get too excited about alleged climate change, alleged global warming and the alleged effects that it might have.
Mr. Newmark: The important thing is that if we can have, for example, windmills on people's roofs or insulation, that will lower the cost of fuel, thereby reducing fuel poverty.
Mr. Forth: Who supplies the windmills is a question that we will come to later. I would digress if I followed that idea too far; even I have spotted that one. We will come back to who pays for the windmills in debates on later amendments.
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Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): I should like to draw my hon. Friend's attention to the link between council tax and energy efficiency. Braintree council gives a £100 council tax rebate to those who insulate their houses. That local initiative encompasses energy efficiency and lowering council taxes.
Mr. Chope: That is an exemplary form of what we call localism. Each council is left to make its own decision on whether it is more important to take part in the gesture politics of dealing with global warming or whether it is better to give some practical help to the people who live in its area, by providing them with proper insulation.
Greg Clark: Does not the Bill meet precisely the objection that the Minister raises? Clause 1(2) requires:
"the relevant persons and bodies shall have regard to . . . the desirability of alleviating fuel poverty".
If my hon. Friend is right and such measures would increase the cost of fuel, that is precisely something that needs to be taken into account by the relevant persons, so that subsection deals with the problem either way.
Mr. Chope: I suppose that the subsection does so in sense-my hon. Friend is right-but the trouble is that the two possibilities that he describes are contradictory. If the costs of microgeneration are uneconomic and local authorities are required to increase the amount of microgeneration even though it is uneconomic, that will push up the cost of energy, thereby exacerbating the problem of fuel poverty.
Greg Clark: Does that not, perhaps inadvertently, precisely meet the requirement? It might protect people from fuel poverty and from fashionable impositions in quite the way that my hon. Friend desires, so perhaps his alternative proposals are not necessary to meet his concerns.
Mr. Chope: I am addressing my remarks to new clause 4 and amendment (a), tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst. Under new clause 4, as my hon. Friend will know, it is left to the opinion of the Secretary of State as to which of those approaches is better. Why not trust local authorities to make their own assessment of whether promoting a lot of microgeneration, where it is uneconomic, is preferable to reducing the fuel bills or increasing insulation in the houses of the poorest citizens of their locality? Surely we should leave that decision to the local authorities-indeed, they have the powers to do so at the moment-and my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr. Newmark) has referred to the way in which his council exercises those powers very responsibly. Of course, the trouble is that the Government are dictating so much council activity from the centre that the discretion to do such worthwhile things is being reduced, because of the way in which the Government are manipulating council tax grants.
Mr. Newmark: The spirit of the Bill is intended to deal with climate change, and as I read it, the phrase "have regard" is not a compelling function, but merely tells people to consider what councils, such as Braintree, are doing and perhaps take on those examples in their own local communities and councils.
Mr. Chope: I agree with my hon. Friend, but nothing under present legislation stops Braintree council having regard to such things. Indeed, he has introduced into the debate an air of reality. If councils want, they can already do such things, and if they are not doing them, it can be an issue at the local elections. Perhaps councillors who want to do so will be elected at by-elections or district council elections. Of course, we hear that the Government want to defer the district council elections in 2007, but that is a side issue.
