Meeting of the Parliament 23 April 2014
Fuel poverty is a much more complex issue than the Labour motion suggests. It is a function of energy prices, earnings, quality of housing, climate, access to the gas grid and other complex factors that are far beyond the Labour Party’s level of understanding and, like most of the failings of successive Westminster Governments, far beyond the Scottish Government’s ability to fully mitigate. When Ed Miliband was energy secretary, he failed to fix the roof when the sun was shining. Now that it is raining, the Tories, with their austerity programme, are taking the buckets away from the Scottish Government as well as selling off the slates on the roof.
Energy prices that are rising well beyond the rate of inflation, well beyond increases in earnings and well beyond our ability to insulate are the main factor that is driving fuel poverty. That, in turn, is due to a failure of both the current and the previous UK Governments’ energy policies. Energy prices are elastic, just like the price of apples. When there is a shortage of apples, the price of apples rises. When there is insufficient energy, the price of energy rises.