Meeting of the Parliament 23 April 2014
We would seek to match that, but we would go further. I invite Jim Eadie to read our challenge paper on fuel poverty, in which we set out a range of measures that we would take. The issue is not about doing just one thing; it is about ensuring that we get the money out the door.
In her amendment, the minister boasts about the size of the budget, but the truth is that it is about £70 million to £79 million a year rolled up over three years to look like a big figure. As Energy Action Scotland and others have said, the reality is that the Government needs to spend four times that amount if it is to have any hope of meeting the 2016 target. In any case, the Government seems to have a problem—I hope that Jim Eadie acknowledges it—with getting money out the door at a time when no one can deny the scale of need.
We have the changes to the energy companies obligation that the Conservative Government has made. The situation is not ideal, but the Scottish Government has known about those changes for a while and has done little to counter them. There is no challenge from the Scottish Government to the big six. To be frank, the annual tea and buns with the minister and cosy chats will no longer do.
The suggestion that independence will solve all the problems is nonsense. We need only look at renewables. I support renewables and investment in them. We do very well with investment in renewables from the UK Government and get substantially more than our population share. The last time that I looked, we received a third of all investment, yet our population share would be one tenth. In an independent Scotland, the burden of renewables investment would fall on Scottish consumers alone, which would increase the average household energy bill by £875 a year. The minister shakes her head, but that is from an independent report by Citigroup. I will send her a copy so that she can read it.
The Scottish Government’s response is simply not good enough. If we look carefully at the report by the Scottish fuel poverty forum, we see that even it tells us so. The forum’s report touches on whether the Government should change the definition of fuel poverty. The minister ruled out any change to the definition in a previous debate, but any change would be a truly pathetic response to a national scandal on the scale that we are seeing.
We know that fuel poverty disproportionately affects low-income and fixed-income households, the elderly, children and those who are suffering from illness. It is a particular problem in rural areas and in the private rented sector. We need to do more to ensure that rural, remote and off-gas-grid areas are better served by the main fuel poverty programmes. I understand that legislation to set minimum standards of energy efficiency in the private sector is planned for 2018, but that could be done much more quickly. It looks as though the rest of the UK will have that in place long before us, so there is no reason for delay.
Labour has published a fuel poverty challenge paper that is full of policy ideas and suggestions. We worked with those in the sector who know what needs to be done and our proposals are shaped by their experience. At a UK level, Labour has pledged to freeze energy bills while reforming the energy market and creating a tough new regulator in place of the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets. It is estimated that such a freeze would save consumers £120 and businesses £1,800 a year.
The real prize is reform of the market and not simply moving green levies from bill payers to taxpayers, which is the SNP’s proposal. Wholesale costs account for half a bill and green levies account for a fraction of it. SNP MPs singularly failed to support a price freeze when it was debated at Westminster. It is clear—to me, at least, but increasingly to the country—that the SNP is siding with the big six energy companies rather than the ordinary people who are struggling to pay their bills.
There is much that we in Scotland can do. Labour’s challenge paper sets out a raft of measures that we could take, including everything from an ambitious house-building programme that would increase the number of energy-efficient homes across the country to paying the living wage to those on the lowest incomes, as well as action on rural areas, the private rented sector, microgeneration and prepayment meters.