Meeting of the Parliament 23 April 2014
I accept that the official figures are just what I say they are—official figures. They are all that we can work on. Whenever the Government cites figures, it uses the official published figures.
It is clear that a lot must still be done to tackle fuel poverty and it remains a priority of the Government to work closely with the fuel poverty forum. However, our powers are limited. We have control over only one of the contributing factors to fuel poverty—the energy efficiency of dwellings. We need more powers—the powers that independence would bring—to tackle all the causes of fuel poverty much more directly, to deliver Scottish solutions to Scottish problems and to ensure that energy companies always behave in a socially responsible way to protect vulnerable customers.
Over the period 2013-14 to 2015-16, the Scottish Government is committed to spending almost £250 million on addressing fuel poverty and energy efficiency. That funding is crucial to meeting our objective to lever in as much additional funding as we can from the energy companies obligation, local authorities’ resources and European funding. By doing so, we will maximise the investment in delivering energy efficiency measures, increase the number of homes that we can help out of fuel poverty, reduce carbon emissions and create much-needed employment in the green economy.
This year, we have allocated £79 million through our home energy efficiency programmes for Scotland. That is 40 per cent higher in cash terms and 17 per cent higher in real terms than the previous Scottish Labour Administration’s budget of £56.5 million. We are spending far more money on fuel poverty measures than any previous Labour Administration in the Scottish Parliament spent.
The HEEPS initiative provides support to communities across Scotland and allows the most vulnerable residents access to a range of measures that will make their homes warmer and more energy efficient. Through our home energy Scotland hotline, we provide free and impartial advice and support on all our programmes to assist people through the process. I have visited a number of HEEPS projects and have spoken to residents who are benefiting from them. I am always impressed by the positive response not only to the fact that they have a warmer home and reduced fuel bills but to the difference that has been made to the external part of their property, which helps to regenerate the community and make it a more attractive place. We are working hard on that.
However, the changes to the energy companies obligation that the UK Government proposes will make it much harder to bring such benefits to our communities. The UK Government’s analysis states that its proposals will reduce energy companies’ spending on ECO by about £500 million a year across Britain, which represents a reduction of about £50 million a year in Scotland. That could result in up to 1,300 fewer jobs in the low-carbon economy because of a shift away from dealing with hard-to-treat cavities and providing the solid-wall insulation that is needed in Scotland in favour of cheaper measures.
Despite the UK Government’s changes to ECO, we remain on track to deliver all our funding allocation and we are increasing the maximum value of grant support to homes to mitigate the impact of the changes. [Interruption.] Jackie Baillie has something to say about that, but we have got our money out. The provision of the funding was delayed at the start of last year because the UK Government did not publish its guidelines on ECO and the local authorities had to undertake procurement, but this year we have got the funding out. In March, local authorities were told of the money that they would get for the current year. They tell us that they are on track to spend all the funding that the Scottish Government is providing.