Meeting of the Parliament 11 January 2023
For many of the reasons that the member has stated, Scottish Labour abstained on the regulations in committee. Voting against them would have meant that people got nothing, so we abstained, and we will be doing so again today. The current system needs to be improved, but what is on offer is nowhere near what is needed. As the member has highlighted, the new system could leave approximately 120,000 people about £50 worse off this winter than they would have been in 2021, under the previous system, and we have already experienced the lowest temperatures in the past 10 years. That is exactly why organisations such as Energy Action Scotland have said that the new system will have less impact on fuel poverty than the one that it is set to replace.
Does the member agree that the Scottish National Party has had the potential to make a difference to people who are hardest hit by fuel poverty but that, instead, it has taken a half-hearted, ill-thought-through approach that leaves tens of thousands of people worse off?