Hansard

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am sorry not to join members in the chamber in person this evening.

I thank members who have supported the motion and those who plan to speak in the debate. I also thank the organisations that have provided briefings ahead of the debate and those with which I have met over the past few months to discuss this serious infrastructure failing. I know that citizens advice bureaux across the Highlands and Islands are working hard to help people through the change, and I put on record my thanks to them all, including the Shetland bureaux, and to the other organisations that are doing the same across the country.

There are just 40 days to go until the nationwide radio teleswitch service switch-off deadline on 30 June. To be frank, however, I think that where we have got to with the switch-off is depressing, frustrating and entirely avoidable—it is, in my view, a national disgrace.

Although the RTS switch-off could be considered a purely reserved matter, it could, based on the latest figures, impact around 125,000 Scottish households, including 22,500 in Glasgow and just over 17,000 in Edinburgh. I urge local authorities and local resilience partnerships to ready themselves for any potential adverse outcomes of the switch-off, which might include thousands of homes being left without heating and hot water.

RTS was a revolution when it was developed in the 1980s as a means of switching electricity meters between different tariff rates at different times of the day, allowing for the cost-effective and efficient use of storage heaters. The signal to switch between timings is broadcast by the BBC, which has had a long-standing arrangement with the Energy Networks Association to transmit a teleswitching signal on the BBC Radio 4 long-wave frequency.

Support for the RTS signal will end on 30 June—a date that has already been pushed back at least twice—and the technology that supports the signal is reportedly already well past its end of life. That also means that it could stop working at any time, so there is a chance of disruption to the service ahead of the deadline.

The RTS and Radio 4 long-wave signal shutdown has been on the cards for a decade now, and it is completely unacceptable that households that rely on RTS for their heating and hot water have been left in limbo. The solution is to exchange RTS meters, which sounds simple. For many years, however, constituents have been contacting me—and other MSPs, as I know—about both the lack of engineers and the lack of connectivity to switch an RTS meter to a smart meter. Even replacing a broken meter has been fraught with difficulties over the years. We have been promised technological fixes in advance of the switch-off, yet we are, at the 59th minute of the 11th hour, still finding that there has been limited development in technology or in greater connectivity to the smart meter signal.

At the current rate of meter exchanges, it will take more than a year for all remaining RTS meters in Shetland to be exchanged, including the Shetland parliamentary office meter. Another short extension of the deadline will not solve the issue, and, if the switch-off happens in autumn or winter, the problems that it will cause will be exacerbated by cold weather.

As things stand, energy companies must increase their efforts to exchange all outstanding meters ahead of the 30 June deadline. However, it is still unclear what will happen when the signal is turned off and an RTS meter has not been exchanged. Storage heaters and the systems that heat water might remain off, leaving households in the cold, or they might remain switched on, which raises concerns about what could happen if heat continues to build in them. We simply do not know what will happen.

For thousands of households, therefore, this is a very stressful time. The impact is disproportionate in the Highlands and Islands; in places with high levels of fuel poverty; in the colder parts of the country that rely on heating all year round, including in the summer; where homes have low levels of insulation, are reliant on oil or electricity for heat and power and have no connection to the gas network; and where engineers are few and far between. It cannot be acceptable for energy companies to leave their customers without power, heat and hot water, nor is it acceptable that customers should be left in the potentially dangerous situation of systems possibly overheating.

Energy companies are responsible for ensuring that their customers’ meters are changed over from the old RTS system, but companies across the market have not covered themselves in glory during this period, with variable response levels to their customers on the issue and an insufficient number of engineers. OVO Energy is the main energy supplier in Shetland, but its lack of informed and efficient customer service has taken up an inordinate amount of time and capacity within my office team, who have supported many constituents through this shambles. OVO’s performance since it took over the domestic customers of SSE Energy Services has shown that it was not set up to take on the task that it faced in rural and island areas, and its failure to retain local engineers has come home to roost in this period ahead of the switch-off.

Customers have been let down, waiting at home all day only to find out that their engineer did not arrive as a result of not having prepared properly for the logistics of island travel. Just this morning, I heard from a constituent in one of the north isles of Shetland who had waited over a month for the only appointment that was available to him from OVO. After he stayed at home all day yesterday, no engineer turned up, without explanation. We learned this afternoon that the engineer had not booked himself on to the ferry to get to the island and it had been full, with no spare capacity. The constituent has complained to the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, which has also, until recently, been missing in action in this debacle.

OVO was in Shetland in March and engaged face to face with local stakeholders as well as local customers—yet, even after that, it is failing its customers. OVO, along with other energy companies, has sent teams of engineers north, in the so-called spring surge, in a bid to exchange meters ahead of the deadline. However, it is too little too late, and customers are paying the price.

Scotland-specific tariffs have been removed in place of generic United Kingdom-wide rates, and the tariffs vary by company. Questions are still going unanswered about whether households will be stuck on higher rates after the switch-off. Customers will be unlikely to want to do battle yet again with their supplier to change tariffs, but why should they be stuck paying a higher rate? Moreover, if the heating is jammed on, how long will it take to notice that, fix it and make sure that the right tariff is reinstated? There simply should not be that much uncertainty so close to a nationwide shutdown of technology.

At the spring Scottish Liberal Democrat conference last month, I put forward a successful motion that set out practical steps to better prepare for the switch-off. Urgent action is long overdue.