Pensioners' Right to Fuel and Communications (Hansard, 30 January 1985)

§ Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, North)
I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to abolish standing charges for gas, electricity and water and to abolish rental charges for telephones and television licences for pensioners. Several Bills on this subject have been introduced previously, but we are now in the midst of a severe winter during which many pensioners are not eating properly, are going to bed early and are suffering badly from hypothermia because they cannot afford to pay heating bills and therefore keep themselves warm and in health.
I present the Bill with a sense of urgency and hope that the House will take serious note of it. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House have been asked during election campaigns whether they support the principle of standing charges being applied to pensioners and have answered that they do not.
The House should be aware that pensioners are treated badly. I should be happy if the Government presented proposals for a serious and real increase in the old-age pension. The real problem for pensioners is poverty. Although my Bill would help to alleviate that poverty, the real problem is the low level of the state pension. Many pensioners organisations are fed up with the patronising attitude of political leaders and newspapers at festive times, especially as they are forgotten for the rest of the year. I hope that the Bill will be widely supported.
I propose the abolition of standing charges for gas and electricity for pensioners, and that there should not be an immediate increase in the unit cost of gas and electricity. The cost of abolition, which was estimated at £300 million in a recent parliamentary answer to me from the Department of Energy, should be borne by the Government only, so that the real cost of gas and electricity will be lower for pensioners than for other people.
At present a rebate scheme on standing charges is in operation. If a standing charge is less than half the total bill for gas or electricity, it is reduced accordingly. Surely that shows acceptance of the principle that the standing charge is wrong because it is a tax on those who consume least. An example of how the rebate principle does not help pensioners is the fact that more than half the people who benefit from it are not old-age pensioners, nor necessarily small consumers, but owners of second homes who leave the heating on to prevent their second homes from freezing up in winter. As the Government accepts the principle of the rebate scheme, they must accept the principle that standing charges are fundamentally wrong.
In 1976, in a report on the issue of standing charges, the Department of Energy said: We are satisfied that there is a sound case in economic principle for a tariff structure under which standing charges are maintained separate from the unit consumption charge. I do not understand what the Department means by that, but I know that there is no social case for it. It is a penalty on the poorest people to continue making standing charges on them.
After I tabled a similar Bill in July 1984, I received a great deal of correspondence from pensioners' groups throughout the country and from some fuel boards which were interested in the thinking behind the proposals. They 289 said that we had exaggerated the position, but I am not sure that we have. Since last July the standing charge on gas credit consumers has been £9.90. Information available as of that date shows that the average standing charge for an average household has been 0.54 per cent. of its total income, and that for a single pensioner it has been 2.24 per cent. In other words, it costs pensioners 4.5 times as much as anyone else. At that time the pension was £34.05, which meant that pensioners were paying 76p a week in gas standing charges alone. A reduction of 76p a week from the gas bill would help many pensioners. The same applies to electricity and other bills. The water standing charge, which should also be abolished, operates on the same principle.
I include in the Bill the abolition of the television licence fee for pensioners. A television is a basic and necessary form of communication for many people, especially single elderly people. We live in a highly mobile society. In my constituency and many others, many elderly people have no young relatives living near them. Often the young relatives have gone to live in the new town areas. That adds to pensioners' sense of isolation. A television licence fee of £46 is a monstrous charge on pensioners for their basic form of communication. It is not a luxury. The abolition of that fee for pensioners is a small price to pay to help them.
The same applies to telephone rentals for the elderly. Telephones are a basic necessity for many elderly people. The Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 recognises that principle. Some chronically sick, elderly people can get telephones, but only with great difficulty. Under the Government's rate-capping proposals many local authorities will no longer be able to meet that need. Although many people are not chronically sick within the exact terms of the Act, they desperately need and rely on a telephone. They tend to be small users, and use it when they are in trouble to call friends, neighbours or the emergency services, or to receive calls from relatives who live far away. Often the rental for the phone is the major part of the Bill, and in some cases it is virtually the entire bill.
With this Bill I am asking the House to take note of the tremendous poverty among elderly people. If the Government are prepared, as they apparently are, to spend £5.2 billion of public money to break the miners' strike, why do they not spend the same sum on making real improvements to the living standards of our poorest elderly people? The Government should seek to do that, rather than take £1 from the heating allowance of elderly people as they did in November.
They are many dreadful stories about pensioners who have been extremely badly treated by the fuel boards, and who have been threatened with disconnection or been disconnected because they could not pay their bills. The 290 Citizens Advice Bureaux in London produced a report entitled, "Cold Comfort For The Poor." One of the examples that it gives is as follows: Pensioner (73 years) receiving retirement pension and occupational pension. In debt to both LEB and NTG. Gas bill of £96 on which the CAB is trying to negotiate fuel direct, which is finally refused since the client is ineligible for supplementary benefit due to income. By this time the debt is £208. Client offers £10 per week, NTG demand £96 (the amount brought forward) before they will accept weekly amount. Client cannot afford this. LEB bill of £66 — negotiated with Board to pay off £3 per week. Gas disconnected. Imagine what that pensioner is going through without gas for cooking or heating during these cold winter nights. That is the kind of poverty that we face.
There is a great deal of misunderstanding about whether special help is available for pensioners. There is not. A large number of charities do their best to help, but a pensioner is not eligible for special help unless he is eligible for supplementary benefit, as is the case with everyone else. Pensioners need warmer rooms than the rest of us, and warm food. They are in their homes for longer than the rest of us and tend not to go out, especially during the winter. Therefore, their fuel bills are of major concern to them, as is the payment of their telephone bills and the television licence fee.
I hope that my Bill will help those people. While disconnections of gas and electricity supplies continue this winter, and while old people are frightened to turn on the gas fire, I wish to draw the attention of the House to the fact that 84 per cent. of disconnections—

§ Mr. Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman has now spoken for 10 minutes.

§ Mr. Corbyn
I shall be brief, Mr. Speaker. Eighty-four per cent. of people about to be disconnected draw state benefits, 80 per cent. receive less than £70 a week, and 60 per cent. have debts in addition to fuel debts. The matter is serious and urgent. The Bill will help elderly people to achieve decency in retirement. The House should recognise that need immediately and support the Bill.