§ Mr. Jeremy Corbyn (Islington, South)I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to ensure the supply of gas and electricity for pensioner households; to abolish standing charges for pensioner consumers for gas, electricity and water; and to abolish telephone rentals for pensioners.I thought that we would never reach my Bill. This is the third time that I have introduced it and I notice that many Members are already leaving the Chamber. Presumably they do not wish to discuss the way that the elderly are treated in our society.
The purpose of the Bill is to ensure that the supply of gas and electricity to pensioner households is maintained, that standing charges for gas and electricity and water for pensioners are abolished, and that telephone rentals are no longer charged for pensioner households.
The way in which the electricity and gas undertakings impose standing charges on consumers means that consumers of the lowest amounts pay, in effect, a higher unit cost for the supply of the services than the rest of the community. Yesterday, the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Security said:
The charges reflect the necessary cost of keeping a supply available to the consumer in his own home for 24 hours a day. They cover the maintenance of the connection, meter-reading, accounting, billing and emergency services. The costs arise no matter how much or how little gas or electricity is consumed by the individual householder."—[Official Report, 17 December 1985; Vol. 89, c. 135.]That may be true, but the effect is that the unit cost of supply for consumers of small amounts of electricity or gas is high. They still have to pay the standing charge irrespective of how large or small the bill is. Members of this place are paying the same standing charge on their salary of £16,000 a year as a pensioner household on a basic pension income of rather less than £40 a week. There is an obvious disparity.The Government have recognised this in the past and they introduced a rebate scheme for the consumers of small amounts of electricity and gas. So that the standing charge would be no more than half of the bill for gas or electricity. This year, all the electricity boards and gas boards have phased out that scheme on the grounds that it benefited only slightly some pensioner households and operated mainly to support those who own second homes who wish to keep on security lighting or basic heating during the unoccupied winter months. I think that second homes are a scandal anyway, and it is certainly a scandal that the scheme should have been used to assist their owners.
I am suggesting that in future we should abolish standing charges for pensioner households. Society must recognise that pensioners need warmer homes. Secondly, we must recognise that the poverty in which pensioners live arises from the disgracefully low level of the basic pension. The abolition of standing charges is one way of assisting pensioners to alleviate that poverty.
On Government estimates, the cost of the abolition of standing charges for pensioners would be £300 million. That could be well paid for by Government income, which from British Gas was £731 million, £500 million of which was the levy. The other £231 million was paid in corporation tax. The income from standing charges was 348 £600 million for gas and £550 million for electricity. The cost of abolishing standing charges could well be paid for out of reductions in levy payments to central Government. That would mean no overall unit increase in the cost of supplying gas or electricity. Any increase would clearly be disadvantageous to the rest of consumers as well as pensioner households.
We know that water charges have increased considerably over the past year. It is fairly obvious to many of us that the Government are increasing water charges continually, as they are increasing gas and electricity charges, as a prelude to the privatisation of those industries. There is an equally strong case for the abolition of standing charges for water supply.
The Bill proposes that the charge of telephone rentals for pensioners should be abolished. The unit cost of calls for pensioners tends to be high because they make few calls but rely on the telephone as a basic means of communication. They have to pay the same rental as anyone else and, therefore, the unit cost is higher.
British Telecom could well afford to make the concession available to pensioner households. Its profits this year are approaching £1.5 billion, and those moneys have been taken from all our purses.
The proposals which I have outlined would help pensioner households. The House should recognise the poverty in which many pensioner households are forced to live. Secondly, it should recognise that death through hypothermia is a serious problem for many elderly people. Thousands are dying each winter through hypothermia. That happens either because they cannot afford to put money in the slot meter to keep the gas fire alight or because they are too frightened of the size of the bill at the end of the winter quarter. The result is that they do not heat their homes properly.
It has gone six o'clock now and many pensioners throughout the country have already gone to bed because they cannot afford to heat their homes for the rest of the evening. That is the plight of many pensioners. If we wish to do something about the scandal of hypothermia, we should increase the level of the basic pension and recognise that the supply of gas and electricity is essential to pensioner households. The fuel boards should not be allowed to cut off the supply of either. Codes of practice are issued, but they are often weak and vague and need to be tightened and strengthened.
The House must recognise that, as pensioners become older, the need to heat their homes properly increases, even though it is estimated that well over two thirds of pensioners cannot afford to heat their homes to the required level. Their ability to campaign to make people in such places as this listen to them diminishes because of their advancing age and frailty.
We must recognise also how many of our pensioners have suffered. I remind the House that at least two thirds of pensioner households are occupied by women, who are often single. Many of them are suffering badly from the lack of a reasonable pension, which many men enjoy because they had a longer working life. Poverty in old age is partly the result of discrimination during the individual's working life.
During election campaigns, many candidates are approached on the issues of fuel debt and the cost of electricity and gas for pensioner households. I am sure that many who are successful in being elected to this place make promises to do something about these problems. I 349 have been contacted by many increasingly active pensioner action groups throughout the country. They have been writing to their Members of Parliament because they are no longer prepared to be treated as objects of charity and patronised. Instead, they are organising themselves and taking action to improve their circumstances. They have collated an interesting collection of replies from individual Members who support the measure which I am introducing.
I hope that the House will grant leave for the Bill to be read a Second time and will enact it. I hope also that it will do something to change the structure of gas and electricity payments. We are living in a self-satisfied age in which many of us ignore the plight of many pensioners and allow the elderly to die through hypothermia. At the same time, society ensures that they pay through the nose for gas and electricity. The Bill will not solve the problem of poverty among the elderly, but it will go some way toward recognising the plight in which they live. I hope that the House will support it.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Jeremy Corbyn, Mr. Chris Smith, Mr. Tony Benn, Mr. Dave Nellist, Mr. Tom Clarke, Mr. Dennis Skinner, Mr. Harry Cohen, Miss Joan Maynard, Mr. Robert Wareing, Mr. Tony Banks, Ms. Jo Richardson, and Ms. Clare Short.