Warm Front (Hansard, 6 March 2003)

§ 4. Dr. Vincent Cable (Twickenham)
If she will make a statement on the funding of the Warm Front programme. [101113]

§ The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett)
Final decisions on allocations for Warm Front in 2003–04 are now being considered. Resources are tight and we will face difficult decisions. However, we are on track to meet our public service agreement target of assisting 600,000 households between 2001 and 2004, and we remain committed to achieving our other targets for eradicating fuel poverty.

§ Dr. Cable
Two weeks after the Prime Minister put fuel poverty at the centre of energy strategy and the independent Fuel Poverty Advisory Group said that a 50 per cent. increase in the budget was needed to achieve the Government's target, why are contractors being told that they can expect budget cuts in the next financial year? Is not the Department making a fool of the Prime Minister?

§ Margaret Beckett
No. There is some confusion in the reaction to the report, which covers the longer-term prospects. The Government have set ambitious targets as we approach, for example, 2010 and 2015. We remain committed to trying to achieve them. However, in a sense, we are ahead of our current targets. As I said, our PSA target is 600,000 households by 2004, and more than 500,000 households have already been assisted through Warm Front. When one takes into account all Government action rather than one specific scheme, an increase will take place this year.
We would like to do more; we wanted to put even more resources into the scheme. We shall probably not be in a position to do that, but I repeat that decisions have not yet been made.

§ Mr. Harry Barnes (North-East Derbyshire)
If Warm Front requires more funding, should it not first put its own house in order? I am spending masses of time going round in circles with Warm Front, Lionheart, East Coast Gas, Dearle Henderson, Ideal Boilers and 947 DEFRA, trying to get a boiler in the home of an 83-year-old woman constituent working. A previous boiler worked but the new boiler does not. There are indications that the boilers from Ideal are known to be defective when they are installed. The whole thing needs sorting.

§ Margaret Beckett
I am sorry to hear of the problem that my hon. Friend identified. If he finds that raising the matter in the House does not result in speedy activity, I urge him to raise the matter with me again and we will see if there is something that we can do to assist. In the longer term, we are reassessing the impact of the pilots to make sure that the money being made available is used as effectively as possible.

§ Mr. Jonathan Sayeed (Mid-Bedfordshire)
The Government are required by law to implement a strategy that will lead to the end of fuel poverty for the vulnerable by 2010. The energy White Paper states: energy efficiency is likely to be the cheapest, cleanest and safest way of addressing the four objectives of the Government's energy policy. One of those objectives is ensuring that every home is adequately and affordably heated". Why is it that the White Paper fails to set targets for improving energy efficiency and to allocate any new resources for achieving fuel poverty targets? Is not the consequence that 3 million people will continue to be condemned to live in homes that are not, in the Government's own words, "adequately and affordably" heated?

§ Margaret Beckett
I know that memories are sometimes short in the House but when the hon. Gentleman's party was in Government, it presided over a tripling of fuel poverty involving 4 million people. He said that the Government "are required by law", as though it were a burden imposed by somebody else. It was actually this Government who placed that provision on the statute book. We are not only implementing it but ahead of the present target. However, I do not dissent from his observation that the White Paper identifies the enormous contribution that energy efficiency can make, not only to resolving fuel poverty but to the effective running of the economy and the prosperity and competitiveness of the business sector. Energy efficiency is extremely important and the Government remain committed to pursuing it with as much force as we can. Other agencies, energy companies and local authorities are involved in dealing with that issue as well as the Government directly.