12:38 Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)

Figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that people who do not pay by direct debit tend to spend £114 more per year, and those who use a prepayment meter even more than that. Even worse, many of the companies that charge extra did not say they were adding a surcharge, but rather that they were “discounting” the bills of those who use direct debit because they incur lower costs. That is a bit like calling a mortuary a negative patients output.

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12:46 Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)

Many things get on my nerves in this House, but what does so more than most is politicians—I do not include my hon. Friend in this criticism; it is directed at others—who complain about excessive energy bills and talk about fuel poverty and how disgraceful it is that people have to pay so much for their energy, when they are exactly the same people who piled extra costs on to people’s energy bills by passing law after law pursuing some climate change ideology. Most energy bills nowadays contain more than £100 a year simply because of the policy decisions made by the same people who complain that energy bills are too high and should be reduced by about £100. That nerve and hypocrisy is the type of thing that does politics no credit whatsoever and makes my blood boil.

I want lower energy bills. That is why I am proud to have been one of the five MPs who voted against the Climate Change Act 2008 in the previous Parliament. It certainly is not becoming for the Leader of the Opposition to claim to be the friend of people who pay energy bills when he did more than most to bump up energy bills with his Climate Change Act. Funnily enough, the £113 typically added to bills by climate change policies is roughly the same as the average discount given to people paying by direct debit. If we want to reduce everybody’s bills by the £113 that my hon. Friend seeks for people who pay other than by direct debit, the easiest way to do it would be to scrap all this nonsense on climate change—this gesture politics that will not make a blind bit of difference to global temperatures, but which makes a massive difference to people’s energy bills.

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