14:30 Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)

I do not want to sound too negative, so let me say what could be done. Local authorities need to work with the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Communities and Local Government, and more widely across the Government, to ensure that they play a full role in encouraging collective switching, because that process can lead to big discounts of £200. DECC needs to promote that more with local authorities, because people are not switching at the rate they should be. There might be many reasons for that. For example, an elderly person may be going blind or have early-onset dementia, while poorer people may be functionally illiterate or have no access to computers. There is a whole swathe of people who should be switching but are not, so local authorities should be co-operating with DECC and other Departments to organise collective switching.

There needs to be certainty and unity within the Government on energy policy. We see the antics of Ministers who are opposed to solar farms in the fens. There are MPs—some from north Wales—who are opposed to offshore wind farms, MPs who are opposed to onshore wind farms, and MPs who are opposed to the feed-in tariff. They know what they are against, but they do not know they are for, and the uncertainty and lack of unity has led to a lack of investment in the renewable energy market in my constituency and throughout the UK.

As the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) said, Wales is a net exporter of energy. North Wales, in particular, is playing its role in renewable energies, and my constituency will have the biggest array of offshore wind farms in the world. I switched on 30 turbines at North Hoyle some eight years ago, and when he was Secretary of State for Wales, my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain) switched on another 30 turbines at Rhyl Flats. Behind those, we will have 200 turbines at Gwynt y Môr and the 2,000 wind turbines at the Rhiannon wind farm array. When I was switching on the North Hoyle turbines, the Prime Minister was describing them as “giant bird blenders”, at the same time as sticking a mini turbine on his own roof in Notting Hill. He was looking both ways.

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14:52 Nia Griffith (Labour)

There is a particular problem for homes that are not on mains gas, because that limits people’s choice of fuel. They might use solid fuel, more electricity, or bottled gas for cooking. More recently, of course, people have been using liquefied petroleum gas, but some areas face a problem because one supplier of LPG gas has a monopoly. I corresponded with Chris Huhne about that matter when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, so I hope that the Minister will be able to continue work to examine LPG competition, particularly when people are trapped into continuing with the same supplier because a whole estate is supplied by one supplier, which creates a difficult situation.

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15:01 Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. He talks about action that we can take. One thing that we can do on oil prices is actively encourage, particularly in rural areas, the development of oil syndicates. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has taken some action on that. Would he encourage DECC to take more action to encourage the development of oil syndicates and get those prices down, particularly in rural areas that are off-grid and have no other options?

The other aspect is that energy prices are driving jobs overseas. More and more companies find that the cost of the energy they need to run their businesses is just too high. We talk about all the jobs that renewable energy and onshore wind will create, but the truth is they will drive jobs and business overseas—not just to Europe, but outside Europe, and that will be devastating.

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15:10 Mrs Siân C. James (Swansea East) (Lab)

Year on year, housing is getting damper and more run-down, and energy is disappearing out of poorly insulated homes and inefficient heating systems, which means that costs are rising. We should seriously consider giving further support to the Energy Bill Revolution campaign, which comprises more than 100 charities, organisations, private businesses and unions that are calling on the Government to use money raised from the carbon tax to fit all houses with effective insulation to stop heat being lost through roofs and walls. The group says a nationwide programme, insulating all homes across the country, could save the average family £310 a year on its fuel bill.

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15:37 Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)

Despite falling by 1.75 million people under the previous Labour Government, it is clear that fuel poverty in Wales and across the UK is now increasing rapidly. The Hills fuel poverty review, which was commissioned by the Government, estimates that 8.5 million homes will be in fuel poverty by 2016, which is up from the 4.75 million homes that were in fuel poverty in 2010, according to the Department of Energy and Climate Change website. With the average energy bill going up by more than £300 since the coalition came to power and Government help to support the fuel-poor being cut, it is hardly surprising that fewer and fewer households can afford to keep warm.

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