This has been a Christmas season like no other, one where
most of us have been obliged to spend much of our time at home. A not
altogether cheerless prospect if your home is warm and well lit.
Unfortunately for many people living in the UK that is a
long way from being the case. Based on 2018 figures 10.3% of UK households are
fuel poor, paying for light and heating is something they must balance off
against eating or paying the rent.
My hometown of Stoke-on-Trent is one of the cities where
this problem is most prevalent, according to figures published in the Sentinel
in 2017 the city has the ninth highest rate of fuel poverty in the country.
The same figures showed that 15.4% of households were
paying above average for their gas and electric, leaving them below the poverty
line.
The pandemic, as in so many other cases, has changed things
dramatically; and not for the better. Fuel poverty charity National Energy
Action estimate that 12,000 people die every year from health conditions made
worse by living in cold homes.
Chief executive Adam Scorer told The Big Issue this
November that this has, thanks to COVID-19, been a 'far from normal winter '
when things are quite bad enough.
The pandemic has, he said, 'hit household incomes and
confined people in cold, unhealthy homes, people are spending more time in
homes they cannot afford to heat, using more energy and paying more for it
while earning less'.
A perfect storm of health and social problems brewing up
and waiting to burst with all the awful consequences that are sure to follow.
What is to be done about such a serious problem? There is a
question that brings the politician and policy maker in their long costs
running over the frosty fields.
The solution, or part of it anyway, is already there in the
legislative programme for the new parliamentary year in the shape of The Local
Electricity Bill, which is due to have its second reading on 5th February.
Introduced as a Private Members Bill by Conservative MP for
Waveney Peter Aldous the proposed legislation would, among other things,
establish a right to local supply. This would make it easier and, more
importantly, cheaper for small community run electricity companies to generate
and sell electricity in their local area.
This would break the stranglehold on the market exerted by
the big four energy companies, in the process using a little of the competition
capitalists preach about endlessly to lever some fairness back into the
system. It would also help to kick
start the generation of renewable energy, ensuring as it did so that through
community ownership customers are also partners in the business.
Private Members Bills have made history in the past,
although the process is more often even when successful tends to be a sort of
parliamentary parlour game. This one matters more than most, even if on the
face of it how we generate and buy our energy is neither a sexy nor emotive
subject.
Poverty is not dissimilar to the virus that has haunted us
for the past year, it kills with quiet efficiency and can, if their personal
planets align in the wrong way, strike down pretty much anyone. Just as it will
take more than one vaccine to beat coronavirus, putting poverty back in its box
will also require a range of actions.
One that needs to be taken early this year is for
parliamentarians from all sides to ensure this unglamorous, but vital, bill
gets passed.
More information about the Local Electricity Bill can be
found at: Local-Electricity-Bill-Briefing.pdf
(powerforpeople.org.uk)
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