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Northern Ireland
Queen's recommendation having been signified--
Motion made, and Question proposed,
Mr. Eric Forth (Bromley and Chislehurst):
We come again to a money resolution on a very interesting Bill that occupied the House a couple of Fridays ago. The money resolution is more interesting than usual. Although the wording is cast in terms of the sort that we have become used to, we have also become used to the fact that Ministers never do the House the courtesy of speaking to the money resolution and explaining what its contents might be. That means that the more curious of us have to ask a number of questions to elicit information from them. It is a pity that things are done that way round, but that seems to be how they prefer it, so I am very happy, as always, to ask my few modest questions to try to find out from the Minister what lies behind the money resolution.
We are discussing the potentially significant Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill and--we are used to this--the money resolution is opaque. It does not tell us how much money we are being asked to vote, but in some ways it is worse because it refers to the authorisation of
I decided to seek further guidance and inspiration from my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Sir S. Chapman)--a senior and experienced Member who is also an architect. He is, moreover, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Accommodation and Works.
One would have thought that he had enormous knowledge of such matters. On the subject of what the Bill might involve in costs and in public expenditure, my hon. Friend said:
Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North):
Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House the cost of fuel poverty? What would it cost not to take action to ensure that households are not in fuel poverty, leading to ill health? Is he aware of the work of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in York? The foundation has estimated that fuel poverty has a huge effect in terms of ill health and its costs to the national health service.
Mr. Forth:
I refute the whole concept of fuel poverty. It is nonsense, as I tried to point out in some of my interventions in the debate. Unfortunately, we ran out of time before I could make the speech that was bubbling up inside me.
Fuel poverty is nonsense. I am much more interested in food poverty, for example. The average family spends much more on food than on fuel. Many families cannot even afford enough food. During the debate, I cited figures that showed that the lowest decile of families by income spend the same proportion of their income on alcohol and tobacco as they do on fuel. Much nonsense is talked about fuel poverty; I am not convinced of it as a concept, so I do not feel that it is relevant.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet added:
We have to look further for inspiration and guidance on the matter. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Mr. Green), the Front-Bench spokesman on that occasion, said:
I then looked to see whether the Minister gave any guidance in the debate about what he thought the Government might be committing themselves to were we to support the Bill and the money resolution. I am afraid that I looked in vain. He had much to say about current programmes of different types and he pointed out:
I was slightly encouraged--I hope that the Minister will not disappoint me when he replies--when he said:
We are in an unusual position. A Bill has been introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West and it received enormous praise and support on Second Reading. However, it received all that support with no one having any idea how much money would be required to implement its provisions properly. For fans of the concept of fuel poverty who think that it is a real problem that must be tackled, I am left with the thought that they must have gone away from the Second Reading debate, in which they expressed their concerns eloquently, wondering how the Government would solve the problem. The Bill gave no sign of how that would be done and the Government did not say how much taxpayers' money they would commit to fulfilling the high aspirations expressed in it. Indeed, my hon. Friend, the Bill's promoter, was not able or prepared to tell the House what he thought would be necessary to fulfil its purposes.
The terms of the money resolution ask the House to give the Government an apparent blank cheque. It refers to
A cynic might say that the Bill will commit the Government to very little other than expressing rather vague targets. In the remarks that I quoted, the Minister gave a hint that, even then, the Government might want to reconsider the targets and move them around a bit,
so that they are not too taxing and do not involve a commitment in the foreseeable future. That is one interpretation.
There is a quite different interpretation. To deal adequately and properly with the problem of so-called fuel poverty, enormous sums of money would have to be spent, and spent quickly, to tackle the problems that were described so eloquently by many hon. Members on Second Reading.
We are in a peculiarly difficult position. We are being asked to vote for an unknown sum of money that could vary from not very much, if little comes out of the Bill and the problem of fuel poverty is hardly dealt with, to an inordinately enormous sum of taxpayers' money. Perhaps it will not be as much as my hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet suggested, but it could be several billions of pounds over a period of years if the problem is to be dealt with effectively. We just do not know what is involved.
That the draft Equality (Disability, etc.) (Northern Ireland) Order 2000, which was laid before this House on 16th March, be approved.
That the Local Government Finance (England) Special Grant Report (No. 59) on Metropolitan Railway Passenger Services Grant 2000-01 (HC 361), which was laid before this House on 21st March, be approved.--[Mr. Mike Hall.]
Question agreed to.
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of--
(a) any expenses of the Secretary of State under the Act; and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums which under any other Act are payable out of money so provided.-- [Mr. Mike Hall.]
11.46 pm
the payment out of money provided by Parliament . . .
That is the key phrase, as ever. The House is being asked to authorise expenditure of taxpayers' money. The money resolution goes on to refer to
any increase attributable to the Act in the sums which under any other Act are payable out of money so provided.
In the usual way, we are given no indication at all of the amounts involved. That would be interesting enough, but as the Minister knows--he sat through the debate on the Bill, which took about five hours--we failed to get any indication at all of the scale of expenditure that might be involved and hence might give us a clue as to the scope of the money resolution. I give a few brief examples from Hansard, which will probably suffice. The Bill's promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West (Mr. Amess), was asked how much expenditure might be involved. He said:
I would be stupid to give a figure that would be used in evidence against me. We can pluck any figure out of the air.
That is not an encouraging start for a House anxious to know exactly what amount might lie behind the money resolution. The promoter was coy on the subject--I put it no higher than that.
the Bill contains no guesstimate of its cost. I believe that it will cost a considerable amount of money . . . I would estimate the cost at approximately £500,000 million a year.
I am not sure that that is what my hon. Friend said, or intended to say--I can only quote the words in Hansard. That is the first figure on the record from an expert--£500,000 million a year is what the Bill might cost the taxpayer. He continued:
I also estimate that a programme of eradicating fuel poverty and ensuring that all the housing stock is satisfactorily insulated would take 15 years.
We are talking about an expenditure programme of 15 years that may cost the amount estimated by my hon. Friend.
My view is that we need to insulate 5 million houses in England more effectively and at the top end, although I hope that the figure may not be so great, as many as 8 million throughout the United Kingdom.
Although no one has yet given a definitive or authoritative figure, we are beginning to realise that the Bill might involve the expenditure of large sums. However, for reasons that I am beginning to understand, the Minister has not yet given us a figure; nor did the Bill's promoter, my hon. Friend the Member for Southend, West--for reasons that I also understand.
if the House supports the Bill--as I hope that it will--we need to think through the taxation and spending consequences.
That is an understatement if ever I heard one. I agree with him; it would be desirable to think through those consequences. I would have thought it more desirable to
do so before Second Reading or before we approve the money resolution. If not, the House will be asked to sign a blank cheque. That would not be a responsible way to undertake our duties.
According to recent estimates, at least 4.3 million households have difficulty with fuel bills.
That was a modest use of words; the phrase "difficulty with fuel bills" is a fair way of putting it. I do not necessarily disagree with that, although I would not want to get involved with the ludicrous concept of fuel poverty. However, he offered no more clues as to how much he thought the Government might commit themselves, and therefore the taxpayer, to as a result of the Bill.
We have to consider provisions for bringing the measure into force and, bearing in mind the Government's current spending commitments and reviews, we want to consider carefully the references to time scales and targets.--[Official Report, 10 March 2000; Vol. 345, c. 1306-354.]
That was the kind of responsible statement that we have come to expect from him. However, there was still no clue as to whether the expenditure involved in implementing the Bill might be within the scope that the Government can afford.
any increase attributable to the Act in the sums which under any other Act are payable out of money so provided.
That has all the appearances of a blank cheque. Nothing in the Bill tells us how much might be required and nothing in five hours of debate told us how much money would be involved to deal with the alleged problem of fuel poverty. Will the expenditure be focused and specific or will it be general and blanket? We have no idea of the answer.
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