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Mr. Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con): I remain in awe of my right hon. Friend's forensic analysis, but I would like to help to connect the dots. He referred to the responsibilities of local government, and one of those is to look after the welfare of the elderly. In that respect, fuel poverty has to do with the relative amount that pensioners pay for fuel. In connection with the concerns that my right hon. Friend mentioned earlier, microgeneration, the insulation of housing, and the responsibilities of local government with regard to that, can help to alleviate fuel poverty.

Mr. Forth: I am grateful to my hon. Friend—I think—but I shall come to that subject later, because I shall talk about means-testing. My hon. Friend has fallen into the trap of talking about the elderly and fuel poverty. Most elderly people these days are perfectly capable of looking after themselves. They are well housed and have good incomes, because they have
 
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pensions and other assets. They get support. Therefore, simply to say that elderly people may have a problem with heating their homes is a questionable concept. Later I shall come to the individual choices that people, elderly or otherwise, make about their spending priorities within their households. I would want to know about those—or at least I think I would, because this takes us into means-testing which I shall explore in a moment. It takes us into asking legitimate questions of people who claim that they cannot afford their heating bill, about what else are they spending their money on, before we get too worried or rush to help them with a windmill on their roof. We must go through this argument one stage at a time.

Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con): I have some sympathy with the point my right hon. Friend is making, but he rather overplays his hand. Surely he will accept that for elderly people and the disabled there are physical and medical reasons why they may need to spend more on heating than other groups in society.

Mr. Forth: Of course there are, as there are for people with very young children. Of course there are groups in society that have different priorities and different needs, but that does not mean to say that we should bring out a blanket definition of something such as fuel poverty and then apply it indiscriminately across the board. Later, I shall come to regional considerations. Will we say that someone who has the joy of living on the Isle of Wight, for example—the southernmost part of our wonderful country—will have the same needs as someone living in the extreme north of Scotland? Of course they will not. Therefore I believe that we must start taking account of climatic conditions, whether they are affected by climate change or not, the Gulf Stream, prevailing winds or whatever it may be. Catch-all definitions such as fuel poverty, which we are dealing with here, will not do. We must have a better understanding of what people need, why they need it and what we should do to alleviate shortcomings.

Now I shall go back to the point that I was making—asking why we do not talk about food poverty, clothing poverty or people's inability to pay for other aspects of their lives, and how essential we think those things are compared to fuel or heating. My hon. Friends have said that they think there is a serious problem of elderly people being unable to warm their homes. But what about elderly people being unable to eat or to clothe themselves properly?

Mr. Newmark: My right hon. Friend is digressing. We are talking about climate change. Fuel poverty relates to climate change and people keeping warm. I agree that food poverty is an issue, but it has no relevance to the Bill, which is why we are talking about fuel poverty in this context.

Mr. Forth rose—

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. It is for the Chair to determine what is relevant. The right hon. Gentleman has been going rather wide in his remarks. I am sure that with all that is in the new clause, he will now be able to address the Bill in an appropriate manner.
 
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Mr. Forth: I am addressing my amendment, which seeks to delete the term "fuel poverty" from the Bill, Madam Deputy Speaker. That is why I am giving some consideration to the concept. I am rather surprised at    my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr.   Newmark), because I thought that the alleged worry was climate change and global warming. If we are going to have global warming, why on earth are we talking about people being unable to heat themselves? This is getting us into intriguing territory, and I want him to think about that before we get too excited about alleged climate change, alleged global warming and the alleged effects that it might have.

Mr. Newmark: The important thing is that if we can have, for example, windmills on people's roofs or insulation, that will lower the cost of fuel, thereby reducing fuel poverty.

Mr. Forth: Who supplies the windmills is a question that we will come to later. I would digress if I followed that idea too far; even I have spotted that one. We will come back to who pays for the windmills in debates on later amendments.

Mr. Chope: Does my right hon. Friend accept that one of the ironies of the new clause is that it could result in higher fuel bills because microgeneration is uneconomic? With higher fuel bills, fuel poverty would be increased rather than reduced.

Mr. Forth: Again, we will come to that later—but to touch briefly on it now, it has not yet been demonstrated to me that solar panels or windmills necessarily have an acceptable pay-off period, or a yield that will give the results that are claimed for them. I have never been persuaded of that. If they did, presumably every roof in the country would already have solar panels and, within existing planning constraints, we would all have windmills, as leading members of our party apparently say they will have. I am not convinced that there is an acceptable pay-back in terms of the investment required in a windmill or a solar panel to give us an overall advantage in fuel terms.

I have had a quick look at some household expenditure figures from 20 years ago and now to see where fuel and power fitted as a percentage of spending. I could go into a lot of detail but I am eager to reach some of the later debates, which will be much more substantial than this one. This is just a taster, after all; there is some meaty stuff to come later. Suffice it to say that the figures I have been given by the Library show that in the year 2003–04 the proportion of household expenditure spent on housing—rent, council tax and so on—was 17 per cent., on food and non-alcoholic drinks 16 per cent., on motoring 15 per cent., on leisure services 13 per cent., and on household goods 8 per cent., but for fuel and power it was 3 per cent. That suggests that we should be careful about analysing the proportion of household expenditure—

Greg Clark: Does my right hon. Friend accept that those proportions would be very different for some of the groups of people that we have been talking about, specifically the disabled and the elderly?
 
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Mr. Forth: They might be—I concede that—but it is relevant to consider by how much. I return to my point about the spending choices and priorities in each household. There is a real difficulty, but a fascinating diversion or digression to be had, about means-testing or blanket support. A large part of me would say that if we want to help people in what is claimed to be fuel poverty, and there are households where, because of individual needs relating to health, location or whatever, people are forced to spend a disproportionately large part of their income on heating and fuel, there may be cause to help them. However, I very much doubt whether we would do that by putting a windmill on their roof, or even a solar panel, because in the middle of winter neither would help them. The help would probably have to be more direct—but I am not sure that that is what we are saying.

Greg Clark: I think that my right hon. Friend has made progress by accepting that, although he may not like the terminology, there is a concept of fuel poverty—that certain people whose needs require them to spend more on fuel than others suffer financially, because they do not have the means to make up the shortfall. He may not like the jargon, but the concept is accepted. The question is how it is addressed.

Mr. Forth: Only partly. What about food poverty or clothing poverty? What if people find that they have to make difficult choices in their household budget, between buying clothes, paying their rent, heating their home or buying food? Why do we always concentrate on fuel and not the other things? That is my point. There is of course cause for us as a society to help needy people and people in difficulties, although we are entitled to ask them some fairly pertinent questions about what they do with their household income and how they prioritise before we rush to help them. But the question has never been answered; we go on and on about this thing called fuel poverty, yet we ignore everything else. It is at least theoretically possible that someone could end up living in a very warm house without enough to eat. What would we do about that? Why do not we answer that question, too?

The idea—the concept—of fuel poverty is extremely dubious. I do not accept that, simply because it is raised in the context of a Bill such as this, people should try to connect it to climate change and windmills and lump them all together as though they were on a continuum. I do not see the connection or the validity.

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