Examination of Witness (Question Numbers
120-139)
MR DAVID
KIDNEY MP
10 MARCH 2010
Q120 Dr Turner: Is HMRC involved
in that pilot?
Mr Kidney: It is DWP information
about pension credit customers being shared with energy companies
via a secure third party, so that is not an HMRC experiment.
Q121 Dr Turner: Because they will
have more information which DWP have not necessarily got.
Mr Kidney: But to allow people's
individual tax dealings to be disclosed to a third party would
require another permission and another piece of primary legislation.
The Pensions Act is about releasing information by DWP.
Q122 Dr Turner: Yes, I understand
that, but has that been considered because there is, I am sure,
a valuable mine of information there?
Mr Kidney: I consider it every
day. I would love to be able to do more. The Government did ask
Parliament for permission to have a broader power to share data
in the Coroners and Justice Bill, but because of objections from
civil liberties groups and all the opposition parties the Government
dropped that from the Bill. I would need to come back to Parliament
for further permission by primary legislation for any more data
sharing. It is very much in my mind. I would like to do that.
Q123 Dr Whitehead: Do you not think,
however, that you have been rather dealt a labour of Sisyphus
right at this minute in terms of the fact that we calculate the
range of fuel poverty by means of the Housing Condition Survey?
That gives us the numbers of people in fuel poverty and you are
then supposed to reach a target of eliminating fuel poverty on
the basis of targeting people you do not know the whereabouts
of. Would you think that the combination of the data collection
of income and perhaps a national database of the efficiency of
households could change that landscape?
Mr Kidney: The answers are yes,
yes and yes to those questions. Obviously, to be completely effective
at hitting the targets that I have got by the measure that I have
got in the Fuel Poverty Strategy—and I am not for a moment
suggesting that I have got any plans to change the measure—I
would need real-time information about household make-up, their
income and the consumption of energy and the condition of the
property, and I do not have any of those details in that form
at all at the present time. The best one again, coming back to
energy efficiency, is that the bricks and mortar, the properties,
do not move and they stay the same, so we are building on the
work that local authorities have been doing for many years about
house condition surveys, and there are some very good examples.
Kirklees has got a very good record and Durham has got a very
good record. We are developing something called the National Energy
Efficiency Data Framework, which is going to be a GB-wide energy
consumption record of buildings and their individual characteristics.
The first data set will be established by July of this year and
phase two will be completed by the spring of next year, and that
starts to bring together information that the local authorities
have got at a local level to the national level. If I set my ambition
at making sure every property in the country is made energy efficient
to a good standard, then eventually we will get to them all and
this would not be so much of a problem. In the meantime where
should we start? We should start with the properties that are
weakest in their condition and have got people with the lowest
incomes, and CESP, that we started from last September and which
is due to run until 2012, is precisely that approach where local
authorities, energy companies and community groups work together
targeting estates within their areas that do have the greatest
instance of poor households in their area. I think that is a really
good example of how I think the landscape in 2012 will be as we
start on this ambitious plan to make every property in the country
energy efficient but start with the ones that need it the most.
Q124 Dr Whitehead: Are you making
the claim or pointing towards the claim that, as a result of the
Energy Efficiency Framework that you have described, you would
effectively have the equivalent of an energy performance certificate
for all properties in the country?
Mr Kidney: In the HEM Strategy
we set out our ambition that we want to accelerate the position
where every property has got an EPC or, for a commercial property,
a display energy certificate, and then to use those as tools on
which to build other policy measures. For example, there is discussion
in the document about future regulation of private rented properties
by reference to the energy efficiency condition of the property.
We are going down that way and this might indeed be a useful cross-check
with the physical condition of the property to what their energy
performance certificate might be.
Q125 Dr Whitehead: Have you costed
what that option might look like over the medium term? What would
it cost, do you think, to have a combination of that database
being really effective and perhaps developing an EPC for each
household?
Mr Kidney: If you want the figures
for the National Energy Efficiency Data Framework programme, I
will need to write to you with the actual figures, but clearly
we have costed that and made provision for it, so that is funded.
A lot of the energy performance certificate obligations are on
home owners and property owners, and so, whilst there was an impact
assessment when we introduced this policy for there to be energy
performance certificates and display energy certificates, this
would be simply an acceleration of a programme that is already
in place, so it would be a marginal cost to do more than we already
do.
Q126 Mr Anderson: Minister, I am
struggling and perhaps I am just too stupid, but information we
have heard this morning is that there are four and a half million
households at one side of the equation, and £10 or £12
billion of unclaimed benefit at the other. Dividing them, you
have somewhere between £2,000 and £2,500 per household
in houses sitting there. While we wait for HMRC, DECC, DWP to
come up with an idea to get round data protection to talk to people
in the private companies about how we help those people, thousands
of people are dying, kids are living in conditions that are just
not acceptable, people are being a bigger burden on the state
through having to go into hospital, things like that. There has
got to be a quicker answer than you suggest. Perhaps I am just
too stupid, but why do we not just give them all a grant? Because
that would not fit the bureaucratic mechanisms that are in place
in this place?
Mr Kidney: Certainly if you are
in the position to annex another department's budget and give
it to me, I would use more money for Warm Front.
Q127 Mr Anderson: Why do we not do
that next month? Why do you not come forward with an emergency
Bill next month? We will all support you.
Mr Kidney: I am not the Chancellor
who makes the decision about levels of benefits, entitlement to
them and makes assumptions about the take-up of them. Clearly,
from one year to the next the Chancellor does not store up the
underspend and keep it in a pot somewhere so that there is a big
sum of money I can now tap into. He moves on to the next financial
year. So any decision by the Government to change eligibility
in order to free up the money to give it for another purpose is
a decision for the Government as a whole, and in particular the
Chancellor. As for the sharing of information more widely, I do
have to obey the law on data protection and human rights and I
cannot work without the permission of Parliament. I could say
to all of you, "How did you behave when the Coroners and
Justice Bill was going through Parliament? Did you object to that
measure that would have allowed me to share data more freely than
is possible under the present law?"
Q128 Mr Anderson: Did you ask us
to, Minister?
Mr Kidney: It was in the Bill.
It got dropped at Report Stage. I would be happy to come back
to Parliament with proposals for wider use of data sharing for
the purpose of tackling fuel poverty, and if this Committee is
saying you are all in favour of that I would look forward to having
the unanimous support of Parliament in getting that legislation
onto the statute book.
Q129 Paddy Tipping: Let us just focus
on the rate of progress on data sharing. I hope you will not mind
my saying this, but you and I have been around quite a long time
and my recollection is that discussions on data sharing started
in 2005. As you say, there was legislation in 2008. We are now
in 2010. The amount of data sharing going on at the moment is
pretty rudimentary, is it not? That is not a good rate of progress.
Mr Kidney: I cannot account for
the period between 2005 when somebody mentioned it and 2008 when
we passed an Act of Parliament.
Q130 Paddy Tipping: I campaigned
for it.
Mr Kidney: Indeed; that is very
good, so two of us are campaigners here. The Act was passed in
2008, regulations drawn up and approved in 2009, data sharing
taking place in the spring of 2010 is, for the parliamentary and
Whitehall machine, pretty good progress. I do not want, however,
to minimise the complexity of the subject. It has never been done
before and there has been a lot of work put into getting it done,
and even though it is in a law and it is in a set of regulations
so that the Government can disclose the information, it still
requires the agreement of the energy companies to take part in
the data matching. I can testify from my personal efforts last
autumn how difficult it has been to shepherd them all into the
same position at the same time to give their agreement for this
to go ahead.
Q131 Paddy Tipping: Let us talk about
Warm Front; you mentioned Warm Front. You have taken a big interest
in it and I saw you on the TV not long ago sticking up very manfully
for Warm Front. It is a good scheme, two million people helped,
high satisfaction rate, according to the NAO 86 per cent, but
it gets a bad press. Let me put it like this, the BBC have been
giving them a tough time recently. What are the issues, do you
think?
Mr Kidney: First of all, I agree
with you: it is on the whole a very good scheme. It is described
in the last National Audit Office report as having high levels
of customer satisfaction, it has been largely effective and therefore
has been value for money, which from a National Audit Office report
is a ringing endorsement, and even since that report was produced
we have improved the Scheme. We have increased the maximum grant
limits, which was a big problem with customer satisfaction when
people were being asked to make a contribution, and a lot of that
has disappeared by increasing the grant maximum. We have made
changes to the administration of the Scheme, particularly in terms
of complaints handling and reporting. We have changed the system
in terms of the rating of the contractor so that poor performing
contractors get pushed out of the scheme if they continue to be
poor performers. We have introduced more competition in that the
contractors have to bid electronically for a greater proportion
of the work. Two-thirds of it is now available by that competitive
auction. We have improved the customer-facing end of the system,
going into a person's home with a laptop and a computer-assisted
design programme that enables plans to be discussed and then drawn
up in the presence of the customer and the customer gets a copy
of the plan there and then, so there is no misunderstanding later
on when the installers turn up and say, "I have come to do
this work", because it is in accordance with that plan. There
have been huge improvements just since then and if you look at
it, it is a huge programme since 2000. It has improved over two
million households in their energy efficiency, delivering savings
in energy costs of £300 year on year for those households
which benefit from it, and it will continue to go on from strength
to strength thanks to the decision that the Chancellor made in
the Pre-Budget Report about finding me some extra money for it.
What went wrong this autumn in particular, I think, is that we
have just had the coldest weather for 30 years and it has made
a lot more people immediately concerned abut the efficiency of
their homes and many more people than usual have contacted Warm
Front. The contact rate in January this year was half as high
again as any previous January, so we have been overwhelmed with
the applications. We have been telling people that they have to
wait a maximum of three months for an insulation measure and six
months for a heating measure, and if they have rung up in the
depths of a really cold winter because their boiler has just broken
down, it is not their idea of a good response to say, "In
six months' time we will come and fix it for you". However,
I want to stress that Warm Front never has been an emergency repair
service and it still is not. That was at the root of the criticisms
in the media, confusing Warm Front with something it does not
do.
Q132 Paddy Tipping: Do you not think
there should be some kind of priority system within Warm Front?
It is just a straight taxi-rank system at the moment.
Mr Kidney: The thing I would want
to stress is that every customer of Warm Front is a vulnerable
householder because of the eligibility. They are either exceptionally
poor or they are exceptionally disabled and in need of support,
and so it gets quite invidious to say, "You are even more
in need because of your poverty", or, "You are even
more in need because of your disability than your neighbour who
applied before you did". It is quite difficult to say to
people that we can do that prioritising. There are cases—we
mentioned cancer patients earlier on—where there has been
a diagnosis of a terminal illness that Eaga will pull out all
the stops to prioritise such a case to make sure that people get
help for the last few weeks or months of their lives, and when
people have to wait and it is very cold there is a scheme for
lending people heaters until we get round to doing the works in
their homes. I think we do the best we can in terms of the client
group that we have got to be able to help as much as we can and
as quickly as we can.
Q133 Paddy Tipping: Remind me about
Warm Front's budget. One of the problems in the current year is
that the budget looked as though it was going to run out and Warm
Front had to ration it. Again, I am not sure whether I am right
on this but I think I am. The Chancellor has made extra resources
available next year but it is still a cut in Warm Front's budget.
Mr Kidney: Warm Front goes in
three-year spending review cycles, and if we go back not to this
review, 2008-11, but the one before that, there was a lot of publicity
then and I was a PPS in Defra at the time, that it did not go
up from one year to the next. In fact, there was a cut in one
year, and that did attract a lot of criticism at that time. What
we can say is that the 2008-11 settlement was the biggest in history
for Warm Front. It was definitely more than the one in the three
years before, and, as a result of the £150 million extra
that the Chancellor announced in the PBR, its total spend now
at over £1.1 billion is by far the most generous settlement
for Warm Front in its history.
Q134 Paddy Tipping: In the current
financial year you know because of the discussions with you that
they were running out of the budget. Why did we not shift some
money in from the financial year that is about to start?
Mr Kidney: While we were waiting
for the Pre-Budget Report Eaga was managing the three-year budget.
They were in the second year and they knew that there was going
to be a third year, which they had to cut the budget for, and
there was a limit to how much I was willing to denude year three
in order to allow them to increase the rate of work in year two,
so we did have to keep some by until we had the decision from
the Chancellor. Once we had the Chancellor's decision and I felt
more comfortable with the overall position, I did give permission
to accelerate £10 million-worth of work into year two using
year three's budget, so as soon as I was able to make such a decision
I did make it.
Q135 Paddy Tipping: Let us return
to HEMS.
Mr Kidney: Could I just say that
we do have to tell people that under the contracts there is a
maximum wait of three months for their insulation measure and
six months for their heating measure. Of course, in the depths
of winter when someone is desperate that does sound a very long
period of time. The actual performance of Warm Front, as shown
in the National Audit Office report, is that they comfortably
come in under those maximum waiting times. I just asked, in readiness
for today, what were the average waiting times in your constituency,
Mr Tipping, and in Sherwood the average waiting time for insulation
last year was 13.4 days.
Q136 Paddy Tipping: What was it in
yours, Minister?
Mr Kidney: And for a heating measure
it was 39 days. Whilst the maximum could have been 180 days it
was 39 days actually, but nevertheless, as I say, when somebody
was very anxious in the middle of a very cold winter and their
boiler has broken down and they are told, "You could be waiting
six months", I can understand how uncomfortable that would
be for the person receiving that news.
Paddy Tipping: You will have seen me
out helping Warm Front. I am their best apprentice. Let us return
to HEMS.
Q137 Dr Whitehead: You produced the
Household Energy Management Strategy on 2 March. Among other things,
it talks about recasting CERT so that energy companies work with
local authorities in the future, and you have that as a suggested
starting date in the document, 2013. First, how do you think that
will work in practice between the energy companies and local authorities,
and, secondly, bearing in mind what has been said about CERT,
are you happy that 2013 is early enough to make that change?
Mr Kidney: The waiting times for
Warm Front measures in your constituency were even lower than
the ones in Sherwood last year.
Paddy Tipping: You still have not told
us what they are in your constituency.
Q138 Dr Whitehead: We are the Cornish
Riviera, so—
Mr Kidney: They are not super
good because I am the Minister, I can assure you.
Q139 Miss Kirkbride: But they are
super good?
Mr Kidney: No.
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