Further supplementary memorandum submitted
by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (FP 01B)
ENERGY & CLIMATE CHANGE SELECT COMMITTEE
INQUIRY INTO FUEL POVERTY, FOLLOW UP REQUEST ON SOCIAL PRICE SUPPORT
In response to a further request from the Committee
following my initial letter of 15 March 2010, I am writing with
additional information on social price support. Members of the
Committee asked about the cost of extending social price support
to people who: (a) have cancer; (b) qualify for Cold Weather Payments;
and (c) qualify for the Warm Front Scheme.
The cost of extending social price support to
these groups would depend on the level of the benefit that energy
suppliers are required to pay to each eligible household. We have
not made any final decisions on the level of the benefit for social
price support post-2011, and will not do so until after we have
consulted on the proposed scheme in the Summer. It is therefore
not yet possible to say what it would cost to extend social price
support to these groups.
What I can say however is that there are around
4.2 million households that are currently eligible to receive
Cold Weather Payments and an estimated 3.3 million households
in England that are eligible for support under Warm Front[17].
The latest NHS Quality and Outcomes Framework data suggests that
there are around 680k people in England that are registered with
a GP and have had a diagnosis of cancer since April 2003[18].
In PBR 2009 we said that, subject to the successful
passage of the Energy Bill, the Government would require energy
suppliers to make available at least £300 million per annum
by 2013-14 for mandated social price support. It is important
to ensure that this is targeted as carefully as possible at the
households that need it the most. We therefore need to identify
groups which have a high propensity to being fuel poor and whose
circumstances and income tend to be stable over time.
March 2010
17 www.decc.gov.uk/Media/viewfile.ashx?FilePath=Statistics\fuelpoverty\1_20091020153255_e_@@_fuelpoverty2007detailedtables.pdf&filetype=4 Back
18
www.ic.nhs.uk/webfiles/QOF/2008-09/Prevalence%20tables/QOF0809_National_Prevalence.xls Back
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