Views
Missed opportunity to tackle fuel poverty - for The Inverness Courier
IT is very unusual for MPs to be in Westminster on Fridays. The Commons does not usually sit on Fridays and when it does the Bills being considered more often than not have little chance of being law.
But last Friday, I was in Westminster to support an important Bill on fuel poverty. It was deeply disappointing that Labour, Tory, and SNP MPs failed to support.
The private members Bill had been secured by my Liberal Democrat colleague David Heath, who represents a very rural constituency in Somerset. While the temperatures are a good deal warmer than the Highlands, nonetheless the problems of fuel poverty are similar to those we experience in the Highlands. Many old, poorly insulated homes; many homes reliant on heating oil; and of course low incomes.
His Bill would have done two things. Firstly, it would oblige the Government to ensure that the homes of those living in fuel poverty are brought up to a high standard of energy efficiency, using super insulation and renewable energy technologies. The current insulation schemes miss out the "hard to treat" homes, of which there are so many in the Highlands, because they are more expensive to insulate.
Because the Bill would have put a legal obligation on the government, that would mean that hard to treat homes would be given a much higher priority, as would those where low income families rely on heating oil. Heating oil users are twice as likely to be in fuel poverty as the rest of the population.
The Scottish government deserves credit for being ahead of the UK government on this. They have already brought together the different schemes that exist to make it easier for people to access, and from 1st April this year will potentially make available new technology such as air source heat pumps for hard to treat homes. But the legal obligations in this Bill, if taken up in the Scottish Parliament, would strengthen yet further the protection and support for local people.
The second aspect of the Bill would have introduced a mandatory social tariff scheme where people who struggle to heat their home get help to ensure they pay the lowest energy prices until their house is brought up to a high standard of energy efficiency. At the moment, energy companies do offer social tariffs, but they are highly complex and many people find it difficult to access information about them.
We need social tariffs to be much more easily available than they are now. Low income families should be guaranteed access to cheaper bills until their homes are fuel-poverty proofed. Taken together, the measures in the Bill could reduce households' energy use by up to 70 per cent and ensure that those struggling to pay their fuel bills pay the lowest energy prices. Around four million households that struggle to keep warm would have been brought up to a high standard of heat and energy efficiency by 2016 — making their homes fuel poverty-proof. Despite the disinterest and neglect of other parties in Parliament, I will certainly continue to campaign vigorously for the ideas contained in this Bill.
UHI OPPORTUNITY
The creation of a new university campus in Inverness offers a huge opportunity for Inverness to obtain state of the art facilities that will be the best in the country. So the coalition of swimming clubs and parents now pushing for a 50 metre pool to be included in the plans have exactly the right idea and I hope their proposal will be included in the finalised plan.
A 50 metre pool would be a wonderful facility for the next generation of swimmers in the Highlands, offering the opportunity to train and compete at the very highest standards.For UHI too, it would be another added attraction to draw students from across the country. The opportunity to develop a university campus comes only once, but the choices made now will be felt for generations to come. Faint hearts at this point will miss an opportunity for a generation. Now is the time to be ambitious and bold.
Posted on: 24/03/2009
