Crispin Blunt

Conservative Party | Reigate

Energy Bill (Lords)

Mr. Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con): While the right hon. Lady is making clear the value of the competitive market, will she also tell us that that competitive market has lifted far more people out of fuel poverty than her Warm Front initiative?

Ms Hewitt: The significant fall in electricity prices resulting from our reforms of the previously rigged market have indeed helped many low-income households out of fuel poverty, as have the substantial improvements in low-income families' incomes resulting directly from benefit improvements and the tax credits introduced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. All that is in addition to the Warm Front programme.

Let us consider what happened last winter. The House will remember that at the beginning of the winter, just before Christmas and subsequently, we continually heard from various prophets of doom that there would be a winter of black-outs. [Interruption.] No, we did not hear that from the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Mr. O'Brien), but we heard it from many people who were extensively quoted in the press.

What actually happened was that early in the winter, National Grid Transco signalled its prediction of the plant margin that might be available. The result of that clear information was that generators brought mothballed plant back, in response both to the NGT signals and to rising prices. Capacity increased, the lights stayed on and the scaremongers were proved wrong.