Joe Morris

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. I commend the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) for securing such an important and timely debate. It is a pleasure, as always, to stand alongside my hon. Friend the Member for North Northumberland (David Smith), as well. I want to start by speaking about a family who work four jobs between them, a tenant who cannot insulate her own home because she does not own it, two pensioners who do not qualify for further support, and a full-time worker on a modest salary. In rural communities, those are the people who are used to falling through the cracks and who are used to the system simply not working for them. I have limited time, so I want to focus on what I would like to see the Government do: that is, to consider rural communities when making policy. For far too long, possibly because of the complacency with which some of these communities were represented by their constituency MPs in the past, rural areas were not particularly advocated for. I urge the Minister to consider in particular the importance of protecting those consumers and of doing what the Conservatives never did in government: to look at fixing the roof while we can. We must fix things before the crisis occurs and a time-sensitive decision is needed. I want to praise the Government for seeing a problem and taking swift and immediate action. When the missiles started flying in the strait of Hormuz, it was a matter of days rather than months before money was committed, but the Government need to think about future crises and what we can do to avert them. I welcome the points made by colleagues on decarbonising houses. It is an open question. I urge the Minister to find ways to support rural households, as well as the businesses and community spaces that communities rely on. They might be off grid, but they must not be shut out.