Sarah Dyke

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this afternoon, Mrs Barker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) on securing this debate and on his tireless work on behalf of the off-grid households in his constituency. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken today. The issue is not just a highlands problem, or even a Somerset problem. It is a problem for all rural households across the UK. Around 1.4 million homes are off the gas grid, and many of them have no choice but to heat their homes with oil. The war in Iran and Donald Trump’s reckless trade wars have sent shock after shock through global energy markets. This week, at the mid-term elections, the American people rejected the politics of division and voted for hope. They also rejected a President whose answer to every energy question is, “Drill, baby, drill”, and who pulled America out of the Paris climate agreement. But a weakened President is not a more predictable one and rural households here are still desperately exposed. Since the war in Iran began, the price of heating oil has risen by around 80%, and yet not one of the 1.4 million households is protected by Ofgem’s energy price cap. The result is a two-tier energy system: one set of rules for homes on the gas grid and another for rural Britain. Behind the figures are real families facing a very difficult winter. A household on mains gas pays as it goes, protected by a price cap with a regulator to turn to. A household on heating oil has none of that. They have to pay in bulk, often many hundreds of pounds in a single bill just as winter sets in, so families are forced to make impossible choices. They heat one room and close off the rest. They go to bed early just to keep warm, or they put off ordering and run the risk of their tank running dry. Too often rural Britain is an afterthought when policy is made, and heating oil is yet another example of that. Phil and Jenny, who live in North Barrow, paid 77p a litre in February. They are now paying nearly double that and cannot afford to heat their home this winter. The Government have announced three measures on energy costs. Not one of them properly reaches a home like theirs. The first is removing unfair standing charges; that is the right thing to do, but it does nothing about the cost of heating oil. The second is removing tariffs on kerosene. Again, that is welcome, but the UK trade policy observatory at the University of Sussex has found that 83% of kerosene imports already come into Britain tariff-free. So, I ask the Minister: will she publish the Department’s own estimate of how much this tariff cut will save a rural household? The third measure is the £100 rebate that was announced last week. Any help is welcome, but will rural households actually get it? Oil-heated homes tend to be bigger, older and harder to heat, and many fall outside the scope of the rebate altogether. How many households that are reliant on heating oil does the Minister expect will receive the rebate? This is a two-tier system, so will the Minister commit that every future energy support scheme is properly rural-proofed, with a published assessment of how many off-grid homes it will reach? My constituent Jill is a pensioner who lives in Horsington. She is the legal guardian of her grand-daughter and, apart from child benefit, she receives absolutely no help at all. She wrote to me recently to tell me that she cannot afford to fill her oil tank, so her grand-daughter will be coming home from school to a cold house. Following pressure from the Liberal Democrats, and from many other hon. and right hon. Members present, £53 million of support was made available in March. However, that equates to about £35 per home, so that support was really limited, and delivery through local councils has created a postcode lottery for rural households. Will the Minister publish details about how much of that £53 million has been spent and by which councils? Will any unspent money be topped up and reallocated before the coldest months arrive? Heating oil is only one part of a wider cost of living crisis in the countryside. The rural premium means that rural households spend 10% to 20% more on everyday essentials. With few buses and longer journeys in rural areas, a car is not a luxury; it is a lifeline. Rural households already face a fuel poverty gap of £987 compared with households in towns and cities. Many rural communities have found their own way to fight back, through oil clubs and consortia. Across the Glastonbury and Somerton constituency, oil-buying clubs are a lifeline for rural communities. By clubbing together and placing one combined order, they secure customers a better price and a more reliable service, and in addition fewer tankers need to travel along our rural lanes. However, that only works if suppliers honour the price they quote. When the war in Iran began, some suppliers refused to honour quoted prices or to quote a price at all, so oil clubs were forced to suspend trading just when households needed them most. The Competition and Markets Authority found that around 1,700 customers had orders cancelled, and many were forced to reorder at higher prices or simply go without. I welcome the Government’s decision to accept the CMA’s recommendations: a code of conduct now and a new regulatory regime to follow. However, will the Minister set out a clear timescale, so that rural families and oil clubs are protected this winter, not next winter? I believe the CMA got one thing badly wrong: its decision not to recommend a price cap. It argued that a cap could reduce competition, but in too many rural areas there is very little competition to protect. On the Isle of Wight, for example, households have just one supplier. Where there is no competition, a price cap does not damage the market; it protects the consumer. Will the Minister commit to zero-rating VAT on heating oil for three months and to a price cap mechanism that protects off-grid homes this winter? Emergency support must get families through this winter, but without urgent action on how rural homes are heated, we will be debating this same crisis every winter, and rural families will keep paying the price. As long as our rural homes depend on imported oil, they will be at the mercy of global events, whether that is the war in the middle east or the decisions of a volatile President, which can drive up the price of filling an oil tank in Somerset overnight. Energy security is national security, which means speeding up the transition to renewable energy—the cheapest and cleanest new power, which is generated right here in Britain. For rural households, it means an affordable way of getting off heating oil, but by July, the warm homes local grant had upgraded just 5,470 homes—0.1% of its target. Yet last week’s Budget cut £1 billion from warm homes plan grants. The Liberal Democrats would instead deliver a 10-year emergency home upgrades programme, starting with free insulation for low-income households. Will the Minister ensure that the new home energy model properly reflects older, off-grid rural homes, so that they are not wrongly assessed and shut out of support? In an unstable world, rural households face a cost of living crisis, and they cannot be treated as second tier again this winter. I have three asks of the Minister. First, will she publish the figures on what the tariff cut will really save rural households? Secondly, will she zero-rate VAT on heating oil for three months and introduce a price cap mechanism for off-grid homes this winter? Thirdly, will she reverse the cuts to the warm homes plan and give rural households an affordable route off heating oil? Rural Britain has been an afterthought for far too long this winter. The Government have a choice: stand with rural households or leave them out in the cold.