Dr Ellie Chowns

I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this crucial issue tonight. I hope to bring to the House the voices of people in my constituency, of campaigners across the country, and of the many families who wake up each morning wondering, “How will we keep our children warm this winter? How will we keep our grandparents warm?” Those are questions that nobody should have to ask. The Government have committed £13.2 billion to the warm homes plan, which is welcome. It was very strongly implied that this would be £13.2 billion of additional funding, but there are rumours that the Chancellor is considering scaling back the energy company obligation and paying for it with the warm homes plan funding. That would mean that the Government were, in reality, reducing the amount of money spent on retrofit. If that is the case, it is extremely disappointing—and that is the understatement of the year. I am really disappointed that the warm homes plan, which was due to have come forward quite some time ago, has been delayed and delayed. We now find that there is perhaps a Government plan to reassign some of the funding in a way that would fly entirely in the face of the intended purposes of the warm homes plan, and in the face of what we need to do: upgrade our homes so that everybody can live in a warm home that is affordable to heat. Fuel poverty is an absolute scandal in our country, and we simply cannot let a long-term programme be cannibalised to produce a short-term headline. The rescue mission that our housing stock needs will not survive being hollowed out further by short-term tinkering in the Treasury. We already know the shocking scale of fuel poverty in this country. The Government’s own figures show that nearly 3 million households in England were fuel-poor in 2024.