Dan Jarvis: United strategy to tackle moral tragedy of fuel poverty

WINTER is creeping up on us. So too is the spectre of people dying because they are cold. These aren’t people sleeping rough on the streets but ordinary residents, living in normal homes, with access to heating. It seems a ridiculous notion. But every winter in the UK, thousands of people – particularly the elderly – die as a result of plummeting temperatures and soaring heating bills: 24,000 people in 2011-12 alone.

Here in Barnsley, we have one of the highest rates of fuel poverty in the region and, on average, 116 excess winter deaths every year. That’s 116 too many.

In a country that, despite all our economic difficulties, is still the seventh richest in the world, this is a moral tragedy.

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It is also bad for our economy. The former Chief Medical Officer, Liam Donaldson, estimated that cold homes cost the NHS £850m every year.

However, countries that suffer more severe winters than us have fewer excess winter deaths. Finland, for example, experiences Arctic winters but has the lowest rate of excess winter death in Europe.

These deaths are not inevitable so we must work to combat them.

So, what can we do about it?

Well, no one can have missed Ed Miliband’s announcement that the next Labour government would freeze energy prices until the start of 2017.

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Despite the hysterical wails of protest from the energy companies and threats of power black-outs, this proposal will save a typical household £120 a year. Some of the big energy companies are already offering frozen deals until 2017 to some of their customers – so it must be possible.

A sustainable solution to fuel poverty will require innovative reforms of the energy market.

We need to break the stranglehold of the ‘big six’ companies who control 98 per cent of the market, to create real competition.

Labour proposes a simple solution: to create a pool, into which all generators would be required to sell their energy, and from which all suppliers would be required to purchase their energy. Consumers would then be able to see the true price of energy and whether a fall in prices is actually passed on.

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Energy efficiency is also key. The Government’s flagship programme, the Green Deal, was heralded as potentially insulating 3.5 million homes. But eight months into this programme, fewer than 150 people have signed up. But 58,000 people have had assessments. So, 99 per cent of those who are interested in signing up have decided that the Green Deal is not a good deal.

We also need to create a new and more powerful energy regulator to replace Ofgem. Finally, the Labour Party has proposed that anyone over the age of 75 should automatically be put on the lowest tariff.

There are steps we can take locally as well as nationally. For the past two winters, Barnsley has distributed 4,000 Winter Survival Kits, half of which went to elderly people and over 1,000 of which were baby packs.

It also funded training for frontline professionals to quickly identify cold homes when working out in the community; and provided training for residents to help with money management. Funding has also been provided to help the local Citizens’ Advice Bureau deal with fuel debt – a growing area of work for them.

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But we need to go further. We need a sustainable strategy that is not dependent on government grants. I believe that the new Director of Public Health is best placed to provide co-ordination in Barnsley between the local authority, the clinical commissioning group and the hospital – as well as drawing in the local charities and their vital knowledge of the communities involved.

Last Friday I spoke at an event organised by Barnsley Council which brought together many of these key groups.

By holding this event, we were recognising the scale of the challenge we face here in Barnsley. And there was no shame in saying that the scale is so immense that no one organisation or agency can tackle it alone.

But let’s be honest – 116 deaths is totally unacceptable. That is why I issued a direct challenge to the whole of the town: ‘Let’s do what Barnsley does best – let’s pull together and work as a town to look after our own – and try to ensure that no one dies because of the cold this coming winter’.

Dan Jarvis is the Labour MP for Barnsley Central.