This is what I plan to say in today’s Opposition Day Debate on an energy price freeze:

One point six million of the UK’s children are growing up in a cold home.

Each winter four times as many people are killed by fuel poverty than on Britain’s roads.

Fuel poverty-related illnesses cost the NHS over £1bn every year.

Britain has a higher number of people struggling to pay their energy bills than every other European country -apart from Estonia

Mr Speaker, there are few who’d deny we have an energy bill crisis and with the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group now warning that fuel poverty affects 6 million households, Big 6 profits are deeply offensive.

Between 2008 and 2010 their profits doubled to £4.6 billion.[1]

Last year, Centrica alone made nearly £1.3 billion in profits, no doubt benefitting  in a range of ways from secondments into DECC and from boss Sam Laidlaw’s influence as a former member of the Prime Minister’s Business Advisory Group.

That’s just one example of the revolving door between the big fossil fuel companies and Whitehall that was similarly well-oiled under the previous government too.

View on price freeze

In this context, a temporary bill freeze would be welcome respite from price hikes, which the government’s independent expert advises at the Committee on Climate Change have reminded us again are, “mainly due to increases in the price of gas”.

I called for a price cap  - alongside a windfall tax on big six profits and a public inquiry - almost 2 years ago, including in a Westminster Hall debate in February 2012. 

Many backbench Labour MPs signed my Early Day Motion on the topic.

I support the relief that this temporary price freeze will bring, so I’ll vote in favour of this motion.

But we also need a much more ambitious, far-reaching and coherent response.

So today I hope that the opposition parties can unite behind calls for radical energy market reform too, as the only way to tackle high energy bills in a permanent way and effective measures to break the “stranglehold” of the Big Six.

As Fuel Poverty Action say: “Freezing prices at their current level won’t help the thousands of people who already die each winter due to fuel poverty: our bills are already at deadly highs.”

I want to set out 5 practical, positive and powerful policies to  tackle fuel poverty this winter, and for years to come.

Energy efficiency

First, energy efficiency.  The only permanent solution to the energy bill crisis is to make all UK homes much more energy efficient - easy and cheap to heat they effectively become fuel poverty proof.

So I am disappointed there’s zero mention of energy efficiency in the motion, especially as the Green Deal is barely scratching the surface.

Under the Energy Company Obligation, at current rates, would take about 32 years to insulate all fuel poor homes. [2]

Insulation rates are plummeting when they should be rocketing, and energy efficiency businesses – often SMEs - are struggling when they should be flourishing.

That’s why a huge coalition of organisations representing consumers, families, older people, faith groups and workers all back the Energy Bill Revolution campaign. 

This calls for the revenue from carbon taxes – which currently disappear into Treasury coffers - to be recycled into a nationwide programme to make all homes super energy-efficient – with full insulation, modern boilers, and renewable energy such as domestic PV, solar hot water, or biomass heating.

This could bring 9 out of 10 homes out of fuel poverty, lower people’s bills, deliver quadruple carbon cuts compared to current schemes, AND create 200,000 jobs. [3]

Mandatory efficiency standards are crucial too.

Some 70% of Britain's fuel poor live in properties with 'bottom of the barrel' energy efficiency ratings of E,F or G. 

A genuine 'fuel poverty' strategy must at the very least commit to lifting all these properties to band D standards by 2020, and raising the rest of our housing stock to today's 'new build' standards by 2030.

Fuel poverty target

Second, we need ambitious fuel poverty eradication targets.  Mr Speaker, I want to highlight a Coalition amendment sneaked in during committee stage of the Energy Bill in the other place.

Astonishingly Minister are trying to remove the statutory duty on Government to eradicate fuel poverty.

They’re replacing it with a vague provision to do something at some point merely to address the situation of those in fuel poverty, and all in secondary legislation thereby reducing accountability and scrutiny.

The End Fuel Poverty Coalition has only been able to find one single Peer to table an amendment that would counter the move.

It introduces energy efficiency targets in order to ensure robust action to tackle fuel poverty and hold this and future Governments to account.

As the fuel poor prepare for the onslaught of cold and avoidable winter deaths, I trust the Minister and the Opposition will rethink their position and give strong cross party support to Lord O’Neil of Clackmannan’s fuel poverty amendment when the Energy Bill returns to this House.

Renewables & decarb  - getting off fossil fuels

The independent experts at the Committee on Climate Change have confirmed that by far the greatest contributory factor to higher energy bills has been the rising price of gas.

This makes the Government’s dash for gas deeply irresponsible. It will increase our dependence on gas and higher energy bills - as well as fatally undermining our hopes of tackling climate change.

This is the third area where we need urgent action.

It also makes Labour’s position of conditional support for shale gas inconsistent with their enthusiasm for a 2030 decarbonisation target and their rhetoric on affordable energy[4].

There is an alternative to gas. Renewable energy can go hand in hand with affordable energy and can help cut our exposure to high and volatile fossil fuel prices.

In Germany increasing deployment of wind and solar power has been a

key factor in driving down wholesale electricity prices. They fell from over €80 per MWh at peak hours in 2008 to just €38 per MWh today.[5] Renewable energy now supplies 22% of Germany’s electricity demand on average.

There are no perfect models, but we should replicate the best elements of Germany’s power sector transformation.[6]

The CCC found that a virtually carbon-free power sector by 2030 would cost consumers £23 billion less than relying predominantly on gas during the 2020s.  They tell us that household energy bills risk being  £600 higher per year if the Government invests in too much gas rather than low carbon power.

Whilst fossil fuels are on an upward cost trajectory, renewable technologies, the other hand have seen dramatic price falls in the past few years. 

If we are serious about creating an affordable energy system , we should be going all out for renewables and energy efficiency [7][i]

Breaking up the big six – community energy

Fourth,  we should be much more ambitious when it comes to ending the Big 6 control over power generation and supply.

Not just regulate them better, not just erect a paper wall between their generation and supply businesses, not just require them to sell their power through a different structure.

Labour’s ‘pool’ may go some way to achieving diversity of supply but it is essentially a centralised mechanism that could stifle rather than stimulate innovation in the retail market around things like smart tariffs linked to renewable generation, because it breaks the link between the generator and the retailer across the board – not just for the big six.

Anyone serious about diversity in the energy market and cutting costs by allowing renewables to push down wholesale peak prices of power would join me in calling for renewables to be given priority access to the grid

We have an opportunity to create a radically better energy system – one where cooperative, community and independently owned local renewable energy schemes flourish, local people benefit from the energy generated. 

The Belgian co-operative Ecopower provides energy for over 30000 members. Denmark guarantees that 20% of all energy projects are open for community financing. In Germany, over half of all the installed renewable energy capacity is owned by private citizens and cooperatives. [8]

That is the sort of transformative scale of community power we should be aiming for here too – it’s where the greatest win for household and business energy bills can be secured.

Projects such as Brighton Energy Coop provide a glimpse of an incredibly positive alternative energy future, where people are active producers rather than only passive consumers.

Local entrepreneurs and residents and local authorities work together and profits are reinvested locally rather than lining the pockets of multinational shareholders. This helps reduce dependence on the big six and insulates people from exposure from high and volatile international fossil fuel prices.

Community energy should be central to the debate about energy bills.

Words alone will not deliver though. We need policies and action.

One small but rapidly growing green energy supplier explains that a big  obstacle is the contract for difference mechanisms at the heart of the Energy Bill  - which Labour and the Coalition have supported.

They state that this approach – also favoured by the big six, unsurprisingly -   risks “making our energy market more, not less, of a closed shop, particularly when it comes to medium-scale renewable generation. This is exactly the scale where new entrants are poised to take advantage of renewable technology to come into the market.”

For every community to generate its own electricity, we need a regulatory framework which allows communities to buy the electricity they generate at wholesale costs, freeing them from the rip-off retail market. 

We need a target for community energy, a requirement for the grid to give priority connection to such projects and more democratic and decentralized ownership of distribution networks.

Without such policies, no amount of pantomime outrage against the Big 6 will put us on a radically different path.

Nuclear

Finally Mr Speaker I want to mention the lavish subsidies for the new nuclear power station at Hinkley. 

The rate of return on investment reportedly given to EDF is a whopping 10%.

10% profits, guaranteed for decades, going from our constituents, to EDF  - one of the big six.[9]

Why is it acceptable for UK bill payers to be fleeced in order to provide a rate of return to EDF double that which Ministers sees fit for renewable project – schemes that could be owned by communities themselves.

Let’s not forget, Hinkley won’t boil a kettle until the early 2020s at best – by when many renewable energy technologies will be a much better deal when it comes to keeping energy costs down.

Indeed some already are cheaper than nuclear.[10]

Consumer futures said that the Hinkley deal “moves the risks of future variations in wholesale prices from investors onto consumers, will likely see household bills increase and will distort future investment in electricity generation.”

And that “Consumers will again feel that the energy market is stacked against them.”

Labour and Coalition support for new nuclear flies in the face of everything they say about affordable energy and the cost of living.

To conclude Mr Speaker, I welcome the greater focus on the problem of high energy bills that we have seen over recent months, but I regret that most solutions put forward do not properly address the root causes of fuel poverty and high energy costs.

A fundamental shift should be at the heart of energy market reform today  – rather than a tinkering round the edges of a system that keeps the Big 6 in power and far too many people in fuel poverty.