Fuel Poverty - The Moral Maze

I note with interest that the topic for this week’s Moral Maze programme on Radio 4 is the moral responsibility of energy companies not to squeeze us dry. I must be one of the only people to have recently received a hefty rebate from my energy supplier, EDF, for which I am very grateful. The reason for this is that unlike the last two years when I had a lodger living with me, I am now living alone again, and on an average day I leave home before 8am, frequently not returning until after 10pm, so my energy usage is minimal. Whilst having someone living with me they were at home all day using heating, lights, cooker, washing machine etc., as I expect are many of those who are either at home with young children, retired, in poor health or unemployed. Having recently experienced some very hard financial times myself, I am very frugal about my energy use, particularly as I have a flat in a listed building with electricity being the sole source of available energy, an immersion heater for hot water, wretched night storage heaters, 12 foot high ceilings, and no double glazing. 

My own solution is to spend what little time I am at home in bed with the electric blanket and the hot water bottle, with heavy curtains and shutters closed permanently from November until Easter. It’s like living in the twilight zone. However, I am fortunate in that I don’t have to consider others and can choose how I spend my hard earned money. If it’s a choice between heating, when an extra jumper would do, or a visit to the local pub for a meal, I know where my priorities lie. No wonder my friends won’t come and visit in the winter. What is at stake here is the issue of multi-national companies making huge profits at the expense of consumers. Much has been said about the benefits of switching, but this is something I have never considered, much preferring the reliability of a supplier that I can trust that provides good customer service; one of the reasons I still use BT, and am loyal to my mobile ‘phone company.  Most people on tight budgets do not have a choice as more and more of their income is spent on energy. 

As a councillor, I have been asked to help sort out the mess in the wake of constituents switching to dubious companies, just for a cheap quick fix that often goes sadly wrong. To an extent it is understandable that companies will seek to increase prices when their own expenses go up, but there is little evidence that these are reduced when the reverse happens. In the current economic climate local government and the NHS are suffering severe cut backs and expected to provide the same level of service with much less money; achieved either by redundancies or looking at different, more efficient, ways of working. Whilst energy companies seem to have carte blanche to increase prices at will there is no incentive for them to put their houses in order. I can appreciate that there is not necessarily the case for energy companies to operate within a tight moral framework, but we are increasingly expecting other sectors of the economy to behave in this way, so why should they be the exception?  

I await, with no great level of satisfaction, the news of the first death this winter of an elderly, frail person who couldn’t afford to heat their home.