Coutinho looking at ‘flexible’ Warm Homes Discount

Energy secretary Claire Coutinho has revealed that she is interested in tackling bills affordability problems through the Warm Homes Discount (WHD) scheme.

Chancellor of the exchequer Jeremy Hunt pledged in last year’s Autumn Statement that the government would introduce a new framework for protecting vulnerable energy consumer by next April. However the government has yet to outline how this proposed framework will work.

Coutinho, who was appointed as secretary of state for energy security and net zero in September, was quizzed about whether she supports the introduction of a social tariff when appearing before a House of Commons select committee this (Wednesday) afternoon.

After outlining the broad measures that the government is using to help hard-up households, including top-up winter benefits payments, Coutinho highlighted the “targeted” energy bills support available through schemes including the WHD.

The government widened eligibility for the WHD, under which suppliers offer low-income customers an automatic £150 cold weather energy bill rebate, as part of its response to last winter’s energy bills crisis.

Coutinho told the energy security and net zero committee that she is interested in a flexible WHD “partly because it targets people who are on low incomes who also have high energy costs.”

The energy security secretary also rejected a blanket ban on forced pre-payment meter (PPM) installations because otherwise all customers could end up paying for the bad debts of some non-vulnerable customers.

She said: “Across the board if you are not in a vulnerable household and running into bad debt that needs to be addressed because otherwise that debt will be passed onto every other customer.”

While stressing she is particularly concerned to ensure support measures are available to protect vulnerable households and help stop customers getting behind on their payments, Coutinho said: “I wouldn’t ban them (PPMs) unless we have a way to make sure that bad debts cannot accrue across the piece.

“It is really important that bad debts aren’t left to accrue because otherwise other energy customers will pay.”

But Coutinho also described the practices surrounding forced installations of PPMs, highlighted in a Times newspaper investigation earlier this year, as “abhorrent” and the kind of activity “we would never want to see again”.

Last week, she wrote to Scottish Power following fresh revelations that it has obtained court orders to install PPMs in the homes of vulnerable customers.

The minister also told the committee that there has been a “threefold” increase in applications for the government’s Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) since the ceiling on grants was recently increased from £5,000 to £7,500.

Utility Week recently reported that applications for BUS vouchers dipped following prime minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement that the grants for households replacing boilers with heat pumps would be hiked.

Coutinho also responded to committee members’ concerns that the government has increased the level of grants without increasing the overall budget for the BUS.

Coutinho told the committee that the scheme’s £450 million budget had been heading for a “considerable” underspend before the recent hike was announced, which the government was now hoping to avoid thanks to “increased uptake” of grants.

And she defended the government against accusations of hypocrisy after Sunak said he was seeking increased scrutiny of decision making around net zero in a speech on the day after the House of Commons broke up for the party conferences.

Coutinho said there has been a “significant amount of scrutiny” of the announcement, adding that she had given a statement at the earliest opportunity to the House of Commons.

Responding to committee members’ concerns that Sunak’s announcement had watered down the government’s efforts to achieve net zero, Coutinho said the UK is still far ahead of its international peer countries.

She insisted that the issue of climate change is “critically important to me and the government”.

On whether hydrogen should be used for home heating, Coutinho told the committee that the extent of the UK’s gas network means it is “worth looking at as option”. She also said that any biomass used to generate electricity should be “genuinely net zero”.