Interview: Laura Sandys MP

“Consumers are absolutely smart – they are really smart – it is just that the sector needs to smarten up to match the consumers.”

The Conservative Party – for all its pre-election talk about its green ambitions (who can forget David Cameron’s hug-a-husky trip to the Arctic?) – has not come across as the most pro-green political party since it became the senior partner in the coalition.

Laura Sandys is one of the party’s few champions of “green Conservatism” and she has been making an impact. She has presided over the opening of what was at the time the largest offshore windfarm in the world, the Thanet Offshore windfarm operated by Vattenfall, just off the Kent coast.

Sandys is not only a proponent of windfarms – on and offshore – she is also an advocate of the green economy and a member of the 2020 group, which has called for the Tories to make the green agenda central to its 2015 general election manifesto.

But Sandys will not be there to usher in what she hopes will be a majority Conservative government with the green economy at its heart. In November, the Thanet South MP announced that she would not stand for re-election on 7 May 2015, and at the beginning of January, she stood down as parliamentary private secretary to her fellow green conservative, climate change minister Greg Barker.

“It’s very sad in many ways,” she says, speaking to Utility Week in an exclusive interview. “But it’s one of those things where you need to make some decisions and I’m not sure people realise I have to make a decision  –not about 2015, but about 2020 – so it’s seven years.

“I need to ensure I have a little bit more flexibility – not more time – but more flexibility to deal with problems. It’s about balancing my work and personal life.”

But will Sandys’ looming departure from mainstream politics weaken the green conservative cause?
She assures me that won’t be the case, and that the image of the Conservatives in relation to environmental issues is “a very black and white perception from the outside”.

“Within the party, I think there is a strong sense to renew the economy and try to reduce the volatility that imported fossil fuels create,” she says. “I believe there is a clear majority in the party that are very concerned about climate change.”

However, there is one central issue that even the greenest of green Tories has to be aware of – the cost of living – and that is an area where the party appears to have a more united front.

“We as Conservatives are united in ensuring the best value is there for the consumers,” Sandys tells me with confidence. Her pre-Westminster role with consumer watchdog Which? lends her some extra authority.

“We are very, very keen that the best value is delivered in terms of greening the economy and decarbonising.”

Achieving the best value for consumers and ensuring they do not waste money – or energy – is something Sandys insists the government is pushing forward, despite the changes to the Energy Company Obligation (Eco), which many believe is a cut or significant scaling back of the scheme.

She says the impact of the Eco has been “smoothed out” and it now targets the poorest households and those with the highest energy bills.

But Sandys does believe more can and should be done under Eco.
“I do wish local authorities would absolutely get on board with the project and really start embracing the opportunities that Eco offers there,” she says.

“From my point of view, I had a very difficult time getting my local authority on board. It just doesn’t seem to be a priority.
“For me, it was the biggest priority that families this winter would not have to suffer in the cold, or that they were being charged much more than they needed to be [for their energy].

“I was absolutely furious and I feel that local authorities needed to really get on to the fuel poverty project and look at this Eco issue as an opportunity to renew their housing stock.”

With Sandys’ concern about how much people are paying for their energy, the discussion quickly turns to Labour’s plans for the energy market – the proposed price freeze. Not only does Sandys oppose the plans, she strongly rejects them, claiming they are “totally pointless”.

“First, it is going to kill the competitors – the new, young companies coming in with innovative packages that are really offering a consumer-facing product. Kill them.

“Second, it’s not going to happen because the bill will not be affected – the energy companies will put their bills up before or after [the freeze].

“Third, it destabilises the whole sector. What we want to do is reduce the overall bill by getting people to be more energy efficient, being really engaged with products that actually mean something.”

For Sandys, this does not mean a 1970s-style energy market where the same product is continually offered to consumers in the same way as it always has been. She says dumb meters and estimated bills are the key culprits when customers become disengaged from their energy suppliers.

She tells me it is not the consumer that must be educated about the energy sector, but the other way around.
“Consumers are absolutely smart – they are really smart – it is just that the sector needs to smarten up to match the consumers.”

Smart meters can be a big step in the right direction, Sandys adds, as long as suppliers use the technology in the right way to make life easier and better for the customer.

“We need to ensure they are very smart and not reliant on consumers becoming electrical engineers.

“Sometimes you hear from people in the smart meter sector that what we need is a huge awareness campaign about what a smart meter is. I think it is incumbent on the smart meter that the consumer doesn’t need to spend any time learning what it is,” she says.
This could be achieved by, for example, letting the meter tell householders how warm their rooms should be (18-20°C) and that the heating controls should be adjusted when the clocks change.

It is this innovation and introduction of “simplistic things” that Sandys believes can help.

One thing she believes has not been helpful in the cost of living debate has been the talk of the cost of energy.

“I sort of regret that people have been talking about the price of energy over the past few months; I wish we had spent as much time explaining to the public about energy efficiency as we did about the cost of a unit of energy.

“The cost of a unit of energy is not really the point. The point is what the bill is at the end of a quarter, and that is what is frightening people.”

In the past 16 months in the job, Sandys believes she has helped the government to make a difference, even though she admits there are still quite a few things on her to-do list.

“I want consumers to be the drivers of markets – I feel very strongly about that,” she says. “Without that, we’re going to find ourselves very much captured by large corporates – and that is not the place to help develop markets.”