Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 20 October 2021.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 1:37, 20 October 2021

I thank Mark Isherwood for that question, and I do look forward to attending the cross-party group on fuel poverty. Clearly, this has to be addressed in a cross-Government way, so working very closely with the Minister for Climate Change, Julie James, and appreciating it from her perspective as being responsible for housing and tackling climate change. So, working together, particularly in relation to tackling fuel poverty, we did publish the plan to tackle fuel poverty in March of this year. We had a public consultation and, of course, many responses from those who will, I'm sure, be attending the cross-party group. But I think it's important just to outline—and this, obviously, alongside my colleague Julie James—our targets. And they are targets that, over the next 15 years, no household is estimated to be living in severe or persistent fuel poverty; no more than 5 per cent of households are estimated to be living in fuel poverty at any one time; and that we should look to the number of households that are at risk of falling into fuel poverty, and they should be halved, by more than 50 per cent, based on the 2018 assessment. What's crucial is that we need to make sure that 155,000 homes—that's 12 per cent of homes in Wales—have safe and comfortable home environments, and that's where our close working is so critically important.