The Cost of Living

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 22 March 2022.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:16, 22 March 2022

Well, Llywydd, I thank Ken Skates for that powerful additional question. Of course, he is right: in the spring statement tomorrow, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has an opportunity to do those practical things that would make the biggest difference in the lives of those people who need that help the most. My colleagues Jane Hutt and Julie James wrote, together, to the Secretary of State at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy back on 11 January, with six different practical actions that the UK Government could take that would lead immediately to relief for people who face the greatest challenge.

But, Llywydd, Ken Skates has identified, to my mind, one of the most concerning sub-groups within that population: people who rely on prepayment meters for their energy supply. The latest figures that I have suggest that prepayment-meter users will be spending £10 every day to top up their meter. If you're a single person living on benefits, you have £77.29 for the whole of the week for absolutely everything. So, they will not be paying £10 a day, they will be going without. That is the only way that they will be able to manage. Their bills will be rising from £1,309 currently to £2,017 after April.

And I'm afraid the answer to Ken Skates's question is that there are no figures kept of people who self-disconnect. For far too long, the energy companies have sheltered behind the comfortable fiction that people reliant on prepayment meters choose to disconnect, whereas we know perfectly well that it's the only way in which they are able to manage. And people face a very, very bleak winter in those circumstances.

Llywydd, some years ago, when I was involved in some university research on this matter, I was involved with the Fire Brigades Union, which published a report into child death numbers—child deaths caused by people forced to self-disconnect because they couldn't feed the meter, who used candles in bedrooms, where curtains caught fire and children died. You know, that is the circumstances in which many families in Wales will find themselves again after next month. If there's anything more urgent on the Chancellor's table, it's hard to imagine what it could be than making sure there is proper help for families facing those very, very bleak choices.