Diolch yn fawr. This debate on fuel poverty and the Warm Homes programme I hope will be useful to all Members, as this is something that I know all our constituents are extremely worried about. The committee started this inquiry in the spring of this year, when energy prices were a third of what they are today. And Wales is particularly vulnerable to this unprecedented hike. Wales has some of the oldest housing stock in Europe. Inadequately insulated homes, concentrated mainly in the private sector, either owner-occupied or private rented, cost a disproportionate amount to heat and rely on carbon-emitting energy sources. The UK overall is bottom of the European league table for homes insulation. UK houses lose an average of 3 degrees Celsius of indoor heat after five hours, three times faster than in Germany. And even southern European countries like Italy and Spain, who don't experience our cold and prolonged winters, have homes that are, on average, twice as well insulated as UK homes. This is shocking indeed. 

Over 20 years ago, the warm homes Act set out to improve the energy efficiency of Welsh homes and eliminate fuel poverty. A combination of flawed policy making, inadequate regulations and upheavals in world energy markets means that not only are we are a long way off achieving that aim, the situation is now acutely critical. As a result of the April price cap rise, the Welsh Government has estimated over 600,000 households, or 45 per cent of all households, are living or will be living in fuel poverty in Wales as soon as winter starts. Presumably—matters have got worse since then—that is now the fate of the majority of households in Wales. The most vulnerable are those who face the grim choice between eating or heating. As set out in this report, Government action on an unprecedented scale is urgently needed. 

I would like to thank all the people who were involved in making this inquiry report, all the stakeholders and policy experts who gave formal evidence, the members of the public who spoke to us about their personal experiences of the issues we are covering in the report, and the committee clerks and research staff who supported our inquiry, as well as the auditor general and his team at Audit Wales for their meticulous audit of the Warm Homes programme, which was published in November last year. 

Gas used to be considered an effective and relatively cheap way of heating our homes. That was until gas started being used to fire up power stations as an alternative to coal, and this, combined with the fallout from the war in Ukraine, have put rocket boosters under market prices. This turmoil has created such an unprecedented crisis for households this winter. The National Institute of Economic and Social Research says these rises will hit the poorest households in Wales harder than any other UK nation or region. And some households spend over a quarter—26 per cent—of their income on energy and food, both of which have experienced massive inflation. For these people, as the NIESR points out presciently, neither wage growth nor welfare benefits will compensate for this fast rise in inflation.