Diolch yn fawr, Jack Sargeant, and thank you for consistently raising this issue in terms of the injustice of the pre-payment meter arrangements. Members will want to be reminded, I’m sure, that approximately 200,000 households in Wales rely on pre-payment meters for their mains gas and electricity—that’s about 15 per cent of all households. Twenty-four per cent of tenants in the private rented sector use pre-payment meters and almost half of our social housing tenants rely on pre-payment meters. Those are the hardest hit by the increase in the standing charges being applied to household bills from April. In fact, the highest increase in Britain was in north Wales—up to 102 per cent—and I know that’s when, Jack Sargeant, you raised this, and that was when we forged a partnership with the Fuel Bank Foundation. In fact, it was at the Wrexham foodbank that I visited and made that announcement last year, where some foodbanks had already been raising their own funds to provide these pre-payment fuel vouchers. It has a disproportionately negative impact on low-income households for those on pre-payment meters.

Now, I have said that I’ve met with—and my written statement last week shows that I’ve met with—energy suppliers, and I have had some assurances that households are not moved onto pre-payment meters when in arrears. I’ve made it absolutely clear that they should remove standing charges for pre-payment customers, and that’s what we’re working with them to explore—what more can be done. But I’ve been assured by energy suppliers that people won’t be moved onto pre-payment meters against their will, but we know that’s happening—particularly to those already on a smart meter. I’m deeply concerned to hear that 64 per cent of smart meter users were switched to the more expensive pre-payment devices in the first half of last year, so I'm going to raise that again with energy providers on 23 January. But also, Ofgem, it's crucially important that they recognise this, and we've got meetings, actually, with Ofgem. I've had meetings; my colleague Julie James meets with Ofgem regularly, and there's a meeting this afternoon. I've asked officials to raise the issue of people being forced onto pre-payment meters against their will in this meeting with Ofgem.