Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:41 pm on 24 January 2023.
In this very cold weather, I just wanted to highlight the situation of a constituent of mine whose boiler has broken down: a family of four with two disabled children, they absolutely don't have the money to replace this boiler, with a combined income of £19,000 and two disabled children. So, they've no savings to fall back on and Nest has told them that they can't help them, because he uses his home as his business address. So, if he'd been a mobile hairdresser, apparently he could have got help, but because he's a mobile IT engineer, who does a small part of his work remotely, helping his clients get their IT systems back up and running again, and only part of his work is done in people's offices and homes, they've told him he's not eligible. So, I wondered if we could have statement from the Minister for Climate Change regarding the decision-making processes that Nest is supposed to adhere to, because there seem to be some huge anomalies here, which don't keep up with the fact that people often work remotely, as we do occasionally. And also, when can we see light of day on the new Warm Homes programme, which might be the best and most elegant way of rectifying this anomalous situation for really desperate people?