Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:09 pm on 8 February 2023.
Well, I'd like to thank Jack Sargeant for his relentless and effective campaign on what are the prepayment meter scandals that have emerged over recent weeks. You have raised this consistently over the past year and helped to expose it, for us and for the Welsh Government to respond, and indeed the whole Senedd and our fuel poverty cross-party group, which Mark Isherwood chairs, and I assure you that this is at the forefront of my agenda at the moment as Minister for Social Justice, to address this shocking scandal.
So, in recent correspondence and contact with the UK Government and Ofgem, including a meeting that I held with the Ofgem board this morning that happened to be in Cardiff, I've stressed the need for energy suppliers to not only stop forced installation, but also to revert any prepayment meters that have been recently fitted, and I continue to seek that meeting with the Secretary of State to make clear the urgency of this call. I have had a response from the energy Minister, and I'm happy to share that with colleagues in the Chamber in the Senedd today.
The existing rules, of course, were intended to protect the most vulnerable in our society, but they have not worked. They're clearly not working as intended, and we have to look at that. So, I did ask that question of the Ofgem board today. They have got to regulate the industry effectively, and in my meeting with them, with the chair and board of Ofgem this morning, I did say to them: are they making effective use of their existing powers as regulator? Are they using those powers? Are they sufficient to effectively regulate the sector? Do we need strengthened legislation? What can we do in terms of further powers needed to regulate the sector? And also, in their response, I will share with the Senedd today that they said that they've launched a robust investigation into the activities of British Gas, the debt collector collecting agency that they were using, and they're looking internally at their compliance activities. They did say that they're using all their current powers to full force, but obviously we need to hear from them, and I think it's due within the next couple of weeks, the outcome of that investigation.
Just finally, on your point about water, heat and power are vital services for our households. As with water, energy supply companies should not be simply able to disconnect users, and I'm going to raise this particular point, as I did today with Ofgem, with the UK Government.