Debate contribution: Fuel Poverty
Debate contribution by Mr Paul Frew on .
- MLA
- Mr Paul Frew
- Party at the time
- Democratic Unionist Party
- Date
- 16 April 2024
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Opposition Business
- Heading
- Fuel Poverty
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4483748
Read the official Assembly record
Text
I have listened to the debate intently in the Chamber or up in my room when I was having to make calls. Everyone here knows of my interest in energy, so fuel poverty is a natural progression of that.
I agree that more can be done to prevent fuel poverty and to lift people out of it, but we are in danger of looking in the wrong places and of tackling the issue in the wrong ways. We could miss tricks that we should adopt but do not because we go down a certain path.
It interests me that the first line of the motion talks about the 290 souls lost every year in winter, yet from March 2022 to March 2023, there were over 1,000 excess deaths in this country, and no one wants to talk about those people. They died over the summer. In this rolling year of 52 weeks, 766 souls were lost. No one wants to join me in asking for an investigation of why people are dying needlessly. It is as if Members do not want to know or those people are not really dying. Why is that the case? There is no doubt that we need a fuel poverty strategy, and one that is updated and fit for purpose. I look, however, at what the Opposition want to see in such a strategy and see that they list a menu in the motion. We can all call for a task force, but surely we have enough expertise in bodies that are already in situ to deal with some of the issues. If the Minister establishes a task force, all well and good, but it will probably produce a report with ingredients that we already know about. I am very interested in having a cap on energy prices. Northern Ireland suffers from having one of the highest levels of electricity costs in the whole of Europe for businesses and manufacturers. We compete with Italy, so our costs are either the highest or second highest. Sometimes we beat Italy, while sometimes it beats us. Our domestic situation is not as bad, but that is to do with the way in which we have worked out the tariff. It is the opposite down South, by the way. There, the domestic customer pays more, while businesses are subsidised. It is a similar situation in Germany. The European Union has taken both states to court because of the way in which they configure prices. My question is simply this: if we impose a cap on energy prices, who pays the difference? Energy prices do not come down that way. Rather, it just means that someone else pays. Who pays, if it is not the customer or the consumer?
Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful for that clarification. There are a number of things in there, so let me pick the bones out of what the Member said. We have a fairly small number of people who generate electricity in this country and then distribute it. It is not the same in England, where there are countless such businesses. What has happened there is that, when a cap is set, it is like a speed limit, with everybody racing to get up to that speed. They do not go slower or lower. Rather, they all go up to that target. When, inevitably, companies have to push through the cap, some go to the wall. Companies in England can afford to do that, but we cannot afford to have more companies go to the wall in Northern Ireland. Our market is too limited.
Yes.
I thank the Member for his intervention. That is a different thing. Wealth tax is different from a price cap. We should never, ever distort the two. If you do not distinguish between the two, you will only bring more pain to the taxpayer. One of the big things that the Assembly can do is fund the Utility Regulator to do its job properly and appropriately to control the big beasts that generate and distribute energy here and the System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI). We need a properly funded Utility Regulator. The Assembly can gift that funding.
Thank you very much.
709 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Assessment
Jev’s structured answers met the documented threshold for “not flagged”.
- Overall probability that the activity is being used to promote, exploit or escalate an identity-based controversy: 0.04 (flagging needs at least 0.70; at or below 0.30 is not flagged).
- None of the five culture-war criteria was met (each was below 0.60).
- Assessed as legitimate policy scrutiny (0.93).
- No identity-based framing was identified (1.00).
- The overall probability was at or below the not-flagging threshold.
This is an AI-generated assessment of the text, made against published criteria. It is not a finding of fact about the MLA or their intentions. The Assembly record itself is the fact.
Jev’s structured answers
| Question | Probability | Met? |
|---|---|---|
| Identity framing | 0.03 | No |
| Sectarian or communal antagonism | 0.03 | No |
| Cultural grievance politics | 0.01 | No |
| Dog-whistle messaging | 0.04 | No |
| Controversy escalation | 0.03 | No |
| Legitimate policy scrutiny | 0.93 | Yes |
| Overall judgement | 0.04 | At or below not-flagging threshold |
| Option | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-based framing (chosen) | 1.00 |
| Reports or questions it | 0.00 |
| Criticises or condemns it | 0.00 |
| Adopts it | 0.00 |
| Subject | Probability |
|---|---|
| No identity-related subject | 0.99 |
| Constitutional question, Brexit, the Windsor Framework and sovereignty | 0.01 |
| Flags, emblems, symbols, names and memorials | 0.00 |
| Parades, bonfires and commemorations | 0.00 |
| Irish language, Ulster-Scots and language policy | 0.00 |
Assessed 21 October 2026 at 09:58 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.
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