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12.4 pm
Mrs. Margaret Ewing (Moray): I am aware that the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Connarty) wants to speak, so I shall try to be brief.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) on securing a debate on this important subject, and I thank hon. Members who have participated in it.
The Scottish National party has pursued this issue for many years. I should like to point out to the right hon. Member for Dumfries (Sir H. Monro) that the six Bills that were introduced by Dr. Gordon Wilson or me had the full support of the House and the whole country. Every part of the country and every party was represented. We have always argued that this matter must be considered in an overall context. This debate is about cold weather
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The hon. Member for Preston (Mrs. Wise), whose Bill on the wind-chill factor I sponsored, had hoped to attend the debate, but I spoke to her yesterday evening and she has caught the dreaded lurgy that many of us have suffered. She gave her apologies, because she had wanted to be here.
I endorse the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross. This is a matter of conscience and morality. Every legislator must search his or her conscience and decide how funding should be allocated.
I go back many years on this subject: when I first raised it in the House in the 1970s, there was a Government with a different perspective. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dundee, East (Mr. McAllion) laughs wryly at the memory of that socialist Government. In the 1970s, I was accused of scaremongering: people said that I should not raise this subject because it would frighten people who lived on low incomes, especially pensioners. I was then a much younger Member of Parliament--like you, Mr. Deputy Speaker: indeed, we came into the House at the same time--and I was new to the procedures of the House. It took a long time for this issue to come on to the political agenda in the House of Commons and in the other place--Lord Gray of Contin works hard on behalf of Energy Action Scotland and has raised the issues in the other place.
The problem was not taken seriously until much later, when people began to realise that excess winter deaths were related to cold weather and to the poor quality of our housing stock. We have made massive strides forward and the problem is now recognised. I do not deride the cold weather payments scheme, although it could be much improved.
I refer the Minister to the 1991 United Nations demographic book. Excess winter deaths were earlier called an obscenity. The study examined various aspects of life styles, and the book shows that Sweden had a 14 per cent. excess winter death rate, Norway had a rate of 10 per cent., Germany 12 per cent. and Great Britain 31 per cent. That is a massive figure of excess winter deaths. Yesterday, I referred to the comparison between Scotland and Finland: Scotland has a 16 per cent. excess winter death rate, whereas Finland has a rate of 9 per cent.
Those statistics are frightening. They involve our elderly people, our disabled people, unemployed people and people who live in poor quality housing, all of whom are the most vulnerable members of our society. In cold snaps we probably turn our heating up or put it on for a bit longer, but we often forget that many of those families cannot do that. For many people, winter means living, eating and sleeping in one room, because they can afford to heat only that one room. The Government claim to value family life. What kind of family life can people have if they are forced to live, eat and sleep in one room?
The situation was exacerbated by the imposition of value added tax on domestic fuel. I noticed that the hon. Member for Fife, Central (Mr. McLeish) did not like my sedentary intervention, but, when the Scottish National
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Let me repeat that we want to hear from the Minister how the Government are dealing with the offer from the Meteorological Office, which my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and Kinross raised in her competent, wide-ranging and definitive speech. The Meteorological Office has offered to carry out a pilot study of the wind chill factor in Scotland, and I was not sure what the Minister's response was. One of my hon. Friends said, "I do not think that I would buy a second-hand car from this gentleman."
What the Minister said was confusing. He said that the cost would be considerably more than £600, but how much will it be? When will the pilot study be conducted? I can assure the Minister--living, as I do, in Lossiemouth, where we have a substantial wind chill factor--that there would be no point in conducting it in June, July and August; it should be carried out during the cold winter months. What is happening to that experiment? The offer seemed very logical to me, and I do not understand why the Government have not taken it up. The Met Office has also proposed the use of postcodes as local triggers. Every speaker this morning has mentioned the anomalies in the present system.
This has been a long-running issue, and, while I do not deny that improvements have been made, we need a long-term strategy. We need to improve our housing stock, for instance. The poorest people usually live in the poorest housing, and are the least well insulated. Energy efficiency should also be improved; the home energy efficiency scheme has been cut substantially. Furthermore, we should keep these matters in mind not just during the winter months but throughout the year. In July, members of the all-party warm homes group--of which I am convener--went along to the Department of the Environment, complete with a polar bear which nearly melted in the July heat, to point out that the issue should be considered all the year round rather than just between December and March, and that we needed to find ways in which to improve the lot of our people.
Our resources should be used properly. Scotland is an energy-rich nation; why should so many people die of cold there? People in my area look out on to the Moray Firth and the oil and gas platforms that bring so much money to the Exchequer. What a contrast they must see!
The SNP also has policies relating to the redistribution of wealth--
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Michael Morris):
Order. The debate is about cold weather payments, not the redistribution of wealth.
Mrs. Ewing:
I am sorry, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I did not mean to be out of order. I was trying to put the matter in a general context, because I do not think it can be viewed in isolation. I was merely going to say that my party is not afraid to consider the redistribution of wealth through, for instance, tax policies.
Mr. Michael Connarty (Falkirk, East):
Thank you for calling me, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I congratulate the hon. Member for Perth and Kinross (Ms Cunningham) on securing this debate on an important subject that must be discussed. It is not just a party matter; it is not the domain of just one Opposition party. It concerns everyone, and the Government are not doing enough. There have been too many partisan comments today.
Local government has introduced many innovations in an attempt to prevent the tragedy of death and impoverishment. My local council, when I was its leader--having taken the seat that had belonged to the hon. Member for Angus, East (Mr. Welsh)--introduced double glazing and central heating in every council house, which is now being provided in much of Scotland. In my council area there is heat leasing, because the Government will not give the council enough money to introduce other schemes to deal with bad housing fabric and inadequate insulation. Everyone is trying to innovate, and we should not become involved in a Dutch auction to keep rents down in order to challenge the opposition when that means that homes cannot be properly heated.
The real problem is the system that the Government have introduced. People are becoming more aware of the fall in temperatures, and the cost of trying to maintain decent heating. The seven-day system is entirely inadequate. In my area--as I have told the Minister, I checked this with the House of Commons research department this morning--Turnhouse was still being used rather than Salsburgh, which was specified in the regulations that we discussed on 18 December. It was claimed that, over a seven-day period in January, the average temperature was 1.2 deg C, so no payment was triggered in my area.
In November, there were high winds--so high that they tore five windows out of the summerhouse in my garden--and temperatures dropped sharply, but the average did not fall below zero in a seven-day period. In Turnhouse, it was 0.5 deg, so again no one received a payment. That is nonsensical: if the wind-chill factor had been taken into account, as we were told in the debate on 17 January, 1.5 deg would have become minus 6.5 deg in Yeovilton, and it would have been similar in my part of central Scotland. As I have said, this is not a party matter; nor is it merely a Scottish matter. I am as concerned about Yeovilton residents as I am about people in my area.
According to Age Concern, if the wind chill factor had been taken into account, only £20 million would have been added to the bill for cold weather payments. That does not seem much to me.
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