1. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on reports of a 50 per cent increase in households requesting financial assistance to pay fuel and heating bills. (S4T-01315)

The Scottish Government is committed to eradicating fuel poverty and has allocated more than £0.5 billion since 2009 to a raft of programmes to help people in Scotland to heat their homes affordably. It is fuel prices, which we have no control over, that have driven up fuel poverty. The fuel poverty rate for 2014 would have been around 9.5 per cent instead of nearly 35 per cent if fuel prices had risen only in line with inflation between 2002 and 2014. All of the increase in fuel poverty since the introduction of the fuel poverty target can be explained by above-inflation energy price increases.

The United Kingdom Government is planning a further £12 billion cut to the welfare budget by 2019-20. That goes too far, and it is impacting on the most vulnerable households by decreasing their incomes. We are doing what we can to protect household incomes and to mitigate the impacts of the UK Government’s welfare cuts. That includes ensuring that the Scottish welfare fund is available as a safety net for the most vulnerable households in the country. Around 178,000 households have benefited from that vital lifeline, and half of the £81 million that has been spent to date has gone to communities in the 20 per cent most deprived areas of Scotland.

The minister mentioned the period between 2002 and 2014, but there has been a 50 per cent increase in requests for financial assistance in one year. We were told that fuel poverty in the poorest households had been mitigated by Scottish National Party spending, but it has not been. The minister said:

“There is no complacency about the issue whatsoever.”—[Official Report, 27 January 2016; c 49.]

Meanwhile, SNP ministers have cut 13 per cent from the fuel poverty budget. If the minister believes that the Scottish Government is doing everything that it can to reduce fuel poverty, will she explain how her Government’s decision has led to a 50 per cent increase in applications for help with heating bills in just one year?

I say to the member that the very purpose of the Scottish welfare fund is to help people on low incomes who are struggling to meet essential expenditure, such as expenditure on fuel bills. Many of those people are already in homes that have had energy efficiency measures installed in them. It is because of their low incomes that they are struggling to meet the cost of the bills, and it is because of the cost of the fuel that 19 per cent of households on band D and above are in fuel poverty. The purpose of the Scottish welfare fund is to help out people in those circumstances, and I would have hoped that Jim Hume would have welcomed that.

I thank the minister for her response, but 845,000 households are in fuel poverty, and the Scottish Government’s response is to install energy efficiency measures in 14,000 homes. I believe that ministers have failed to grasp the scale of the problem. We have heard that it is everybody else’s fault, but the Scottish Government has powers to address the issue. Will the minister commit to taking additional measures so that people do not have to rely on crisis grants to keep their homes warm?

We have already installed measures in 700,000 homes; 900,000 measures have been installed, and the money that we have set aside this year will improve energy efficiency in a further 14,000 homes. We are working very hard to end fuel poverty. We have set up a strategic working group to work alongside the Scottish fuel poverty forum and the rural fuel poverty task force to build on the efforts that we have already made to drive forward the fuel poverty agenda. There is no complacency on our part. We have no control over fuel prices. We have put in place measures to help those on a low income, and we will continue to do that.

On “Reporting Scotland” last week, I heard a spokesperson from Tackling Household Affordable Warmth—THAW—Orkney say that the main reason for fuel poverty was the high price of electricity, as the minister has said. The additional 2p supplement that applies in the Highlands and Islands makes the electricity there the dearest in the United Kingdom. The Liberal-Tory coalition did not try to mitigate that and the Tory Government has not done so, either. Will the Scottish Government press the UK Government to end what is the main cause of fuel poverty in my area?

The member makes a very good point, which is one that we have made previously to the UK Government and which we will continue to make to it. At the same time, we will call on the energy companies to reduce energy costs further by passing over the wholesale cost savings to gas and electricity customers now to help bring down the cost of fuel, which is, as the member said, the main driver of fuel poverty in Scotland.