The energy companies’ recent climbdown is pleasing, but the prepay system is fundamentally unfair. It’s got to go
It’s a January morning in Glasgow and I’m speaking in a virtual meeting with a collection of MPs and fuel poverty campaigners. It’s part of the new all-party parliamentary group for prepayment meter reform, chaired by the SNP’s Anne McLaughlin. In the next room my toddler is napping, so I speak more gently than I usually would. My screen has the background blurred because our kitchen is, frankly, a tip, and I don’t want our dirty dishes to distract from what I have to say.
On my laptop is a picture gallery of those attending, each of their faces drawn with real concern. The day before this meeting, the Times had published an undercover exposé on British Gas, whose third-party debt collection agency was revealed to be breaking into people’s homes, with warrants, to forcibly install prepayment energy meters – even when there were signs that vulnerable people lived there. The debt collectors, it was alleged, were incentivised with bonuses to do their ruthless work.
