“These appalling new figures show that excess winter deaths for Wales in the period 2008/09 went up from 1440 to 2500 – a shocking increase of 70% on the previous year.

“The number of older people dying in Wales between the months of December and March has almost doubled. It is yet another shocking indictment of the Labour-Plaid government’s failure to grasp the nettle.

“Age Concern and Help the Aged have called it a “national scandal” and I agree with them.

“Today in the Siambr I called on the Leader of the House to arrange an urgent debate on the increases in excess winter deaths. I’m sorry to say that he didn’t even know about the new figures.

“This is a very serious issue to many people in Wales, including my own constituents across North Wales, and I expect the Labour-Plaid government to shoulder its responsibilities to the people who elected them”.

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The Bill will provide for a massive ‘fuel poverty-proofing’ of the existing housing stock in England to bring older homes up to current energy efficiency standards, and will also introduce social tariffs to reduce the energy bills of the most vulnerable groups. Any new money for energy efficiency measures will mean that Wales will get a corresponding share decided on the basis of the Barnett Formula, which is based on the population of Wales relative to England.

However, as the Welsh housing stock would take more money per head to bring up to standard, and with higher levels of fuel poverty in Wales, any extra money arising from the Barnett Formula would fall short of the need in Wales.

The most recent figures available suggest that fuel poverty levels in Wales are almost double that in England, in 2006 11.5% of households in England were fuel poor, while in Wales this figure was 19.5%. Due to the rise in fuel costs in the last year, National Energy Action Cymru has estimated that 340,000 Welsh households are now in fuel poverty, around 1 in 3. Home energy efficiency figures show that 26.7% of homes in England have loft insulation of less than 100mm, compared to a figure of 33.8% in Wales.

On Monday the Welsh Assembly Government launched the consultation on the National Energy Efficiency and Savings Plan which will review the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme (HEES) amongst other fuel poverty policies. Since HEES began in 2000 over 200,000 energy efficiency measures have been installed in Wales. However the scheme has been less effective at targeting the fuel poor – when the scheme was reviewed in 2005, it was estimated that only 29% of householders receiving HEES grants were likely to be in fuel poverty.

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