SNP and Green budget makes real terms cut to fuel poverty spending

Scottish Liberal Democrat climate emergency spokesperson Liam McArthur MSP has today criticised the Scottish Government for failing to tackle the scale of fuel poverty in Scotland, as he revealed that spending on fuel poverty will be hit with a real-terms cut in the 2024/25 budget.

In response to a parliamentary question asked by Mr McArthur, the Scottish Government revealed that spending on Energy Efficiency Delivery Programmes is set to be £119m in the 2024/25 budget. Using the SPICe Real Terms Calculator, this figure is approximately £23m short of what spending would have been had ministers increased it in line with inflation.  

At the same time, the budget assigned to the Fuel Insecurity Fund has gone from £30m in 2023/24 to zero in 2024/25.

In February, new figures revealed that the percentage of people living in fuel poverty in Scotland increased by 23% between 2019 and 2022, with an estimated 791,000 households in fuel poverty in 2022. Fuel poverty levels in Orkney, Mr McArthur’s constituency, stand at 31%.

Mr McArthur said:

“Under the SNP/Green government over recent years, efforts to combat fuel poverty, affecting hundreds of thousands of households across Scotland, have stalled.

“Now, real-term cuts to funding are set to deepen the misery for individuals and families in communities right across the country, compounding the already woeful lack of progress we have seen under the government’s flagship scheme. Research from Scottish Liberal Democrats has revealed that at the current rate of progress it could take almost 100 years to insulate all eligible homes.

“In the last parliament, SNP Ministers dumped their commitment to eradicate fuel poverty. Scottish Liberal Democrats will continue to press ministers to roll out a new nationwide insulation programme to meet the scale of the challenge, providing a win-win of cutting emissions and household energy bills.”

Additional Information:

Scottish Liberal Democrats used the SPICe real-terms calculator to compare the value of spending in 2021/22 (£124,000,000) with the value of spending in 2024/25 (£142,780,823.3) if spending had kept in line with inflation. Given that the Scottish Govt planned spend is £119.3m in 2024/25, this represents a real-terms cut of approximately £23m.

You can find a table below setting out the Scottish Government’s spend on fuel poverty since 2020/21:

You can find the most recent fuel poverty statistics in the Scottish Housing Conditions Survey here