Part of 1. Cwestiynau i’r Gweinidog Cyfiawnder Cymdeithasol – Senedd Cymru am 1:57 pm ar 29 Mawrth 2023.
Well, thank you very much, Jack Sargeant, and for your continuing leadership in this field. You are standing here as an elected representative, representing your constituents, who clearly have responded to you in that powerful survey, which is influential, and indeed the Minister for Climate Change and I are meeting the chief executive, Jonathan Brearley, in the next couple of weeks. We will be both then again expressing our concerns about the ways in which your response in past times in terms of meetings with Ofgem hasn't been treated with the full respect and recognition that it should.
But I just want, again, for colleagues to know what has happened, just to repeat what Jack Sargeant has said. Just three energy companies—three—British Gas, Scottish Power and Ovo Energy, and I name them here today, fitted 70 per cent of the total of those forced installations. And just to say, the overall number of forced meter installations increased by more than 40 per cent last year, when fuel bills were rocketing and the winter fuel poverty crisis looming. Scottish Power installed the highest number of prepayment meters relative to the size of its customer base. It's just shocking. We have to keep, in this Senedd, and I think it's important that there's strong support across the Senedd, I believe, making it very clear how we in Wales are not going to stand for this treatment, and we will make this very clear to Ofgem and to the UK Government, who've got the power to make changes here. But can I just say, I welcome the Petitions Committee, the cross-party committee, chaired by Jack Sargeant? I will be saying—. I will, hopefully, give evidence, and also urge the chief executive and chair of Ofgem to do so as well.