Against a background of rapidly rising energy prices, politicians have to be praying for a milder winter than the Met Office predict. A prolonged cold spell would throw the issue of fuel poverty back onto the political agenda, with a vengeance.

Up to 2003, the governmentâe(TM)s fuel poverty strategy was making real inroads into the number of households at risk. A combination of the governmentâe(TM)s Warm Front programme, energy sector contributions, and falling energy prices had cut the number of fuel poor households to around 1.2 million. The tide turned, dramatically, when oil and gas prices started to rise.

Since 2003, gas prices have gone up by 74 per cent and electricity prices by 53 per cent. Some energy companies are still announcing price increases. We now have almost 3 million households in England that have been plunged back into fuel poverty and something approaching 4.5 million households across the U.K. as a whole. Over 80 per cent of these fall into the category of âe~vulnerable householdsâe(TM) that the government had promised to take of fuel poverty completely by 2010.

It is difficult to see how this internal target set by the government can be met. It also brings into question how the government will meet its legally binding duty, under the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000, to end all fuel poverty by 2016.

DEFRA has yet to announce the coming yearâe(TM)s budget for Warm Front. It will not begin to clear the backlog of fuel poor homes if there is any cut in the current £350 million annual budget. Even then the government will need to draw on far larger contributions from the energy sector than have been agreed so far if we are to halt the numbers in fuel poverty rising even further.

In April 2007, the governmentâe(TM)s Fuel Poverty Advisory Group (FPAG) argued that an annual budget of £1 billion was required, right through to 2016, if fuel poverty was to be eradicated. With little sign of a threefold increase in the budget, there is no great prospect that the rise in fuel poor households will be contained. Warm winters may conceal lukewarm performance, but they wonâe(TM)t keep people alive when the weather turns against us.

It had taken the best part of a decade to secure the passing of the Warm Homes and Energy Conservation Act 2000. During this period we had to endure the human tragedy (and political scandal) of Britain having 30,000 excess winter deaths each year. This was way in excess of other European countries with more severe climates than our own. The explanation lay in the poor structural quality of Britainâe(TM)s housing stock.

It isnâe(TM)t difficult to see where and how we begin to meet the legal obligations that government imposed on itself. It is simply that we have to be honest about the powers and resources that are needed to do so. Local authorities have to be faced with a duty to raise energy efficiency standards in social housing. The existing ratings system known as SAP (Standard Assessment of Performance) has to set a minimum standard of SAP 65 that applies to all social housing by 2016. To deliver this, local authorities will have to have an entitlement either to the government grants or borrowing permissions that will deliver this scale of housing improvement.

This should be a statutory requirement applying to all private sector rented properties as well. It is not an attack on private renting, merely a benchmark for decent housing that applies to all rented sectors. Stamp duty levies or exemptions can be applied to house sales/purchases to deliver the same standards.

I know this will be a tough call in the spending review, but, like many MPs, I would rather be faced with a money count than a body count when the cold sets in.