Miatta Fahnbulleh’s path to parliament was each extremely standard and completely unconventional.
Typical as a result of she went from unbiased college to Oxford College the place she studied philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) – a mainstay for wannabe politicians – earlier than a postgraduate diploma in financial growth. Typical, too, given she labored on this planet of suppose tanks (first at IPPR after which as chief govt of the New Economics Basis), as a coverage adviser inside Downing Road, and as coverage adviser to the then chief of the opposition – and now her departmental boss – Ed Miliband.
Up to now, so orthodox. However Fahnbulleh’s story is completely different, too. On the age of seven, she escaped civil warfare in West Africa and made a brand new dwelling within the UK. Though the household settled in north London, their centre of gravity grew to become Peckham in south-east London. She says the world, with its sizeable Sierra Leonean neighborhood, taught her the values of compassion and solidarity that formed her politics, and way more moreover.
“We had household there however, extra importantly, church was there, it’s the place you went to do your meals procuring, it’s the place you went to braid your hair,” she tells Highlight. We’re sitting within the vivid expanse of the Portcullis Home atrium, subsequent to the Palace of Westminster and a spot the place journalists and politicians meet. Her solely props are a big, yellow water bottle and an equally outsized purple ministerial folder.
Fahnbulleh, 45, all the time knew she needed to serve in some capability. Within the occasion, it took a pandemic to persuade her to face for parliament. And Harriet Harman’s announcement that she was retiring as MP for Peckham and Camberwell was the clincher. Fahnbulleh was chosen because the candidate for the redrawn Peckham constituency, and gained it final July with 58.8 per cent of the vote. Inside days she grew to become one among 5 new MPs to be given a ministerial position regardless of having no earlier parliamentary expertise.
On how the Covid-19 lockdowns influenced her sense of goal, she recollects the prevailing inequality – “the important thing staff we had been clapping however had undervalued for too lengthy” – and noticed it as a “second of change”. Nonetheless, when the nation reverted to the previous regular post-pandemic – “worse than the previous regular, in lots of respects” – she says she felt “winded”. She knew the nation wanted individuals who would push politicians into motion. However she knew, too, that the nation wanted politicians.
“You are feeling it once you stroll round Peckham since you see how a lot the system not working bears down on components of the neighborhood,” she says. “If I’ve an opportunity to have an effect on power payments and to improve folks’s properties, that’s bread-and-butter stuff.”
Which brings us to her day job.
Spend time down the rabbit gap that’s the Division for Vitality Safety and Web Zero part of the gov.uk web site, and also you’ll encounter a laundry listing of tasks that fall to the minister for power customers. Areas of concern embrace clear warmth, gasoline poverty, public-sector decarbonisation, prepayment meters, and far, way more. It’s a large temporary.
Fahnbulleh, because the incumbent, has a pithier definition. “I’m the minister for power customers and I’ve bought one job: to get the power market to work for folks.” In observe this implies decreasing power payments, making a “huge dash” in the direction of clear energy by 2030, and giving folks better confidence and belief available in the market.
That is simpler stated than completed. In early April the power value cap went up for a 3rd time in a row. The common annual power invoice rose to £1,849, a rise of 6.4 per cent on the earlier value cap. For a authorities that pledged to chop payments by as much as £300 throughout the lifetime of a five-year parliament, this isn’t an excellent begin. And for an citizens that voted for change, the wait will really feel limitless.
In keeping with Fahnbulleh’s evaluation, 4 fifths of the value cap enhance is pushed by wholesale power costs. The answer? Finish our reliance on fossil fuels. “Sprinting to scrub energy by 2030 is about breaking that dependence.”
Put apart how Westminster insiders will inform you privately that greening the electrical energy grid by 2030 is a delusion (Fahnbulleh calls the goal “punchy”). There’s one other downside with this answer. It’s a promise of jam tomorrow. What are households, struggling to pay their payments in the present day, speculated to do within the meantime?
That’s the place a collection of mitigations are available in, says Fahnbulleh. She factors to the Heat Dwelling Low cost, offering a one-off £150 electrical energy low cost for as much as 6.1 million households subsequent winter, and the Heat Properties Plan, assist to assist house owners improve drafty, energy-inefficient properties and get monetary savings within the course of. Fahnbulleh informed the Vitality Choose Committee late final 12 months that retrofit exercise may scale back payments by £200 on common.
Fahnbulleh is satisfied that the division’s clear energy plan is a key a part of the patron story. “Reliance on fossil fuels bought us into the worst power disaster we’ve seen in generations. The way in which out of this bind is to make the transition.”
Nonetheless, power payments stay costly and the applying of levies, typically for the perfect of causes, solely make them extra so. Critics argue the levies are too excessive; that they’re centered too closely on environmental measures, accounting for nearly two thirds of general prices; too skewed in the direction of greener electrical energy and away from dirtier fuel (16 per cent and 5.5 per cent of ultimate payments, respectively); and that they’re regressive and more likely to contribute to gasoline poverty.
“Most of those levies are doing one among two issues,” says Fahnbulleh by means of defence. “They’re both supporting low-income households… or serving to with the transition. They are going to work if the transition occurs and impacts on folks’s pockets.”
Would it not not be higher to place a few of these environmental prices by means of common taxation? “It’s a query for the Chancellor, not me,” she says, whereas acknowledging the significance of often reviewing the composition of levies. She cites the differential between electrical energy and fuel. “What we gained’t do, nonetheless, is penalise customers, significantly low-income customers on fuel. It’s a coverage quandary we are attempting to work by means of however it’s one we’ll discover an progressive answer to.”
The 2-track technique – accelerated transition to renewables within the mid-to-long time period, and an effort to retrofit properties to make them hotter in the present day, coupled with monetary support for these in most want – stays Labour’s method.
Maybe probably the most tough second for the federal government occurred inside its first few weeks in energy, when it selected to limit winter gasoline funds to pensioners throughout England and Wales. Beforehand common, these funds could be restricted to these on low incomes who obtain specified advantages comparable to pension credit score.
The choice was taken not by Fahnbulleh’s power division however by the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, along side the Division for Work and Pensions. Neither is it strictly an power subsidy. It’s a cost-of-living subsidy. Not that these affected care about such distinctions.
As minister for power customers, it is probably not Fahnbulleh’s coverage nevertheless it has an influence on these she serves each in her constituency and at ministerial degree. Requested what she thinks of the change, she says: “When power payments are excessive, something that places folks below strain is tough. I’d be fully tin-eared if I didn’t [recognise] that.” She once more cites the mitigation the federal government is putting in, this time £500m by means of assist negotiated with the power corporations final winter, coupled with the £500m put aside by means of the Heat Dwelling Low cost.
One potential technique of assembly the interlinked wants of power affordability, sustainability and safety is thru the adoption of warmth pumps. However right here we encounter issues, too. The arms-length Local weather Change Committee needs half of UK households to put in a warmth pump throughout the subsequent 15 years.
There are two points. First, prices stay larger than for a fossil gasoline boiler. Second, on condition that lower than 300,000 households have a warmth pump in the present day, the goal of 17 million seems a great distance off.
Once more, the minister is bullish. She factors to the truth that 5 of the six busiest months for the boiler improve scheme have come since Labour got here into energy. Whereas Fahnbulleh insists that she just isn’t going to drive anybody to put in a warmth pump, she places the uptick right down to a authorities that’s offering “readability relatively than misinformation”.
Nonetheless, the goal is a distant one, and maybe the smart-meter rollout provides a cautionary story. Initially launched in 2011, the Cameron authorities promised that each dwelling would have a meter by 2019. Forty per cent of households are nonetheless with out one in the present day. Regardless of this, Fahnbulleh is a fan of the sensible meter as a result of she believes it permits folks to take management of their power consumption. “Shoppers are massively attuned to creating financial savings at a time of excessive costs,” she argues.
As with sensible meters, there’s a hazard that perceptions of warmth pumps worsen, then calcify. As soon as a model is broken, restore is sort of unimaginable. Fahnbulleh takes problem with this framing, pointing to the influence warmth pumps have had elsewhere, not least in Denmark. “They made their transition after the oil disaster within the Seventies,” she factors out. “They’d the foresight to have these arguments many years in the past.”
She makes use of this as a second to make the large rallying cry for renewables. “Fossil fuels are a finite useful resource which can be depleting at tempo and the place consumption and demand goes up. Costs are solely going a method,” she notes. “Even for those who don’t consider in local weather change, diversifying so that you can provide folks entry to cheaper power and so that you aren’t being [buffeted] by world markets, is definitely frequent sense.”
When the New Statesman compiled its Left Energy Listing forward of final 12 months’s common election, it described Fahnbulleh “as a pure candidate to hitch the entrance bench in a Starmer administration”. Is she shocked that the prediction got here to cross? “I genuinely didn’t suppose I’d have a job so early on,” she replies.
As an economist by commerce, may the Treasury be her subsequent and pure dwelling? “I got here into politics to try to change the economic system so it really works for folks. It doesn’t matter what temporary or portfolio I maintain. For so long as I maintain it, I’ll all the time be making an attempt to try this.”
In the direction of the top of our dialog, she pays a tribute to Harman, her long-standing Peckham predecessor. Fahnbulleh says that when she’s within the constituency, folks inform her that Harman is a tricky act to comply with. Fahnbulleh doesn’t want reminding. “Nationwide influence, sure, however enormous influence domestically,” she says of Harman. “She basically modified politics for girls and in addition had that granular influence. That’s a gem.”
With that, she picks up her yellow water bottle and purple ministerial folder, and heads off to her subsequent assembly – this time together with her colleague, the housing minister Matthew Pennycook.
This text first appeared in our Highlight Vitality and Local weather Change complement of 24 April 2025.