Ex-minister: I threw out smart meter
A former energy minister who helped introduce smart meters has admitted he threw his own away because he “didn’t use it”.
Mike O’brien, who was a minister under then Prime Minister Gordon Brown, said that he had an early version of a device designed to make it easier to keep tabs on energy use and costs but “got rid of it”.
Almost seven million meters, which show households exactly how much energy they use, have been installed to the end of March this year and the Government has pledged to offer them to every household and business by the end of 2020.
Mr O’brien, the MP for North Warwickshire from 1992 to 2010, was energy minister from October
2008 to June the following year, under then energy secretary and later party leader Ed Miliband.
He said: “I had an early version. After a while I barely looked at it, didn’t use it. We got rid of it.”
A report from the Science and Technology Committee concluded that smart meters were likely to save individual consumers only a small amount of money on their energy bills, and the Government needed to work harder to convince households of the true benefits of the rollout.
In May, the Institute of Directors called for the next government to put the smart meters programme on hold to avoid “mushrooming” costs.