Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

The Government has so far allocated a total of £1.1 billion to the Home Upgrade Grant (HUG), with delivery taking place from early 2022 to March 2025. Funding for HUG Phase 1, worth £152m, is expected to be delivered from early 2022 to March 2023.

There are unprecedented conditions in global energy markets. As a consequence, some suppliers have exited the market. The Government and Ofgem work to ensure that exits are orderly, customers are protected and they have uninterrupted supply. The Government is considering the necessary reforms to retail market regulation to support the UK’s transition to net zero.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Government has provided an unprecedented £400bn package of support for UK businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, which included government backed loans, business support grants, business rates relief, CJRS and VAT cuts for food and beverage. The Government’s Covid-19 loan schemes provided a lifeline to millions of businesses, including those in the hospitality sector, across the UK – helping them survive the pandemic and protecting millions of jobs.

As of 31 May 2021, over £79 billion has been lent through the schemes. The schemes closed for new applications on 31 March 2021. Analysis from the British Business Bank in January 2021 shows that the proportion of overall Coronavirus loans in each of the nine English regions and three Devolved Nations matches closely their respective share of the UK business population.

On 1 March 2020, we published the Government’s Response to the 2019 consultation on Neonatal Leave and Pay which committed to introducing a new entitlement to Neonatal Leave and Pay.

The entitlement will apply to all parents of babies who are admitted into hospital up to the age of 28 days, and who have a continuous stay in hospital of seven days or more. The period of leave and pay available to parents will be capped at 12 weeks. Neonatal Leave will be a ‘day one’ right, available to an employee from the first day of employment in their job.

We will bring forward legislation to introduce Neonatal Leave and Pay when parliamentary time allows.

The Government does not make research grant awards to enterprises owned by foreign governments. UKRI takes independent decisions on the distribution of research grants between eligible UK higher education institutions and research establishments, which may themselves collaborate with international partners.

HM Land Registry does not hold this information.

Further details about the information that HM Land Registry holds, what is publicly available, and how it can be obtained, is set out online via the GOV.UK website.

The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) requires larger suppliers to deliver energy efficiency and heating measures to achieve bill savings for low income and vulnerable household. In summer 2021 the Government consulted on a successor ECO which will run until 2026, with the value boosted from £640 million to £1 billion a year.

In addition, as outlined in the Government’s Heat and Buildings Strategy, the Boiler Upgrade Scheme will launch in England and Wales from Spring 2022, and will provide capital grants to support the installation of low carbon heat technologies. Grants of £5,000 will be offered for air source heat pumps and biomass boilers, and £6,000 for ground source heat pumps. Homeowners, small businesses, and private landlords will be eligible for the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

The Government welcome the Brazilian government’s recent commitments made at COP26 to reduce emissions by 50% by 2030, formalising the 2050 net-zero pledge and importantly, to eliminate illegal deforestation by 2028. The Government is also pleased to see Brazil’s commitment, as part of the Glasgow Leaders Declaration at COP26, to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030. Therefore, the Government is developing a strong cross-government integrated plan that builds on the established partnership HMG has developed with federal and subnational governments in Brazil.

The Number of Civil Servants employed by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) on the 31 March 2019, 31 March 2020, 01 March 2021, 01 June 2021 & 01 September 2021 by NUTS1 UK regions are presented below:

None.

Ministers holding meetings or phone calls on government business are routinely accompanied by a private secretary or other official, in line with the expectations of paragraph 8.14 of the Ministerial Code.

Following the Spending Review, BEIS will set R&D budgets through to 2024/25. Further details of how this funding will be allocated will be announced in due course.

The Government actively supports and funds the development and dissemination of techniques that replace, reduce and refine the use of animals in research (the 3Rs). This is achieved primarily through funding for the National Centre for the 3Rs. Since the NC3Rs was launched it has committed £100 million through its research, innovation, and early career awards to provide new 3Rs approaches for scientists in academia and industry to use.

The recently published Heat and Buildings Strategy brings together work from across Government on energy efficiency and clean heat, delivering a consistent and coherent approach across different markets, buildings and occupancy types. The Government has taken action to ensure that decision-making across government is aligned to deliver net zero, including establishing two Cabinet Committees, chaired by my Rt. Hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the COP President, to co-ordinate action across government, strengthening official-level governance, and taking new approaches to embed net zero in spending decisions.

The Vaccine Task Force is working closely with vaccine suppliers, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and international partners such as COVAX and UNICEF to allocate vaccines according to need, facilitate the rapid delivery of doses and maximise the shelf life available to recipients.

Our approach to the 20m recently announced for donation via COVAX at the G20 in October was also previously laid out in the answer given by my Hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State to the Hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon on 9th November 2021 to Question 69687.

The Government has made a £1.7 billion loan facility available to the energy administrators for Bulb Energy, to provide working capital for a six-month period. As my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out in the House of Commons last week, we intend for the SAR process to be temporary and has instructed officials, industry and Ofgem to work to that end.

Schemes like the Energy Company Obligation allow energy suppliers to deliver part of their obligation by installing innovative measures in eligible households. In addition, research and development funding is available for developing new alternative heating technologies, such as heat batteries, through programmes like the BEIS Energy Entrepreneurs Fund (EEF) and Clean Growth Fund (CGF).

Under the Green Homes Grant Scheme vouchers are issued with a 90 day validity period.

The validity period of many vouchers have been extended on request. However, data is not collected on how many voucher extension requests have been accepted or rejected.

The Green Homes Grant Voucher (GHGV) scheme launched in September 2020, to help householders and landlords with the cost of installing energy efficient improvements in their home.

Official statistics (https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/green-home-grant-statistics) published on 18 November for the Green Homes Grant Voucher scheme describe the status of applications prior to 05 November. At present the release does not include further application details including how many were landlords, however it does show applications in each region of England.

The next statistical release will be published on 23 December 2021.

The Hon. Member received a response on 27^th October.

For the 2020/21 scheme year of the Warm Home Discount, around 1 million of the approximately 1.2 million Pension Credit Guarantee Credit (PCGC) recipients received the rebate automatically as a result of data matching between the Department for Work and Pensions and participating energy suppliers. A further 50,000 claimed a rebate through calling the helpline, having been sent a letter from Government requesting that they provide further information. There may be a number of reasons why the remainder did not receive a rebate, and some would not have been eligible, for instance if they were not with a participating energy supplier. The Government do not currently have the data for previous scheme years available.

Under the Broader Group, it is up to each energy supplier to set the eligibility criteria they use to decide which customers receive rebates. The Government sets mandatory Broader Group eligibility criteria, of which the potential eligible pool for 2020/21 is estimated to be around 3.1 million households. However, most energy suppliers expand their eligibility criteria, subject to approval from the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, the scheme administrator. This means that the actual eligible pool was larger, and the eligibility criteria tend to vary between energy suppliers and scheme years. The Government therefore do not have data on the total number of households who would have been eligible for Broader Group rebates in each scheme year.

Since its introduction in 2011, the Warm Home Discount has provided over £3 billion in rebates worth £140 to households, in addition to other forms of support. Around 2.2 million households receive a rebate under the current scheme.

The Warm Home Discount is a key policy in the Government’s strategy to tackle fuel poverty and reduce the energy costs of low-income and vulnerable households, which is why the Government committed to extend the scheme until 2026 in the Energy White Paper last December.

The Government is currently consulting on expanding and reforming the scheme from 2022. Under the plans, households would receive £150 and the total spending will increase to £475 million a year, up from £354 million currently.

Across the UK, 251,342 applications for a CBIL were made; 109,877 were successful. As of our final evaluation of July 2021, 87,809 Coronavirus Business Interruption loans (CBIL) have been offered in England, to the value of £23.03bn. 919 loans were offered to the companies in the North East of England to the value of £694,592,700.

Analysis is underway, and no reliable conclusions can be drawn from the analysis so far.

Ministers have regular conversations with Ofgem. As an independent regulator Ofgem is available upon request to give an account of the recent insolvencies in the energy supply market directly to Parliament.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has indicated that it will not be possible to answer this question within the usual time period. An answer is being prepared and will be provided as soon as it is available.

The Government recognises the vital role that the steel sector pays across the United Kingdom economy. We will continue to work with the sector to support its decarbonisation. Funds such as the Industrial Energy Transformation Fund (IETF) and the Industrial Decarbonisation and Hydrogen Revenue Support (IDHRS) scheme have been announced to support decarbonisation by the Government. Further proposals, including the approach to the Clean Steel Fund, will be brought forward in due course.

A report which includes some of those potential merits is available on the Government website: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/space-based-solar-power-de-risking-the-pathway-to-net-zero.

Almost all workers are legally entitled to 5.6 weeks paid holiday a year and employers should do everything reasonably practicable to ensure that they are able to take as much of their leave as possible in the year to which it relates. Employers can offer more holiday than the statutory minimum, which would be agreed as part of individual contracts.

The Government is also exploring additional ways that employers can offer flexibility to workers to balance work and other responsibilities. We are consulting on a series of measures to change the existing legislative framework so that it is more effective at supporting flexible working.

My Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have held a series of bilateral and roundtable events with a range of energy suppliers. We are continuing to engage with these stakeholders regularly to hear about the challenges they currently face and discuss the way forward.

It is the responsibility of Ofgem, as the independent regulator, to engage with suppliers considering exiting the market.

In a competitive market, it is normal from time to time for energy suppliers who cannot finance their activities to exit the retail energy market. We have, however, seen large and unprecedented gas price spikes which has resulted in acute financial pressure on suppliers recently, driving a higher number of market exits.

We are working with the energy industry to put them on a more stable footing in the longer-term. That includes continuing to build a robust domestic renewable energy sector so that we are less exposed to global trends in natural gas supply and demand.

The Department’s analysis shows that changes in retail prices of petroleum products, such as petrol and diesel, are primarily driven by changes in global market prices for crude oil and exchange rates.

Recognising that fuel is a major cost for households and businesses, the Government has kept fuel duty frozen. This is the twelfth consecutive freeze saving the average UK car driver a cumulative £1,900, compared to the plans the previous Government set out in 2010.

In 2020, CHP represented 7.7% of the UK’s total electricity generation and 8.5% of gas demand. Approximately 85% of fuel used in CHPs in 2020 was fossil fuel (72% of which was natural gas). CHP plants are used by a wide variety of sectors, in particular chemicals, food and drink, paper and refining industries. CHPs are also used in large commercial and civic buildings with high heat demands, such as hospitals, hospitality and leisure facilities, retail outlets and heat networks.

The Government recognises the benefits CHP can bring, such as primary energy savings associated with making use of the heat from power generation compared to separate heat and power generation, and grid stability.

The Government continues to develop policies to support the decarbonisation of CHP in the future and is reviewing the potential role for CHP using various fuel sources going forward. As part of this review, we have published a call for evidence on CHP: Pathway to Decarbonisation that closes on 20 December 2021. In the Heat and Buildings Strategy, Government proposed to regularly review the contributions of different technologies.

As outlined in the Hydrogen Strategy, analysis indicates that boilers and CHP installations could make up around two thirds of demand for hydrogen fuel switching by 2030 in industrial sectors.