Costs of Living Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Lord Rooker
Main Page: Lord Rooker (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Rooker's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Callanan (Con)
The noble Lord makes a good point, but, as a result of the price cap, most energy companies are hedging their supplies, based on current prices. There are plentiful supplies of LNG, but, of course, capacity able to be injected into the system is limited, due to our number of offshore loading points. We actually have a good number in the UK, but they are being fully utilised.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
What is the technical difficulty of changing benefits mid-year? Surely the big advantage of universal credit, bearing in mind that probably 60% of those who are really badly affected are in work, is that there is no distinction between being in or out of work. I do not understand the technical problem that has been raised. Universal credit is the quickest, easiest, most targeted thing for the Government to do. They do not need to wait, so why are they waiting?
Lord Callanan (Con)
As I said, the Chancellor is considering a range of options to mitigate the expected further energy price cap rise in October, and we keep that and all other matters under constant review.