Consumer Energy Bills: Government Support

Adam Dance Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Luke Taylor]

I wholeheartedly agree. As an engineer by background, I think we need to focus on the outcome and the goal, rather than prejudicing the tool. While air-source heat pumps are suitable in many cases, they rely on air tightness and insulation, which may well be a barrier to quick implementation.

The Liberal Democrats have been calling for a 10-year emergency home upgrade programme, starting with free insulation and heat pumps for those on low incomes.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

A constituent of mine was having energy retrofit work carried out by Consumer Energy Solutions under the energy company obligation 4 scheme, which seeks to lower heating costs. That firm has recently gone into administration, and the work will now not be finished. The ECO4 scheme has been extended, but the Government have not clearly committed to introducing better protections for customers. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government urgently need to ensure greater consumer protections against installers’ incompetence and incompletions?

[Luke Taylor]

I agree 100%. Whenever we have novel technologies, there is a rush to fill the space; unfortunately, cowboys may well get there first. The Government have a huge role not only in encouraging quality installation but in protecting against that vacuum being filled by disreputable traders.

On the subject of the home upgrade programme, as with most Liberal Democrat policies we urge the Government to steal it. It would complement and, frankly, complete their own strategy. I invite the Minister to take this opportunity to outline specifically how the delivery of that strategy will work. As we Liberal Democrats have said, without a clear replacement for the ECO programme or future homes standard, we face losing skilled installers and risk long delays for the kind of ambitious programme of insulation that we need. That is not a theoretical loss: homes with lower efficiency standards are actively dangerous to people’s health. We will hold the Government accountable for their legally binding targets, but I encourage them to remember that full disclosure of the practicalities of implementing the strategy would help all of us work harder to tackle fuel poverty.

In fact, the Government should be working more closely with new projects such as the Citigen network, which I recently visited in London, or with local councils such as my own in Sutton, to see how new alternative heat sources are already making a difference to people’s lives. We can and must be more ambitious. We must surely now recognise that the scale of the crisis is so severe that tinkering with infrastructure investment, while useful for the future, does not solve the problem for families shivering and cutting back every single day.

To genuinely rescue people from the cold, we must tackle the real cost of energy now. That is why we need a social tariff to provide targeted energy discounts for vulnerable households, including those on low incomes and in receipt of personal independence payment. That is why the Liberal Democrats have been calling for the renewables obligation levy to be removed from people’s energy bills and instead funded by a proper windfall tax until April 2027—after which the Government should develop a new way of funding RO contracts, implementing Liberal Democrat proposals to move them on to a contracts-for-difference model. That would decouple energy prices from the wholesale gas prices and ensure that ordinary people across the country can benefit from cheap renewable energy.

I am sorry not to see any Reform MPs here, although it is not a surprise; it was written down here in my notes. They deserve to be told once again that net zero does not mean higher energy costs. How we fund our energy transition is a political choice. They are choosing to remain wedded to the very system that has left us so vulnerable and Britons literally freezing to death in their own homes, rather than making sure that the fat cats pay their fair share towards keeping people in this country alive.

Factored Energy Arrangements: Pricing

Adam Dance Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Graham Leadbitter]

That is absolutely the case. To take Scotland as an example, consumers have a route to address complaints about this issue through the regulation of factors, but it is complex and cumbersome. There should be a simpler way to do it through the energy regulator, as I will touch on later in my speech.

Many communal meters are correctly classed as profile class 01, a domestic designation based on usage. However, where a property factor, managing agent or company holds the contract, suppliers often automatically apply the business tariff.

[Adam Dance (Yeovil) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Member for securing this debate. Business owner Gary Helliar, from Yeovil, signed an energy contract through a broker who convinced him that energy prices were going to rise to 35p per kilowatt and that the 15p kilowatt was a great deal. Energy prices have fallen below that, but Gary has been stuck in that contract and is facing bills of about £390,000. Does the hon. Member agree that we need greater oversight of energy brokers, so that local businesses are not pushed into rip-off contracts?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I certainly agree on that point. It is not entirely the purpose of my debate to address that issue today, but it one that I recognise. I think there has to be a route for people to challenge the advice they are given and to take to task those who have given incorrect advice, and that has to be reasonably simple. In many cases currently, it is not.

Ofgem’s guidance on domestic communal supplies, which suppliers ought to follow, is very clear: where the non-commercial collective purchase of energy is for mainly domestic use, that should be treated as a domestic supply, provided that the arrangement is not commercial in nature. That guidance makes it clear that classification should be based on how the energy is used, not on the legal entity holding the contract, yet in practice it is inconsistently applied and weakly enforced.

Inconsistent supplier behaviour has created staggering inconsistency across the energy market. Some suppliers, including Ecotricity, Octopus and OVO, correctly apply domestic rates based on usage and do not override domestic classifications simply because a factor is involved. However, others, including EDF, British Gas, E.ON and SSE, often default to business rates, based solely on the identity of the contract holder. Indeed, in research carried out by my office, representatives of EDF have explicitly stated that they

“override the domestic classification if the usage is for a communal area managed by a business entity”.

That is in clear contradiction to Ofgem’s advice. The result is a supplier lottery. Two identical buildings on the same street can pay vastly different amounts for the same stairwell lighting, purely because of which supplier the managing agent selected.

The lack of regulatory oversight is deeply frustrating for our constituents. No meaningful reform has followed the 2023 call for evidence and multiple parliamentary questions. The current Government have carried out some further consultation, but have not yet moved things on, either. When I come to my conclusion, I will have specific asks for the Minister in that regard.

In April 2024, the Minister’s Department suggested that, due to physical set-ups, these consumers would continue to receive energy via non-domestic contracts. I have additionally met Ofgem on this issue. It recognises the problem, but consistent standards have not been enforced. Residents who do not choose their supplier are excluded from key domestic protections, including price cap coverage and Energy Ombudsman access. They are effectively trapped. More worryingly, when debts arise, suppliers may pursue residents directly as the “end users”, despite residents having no control over the contract. It is a Catch-22, where responsibility exists without authority, leaving residents unable to discuss the debts they are being chased for, because they do not hold the contract. If residents wish to complain, they often find the ombudsman route unavailable to them because the contract is held by a third party, leaving courts or tribunals as the only effective route for redress.

I therefore have six targeted and practical policy asks of the Minister. No. 1 is to reform standard licence condition 6 in order to prioritise actual usage over contract structure. No. 2 is to mandate a standardised appeal process for tariff classification across suppliers. No. 3 is to enforce profile class integrity, so that domestic or PC 01 meters are not billed at business rates. No. 4 is to strengthen Ofgem’s enforcement powers, so that protections are enforceable and not just advisory. No. 5 is to reopen the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero call for evidence and commit to legislative change. No. 6 is to ensure that residents under third party communal contracts can access the Energy Ombudsman.

The current system is a failure of logic and protection and a further cost of living blow to the people who can least afford it. We are effectively telling residents that, because they live in a flat with a shared hallway, rather than in a semi-detached house, they must pay business prices to power their light bulbs and fire alarms. To put it simply, the current situation is like someone being charged a commercial freight rate for a first-class stamp simply because the person posting the letter for them happens to be a professional administrator. It is time that the Government and Ofgem ensured that domestic use always equals a domestic price, and that residents are made fully aware of their rights when communal energy arrangements are put in place.