Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Reid Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I share the right hon. Lady’s views on this. Carbon capture and storage is indeed an important part of our energy mix and an important part of supporting all energy sources in this country.

[Mr Alan Reid (Argyll and Bute) (LD)]

2. What recent steps he has taken to help households with energy bills.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)]

Mr Speaker, with permission I will answer this question with questions 3, 7, 10, 15 and 16.

There are three main ways in which we help people with their energy bills: first, with money, to help vulnerable customers with their energy bills with policies like the winter fuel payment, the warm home discount and cold weather payments; secondly, by helping people save energy and so cut their bills with policies like energy efficiency, product regulations, the energy companies obligation and the green deal; and, thirdly, by making our energy markets more competitive, where our reforms have seen the market share of smaller independent companies grow from less than 1% in 2010 to 10% today, enabling people to save hundreds of pounds on their bills by switching supplier.

[Mr Reid]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Secretary of State may have been reading from an old list. It is important to have an updated list, and he ought to be able to look to people to provide him with an updated list. This is very unsatisfactory. The grouping is with 6, 9, 14 and 15. We really must get these things right.

[Mr Reid]

The price of oil has been coming down quite dramatically in recent weeks. This opens up the prospect of lower prices, particularly for people who live off the gas grid. What is he doing to ensure that companies selling to those consumers bring their prices down to help them with their heating bills this winter?

[Mr Davey]

First, Mr Speaker, I apologise for not getting the list of questions right. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) makes a good point. We expect heating oil companies to pass on the savings they are making. They do not hedge in the way that electricity and gas companies do in relation to the long-term forward markets; I understand that heating oil forward purchases are done on a much shorter time scale. We would therefore expect reductions in the price of oil to be fed through much more quickly.