Draft Heat Networks (Market Framework) (Great Britain) Regulations 2025

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 General Committees

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, and a great pleasure to be back at another Delegated Legislation Committee. I am thinking about getting a camp bed and staying on this corridor for the rest of the year.

Of late, His Majesty’s official Opposition have been accused of seeming to oppose for opposition’s sake; in last week’s Second Delegated Legislation Committee there was an uncomfortable moment when the Minister quoted a 2023 speech of mine back to me verbatim. That will not be the case this morning, however, because the Opposition welcome the move to regulate the heat networks market, which has hitherto been largely unregulated. Heat network users currently have fewer rights and diminished customer protections compared with other utility consumers. Although heat is an essential utility, the existing legislation covers only issues that pertain to metering and billing usage.

We welcome the consumer protections that the draft regulations entail. Consumers and bill payers are at the crux of our energy systems, and changes made must be in their best interests. I believe that this change is indeed in their best interests: in this instance, the consumers stand to benefit.

Sadly, that does not seem to be true of the Government’s energy policy more widely. We are not seeing the £300 saving on energy bills that was promised in the election campaign. What we are seeing is a ruinous overreliance on renewables, with wind generation supplying just 0.7% of the UK’s energy demand today; the boiler tax, which Labour MPs waved through Parliament last week; and the increases to employer national insurance contributions, which will depress wages and dampen employment. Households and consumers rarely seem to be the focus when this Government are making policy.

Today, however, that is not the case. In the heat networks market, the consumer stands to benefit from the introduction of this regulatory framework. As the market for heat networks expands, the risk of exploitation of consumers becomes more pertinent. It is therefore right that legislation be introduced to remedy the gap and bring heat networks into line with the frameworks that regulate gas and electricity markets.

I will not detain the Committee any longer. The Opposition absolutely support the regulation of the heat networks market for the sake of the protection of consumers from exorbitant charges, so I do not wish to stand in the way of the draft regulations. I strongly encourage the Government to prioritise bill payers and consumers across the rest of their energy policy, so that once again we can be in a place where I am not opposing for opposition’s sake, as I was accused of doing last week.