Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Angus MacDonald and Douglas Alexander

Wednesday 22nd October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Angus MacDonald (Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire) (LD)]

4. What steps he is taking to help ensure that people do not pay disproportionately high energy prices in Scotland.

[The Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr Douglas Alexander)]

This Government are taking action to support vulnerable families this winter, including by expanding the warm home discount scheme, which means that more than 500,000 households now benefit from that £150 payment—one in five Scottish households.

[Mr MacDonald]

Will the Minister acknowledge the unfairness that my constituents in Skye, and indeed people all across rural Scotland and rural Great Britain, are paying four times as much to heat their houses using locally generated renewable electricity—often while looking at wind turbines outside their windows—than those in cities who heat their houses using imported high-carbon gas, which is largely due to the fact that the environmental tariffs fall wrongly on the renewables and not on the carbon fuel gas?

[Mr Alexander]

Communities can feel tangible benefits, but those community benefits are largely voluntary at the moment. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, however; that is why this Government are considering mandating the provision of community benefit funds for low-carbon energy infrastructure across the United Kingdom. We will have more to say in our plans when they are set out later this year.