Oral Answers to Questions

Douglas Carswell Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

1. What steps his Department plans to take to reduce the overall subsidy to UK energy sources.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)]

The Government recognise the hon. Gentlemen’s point regarding the impact on taxpayers and consumers of Government support for renewable and low-carbon energy. However, Government policies are also aimed at reducing bills. Without Government policies, particularly on energy efficiency, bills would overall be on average around £90 higher this year.

[Douglas Carswell]

Yesterday the Prime Minister confirmed that he is happy to see the levy control framework increase to £371 per year per household by 2020. At a time of falling oil prices and at a time when the shale gas revolution holds out the tantalising prospect of cheap energy, is not the Department carrying on subsidising windmills unnecessarily, and are we not making policy on the basis of outdated assumptions that need to revised?

[Amber Rudd]

We recognise the importance of keeping bills down for consumers, particularly when times are difficult, but this Government’s initiatives are to help reduce bills and our support for renewables is unquestionable. We feel it is essential to have some subsidy to get renewables going. I note that the hon. Gentleman is a big supporter of solar. Those costs have come down and our support has consequently come down. We expect it to reach grid parity by 2020. We are optimistic that wind farms are also beginning to come down in cost, and we have seen a 10% reduction in the support for them very recently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davey]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am grateful for his comments. One of the reasons I set up the green growth group in Europe was to push the argument that a country can grow and go green, and that argument has been won in the debate in the European Union. He may be interested to know that in Lima we worked with Latin American countries—particularly Peru, Costa Rica, Colombia and Mexico—because our Latin American friends now want their own green growth group.

[Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)]

The Secretary of State reels off statistics about home insulation, rather like a Soviet-era apparatchik talking about tractor production. Thousands of homes in Jaywick were promised home insulation at the beginning of this year. Why, at the end of the year, have only a handful of homes had that insulation, and why has the promise that more homes would get it evaporated?

[Mr Davey]

I have to say that we have a very good record on energy-efficiency, as today’s announcement of 1 million energy-efficiency measures from the green deal and the ECO demonstrates. I do not know about the particular example in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I can tell him that because of some of the changes we made to the ECO this time last year, some energy- efficiency schemes have not gone ahead, but what has gone ahead is a £50 cut, on average, in people’s energy bills.