Domestic Heating Oil

Eilidh Whiteford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Pat Glass]

Absolutely, and I am happy to give way to hon. Members from across the House, because this debate is about an issue that affects all our constituencies.

When I first started to investigate the domestic heating oil industry, it became clear to me that it operates in a completely unregulated market, where suppliers can do exactly what they choose. A number of takeovers and mergers in recent years have led to the supply industry being owned by two or three companies. All that has happened quietly, without reference to the Office of Fair Trading or the Competition Commission. Prices are being driven up not by world shortages or global increases in the price of oil, although there is some of that. Rather, prices in this country have gone up by 100% in a very short space of time largely because suppliers have been clearly taking advantage of people in desperate need during the coldest winter in a generation.

[Dr Eilidh Whiteford (Banff and Buchan) (SNP)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady not only for allowing me to intervene, but for bringing this issue to the House. Does she agree that one of the fundamental issues in this debate is the fact that people in rural areas often do not have a choice? The problem with the market is that people do not have a choice over either the oil that they use or the suppliers available to them.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

rose—