Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

13. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the energy bills support scheme alternative funding.

[The Minister for Energy and Climate (Graham Stuart)]

The energy bills support scheme alternative funding will provide £400 of credit to around 900,000 households without a direct relationship with an electricity supplier. This matches the energy bills support scheme in Great Britain, which is automatically delivering the discount to 29 million households.

[Mohammad Yasin]

My constituency is home to a number of residents who are waiting for the energy bills support scheme alternative funding. Despite the Government confirming alternative funding on 1 April 2022, not a penny has been paid to date. Why is this taking so long? When do the Government estimate the first payment will be received?

[Graham Stuart]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration. It is complicated. We do not live in a database society, so finding and identifying these people without putting public money at risk has been challenging. I am delighted to say, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, that a pilot programme using the Government portal, and a telephone support service for those who struggle to access the portal, went live yesterday. We aim to have the portal open at the end of the month. If all goes well with the pilot, payments will be processed by local authorities and will go out as soon as possible in February, and certainly this winter. That is our aspiration.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I am afraid the Government are testing the patience of park home owners in my constituency. I have previously asked the Minister whether he can confirm that payments will be made directly to park home owners, rather than park home operators. Can he confirm that point, and that payments will be made as a block sum? Or will they be paid monthly, as per the standard programme?

[Graham Stuart]

I have spoken on a number of occasions with my hon. Friend, and with colleagues on both sides of the House, about making sure these residents are not forgotten. We have worked hard to make sure we have a system that can stand up and deliver. We give the funding to local authorities and, as soon as they have gone through the process and made the necessary verifications for the payment to go out, a single payment will be paid directly into the bank accounts of the people concerned.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

14. When he plans to make an announcement on the floating offshore wind manufacturing investment scheme.

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[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

T3. What progress has my right hon. Friend made on promoting community energy?

[The Minister for Energy and Climate (Graham Stuart)]

The levelling-up White Paper outlined that the new UK shared prosperity fund will support interventions that reinforce the Government’s commitment to net zero by 2050. That includes £2.6 billion of funding for investment in places, including for community infrastructure projects.

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[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend rightly highlights the target set by the Chancellor to reduce by 15% demand across our energy system. The energy efficiency taskforce is being established, with my colleague Lord Callanan as co-chairman. We will be taking a number of steps, alongside the additional £6 billion in 2025-28, on top of the £6.5 billion being spent on energy efficiency in this Parliament.

[Stephen Farry (North Down) (Alliance)]

I am grateful to the Minister for Energy and Climate and his officials for their work on rolling out the energy payments in Northern Ireland, which started this week. Will he reassure us that he will continue to work very closely on the roll-out with the energy companies and the advice sector, ensuring that photographic ID issues and potential changes of address by property occupiers and park home owners are addressed so that everyone across Northern Ireland receives help, particularly the most vulnerable?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question and for so assiduously pressing the case, along with his colleagues, for Northern Ireland residents. I am delighted to see payments going out automatically to direct debit payers, and vouchers going out to others. He is quite right to focus on this. Suppliers have worked with the Post Office in trying to make sure that the right instructions are going out alongside the vouchers to help people get through this. To avoid scammers, I encourage people to go to the Post Office and, ideally, get this paid into a bank account. That will be £600 for every household and family in Northern Ireland, which will help at this time.

[Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

T6. What action is the Secretary of State taking to deal with the large number of house fires arising now because of malfunctioning solar panels?

[Graham Stuart]

Obviously, management of safety is not something for which I am directly responsible, but I am happy to follow up with my hon. Friend. I always thank him for giving me prior notice, which of course he did not do today.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is well known for his airbrushing skills, but he cannot airbrush the fact that, of the top 10 economies in the world, the UK is the only one with a declining steel industry. When is he going to sit down with Tata Steel and the other businesses to do a deal on green steel for the future of our workforce?

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[Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)]

T7. Last week I visited Duftons Plumbing & Heating Supplies, a leading local firm, and its tie-up with Daikin UK, a heat pump manufacturer. The importance of having trained engineers locally available to advise customers and install green heating technologies was clear. Will my right hon. Friend please advise what support there is for training those new skills?

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the need for skills and training if we are to meet our ambitious net zero targets. On 20 September, the Government launched the latest phase of the £9.2 million home decarbonisation skills training competition, which will fund training for people working in the energy efficiency, retrofit and low-carbon heating sectors in England. We are confident that there is enough training capacity to meet demand for heat pump upskilling as heat pump deployment increases.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The UK imports all medical radioisotopes used for treatment and diagnosis, mostly from European facilities that are due to close down by 2030. What assessment has the Secretary of State made of the need to ensure security of supply of nuclear medicines?

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[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for this question and for the numerous parliamentary questions he has also tabled, highlighting the need to ensure that vulnerable customers, including those on prepayment meters, are treated properly by suppliers. Where customers are not treated properly, those suppliers are in breach of their licensing conditions from Ofgem, which, as he knows, has investigated that matter, has found the suppliers wanting and is taking compliance action now. I share his frustration, as does the Secretary of State, to ensure that the system not only does what it says on the tin, but delivers in practice for people, including his constituents and mine.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

T9.   After the price of energy, the second most common complaint from local businesses in Amber Valley is that they cannot work out how the tariff that they are quoted bears any relation to the wholesale price and the cap. They then cannot work out why all the additional charges are now, for no obvious reason, a multiple of many times what they were a year ago. Can the Minister ask Ofgem to cut down on those practices so that businesses can see a fair and transparent price that cannot be altered halfway through the year?

[Graham Stuart]

It is important to differentiate between the domestic market, which is much more heavily regulated and for which, of course, we have the energy price cap, and the non-domestic market, which is much more complicated and for which we have not felt that a one-size-fits-all approach would work. But my hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight issues where companies do not behave in the right way. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I are working with Ofgem to ensure that it fulfils its obligations. It may not be fully regulated in the same way, but it has licensed conditions and it needs to fulfil them.

[Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)]

Will the Minister confirm that post offices, which are at the heart of our community, will receive support for their energy bills so that they can continue to function for the rest of the community?

[Graham Stuart]

Post offices, like all non-domestic businesses and institutions, will benefit from the new energy price discount scheme, which follows the energy bill relief scheme, as announced by the Chancellor.

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend the Energy Minister is more than aware of the deep anger in my constituency and across the east of England about National Grid’s green proposals to put pylons across the whole of East Anglia. Will he give clear assurances that the Government will work proactively to explore offshore grid options—an alternative, basically—to deliver more resilience and capacity, and to protect our countryside?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my right hon. Friend who, along with colleagues, has been assiduous in championing constituents’ interests and making sure that no infrastructure that imposes a burden on constituents goes in if it is not necessary. I am pleased to say that we have launched the £100 million offshore co-ordination support scheme, which provides funding to ensure a more co-ordinated approach. Although we recognise that we cannot forcibly change some contracts, we can—including with that funding—encourage developers to look at doing their infrastructure in the way that has the least negative impact on her constituents.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last year, a pay transparency came into law in Colorado. It requires employers to publish the salary range when they advertise for jobs, saving considerable amounts of time, and sometimes costs, for would-be employees. Would such a common-sense rule not be good for British job applicants and employers, too?

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[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

The west midlands has the highest fuel poverty in the country. How many west midlands homes will benefit from the new energy company obligation plus scheme when it comes online this year? Will the figure be nearer 4,000 or 20,000 homes?

[Graham Stuart]

I will write to the hon. Gentleman as I do not have those numbers to hand. I am delighted that we have gone from just 14% of homes being rated EPC C or above in 2010 to more than 46% now. That is not enough, but we have transformed the situation of UK housing stock that we inherited from Labour.