Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grahame Morris and Ed Davey
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
15. What steps he is taking to help households with energy bills.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
Mr Speaker, with permission I will answer this question with questions 3, 7, 10, 15 and 16.
There are three main ways in which we help people with their energy bills: first, with money, to help vulnerable customers with their energy bills with policies like the winter fuel payment, the warm home discount and cold weather payments; secondly, by helping people save energy and so cut their bills with policies like energy efficiency, product regulations, the energy companies obligation and the green deal; and, thirdly, by making our energy markets more competitive, where our reforms have seen the market share of smaller independent companies grow from less than 1% in 2010 to 10% today, enabling people to save hundreds of pounds on their bills by switching supplier.
Mr Davey
We have a whole panoply of measures to help vulnerable people, as I set out in my original answer. Some of the wider policies that we are implementing, particularly those relating to competition, are helping people across the board. We are in discussions with other Government Departments, particularly the Department for Work and Pensions, in relation to the point that the hon. Lady has raised.
Grahame M. Morris
It is not just heating oil prices that have fallen. Wholesale gas and electricity prices have fallen significantly in the past year, yet consumers have seen little reduction in their bills. Does the Secretary of State now regret voting against Labour’s motion on 18 June, which would have given powers to the regulator to ensure that when wholesale costs fell, the reductions were passed on to the consumer?
Mr Davey
It is interesting to look at the history of wholesale prices coming down and reductions not being passed on. There were much greater falls in wholesale costs when the Leader of the Opposition was doing my job, and they were never passed on. This Government have taken action by giving consumers far greater choice. They can now switch from companies that are not offering them a good deal and, in some cases, cut their bills by hundreds of pounds.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grahame Morris and Ed Davey(10 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Grahame M. Morris (Easington) (Lab)
T5. I would like to press the Secretary of State on answers he gave earlier about support for the remnants of the coal industry. Thousands of coal miners’ jobs are hanging by a thread, yet his response was that there were issues about committing to closure, but that is not necessarily a problem as long as those pits are allowed to exhaust their known reserves.
Mr Davey
What I have said—and what other Ministers have said—is that the Government have worked incredibly closely not just with the commercial companies involved but with unions and others to help everybody come to a result. I have to tell the House, however, that the coal industry is not nationalised; it is in private hands, and we need to work with the commercial operators.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Grahame Morris and Ed Davey
Grahame M. Morris
The Secretary of State mentioned going back to the 1970s. I hope he has seen the Office for National Statistics figures published yesterday on hourly pay rates, which showed that on average they are down 7.6%, and twice as much in construction. Why can the 36,000 households in my constituency that would benefit from a price freeze not enjoy the £120 they would have if he implemented such a freeze?
Economic Development (North-East)
Debate between Grahame Morris and Ed Davey(13 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)
I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) on securing the debate and on his work when he was a Minister. From his comments, he has shown his detailed knowledge of the region where his constituency lies, and in truth Members from all parts of the House will agree that he did an awful lot of work, with some success, for the region. It is right to pay tribute to that, but I think that his skills as a former Chief Whip enabled him to ensure that his debate took place this evening, so that a larger number of Members could join in. The fact that we have had so many Members in the debate has enriched it, and I have found many contributions insightful and interesting.
I make this observation to the right hon. Gentleman, however. Sometimes, in his initial remarks, he appeared rather over-rosy about what happened under the Labour Government—as if everything was just perfect in the north-east as a result of their policies. That is certainly not how I view the economic statistics. Equally, he was rather over-pessimistic about the future. In general, he, like many of his hon. Friends, failed to admit that this country has a huge problem with a massive deficit.
I am afraid that the deficit deniers were out in force tonight, but, when we in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills had to grapple with the Budget by making our contribution to deficit reduction, we noticed and learned from some of the previous Government’s plans. This has not been mentioned during tonight’s remarks, but they planned to make similar reductions in the Department’s spending—albeit over a slightly longer time scale, I certainly give the right hon. Gentleman that. The reductions would have been significant, however, and whenever we have debates about the Department, we never hear which programmes the Opposition would have cut if they had been returned to government. That whole issue clouds the debate, and the failure to address it undermines the case that the right hon. Gentleman and his hon. Friends make.
Grahame M. Morris
Will the Minister explain the issue of choices in connection with a point that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) made about the coalition Government choosing to fund the upgrading of the A11 in Cambridge, but not the dualling of the A1 north of Newcastle?
Mr Davey
All Governments have to make choices, and my right hon. Friend was saying that the Labour Government failed to choose to upgrade the road that serves his constituency, so again I am afraid that they do not have as good a record as some Opposition Members would like us to believe.