Oral Answers to Questions Debate
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Grant Shapps
Main Page: Grant Shapps (Conservative - Welwyn Hatfield)Department Debates - View all Grant Shapps's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(1 year, 9 months ago)
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Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant Shapps)
The energy bill relief scheme provides discounts on the wholesale element of gas and electricity bills to ensure that all eligible businesses are protected from high energy costs over the winter period. The support is applied automatically to bills.
Peter Gibson
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. The Government have already awarded Cummins, the engine maker in Darlington, £14.6 million to develop a hydrogen combustion engine, which will help the road haulage industry to decarbonise and reduce business energy costs. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that investment in alternatives such as that will benefit businesses into the future, will he look at the regulation to enable this technology to be exploited and will he visit Darlington to see Cummins?
Grant Shapps
I think the answer is three yeses. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of that hydrogen technology; it is one of the reasons the UK has a global lead. I am looking very closely at how off-road hydrogen vehicles could also be a big part of our decarbonisation strategy.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
Some 440 redundancies have just been announced across Liberty Steel, including 185 in Rotherham. It cites soaring energy costs as a major factor behind the decision. It is no surprise that its announcement comes just days after the Government said that they were going to start withdrawing support for business energy costs, and inflated energy markets have placed British steelmakers at a profound disadvantage. When will Ministers step up and address this, as our competitors’ Governments do?
Grant Shapps
As the hon. Lady will know, I am of course very concerned about the Liberty Steel position, and I am working very closely with it and everyone else involved. There has been £18 billion of support to business, and we have just announced a further £5.5 billion specifically on energy bills. On energy-intensive industries, there is further support through an 85% measure, which we are also reviewing to take up to 100%. We will work very closely with the company, and I will undertake to work, with my Ministers, with her as well.
Boris Johnson (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that, in addition to the excellent solution proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson), now is the time for the Government to exploit this country’s technological lead, and build a fleet of small modular nuclear reactors as part of our Great British Nuclear programme? While I am at it, is it not time that the Labour party apologised for 13 years of bone-headed hostility to any new nuclear power in this country?
Grant Shapps
I think it is fitting if I start with the apology, because I inadvertently airbrushed my right hon. Friend out of a picture on Twitter last week. I think my team were confused: I simply told the team that he needed hair brushing, not airbrushing. No one did more to progress space than my right hon. Friend as Prime Minister, and although the space launch was not successful last week, I know it is the start of a very important new sector for this country.
On my right hon. Friend’s point about small modular reactors, he is absolutely right. We will be announcing the creation of Great British Nuclear very shortly, and small modular reactors—Rolls-Royce and the others—will play an amazingly important part in this nuclear mix, which will get us back up to 25% of our power being from nuclear.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
As my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) said, high energy costs and competitiveness were cited by Liberty Steel when it also announced the idling of the Newport site, which is really hard news for the dedicated and skilled workforce there. No more warm words from the Government: what will the Government practically do to work in partnership with our industry, as other European countries are doing—and they are far more generous, which is the point here—to ensure that this key strategic industry is competitive?
Grant Shapps
The Government have worked very hard with the steel industry, to the sum of hundreds of millions of pounds, and will continue to do so. We do recognise the strategic importance of steel, and we also recognise that energy prices are very high. As I mentioned to the hon. Member’s colleague, the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), a moment ago, we have already consulted on and will be in a position to say more soon about greater discounts in the energy-intensive industries, but we need to work together to make sure we can deliver that, and I look forward to extending the invitation to her as well.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
Last Monday the Government presented the next stage of their energy support scheme, but it got a decidedly mixed response. The Federation of Small Businesses calculated that it is worth just 2p per kilowatt hour of electricity to the average small business, which it says is not enough to be material to a business’s decision to close or not, despite that element of the scheme costing £2 billion of taxpayers’ money. The worst of all worlds would be a scheme that costs a large amount of money, while failing to improve the situation facing businesses in any significant way. Will the Secretary of State respond to that criticism and explain the Government’s thinking behind the design of that stage of the scheme?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman will know that UK gas wholesale prices—the forward price—peaked at £600 in August. I looked this morning before coming to the Dispatch Box, and it is currently at 136p per therm, which is a massive reduction. We are very much of the view that we must continue to provide support to business, on top of the £18 billion, which is why the Chancellor has announced up to another £5.5 billion. We also recognise that prices are lower now than they were before the invasion of Ukraine, so we will track the issue carefully and continue to provide that support to business.
Jonathan Reynolds
As we heard from colleagues, energy prices are inextricably linked to our country’s competitiveness. Last week, Make UK published a survey of manufacturing businesses. That report was damning, with businesses saying that under the Conservatives they pay a premium for doing business in the UK. They can see that the political instability caused by this Government has driven investment away from Britain, and after three Prime Ministers, four Chancellors and three Business Secretaries last year, it is hard to disagree. Does the Secretary of State accept that the low investment the Conservatives have presided over is at the heart of our economic problems? What is he planning to do this year finally to change that?
Grant Shapps
No, I do not accept the hon. Gentleman’s analysis. He must recognise that in countries such as Germany, for example, where he is right to say that energy costs for business are lower, that cost is reflected in typically higher costs for domestic bills, and he would need to say whether he supports that. In addition, £18 billion is a huge amount of support. Taxpayers are having to pay that money, and it is a question of getting the right balance between the taxpayer and industry. I have already explained the ongoing support we will put in, in addition to the energy-intensive industry consultation that has already gone out, and we will say more about that shortly.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
James Grundy (Leigh) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant Shapps)
The Government are supporting households with their energy bills through the energy price guarantee, the energy bills support scheme, and alternative fuel payments for households that use alternative fuels such as heating oil to heat their homes.
Theresa Villiers
Will the Government take action to decouple the cost of gas supplies from renewables, because that is a way to get the cost of renewable energy down, helping households and also helping the taxpayer fund the important package of support that the Government have introduced for energy bills?
Grant Shapps
My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and it is noticeable that gas prices are high, but the price of renewables is typically much lower. Indeed, for a whole load of days in a row more than half our electricity has been provided through renewables, in particular offshore wind. That decoupling is important, but it is also not straightforward, as my right hon. Friend will know. It is something that the Minister for Energy and Climate and I are actively working on.
Paul Holmes
Eastleigh has a diverse housing mix that includes pensioners, those living in park homes and lower-income families, who are all struggling to pay their energy bills. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to pass on any falls in wholesale energy prices to consumers, so that they pay less as prices come down?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend raises a good point. What concerns me is the idea that when wholesale prices go up we get a rocketing in domestic prices, but as wholesale prices fall again, as they have done, we get a sort of feathering down, very slowly. I am concerned about that and I have written to Ofgem asking it to look at the market. Energy companies are forward buying their energy by several months, but we need those changes to come through in reductions to households, and we will be pressing to make sure that happens.
James Grundy
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the support the Government have provided to households to help with their energy bills will continue once current arrangements come to an end later this spring, and until international energy markets have fully stabilised?
Grant Shapps
I am pleased to confirm that the energy price guarantee has been extended to April 2024, so that support will continue. As I mentioned earlier, we are seeing some of the prices moderate, but the problem is that that combination of higher prices could still continue to lead through, which is why we will keep the energy price guarantee in place.
Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)
May I ask the Secretary of State about two groups who have not had much support so far? One group is households on a communal heating scheme who get their heating bills from their landlord. The Government have announced measures to rectify that situation, but could registered housing providers such as housing associations and local authorities be allowed to apply jointly for their tenants, to ease them into the scheme? Secondly, people on housing benefit do not get the additional help for being on a low income that those on universal credit receive, because housing benefit is not a Department for Work and Pensions benefit. Why is there discrimination against housing benefit recipients? It really is unfair, is it not?
Grant Shapps
I know that the hon. Gentleman and the whole House recognise how complex it has been to put in place the schemes to pay money to people in a system that is usually meant only for people to pay money to energy companies. That has been easy to resolve through the simple direct debit billing method but much more complicated in edge cases including combined energy and heat power and other off-grid measures. It is probably best if I ask my right hon. Friend the Energy and Climate Minister to speak to him specifically about the cases that he raised, because they are so complex that that probably requires a meeting and a further clarification letter.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Domestic energy companies are routinely raising people’s direct debits above the level of energy that they use and need to pay for. In the process, they are building up credit balances—sometimes of hundreds of pounds of people’s money—when those people cannot afford that. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how to hold the energy companies to account and ensure the automatic repayment of overcharging?
Grant Shapps
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I have had the experience myself where the energy company arbitrarily decided to put an outrageous figure into the direct debit. Once someone challenges that figure, the company will fall back from that—but that is if they can get through on the helpline.
Grant Shapps
I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s concern and will offer him a meeting with the Energy and Climate Minister specifically on this matter.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I wonder what discussions the Secretary of State has had with the energy companies following the report last week from Citizens Advice showing that hundreds of thousands of customers are being forcibly moved on to prepayment meters. Has he had discussions with his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice? Forcible entry to make hundreds of these changes is being approved on an industrial scale in minutes flat in magistrates courts. It is a real scandal. What is he doing about it?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Gentleman is right on that point. My right hon. Friend the Energy and Climate Minister and I have instructed our officials to draw up measures that could be helpful. We also have a letter to go to Ofgem once we have that advice. I am very concerned about this happening through an enforced process. We are on the public’s side and trying to fix it.
Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
The alternative fuel payment scheme is being applied to people’s electricity bills where they have their own direct supply, but, for people in park homes or on houseboats without their own electricity, such support is difficult to access, and they are often the types of people who struggle to get online. Will the Secretary of State consider a better public information campaign for those households and support with access to applying for the scheme for those who struggle to get online?
Grant Shapps
The hon. Lady points out another one of the edge cases in park homes. Many hon. Members have park homes in their constituencies, including me, and it has been more complex to get the money to them. She will be pleased to hear that the pilot scheme to get that money out to them launched yesterday. It will be a process through the local authority, and we are making sure that it is expedited as much as possible.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
According to Citizens Advice, someone is being cut off from their energy supply every 10 seconds. With millions unable to afford to top up their prepayment meters, self-disconnections have rocketed. Is it not the Government’s and the energy regulator’s responsibility to ensure that people are not sitting at home in the cold and in the dark? As temperatures once again reach freezing point across the UK this week, will the Government introduce an immediate moratorium on the forced installation of prepayment meters while their use is reviewed?
Grant Shapps
It is a matter of considerable concern that anybody should be removed from their power or heating. We have specifically asked the energy authorities not to go down that line and asked Ofgem to do the same. As I mentioned just moments ago, officials are actively working on this issue, with a letter ready to go to Ofgem as well. She is right to highlight this issue. We do not want to see people cut off during this cold weather. We will return to the House with more detail.
David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)
Holly Mumby-Croft (Scunthorpe) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Grant Shapps)
On Thursday, I will be flying our flag on the global stage for the CBI in Davos, making sure the world knows that Britain is the place to invest. At the World Economic Forum, I will be setting out a bold vision to scale up Britain, backing British business, empowering our entrepreneurs and driving disruption.
Holly Mumby-Croft
Will my right hon. Friend give further detail on whether the Government think that the non-domestic energy support package will help to provide a level playing field for British steelmakers?
Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend, who has done more than many others to fight for and support steel in her constituency, is right to highlight the energy bills discount scheme, but other schemes, including the one I was talking about, the energy-intensive industries scheme, where we have the consultation to take the level up to 100%, may in the end be much more meaningful. I want to assure her, Opposition Members and the whole House that the Government are very focused on this issue.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
Tomorrow, the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill comes back before us. It will see vital employment rights such as holiday pay, TUPE and maternity protections scrapped at the end of this year if Ministers do not act. Labour Members believe in strong employment protections, so will the Government vote with us tomorrow to ensure that those vital rights are saved?
Grant Shapps
There is absolutely no truth whatsoever in this idea that employment rights, environmental rights or other rights will be scrapped, and the sooner the Opposition stop peddling this stuff the better.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend knows only too well our energy triple challenge of keeping the bills down, keeping the lights on and decarbonising. As chairman of the 1922 Backbench committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I draw his attention to the fact that we have just published a report on the future of energy. In my humble opinion, the report is packed full of incisive and actionable policy suggestions. May I invite him to meet me and my vice-chairs to discuss it and the implications for his Department?
Grant Shapps
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in her analysis: I have not yet read her report but I look forward to receiving a personalised copy of it, and I certainly look forward to meeting her, alongside the Minister for Energy and Climate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart).
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?