Energy Bills Support Scheme: Northern Ireland

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Climate (Graham Stuart)]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The Northern Ireland energy bills support scheme will provide £400 to households in Northern Ireland this winter. In addition, it has been decided that the alternative fuel payment of £200 will, unlike in Great Britain, be paid to every household in Northern Ireland because of the high preponderance of the use of heating oil in particular. On top of that, support is already being provided to households in Northern Ireland through the energy price guarantee, which brings an automatic reduction in bills.

Energy is devolved, so this scheme should have been administered by the Executive in Northern Ireland. In Great Britain, my Department has been working since February to deal with this very complex and challenging task. We do not live in a society with a centralised database, so standing up the support has proved extremely challenging. It was not until August that the Executive asked the Government and therefore my Department to take on responsibility for it, which is one reason why we have been behind.

There is also a different system and a different regulator. As energy is a devolved matter, the Department was not used to working with the system on a day-to-day basis. Since then, we have identified that we needed powers that we lacked in the Northern Ireland context and we were able to seek those powers through emergency legislation—the Energy Prices Act 2022. We then sought to find the right route to get through to consumers in Northern Ireland.

We found that working through suppliers, because of their established relationships, is the best way—if not the only way—realistically and in a reasonable timeframe to reach consumers in Northern Ireland. By using those systems, we hope to expedite delivery, but there is a different set of suppliers from Great Britain and they have their own processes that need to be adapted to deliver the support. Detailed work is under way to establish how suppliers can use their systems to pass funds to consumers in a way that will meet consumer needs and ensure that public money is properly protected. That is where the biggest issue has come about.

I would like to see the AFP and the EBSS added together so that a £600 payment can go to households in Northern Ireland, and I would like it to be available for them to use this winter to meet their heating oil bills and the cost of living crisis. I do not want them to have stranded electricity credit that they may not use up until the following winter. That has been the crux of the challenge when dealing with suppliers and that is what we are working on to make sure—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I call Carla Lockhart.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

As I said, energy is devolved. I understand why the hon. Lady’s party is not part of the Executive, but that has consequences. It meant that we did not start until August. We should not be doing this; the Executive in Northern Ireland should be doing it—that is the truth.

I met chief executive officers of the energy suppliers last week. Whatever the hon. Lady may have heard, they are not ready. Their systems do not allow for the dispensing and cashing out. I hope that she agrees about not wanting to see people unable to access stranded credit in their electricity account. I have insisted that we find a way to make sure that people can cash that out and use it to meet their heating oil bills this winter.

We had a roundtable on Monday with my officials and those suppliers, and another yesterday. I am receiving daily updates and I am determined to find a way to ensure that we can allow cashing out this winter. In answer to the hon. Lady’s question, however, given the late handing over from the Executive to us and the situation with suppliers, I do not see that we will be able to stand that up before Christmas. We are aiming to stand it up in January, if we possibly can. That is my aspiration and my aim, and that is what I am seeking to achieve.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) on being granted this urgent question. I will put on record some statistics from the Northern Ireland Consumer Council to give some context to what we are talking about. Some 44% of households in Northern Ireland have no savings compared with the UK average of 16%. Households in Northern Ireland are the most vulnerable in our country to the cost of living crisis, with a weekly discretionary spend of £93 compared with the UK average of £204.

Even with the Government’s measures, the University of York estimates that more than 10 million families will be in fuel poverty. Under the new Government’s plans, bills will rise by £900 to £3,000 on average from April. That would mean that 18 million households were in fuel poverty across the UK, with Northern Ireland hit among the hardest. To make matters worse, two thirds of households in Northern Ireland use heating oil, so are not supported by the energy price guarantee.

Providing support for households in Northern Ireland should have been a priority as they will be hit harder by the rise in energy bills. Instead, the Government seem to have forgotten them. The energy market is complicated but the Government have been aware of these issues for six months. In May, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke), wrote in the Belfast News Letter to promise that the Government were

“urgently working to ensure that the people of NI receive the equivalent of this”—

energy bill support—

“as soon as possible.”

There has been little sign, however, that the Government have been working on the issue at all since then.

A taskforce was set up in August, but has met only twice. The former Prime Minister, during her very short tenure, told the people in Northern Ireland that payment would be delivered in November—today is 30 November. It is not good enough to let the issue drift. The Northern Ireland utility regulator said in August that he believed there was a simple mechanism to get the money out and he had been left frustrated that the Government had not taken it forward. Can the Minister explain why the option put forward by the Northern Ireland utility regulator has not been taken forward? How much longer will people in Northern Ireland have to wait for this support?