Social Energy Tariff

Lord Offord of Garvel Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a valuable point. We will invest £13.2 billion in the warm homes plan over the spending review period, in line with our manifesto commitment. This builds on last year’s initial settlement of £3.4 billion, and we have taken a major step forward in our plans to upgrade up to 5 million homes over this Parliament, cutting energy bills for good and fulfilling our manifesto commitment to deliver the warm homes plan.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My Lords, as has been pointed out, we have a social tariff. We had one previously, before 2011, but it was abolished in favour of the warm home discount. I welcome any initiative by the Government to increase that to alleviate any suffering, but any talk of a social tariff would be a sticking plaster over the fundamental problem raised by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux: that the cost of our electricity is way too high. Our domestic electricity is three times more expensive than that of the US, and industrial electricity is four times more expensive than that of the US and seven times more than that of China. This is the real problem. Only one-third of electricity prices in domestic bills are wholesale prices; 46% of the total costs are the green levies and subsidies, which are being accentuated by the accelerated and self-inflicted rush to decarbonise the grid. Will the noble Lord go back to his department so that we can come up with a new plan for energy that is affordable for all?

[Lord Wilson of Sedgefield (Lab)]

We have plans on the go to make everybody’s energy bills cheaper. We need to move towards having energy that is essentially homegrown, as at the moment it is not. We need to move in that direction if we want to bring down bills, which is the target of this Government.