Energy Price Freeze

Mark Tami Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Weir]

My h F is correct. As I was just saying, the price freeze does come at the cost of much-needed future investment and the jobs that it could create. It does seem to me that the CMA investigation will mean that there will be a slow-down in investment over at least the next two years while companies wait to see what will happen and how they will be affected by its conclusions.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

I would accept the hon. Gentleman's point if we had seen investment anyway, but we have not. For years and years, we have not seen the level of investment that we need. To say that it is the price freeze that is stopping it is ludicrous.

[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman clearly is not listening. I said it would make the situation worse. I fully appreciate that we need this investment. It is not happening sufficiently now, but it will get worse under this. The hon. Gentleman should perhaps listen a little more closely. Effectively there will be a slow down in investment whatever happens now, and that could be disastrous since it is only by investment in new renewable energy that we can break away from the dependence on carbon-emitting generation and bring down bills permanently in the long run.

But if we are to have an investigation, it should look at the whole of the energy industry and in particular the very costly subsidies that are being provided for new nuclear. The deal announced for Hinkley C is almost double the current wholesale energy price, and incidentally, I understand, very much higher than prices agreed by EDF for similar stations overseas. It will cost the taxpayer an eye-watering sum of money and be guaranteed for at least 35 years. Indeed, the cost of that station alone will be more than four times the total amount paid out in renewable obligations for the first 10 years of its existence. If more stations are built, we can assume that developers will be seeking the same sort of deal, and Hinkley will become the benchmark of how nuclear developers can soak the taxpayer. Perhaps this is an area that could be improved by more ‘transparency’ and ‘accountability’ as sought in the motion. All this, despite the fact that the similar stations being built in Finland and France are many years behind target and vastly over budget. Surely in any investigation into the market this should have been a major factor, yet there is simply no mention of it in the documents issued with the announcement of the review.

We believe that if we are to reduce and retain lower energy bills, we need to move to a renewable future and make that investment now. We believe that we need to remove the cost of the energy company obligation and warm home discount from energy bills and put it into general taxation, but maintain the level of spend. It is interesting to note that although the UK Government have removed those to some extent, that is a temporary measure for a couple of years, not a long-term measure. Doing this would be much fairer and allow a much more targeted approach to dealing with these issues. It is undeniably true that there is now so much distrust of the energy companies that even a good deal from them is now looked at with suspicion and rejected out of hand by many consumers.

The investigation by the CMA may well finally get some agreement on what is happening in the energy market and allow us a way forward. I could agree with most of the Opposition motion, but I do have difficulty with the last part which seems to have come to a conclusion about the investigation before it has taken place. Given that previous investigations by the OFT have decided that the market was working, I am not entirely sure that we can rely on this current one coming to the conclusion that the market is broken, as the motion puts it, although most of us would agree that there are indeed serious problems with it. It will be interesting to see the conclusions that it comes to. Clearly there must be changes in our energy industry, and the sooner the better.