Energy Rebates: Highlands and Islands

Debate between Michael Shanks and Graham Leadbitter

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

I thank the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter) for securing this incredibly important debate. He has the pleasure of representing one of the most beautiful parts of Scotland, to which I enjoy going on holiday often. It is great to be discussing this long-standing issue for the highlands and islands of Scotland, which, as he mentioned, was also raised by former Members.

The context of this discussion is important. Energy bills are too high for too many people right across the country, not just in the highlands and islands. This Government have made it clear from the outset that we want to put in place an energy system that delivers lower bills permanently; removes the price spikes that all our constituents, including those in the highlands and islands, have faced over the past few years; and speeds up the transition to home-grown clean energy.

The hon. Gentleman made the point, as have others, that the north of Scotland plays an important role in delivering clean energy at the moment. That brings us back to a conversation that we have had in this place a number of times—indeed, in the previous debate, I recruited the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) to help me with it—on community benefits. We need to do much more for the communities that host this nationally important energy infrastructure and the network infrastructure that goes with it to get power across the country. They should feel benefits from that in their bills and their local communities, and we are looking at that.

The creation of Great British Energy, the first publicly owned energy company in this country for 70 years, is about harnessing clean energy and investing in communities, and of course it will be headquartered in Scotland. I know that the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey and his SNP colleagues did not support the Great British Energy Bill, but I hope that in time they will see the benefit of Great British Energy delivering a greater quantity of cheaper energy right across the UK, which will bring down bills for everyone, wherever they are.

The hon. Gentleman made an important point about locational pricing. If we were to design an energy system from scratch, we would not design the system we have at the moment, which is the legacy of electricity infrastructure being built in different places, at different times and in different ways across this country for a century. Our ambition is to deliver a lower-cost, renewables-based energy system, so we are considering what reforms to the energy market will look like to enable electricity prices to better reflect local conditions. That could have a significant impact on communities like the one the hon. Gentleman represents, recognising that there should be some relationship between where energy is generated and the price people pay for it.

There are potential reforms on the table. The previous Government started the consultation and we have picked it up. Many hon. Members will be aware of the options. They include the possibility of zonal pricing, but it is important that we balance such options with potential capital investment impacts, so there is detailed work going on before we reach any decisions. Reform of the electricity market does not have to be defined simply by locational pricing; we will look at a number of other reforms to the national pricing model, and we continue to work closely with the regulator, Ofgem, and the new publicly owned National Energy System Operator to look at how they might work.

The hon. Gentleman’s point about transmission and distribution costs comes up in debates inside and outside this place. It is important to recognise the difference between the two. Electricity network charges are paid for connecting to, and using, the electricity network. They are paid by consumers across the country, both industrial and domestic, through the standing charge on their energy bill. Transmission charges are based on the costs that users impose on transmission by connecting in different locations, which means that there are higher charges for those areas that require energy to be transmitted a long distance. However, as we have discussed, transmission costs are generally lower in the highlands and islands than in other parts of Great Britain because Scotland is a net exporter of energy.

As the hon. Gentleman pointed out, the difficulty comes with the distribution cost, which is the cost of supplying households in each area with electricity. It is based on the complexities of how we get electricity to individual households, so places like the highlands and islands face higher distribution costs, for obvious reasons: the mountainous terrain, sparse population, distance between houses and poor weather conditions all contribute to those costs being some of the highest in the UK.

[Graham Leadbitter]

On the point about transmission charges versus distribution charges, transmission is, in effect, distribution to the rest of the UK. Energy is transmitted for people to purchase at the other end. It does not cost any less to do that—in fact, it costs more. Purchasing energy hundreds of miles away from where it is created, but paying less to receive it, seems completely inequitable.

[Michael Shanks]

I think that would be true if transmission charges were higher in Scotland than in other parts of the UK, but that is not the case. Distribution charges might be lower in certain parts of the rest of the UK, but the transmission charges are higher, taking into account exactly that point.

We would like to get the grid into a place where we have much more generation capacity being built next to population centres, as well as the investment in the highlands and islands and the North and Celtic seas, but there is no doubt that the grid we will need to build in the future will be very different from the one where we built a gas or coal power station next to a city. We do have to wrestle with these questions of how we get power to the right place.

We also have to take into account how to build in capacity for when renewables are not generating. Parts of Scotland may well generate more electricity than they can use, but not always—not 24/7, 365 days of the year—so the whole grid has to be part of the answer. As the hon. Member referred to, one solution is the hydro benefit replacement scheme. It provides annual assistance of about £112 million to reduce distribution costs for domestic and non-domestic customers in the region, which works out at around a £60 annual reduction in household bills.

Many hon. Members have raised the really important point of standing charges, which are considerably higher in the highlands and islands than in many other places. The setting of standing charges is a commercial matter—they are not fixed by Government—and is regulated by Ofgem. However, the Government have taken the view, as we made clear during the election and in subsequent weeks, that the burden of standing charges on energy bills is far too high. We have had a number of conversations with Ofgem and others about that, including on the amount of variance between standing charges across the UK.

We are committed to lowering standing charges overall, and we have been working constructively with Ofgem on that. In August, Ofgem published a discussion paper addressing many of the issues on standing charges. It sets out the options for how we can reduce them, including moving some supplier operational costs off the standing charge and on to the unit rate, which would rebalance some of the issues raised by the hon. Member; increasing the variety of tariffs available to consumers in the market; and, in the longer term, reviewing how system costs are allocated. That will affect consumers in many ways, but in the meantime we want to work with Ofgem on any practical steps we can take to reduce standing charges as much as possible.

Before this debate, we had a debate on the wider questions around fuel poverty. I will not go over many of those points again, but I will just make the point that many aspects of fuel poverty are devolved to the Scottish Government, which in the autumn Budget last year received the biggest settlement since devolution. We have also announced £1 billion through the warm home discount, which provides an annual £150 rebate off bills for low-income households. That has a Barnett impact and there is therefore money for the Scottish Government to invest if they wish to do so.

The household support fund is an England-only scheme to provide support for those most in need. Of course, it is for the devolved Governments to decide how they want to allocate the additional funding, and the Scottish Government have not implemented a like-for-like scheme, but they do have a wide range of support for households in response to the cost of living crisis.

As I said, we had a very good debate just before this one on fuel poverty. The Government are committed to tackling it. Policy in this area is devolved in Scotland, but this is one of many questions about how we bring down costs for all consumers right across the UK. In our plan for clean power by 2030, we commit to delivering what will be cheaper energy—that was confirmed by the NESO this week. It will require a huge amount of effort, but as part of that we are committed to looking at the review of energy market arrangements as well.

This is a complex issue with a number of layers to it. I thank the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey for raising it again. The challenge of how we lower bills for all is part of the energy trilemma that we are facing around how we demonstrate climate leadership, improve our energy security and lower bills in the long term. It is one that we are tackling head on, and we are determined as a Government to ensure that we do what we can to lower bills for all households across the country—in the highlands and islands, and right across the UK.

Question put and agreed to.