Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the impact of capacity issues at the national grid on housebuilding in Stockport constituency.
Answered by Graham Stuart
I refer the Hon. Member to the answer I gave him on 20th September 2022 to Question 46191. In addition, Ofgem’s upcoming distribution network price control provides £22.2bn in baseline funding to deliver electricity to homes and meet expected increases in electricity demand. It incentivises networks to invest ahead of demand to future-proof the network. Transmission and distribution network companies are also working together to improve the connection processes and embed best practice. This should help release network capacity and accelerate connection timescales.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to support small businesses in Stockport constituency in the context of the cost of living crisis.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
Businesses in Stockport will have benefitted from the Government’s reversal of the National Insurance rise, saving SMEs approximately £4,200 on average, the cut to fuel duty for 12 months and raising the Employment Allowance to £5,000.
The Energy Bill Relief and Energy Bill Discount Schemes will protect SMEs from high energy costs over the winter. The Autumn Statement announced £13.6 billion of support for businesses over the next five years, reducing the burden of business rates for SMEs.
The Government is providing financial support – 173 SMEs in Stockport have received Start Up loans to the value of £1,648,098 as at December 2022.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many businesses in Stockport constituency have received the Government energy subsidy.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Energy Bill Relief Scheme (EBRS) provides a discount on the wholesale element of gas and electricity bills to ensure that all eligible businesses in Stockport, that receive their energy from licensed suppliers, are protected from excessively high energy costs over the winter period. The EBRS discount is applied directly to the energy bills of eligible businesses by their energy providers. Therefore the Government does not have a breakdown of support received by location. The new Energy Bill Discount Scheme (EBDS) will run from April until March 2024 and provide a discount to eligible businesses.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of how many prepayment energy meters there are in Stockport (a) constituency and (b) borough; and what proportion of those are in households.
Answered by Graham Stuart
BEIS produced a one-off publication in March 2019 of annual prepayment meter electricity statistics for Great Britain by country, English regions and local authority. These statistics cover electricity prepayment meters that had a domestic meter profile in 2017.
Data on regional variation of payment method (prepayment, direct debit or credit) for domestic standard electricity customers, domestic economy 7 electricity customers and domestic gas customers is published in Quarterly Energy Prices table 2.4.2, table 2.4.3 and table 2.5.2.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many homes have been retrofitted through the Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund in Stockport constituency.
Answered by Graham Stuart
The Social Housing Decarbonisation Fund Demonstrator and Wave 1 awarded a combined total of around £240m of grant funding to Local Authorities, with data held on local authority-led projects rather than at a constituency level. Greater Manchester Combined Authority received approximately £10.5m grant funding to retrofit homes under the SHDF Wave 1 Project. The SHDF Wave 2.1 competition will allocate up to £800m of grant funding, with successful projects likely to be notified in March 2023.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which industry in Stockport constituency receives the most Government funding as of 7 December 2022.
Answered by Nusrat Ghani - Minister of State (Minister for Europe)
We do not collect data on industrial investment at constituency level. Levelling Up will be achieved through empowering our regions by devolving money, resources, and control away from Westminster.
As a part of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority, Stockport will benefit from access to £83.9m through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and £100m through the Innovation Accelerators. Stockport has also been awarded grants of more than £28m through the Towns Fund and Future High Streets Fund to support private sector investment.
The Greater Manchester city region, meanwhile, has received a total of over £115m for the academic year 2022/23 in Quality-related research (QR) funding and Higher Education Innovation Funding (HEIF) delivered through Research England.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much funding his Department provided for research and development in Stockport constituency in the 2022-23 financial year.
Answered by George Freeman
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) do not yet have full data for competitive grants in the current financial year 2022/23.
The Greater Manchester South-East sub-region (which is composed of the Metropolitan Boroughs of Stockport and Tameside) received £1,626,895 in publicly funded R&D from UKRI in the financial year 2020-21 (latest data available). The North-West region of England received £539,953,563 of public R&D funded by UKRI in the financial year 2020-21 (latest data available).
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many businesses are owned by black and ethnic minority people in Stockport constituency.
Answered by Kevin Hollinrake - Minister of State (Department for Business and Trade)
The Government does not hold regional information on the proportion of BME-owned businesses in Stockport. Government is aware of the challenges faced by ethnic minority businesses and is taking action to support them. Ministers regularly engage with ethnic minority business leaders and networks to better understand the issues facing them.
We are working with stakeholders to agree interventions to improve access to finance. Since its launch (2012) the Start Up Loans programme has issued around 20% of its loans to Black, Asian, and Ethnic-minority business worth £187,043,936.
We are also delivering actions set out in the Inclusive Britain report (2022), which aim to support ethnic minority entrepreneurs.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, which ward in Stockport constituency has the highest proportion of homes fitted with external wall insulation.
Answered by Graham Stuart
BEIS estimates that under the Energy Company Obligation (ECO) and Green Homes Grant (GHG) Government schemes, the ward with the highest proportion of external wall insulation measures installed in Stockport constituency is Manor.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that people in receipt of (a) Personal Independence Payment and (b) Higher Rate Mobility Payment also benefit from the Warm Home Discount at their residential address irrespective of whether their name appears on the energy provider's bill and electronic records.
Answered by Graham Stuart
Households in receipt of means-tested benefits with high energy costs based on certain characteristics of their property are eligible for the rebate. As a result of expanding and reforming the scheme 160,000 more households where a person has a disability or long-term illness will receive a rebate.
The Government’s data matching with energy suppliers enables most eligible households to receive their rebates automatically. To be eligible, a person, their partner or their DWP Appointee must be named on the electricity bill or account of a participating supplier on the qualifying date.