Oral Answers to Questions

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

6. What steps he is taking to help households with energy bills.

[Andy Sawford (Corby) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What steps he is taking to help households with energy bills.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davey]

First, Mr Speaker, I apologise for not getting the list of questions right. My hon. Friend the Member for Argyll and Bute (Mr Reid) makes a good point. We expect heating oil companies to pass on the savings they are making. They do not hedge in the way that electricity and gas companies do in relation to the long-term forward markets; I understand that heating oil forward purchases are done on a much shorter time scale. We would therefore expect reductions in the price of oil to be fed through much more quickly.

[Nia Griffith]

It is all very well to talk about making the energy companies reduce their bills, but does the Secretary of State not agree that it would be a lot more effective if the regulator had the power to force them to bring prices down, as Labour is proposing?

[Mr Davey]

Actually, it was the last Labour Government who got rid of price regulation from the regulatory tool book. This Government have supported the referral of the energy market to the independent competition authorities. That is a policy that the last Government—and the present Leader of the Opposition when he was doing my job—failed to pursue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davey]

First, it is worth putting it on the record, as it is Christmas, that Britain leads the world in offshore wind, with more offshore wind farms installed than in the rest of the world combined. In the current round of CfD allocations—of course, it has not been completed yet, so I cannot talk about the details—we have ensured that we have sufficient allocation for offshore wind, but we have also ensured that the levy control framework includes further allocations for it, so that the consumer can benefit from dropping prices.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has mentioned the cuts in the energy companies obligation. When those cuts were made, Ministers made it clear that it would not be acceptable if energy companies did not pass them on to consumers. Will the Secretary of State explain why 4 million households have still not received the full saving and what he intends to do about it?

[Mr Davey]

I do not recognise the figures that the hon. Lady gives, and I have to tell her that the energy companies obligation is one of the most successful energy efficiency policies ever implemented. A huge number of steps are being taken, and I hope that any future Government will continue and build upon them. We have given the industry much greater stability—it has never before had three years of reassurance about the future regime, which we gave it last year.