Draft Warm Home Discount (Scotland) Regulations 2022

Nick Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2022 General Committees

[The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Warm Home Discount (Scotland) Regulations 2022.

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Efford. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

The draft regulations were laid before the House on 29 June 2022. We have already passed legislation for the warm home discount scheme in England and Wales. The Scottish Government have devolved powers under the Scotland Act 2016 to design and implement a warm home discount in Scotland, while the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy reserves certain powers. Earlier this year, Scottish Ministers requested that the UK Government make provision for a continuation of the scheme in Scotland. In May, the UK Government consulted on such proposals, which were supported by most respondents.

This draft statutory instrument extends and expands the warm home discount scheme in Scotland until March 2026. The scheme will be worth about £49 million per annum in Scotland, an increase of some £13 million. About 280,000 vulnerable Scottish households will receive a rebate, which is 50,000 more than last winter. The apportionment of spending to Scotland—9.4% of the total—is based on the number of domestic gas and electricity meters across Great Britain. The proportion of spending in Scotland will exceed Scotland’s share of the population.

The scheme participation threshold for energy suppliers is lowered to 50,000 domestic consumer customer accounts in 2022-23 and to 1,000 from 2023-24. As requested by Scottish Government Ministers, the scheme will largely be a continuation of what was in place previously.

Under the core group, about 90,000 pensioners in receipt of pension credit guarantee credit will continue to receive their rebate automatically. Under the broader group, about 190,000 low-income and vulnerable households will receive a rebate following an application to their energy supplier.

[Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister would help me. The explanatory notes state that the

“process requires data matching activities by DWP which can only take place once the instrument is in force and takes several weeks before suppliers can start to provide the rebates.”

This could be a complex process, so has he got an estimate for when the rebates will be applied, please?