Storm Arwen: Power Outages

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

Of course we will be working, particularly with local resilience fora. The Secretary of State had a series of meetings on calls with local resilience fora through last week, learning and assessing at first hand what their needs are. If Storm Barra is of a similar magnitude or even anywhere close, I would expect that process to continue. With climate change, we can expect the frequency of such events to increase, and we need to make sure that local resilience fora are ready to meet those challenges.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May I say very firmly to the Minister that it is simply unacceptable for customers to have to wait for up to three months for compensation payments? This is an accounting function—a billing function. It is easy to press the right button and get the compensation of £140 a day to these poor people before Christmas.

[Greg Hands]

I stress that I am not apologising on behalf of the companies, but it is “up to three months”; I hope that it will be a lot quicker. Of course the Secretary of State and I will engage with the distribution network operators to make sure that it is done as quickly as possible. Ofgem is engaging with them as well.