Heating Oil Support

Debate between Pippa Heylings and Martin McCluskey

Monday 16th March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

We welcome the Government finally taking action to protect households from soaring energy costs due to the middle east crisis, following calls from those on the Liberal Democrat Benches and MPs of all parties. However, today’s intervention is a sticking-plaster solution, with too many households potentially falling through the cracks and not receiving support. We have heard that those families who must use oil for heating are the most exposed and defenceless, caught in the crossfire of Russia’s war in Ukraine and now the volatility in the middle east.

The heating oil market needs regulating. The Liberal Democrats are calling for the immediate introduction of a three-month VAT holiday on heating oil, as well as a proper price cap, because these households deserve the same protection as those that use gas and electricity. The real way to protect households and businesses is not by parroting Trump’s “Drill, baby, drill” mantra and buckling in for more roller-coaster rides that burn a hole in people’s pockets but by accelerating the transition to secure, home-grown clean energy that we control and extending preferential treatment to the warm homes plan, to help those homes that use heating oil to electrify and get off volatile fuel that we do not control.

Will the Government agree with the Liberal Democrats and set a price cap for heating oil to shield off-grid households? Also, if the Government want to provide targeted support, will they learn the lessons from the covid pandemic and the 2022 energy crisis and immediately enact a data-sharing scheme between Departments, including the Department for Work and Pensions and the NHS, and devolve this to local authorities to enable them to deliver targeted support to those who need it the most through, right now, the crisis and resilience fund that they want to be adopted on 1 April?

[Martin McCluskey]

I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive tone, for working together on some of this, and in particular for her comments on the need to move towards a transition to ensure our energy security and, ultimately, to lower bills.

On the hon. Lady’s point about a cap, the market for heating oil, as she will know, is very different from the market for electricity and gas. The reason that the price cap was introduced many years ago was the potential loyalty penalty that existed, whereby consumers who were with an individual company for a long time were penalised for that. Heating oil, by contrast, is supplied through a highly competitive market. That is why we have asked the CMA to look at this in more detail and we will examine its findings to establish what regulation may be required.

On the hon. Lady’s comments regarding the warm homes plan, the low income fund will target many of those people. She may also be interested to know that about 50% of the grants given out under the boiler upgrade scheme are to rural homes, many of which will be in this situation, that are transitioning from oil heating to electrified heating through a heat pump.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Pippa Heylings and Martin McCluskey

Tuesday 6th January 2026 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and happy new year.

It is freezing outside and, tragically, more than 4,000 households in my constituency are living in fuel poverty. The Government’s decision to cut the energy company obligation, which was the key mechanism for delivering home insulation and energy efficiency, without any details about what will replace it, risks pushing more families into fuel poverty. The businesses and supply chains that have fulfilled ECO contracts for more than a decade have been left in limbo. Again, we have heard no date for the plan. Will the Secretary of State or the Minister finally say when it will be released, thus ending uncertainty for businesses and the suffering of households?

[Martin McCluskey]

The warm homes plan will be published soon and I look forward to conversations with the hon. Member about how we roll out its ambitious measures. ECO did not target those in fuel poverty successfully enough—we spent far too much on something that did not deliver the right results. Instead, the warm homes plan will provide £1.5 billion of additional capital support, targeted at people on low incomes. That is in addition to, for example, local authority grants, which target billions of pounds at low-income households. However, I am more than happy to have further conversations with the hon. Member when the warm homes plan is published.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Pippa Heylings and Martin McCluskey

Tuesday 14th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

I welcome the new Ministers to their place—I look forward to working with them—and I congratulate the Secretary of State and the Minister for Energy on holding on to their posts, which we are glad to see.

One of the best ways to bring down household bills is to help homeowners and small businesses make their properties cheaper to warm and to power. The Liberal Democrats have put forward a plan to do that by introducing a windfall tax on the big banks, which have seen billions of pounds in unexpected profits as a result of the quantitative easing programme by the Bank of England more than a decade ago. Does the Secretary of State agree with the Liberal Democrats that we should instead use those excess profits to fund green affordable loans of up to £20,000 for households and up to £50,000 for businesses and community groups, and cut people’s power bills for good?

[Martin McCluskey]

Having been in this job for only four and half weeks, I am always in the market for good ideas, whichever part of the House they come from. The £13.2 billion warm homes plan will do exactly what the hon. Lady wants us to do—safely insulating homes and getting people to take the action we need them to take to achieve clean power 2030. Importantly, the plan will create homes, businesses and properties that are warm and affordable, powered by sustainable clean energy.