Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what discussions he has had with representatives of the Scottish Government on proposals for a policy of national fixed pricing on energy distribution in the last 12 months.

The Government undertakes a triennial review of the Hydro Benefit Replacement Scheme. As part of the last review which completed in July 2016, we concluded that there was not a good case for a national fixed tariff for distribution as the move away from cost reflective charging risked increasing overall network costs for consumers across GB. Ofgem’s assessment of regional differences in network charges, which was published in October 2015, concluded that there was no compelling case from a regulatory perspective for a national fixed tariff. Ofgem found that it would have left 16 million households worse off, with only 11 million benefitting.