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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment his Department has made of the implication for his policies of 2.5 million people living in energy poverty.

This Government is committed to tackling fuel poverty. The latest statistics on fuel poverty in England show the average fuel poverty gap – the amount needed on average to lift households out of fuel poverty – decreased to £326 in 2016, down from £341 in 2015.

The best long-term solution is to improve energy efficiency to bring the cost of heating homes down. That is why we have just consulted on focussing the whole of the £640m per year Energy Company Obligation on low income and vulnerable households from later this year.

We are also introducing a price cap to stop unreasonable price rises for those 11 million households on standard variable and default tariffs and under the Warm Home Discount Scheme, over 2 million low income and vulnerable households are provided with a £140 rebate off their energy bill each winter.