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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to reduce fuel poverty in (a) Jarrow constituency, (b) South Tyneside, (c) the North East and (d) England.

The best long-term solution to tackling fuel poverty is to improve energy efficiency to bring the cost of heating homes down. We recently announced that the whole of the £640m per year Energy Company Obligation scheme will be focused on low income and vulnerable households from later this year.

Financial support is also available to help low income and vulnerable households with the cost of keeping warm each winter. The Warm Home Discount provides over 2 million households with a £140 rebate off their energy bill.

In addition, the current Safeguard Tariff caps energy prices for 4 million pre-payment meter customers, and 1 million households in receipt of the Warm Home Discount, two groups who are known to be among the most vulnerable in society. The Domestic Gas & Electricity (Tariff Cap) Act 2018 requires Ofgem to temporarily extend these protections to a further 11 million customers on standard variable and default tariffs.