Question to the Department for Energy Security & Net Zero:

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, what steps her Department has taken to enforce the requirement to pass on energy price support to end users under section 19 of the Energy Prices Act 2022 in relation to the (a) Energy Price Guarantee, (b) Energy Bills Support Scheme and (c) Energy Bill Relief Scheme.

The legislation was introduced to ensure that intermediaries who received energy price support were legally required to pass through the benefit. The regulations allowed end users to pursue recovery of benefits from their intermediary as a debt through civil proceedings. Should a court rule in the end user’s favour, they will be entitled to the payment, plus interest.

Such an assessment is not possible as data is not held in this way. We believe in the majority of cases energy price support was passed on to the consumer. We are aware of a small number of cases which have been escalated and are currently being investigated by the authorities.