Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what assessment his Department has made of the effects of the changes made by the Valuation Office Agency to rates for gas storage facilities on security of supply and price stability in the UK.

Business rates are only one part of a suite of costs faced by gas storage operators and the impact of business rate changes on gas storage sites can only be understood when compared to commercially sensitive information about each gas storage site, to which the Government does not have access. It is not feasible to assess the impact of rate changes in isolation and for this reason we have made no such assessment.