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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what assessment he has made of the effect of energy prices on the viability of small and medium-sized businesses.

The Government is committed to ensuring competitive and affordable energy costs for all businesses as well as households. The Committee on Climate Change recently assessed energy costs for all businesses and concluded that energy costs are a small proportion of businesses’ operating costs.

In their final report on the investigation into the energy markets published in June 2016, the Competition Markets Authority proposed a number of remedies to help microbusinesses access better energy deals. The Government supports the implementation of these measures which have now been implemented by Ofgem. These will improve the transparency of tariffs available to businesses and by making it easier for these businesses to switch suppliers.