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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to (a) expedite the Government's application to the European Commission to exempt energy-intensive industries from the indirect costs of the Renewables Obligation and small-scale Feed-in Tariffs and (b) ensure that legislation on that exemption is in place before financial year 2017-18.

We are engaging with the European Commission about our state aid pre-notification to move from compensation to exemption for the indirect cost of the Renewables Obligation (RO) and small-scale Feed-in Tariffs (FiT). We aim to introduce the exemption for Energy Intensive Industries (EIIs) from 1 April 2017.

The Government continues to provide relief to those EIIs most affected by the rising cost of electricity and has paid over £360m in compensation since August 2013.