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 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 ensure legislation is in place by April 2017.

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.