PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 24 March 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

Since conflict broke out in the middle east, we have acted to prevent price-gouging, help those who rely on heating oil, and ensure that businesses get a fair deal on their bills. The energy price cap will fall by £117 next week, with savings locked in until the end of June. We have also sped up work to take control of Britain’s energy, accelerating our next renewables auction and our warm homes plan. We will do whatever it takes to fight people’s corner and learn the right lessons from the crisis.

To go back to heating oil, 20% of households in my South Cotswolds constituency rely on heating oil—that figure is four times the national average—and many of them face high up-front costs. Will the Secretary of State consider supporting more flexible payment or credit schemes, and pooled purchasing models, which would enable villages to combine orders, secure bulk discounts and spread costs over time?

The hon. Lady raises an important issue, and I am sure that many Members will empathise as our constituents face difficult times. The Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), tells me that the Competition and Markets Authority is considering all those issues. If Members encounter practices relating to heating and other things, they should bring them to the attention of my hon. Friend, because we want to work as speedily as possible with the CMA to stamp them out.

My hon. Friend is right to point out the importance of finishing companies. I know that some spinning and weaving businesses are included in the supercharger, but finishing is often not, even though it is done in the same factory. Clearly, whether they are waterproofing sou’westers or fireproofing mattresses, these businesses are important. I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the upcoming supercharger review and what options there may be for those businesses.

Will the Secretary of State be honest and tell the country why he is ideologically obsessed with shutting down the North sea? Is it because he does not think we need the £25 billion of tax revenue it would generate? Is it because he prefers to import gas with higher emissions, or is it because he has never bothered to speak to the thousands of workers who are losing their jobs right now because of his policies?

I am not. As I said earlier, we are using existing oil and gas fields in the North sea for their lifetime, and we have introduced tiebacks for existing fields. While the right. hon Lady comes here month after month with proposals that will do nothing to cut energy bills for people, this Government are actually taking action: reducing the energy price cap next week; making plug-in solar available to all families; the warm homes plan to drive down bills; and crucially, a renewable power auction, which she said that we should cancel, to help 12 million homes.

RenewableUK, the unions, Tony Blair and the Secretary of State’s own handpicked chair of Great British Energy—the biggest advocates for an energy transition—have said that he has got this wrong. Is his ideology so rigid that he is incapable of admitting when he has got things wrong and that he will put us on a pathway to higher emissions and fewer British jobs?

Let us try again. Can the Secretary of State be clear with the House? He knows that we will need gas for decades to come, so why does he prefer to import dirtier gas from abroad than to use the gas that we have in the North sea?

I do not. We continue to use the North sea, and ours is a pragmatic position. But there is a wider lesson that the House has to focus on. Is the lesson of this crisis—a fossil fuels crisis—to double down on fossil fuels, or is it to drive forward with clean energy? We believe clean, home-grown power that we control is the answer.

I thank my hon. Friend for his important question. We are taking three additional measures. We are expanding and extending the warm home discount to 2031. We have supported heating oil customers with the £53 million-worth of support that was announced last week, and our £15 billion warm homes plan is the biggest home upgrade plan in British history. All of that is wrapped up in our clean energy mission—clean power 2030—which will ultimately give us control of our energy.

We moved swiftly to introduce funding to support people. The £53 million-worth of support, which is being disbursed through the crisis and resilience fund in England and Wales, will provide support for people through this immediate period. We will keep other measures under review, but if hon. Members have examples of unfair pricing practices, it is important that they report them to the CMA so that it can consider them as part of its review.

I congratulate all those in my hon. Friend’s constituency on what sounds like a fantastic project, and it is an example of what we want to see all across the country. The local power plan unlocks £1 billion of investment, with the ambition that communities right across the UK should be able to own and operate their own energy infrastructure, and the profits from that should flow into local communities.

We do work very well together, actually, contrary to what it might appear from the hon. Member’s contribution. He suggests, quite wrongly—twice now—that Scotland is generating all this electricity by itself. Of course, those projects are funded by bill payers across the UK investing in that infrastructure. His plan seems to be to take a third off energy bills with independence, with absolutely no credibility whatsoever.

We heard in the responses to our 2024 consultation the concerns about the continued risk to consumers arising from some of these TPIs. The Government plan to bring in new regulation of TPIs and will appoint Ofgem as the regulator, which will be empowered to put in place rules to protect small and medium-sized enterprises and other TPI customers.

The support on offer is not means-tested; it is at the discretion of local authorities to decide the criteria for those applications. That is the first point. The second point is that the CMA is investigating this in detail. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said earlier, if there are any examples, please bring them to my attention and to the CMA’s attention, so that they can be considered as part of that review.

Terminally ill people often have additional energy needs and energy costs. What steps is the Department taking to support those people who are terminally ill with increased energy costs?

I welcome my hon. Friend’s advocacy for those people. No one with a terminal illness should have to face concerns about their energy bills. I will soon be meeting the Minister for Health Innovation and Safety, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Dr Ahmed), to discuss how Government can better share data in order to target support at vulnerable people and those with health conditions.

The Chancellor will have heard the hon. Member’s question, because she is in the room. My right hon. Friend is providing support for people but on a platform of fiscal stability, which the Conservative party would do well to understand.

The Minister knows that Stafford residents are passionate about solar power, and they would like to see the Government go further, with a commitment to solar panels on all new car parks and industrial buildings, like they see in Europe and in France particularly. Does the Minister agree that this policy would help to reduce energy bills for homeowners, as well as protect our rural land, and will he meet me to discuss my campaign?

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend, so I will do that. She is right: we want to cover as many rooftops in the country as we can with solar panels. Just today we have announced that plug-in solar will be available in the UK in the summer, allowing renters and others across the world to go into a supermarket, buy some solar panels, plug them in and save money. That is part of what we want to do to bring down bills across the country.

The green firms that innovate the most, and young firms, have been shown to be particularly credit constrained. Will the Minister meet me to discuss what measures the Government are taking to increase credit supply, raise research and development, and increase economic growth?

We now have record public sector investment in the development of this technology, with £86 billion to 2030. As a techno-optimist, I agree with the International Energy Agency that we can now solve 75% of these problems using technology, and I would be happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the matter further.

For as long as the UK depends on oil and gas, global conflicts will continue to drive price hikes for my constituents in Bedford and Kempston, who face soaring bills when the price cap ends in June. Does the Secretary of State agree that lower bills should come before company profits, and will he levy a windfall tax on the fossil fuel companies, which are making billions from this crisis?

As a result of decisions made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, we are raising significant sums from the windfall tax. We do not agree with the Opposition parties that now is the time to abolish the windfall tax; we think that is really important revenue that can help many of our constituents.

We keep hearing the argument that it will take five to 10 years for new oil and gas to flow, and that therefore there is not point to starting new drilling, but the operators of Jackdaw and Rosebank say that both could be producing by the end of the year—it only needs the Secretary of State to approve that. Why is he denying the UK that supply of domestic fuel?

Those projects are continuing at the moment at the developers’ own risk. They are subject to a process, which the Conservative party will understand because this matter ended up in the courts under the previous Government. We are dealing with that process. Ultimately, none of those projects would take a penny off bills—that is the argument we are making. The Conservatives have no plan for bringing down bills; we have.

Medway Maritime hospital in my constituency is benefiting from a £25.9 million investment to introduce heat pumps and other measures. Does the Minister agree that we could invest in public sector provision to reduce bills in schools, hospitals and other buildings across the country?

I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local hospital. He rightly shows the way that cheap, clean, renewable power can cut bills not just for families, but for our public services, as GB Energy is doing, so that we can transfer money to frontline patient care.

The Secretary of State will be aware of the very high dependence in Northern Ireland on home heating oil. Although the Government have offered some help in the past 10 days, has consideration been given to what happens beyond the summer period if the crisis in the middle east continues over the next few months?

We have supplied £17 million to the Northern Ireland Executive, and I had a constructive conversation last week with Minister Archibald about how that is deployed. We will keep other measures under review as the situation develops.

We all love Cornwall and its incredible clean energy potential. I can confirm that we will be opening the new renewables auction in July. We see an incredibly bright future for floating wind, and we see Cornwall absolutely at the centre of that.