PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Household Energy Bills - 2 June 2026 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

We recognise that the latest price cap that has been announced will be deeply concerning for households, many of whom were already struggling before the Iran crisis hit. That is why the Government have already taken action. We have taken £150 of costs off energy bills, extended the warm home discount to nearly 6 million families and provided over £50 million of immediate support for vulnerable customers who use heating oil. We will, of course, continue to monitor the situation closely ahead of winter and stand ready to take action.

The energy price cap increase is estimated to cost each household an extra £18 every month, which is the price of a regular essential food shop at a discount supermarket. I note the measures that the Minister says the Government are taking, but in addition will the Government urgently bring forward a social tariff for vulnerable low-income households?

The hon. Member makes an important point. The Government do not want anyone to be making the choice between heating and eating. That is why across Government we are working on a data sprint to work out how we can use household income date to ensure that we are targeting support at the right people.

The typical annual dual fuel bill is 40% higher today in real terms than it was in 2021. After accounting for inflation, that means it is £511 more per household. The bad news does not stop there, with Ofgem announcing that the crisis is going to get worse, with a 13% increase to the energy price cap. My constituents in Leicester South were already suffering. Labour promised to fix that, but the cost of living is just getting worse. The Minister says that the only way to protect our country is through clean, home-grown power, so what is he doing to decouple the bills from gas prices and when will my constituents feel that?

The hon. Gentleman’s constituents in Leicester will benefit from the decisions that we have already made. Those decisions take £150 off energy costs and extend the warm home discount and the warm homes plan, providing £15 billion of support. We are delinking and we are already taking action, as the Secretary of State announced last month. Ofgem has pointed out that although last week wholesale gas prices at the price cap went up by 24%, electricity went up by 5%. As it said:

“This reflects the increase in the amount of renewable generation on the system and therefore reduced reliance on gas”.

In my constituency, 3,199 households currently experience fuel poverty due to high energy costs, and costs linked to the Government’s clean energy agenda could mean that household bills are set to rise by at least £100 in the next four years. How long will hard-working families in South West Hertfordshire have to pay the price for Labour’s ideological dash away from domestic energy production until it has a credible plan to fill the gaps in its energy policy?

That comes from a member of a party that learned no lessons from the last energy crisis. We will not make the same mistakes, which is why we are investing in clean power by 2030, which will drive down bills. Only today, we have seen the jobs benefit from the investment in clean energy, supporting 1.1 million jobs, 22,000 small businesses and £105 billion for our economy.

I welcome the Government’s measures to support domestic consumers of kerosene heating oil. I am told that if those who are eligible filled their tanks today, they would pay the equivalent of what they will be paying in February 2027. In my constituency we have big commercial users of kerosene oil, such as distilleries, seaweed manufacturing, tourist amenities and chemical plants. What measures is the Department taking to support commercial users of kerosene oil?

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for all the work he does to advocate for his constituents in Na h-Eileanan an Iar; I was pleased to visit him recently to see the impact that the increases in heating oil are having on his constituents. We are looking closely at the non-domestic heating oil market, and we will come forward with more proposals in due course.

I congratulate my hon. Friend and the team on reducing the cost of energy, including with recent efforts to break the link between the volatile gas price and electricity prices. However, every witness before the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, when we ask how to decarbonise and reduce bills, tells us, “Make electricity cheaper.” What further efforts will the Government make in reforming the energy market in order to achieve that?

My hon. Friend will know that we are taking action, which the Secretary of State announced, to further delink the cost of electricity from gas. As Ofgem said last week in relation to the price cap, we are already seeing the effects of that. Because of the additional renewable generation in the system, we are seeing the effects of that. Every turbine we build, every solar panel we deploy and every reactor we bring online will ultimately reduce our reliance on fossil fuels and bring down the cost of electricity.

A good way of reducing bills is to reduce consumption. In Germany, about 12 years ago, subsidised mortgages were introduced to help reduce the cost of installing triple glazing in houses. However, in conservation areas in this country, such as in my constituency, people are prevented from installing even secondary glazing, so they cannot reduce their bills, even though they would desperately like to. Will the Minister meet colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to get this issue sorted?

I would be more than happy to meet to discuss that. The warm homes plan—our £15 billion investment in home energy upgrades, which is the biggest in British history—will go a long way to achieving some of the ends that my hon. Friend describes. I point him towards the work that we are doing jointly with the Green Finance Institute to bring forward low-cost consumer loans so that people across the country can benefit from clean technology.

One in three households in the constituency that I represent live in fuel poverty, and they face even higher bills from 1 July. Does the Minister agree that the Ofgem energy price cap should be frozen to provide universal support for households now and to give people certainty in the cold winter months ahead?

I welcome the hon. Lady to her place, and I look forward to working closely with her on this brief, as I have done with other colleagues from her party. She will know that we have said we are looking at all contingencies in relation to the support that we may need to offer in the winter, but that has to be paid for. We need to ensure that we have proposals that do not make the same mistakes that the Conservatives made in the last crisis, when they wrote a blank cheque in order to provide support to people, so we will come forward with plans for support in the winter.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he is doing on this issue in his constituency, and I would be happy to meet him to discuss it further. I have seen for myself the benefits that green doctors—energy doctors—bring to constituencies across the country when I have visited those programmes. That kind of local support will be central to the work we are doing in setting up the warm homes agency, which will provide advice and guidance to people across the country.

I call the shadow Minister.

Labour came to office with bold promises to cut energy bills, but in the real world we have seen bills go up, up and up again. In answer to the first question, the Secretary of State said that he wanted to do all he could to cut energy bills, so here are some ideas for how he could do so. He could scrap carbon taxes, he could remove VAT from energy for three years, and he could scrap legacy renewable subsidies—that would save people £200. It is called the Conservatives’ cheap energy plan and, in the national interest, we do not mind if he steals it. Will he?

We can see the economic recklessness of the Conservative party when the hon. Member stands at that Dispatch Box making uncosted promises and claims. Before this crisis, bills were going down—they were going in the right direction—and no one would have anticipated the consequences of the war in Iran. Let us look at the balance sheet of the past two years. This Government have made the biggest investment in warm homes in our history, with record-breaking renewables delivering for 23 million homes. As of today, there has been £90 billion of clean energy investment, and every single wind turbine we deploy and every single nuclear reactor that is online reduces energy bills for consumers across the country.