Energy Price Guarantee Extension

1. What assessment he has made of the potential impact of the extension of the energy price guarantee on household energy bills.

The energy price guarantee has been extended at the same level for a further three months until the end of June. By then, the Government will have covered nearly half of a typical household’s energy bills during this winter, and a third to a half of business bills as well.[Official Report, 12 June 2023, Vol. 734, c. 2MC.]

I welcome the Secretary of State and his entire team to their places in this important new Department. I thank him for his response, but does he agree that the best way to ensure the stability of energy prices long term is to develop our own sovereign supply, with technology such as small modular reactors, hydrogen and nuclear?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we put £200 million into funding new hydrogen in the “Powering up Britain” document just a few weeks ago. He will know about Great British Nuclear. I intend that we launch a competition, pick a winner for that by the autumn and get on with it.

If the energy price guarantee is to come to an end in June, surely the logical next step is a social tariff. People have become used to social tariffs from their mobile phone providers and broadband. What is the Secretary of State doing to make sure energy companies introduce a social tariff to target support at the most vulnerable in society?

Just to correct the record, it comes to an end in April 2024, so that guarantee remains in place. Wholesale prices in the meantime, fortunately, have been falling—I noticed that they are £98 per therm this morning. We do think that things like a social tariff could be very helpful and the Chancellor has undertaken to look at that as well.

It has made a huge difference to millions of families that the Government have been paying over a third of people’s energy bills, as part of a bigger package that is one of the most generous in Europe, but can the Minister assure us that the Government are doing everything possible to get inflation down and ensure that we have more sustainably priced energy in future?

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. She mentions a third; in fact, we have been paying around a half of the typical household energy bill this winter, at huge cost. Fortunately, we have seen the wholesale prices fall, and we will start to see that reflected in the energy prices, although we have extended the guarantee—the £2,500. But she is absolutely right in her wider point: it is essential that we get to the cheapest, most plentiful electricity in Europe, and the “Powering up Britain” document aims to do precisely that.

One of the most effective and long-term ways of getting people’s energy bills down would be to invest in a comprehensive, street-by-street home insulation programme, which this Government are still failing to do. Research by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit shows that delays to legislating for minimum energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector could cost renters in the leakiest homes an additional £1 billion in higher bills, so with the Energy Bill making its way through the Commons later this year, will the Minister finally end the delay and ensure that those proposals, which the Government first started consulting about three years ago, are legislated for in that Bill?

Sometimes, we speak in this House as if we have not actually greened up any of our Victorian housing stock. In fact, back in 2010, only about 14% of houses in this country had A to C on their energy performance certificate; today, that figure is 47%. This year, we will have over half of our homes greened up. We are putting £12.5 billion-plus into it. So we are making rapid progress, which is sometimes not entirely reflected by Opposition parties.