Oral Answers to Questions

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Alyn Smith (Stirling) (SNP)]

17. What steps her Department is taking to help reduce energy costs for households.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

20. What steps she is taking to provide support with energy bills.

[The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)]

Ofgem’s new price cap means that from April, the average bill is set to drop by £238. This shows that our plan is working: we have halved inflation and energy prices are at their lowest level in two years. Alongside that, we have taken the number of homes that are well insulated up from 14% in 2010 to 50% now. We have recently set out plans to help more customers access smarter energy tariffs, which could save them up to £900 a year.

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[Elliot Colburn]

The fall in the energy price cap is certainly welcomed by Carshalton and Wallington residents, as is the support for households, but many small and medium-sized businesses in my constituency are still struggling to absorb higher costs. Will the Secretary of State outline in a bit more detail the support that those businesses can access to help with energy bills?

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank my hon. Friend for recently welcoming me to Carshalton and Wallington. Wholesale energy prices have fallen significantly since last winter, but we are committed to supporting businesses with their energy bills. Last winter alone, we delivered about £7.4 billion to support businesses, covering nearly half of many businesses’ wholesale energy costs. We are continuing the energy bills discount scheme to support eligible businesses with high energy costs until they can take advantage of lower wholesale prices.

Oral Answers to Questions

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

12. If she will take steps to ensure that consumers do not pay for heat network remediation.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

15. What steps she is taking to support heat network customers with energy bills.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

17. What assessment she has made with Cabinet colleagues of the potential merits of introducing a mandatory price cap on heat networks.

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[Amanda Solloway]

Through the heat network efficiency scheme, the Government are providing £32 million to upgrade existing heat networks and reduce energy costs. The scheme will upgrade old equipment and help consumers in more than 10,000 houses to reduce their energy use. We will shortly announce the first awards from the fund.

[Elliot Colburn]

Residents living in New Mill Quarter in Hackbridge in my constituency have been plagued by a litany of problems since they were connected to the Sutton decentralised energy network, including an inability to change tariffs. Does my hon. Friend agree that residents have been let down by the mismanagement identified in an independent report on its poor running by Lib Dem-run Sutton Council? Will she commit to working with me to ensure that heat network customers, who have nowhere else to go for their energy, are protected by new measures in the Energy Bill?

[Amanda Solloway]

I know how hard my hon. Friend works for his constituents and I thank him for bringing this scheme to my attention. We want all heat network customers to receive a high-quality service and fair pricing, which is why we are appointing Ofgem as a regulator through the Energy Bill and currently consulting on how it will operate. Of course I will meet my hon. Friend.

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[Amanda Solloway]

I can assure the hon. Lady that we are in constant conversations with Ofgem on such matters. Although this is a matter for Ofgem, I have a regular meeting to make sure that we are on top of this.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

T3. Energy from waste requires burning waste and it is therefore not conducive to net zero. The expansion of the Beddington incinerator in my constituency is not needed to meet local demand, so can my right hon. Friend assure me that the Environment Agency will take that into account before making a decision on whether or not to license?

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

The Environment Agency’s recent consultation on varying the environmental permit for the Beddington energy recovery plant closed on 1 September. The Environment Agency will carefully consider all relevant responses and issue a final decision in due course.

Energy Bill [Lords]

Elliot Colburn Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

In the short time available, I want to focus on an aspect of the Bill that has not yet been discussed in this debate: the new regulations on district heat networks. I am very grateful that the Government have listened to concerns—not just from me, but from colleagues across the House who have district heat networks in their constituencies—about just how damaging those networks’ unregulated nature can be. That can be seen on the New Mill Quarter estate in my constituency, which I have raised a number of times in this place. I will outline briefly why this new regulation is so needed and why it is welcome, but also where I would like the Government to look into potentially going further.

To give a quick bit of context, the New Mill Quarter estate in Hackbridge is heated by a series of insulated pipes that stretch from the incinerator in the north of the constituency across redeveloped farmland to heat those homes, but it has been bedevilled by problems. It is not even online yet: it is currently being powered by a back-up gas boiler system, and it has suffered a number of blackouts and two call-outs from the London Fire Brigade and, practically, seems to have had a huge failure. I do not have time to go into that subject now, but I draw Members’ attention to some of my other contributions in the House on it.

Blackouts are probably the No. 1 reason why regulation is needed. The reliability of district heat networks is a massive problem, and not just in New Mill Quarter in Hackbridge; it has happened across other estates in London, such as Oval Quarter in Lambeth, New Festival Quarter in Tower Hamlets and multiple estates in Southwark—no guessing which party runs those local authorities.

Customer satisfaction is lower for customers on district heat networks, rather than gas boilers. A 2017 survey conducted by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy found that district heat network customers were much less satisfied with their service than those with other forms of energy.

Bills are another big issue. The cost of living is a massive concern for all our constituents right now, and the No. 1 concern that comes up time and again when I talk to Carshalton and Wallington residents is meeting the cost of their energy bills. We need to empower Ofgem to force the pricing model of district heat networks to be comparable to the market average. That is incredibly important, and I am grateful to the Government for looking at that in detail and taking steps in that direction. The residents of New Mill Quarter are facing energy bills higher than the market average. They are not protected by, for example, the energy price cap, because it is an unregulated piece of heating. I very much welcome the Government’s measures, which will provide a lot of reassurance not just to residents of New Mill Quarter, but to others living under a district heat network.

The final thing that I welcome the Government taking action on is simply the monopolistic nature of heat networks. Customers cannot change and go to a new supplier, because a district heat network forces those living within it to use that heat network. They cannot shop around for a better deal and they cannot rely on the market—this is important to me as a free-market Conservative—to drive down prices while driving up reliability. Regulation therefore is so important, and I am grateful that the Government are taking steps in that regard.

One area I would like the Government to look at further is future-proofing district heat networks. Many of them are future-proofed by their very nature, but for those that are heated by incinerators, such as the one in Hackbridge, I can see a glaring problem coming down the line. The Government outlined in their waste minimisation strategy that they want to phase out incineration as a form of dealing with waste. All of us across the House support the reduction and stopping of incineration as a form of dealing with our waste. Incineration is only slightly better than landfill—only very slightly. It is not a net zero-conducive form of waste management, as we rely on creating waste to feed it.

The problem we can see in estates such as New Mill Quarter is that we will have an incinerator that becomes less and less needed as the years go on. We then have two options: either we have to import waste to feed the thing and keep the heating going, which obviously is not conducive to any net zero ambitions; or the thing has to be turned off, and what happens then? That entire estate was new build, built specifically with the infrastructure to deal with the incinerator. I might be long dead by the time it happens, but the problem is coming, and we should not leave it to a future generation to solve. We should look at future-proofing that now.

[David Duguid]

I am interested in what my hon. Friend is saying about heat networks and wonder whether he might agree with something I have learned just recently. It is a proposal from a stakeholder who deals in renewable energy, including hydrolysis to create hydrogen. That generates a lot of heat, and their suggestion is that we declare heat as a utility in a wider form. Would that help his purposes?

[Elliot Colburn]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and it relates to a point that a number of colleagues have made today: we cannot mandate the use of one technology or a very small number of technologies; we need to have that collective option. I urge the Government to err on the side of caution because, under their own ambitions, district heat networks could account for something like two fifths of the UK’s heat provision. Given the problems that have existed in Hackbridge and across multiple estates, and not just in London, I urge the Government not to put all their eggs in one basket by relying on district heat networks as a singular answer. I agree with my hon. Friend. There are plentiful supplies of renewable energy out there. We need to make sure that we are neither mandating nor preventing the use of any one. We should be using all those potentials to reach our net zero ambitions and provide more domestic energy security.

I very much welcome the measures set out in the Bill and urge colleagues to support it. It will certainly have my support tonight.