Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent discussions he has had with energy providers on promoting renewable energy use in rural homes.
Answered by Claire Perry
Ministers regularly discuss a range of issues with energy suppliers.
The Rural Community Energy Fund provides funding for feasibility studies for rural communities to develop, own and generate their own energy. The Feed-in Tariff scheme also remains open for projects across the UK, including community projects.
There remains up to £100m of support for small scale renewables through the Feed-in Tariff up to 2019. As we set out in the Clean Growth Strategy, we are currently considering options for our approach to small scale low carbon generation beyond 2019. We will make a statement on future support for small scale renewables in due course.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what interest rate for finance under the Northern Powerhouse was offered to successful bidders by local authority district in each month since January 2015.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF), has a total of five delivery partners operating the seven funds. These funds utilise a range of interest rates which are set according to the risk of each investment or loan. The rates used are commercially sensitive and not publicly available.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many applications for funding through the Northern Powerhouse have been (a) received and (b) successfully awarded by local authority district in each month since January 2015.
Answered by Andrew Griffiths
Table 1 (copy attached) shows the distribution of 2690 ‘applications received’ by the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF) and the 258 ‘successfully awarded investments or loans’ by Local Authority District from March 2017 to March 2018. Of the applications received, 286 were from outside of the Northern Powerhouse area, but could have been eligible if the applicants were willing to relocate to the area or conduct “significant business” there. Please note, the NPIF became operational in March 2017, so there is no data for the Fund before that date.
Table 2 (also in the attached) shows in £million the sums awarded to the eleven Northern Powerhouse LEPs as Growth Deals for the period 2015-2021. The full award came to £3,435.41m.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the effect of shale gas extraction on the (a) farming and (b) tourism industry.
Answered by Claire Perry
My rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has regular discussions with Cabinet Ministers on matters relating to energy policy.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much money his Department has spent on bottled water in each year since 2010.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
We do not hold this information.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps the Government is taking to prioritise the use of clean, renewable energy over traditional energy sources; and what steps are being taken to avoid wind farms being turned off and constraint payments made.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
The Clean Growth strategy (CGS) announced on the 12th October, set out the government’s ambitious strategy to cut emissions while keeping costs down for consumers, creating good jobs and growing the economy. This includes a strategy of decarbonisation to deliver our goals of meeting our carbon budgets in a secure clean and affordable way. In 2016, renewables share of total generation was nearly 25% of UK electricity generation, and we are on track to meet our ambition of delivering 30% of the UK’s electricity from renewables in 2020-21.
The latest Contracts for Difference round announced on 11 September secured a further 3.3GW of renewable electricity, enough to power 3.6 million homes. This will see a saving of 5.4 million tonnes of carbon a year, the equivalent of the average annual carbon emissions from 2.8 million cars. The Clean Growth Strategy (CGS) also announced:
Whilst we do not consider constraint payments to be inherently wrong, the UK Government has taken action to minimise the costs involved. In October 2012, we worked closely with Ofgem to introduce the Transmission Constraint Licence Condition, which ensures that generators are not able to profit unfairly at the expense of consumers. This has helped to halve the average unit constraint price for wind farms. In addition, the delivery of planned transmission reinforcements should help to reduce constraints.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what progress the Government is making on implementing the recommendations of the Committee on Climate Change report Meeting Carbon Budgets - 2016 Progress Report to Parliament, published in June 2016, on including peatland within the UK's carbon inventory by 2018.
Answered by Claire Perry
The Committee on Climate Change (CCC) have identified a number of improvements to the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions inventory. They particularly encouraged the inclusion of new guidelines on wetlands (which cover peatlands) from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change1 to fully assess their impacts. Further research is required before these guidelines can be fully applied in our national GHG inventory. This is currently underway and will feed into the inventory over the next few years.
[1] IPCC 2014, 2013 Supplement to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories: http://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/public/wetlands/
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many (a) official and (b) official sensitive documents have been recorded as lost by his Department since 8 May 2015.
Answered by Margot James
The Department of Business Energy and Industrial Strategy was formed in July 2016 and its Annual Report to Parliament will include all relevant losses since its formation. Currently, there are no losses to be reported. Any losses will be assessed and responded to individually and on a case by case basis with all possible mitigating actions being taken and in full compliance of our legal and other responsibilities.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what the hourly pay-rate is for his Department's cleaning staff.
Answered by Margot James
On average the hourly rate for a cleaning operative is £8.04.
Asked by: Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat - Westmorland and Lonsdale)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many prosecutions have been brought by the Employment Agency Standards Inspectorate in each of the last six years.
Answered by Margot James
The table below sets out the total number of successful prosecution cases brought by Employment Agency Standards (EAS) since 2010-11 and the number of defendants.
Year | Prosecution cases | Defendants |
2011/12 | - | - |
2012/13 | 4 | 7 |
2013/14 | 2 | 4 |
2014/15 | 2 | 3 |
2015/16 | - | - |
2016/17 | 1 | 2 |
EAS are currently investigating 11 cases (21 defendants) that may lead to prosecution proceedings. EAS publishes its prosecution figures in its Annual Reports.