Oral Answers to Questions

Christian Matheson Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

1. What steps his Department is taking to help protect jobs in the energy sector.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

The Government are committed to protecting jobs across the energy sector, which already employs over 700,000 people across the UK and is creating thousands of new jobs through our net-zero strategy.

[Christian Matheson]

I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a member of Unite the union, which tells me that OVO Energy has a tangled web of companies into which £40 million has been salted away without any clear indication of what the money is or where it is coming from. Meanwhile, it is making 1,700 of its employees—a quarter of its workforce—redundant and its boss Stephen Fitzpatrick has said that they should keep warm by doing star jumps and that he is doing them a favour by sacking them because of the jobs market. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is about time that OVO stopped threatening to sack so many of its employees and opened up its books so that we can see where all the money is going?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I speak to the operators of energy suppliers the whole time, as does my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, and we have had many concerns about the practices of some of these businesses and are very mindful of some of the accusations being made against OVO. I speak to Mr Fitzpatrick on a regular basis and I will absolutely pass on the hon. Gentleman’s concerns to Mr Fitzpatrick directly.