Dan Poulter

Consulting on East Anglia Green is a matter for National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET). The Ministry of Defence is a Statutory Consultee under the Planning Act, and the Government understands that NGET are engaging with RAF Wattisham on any potential impacts of the project on Wattisham Air Base.

Consulting on East Anglia Green is a matter for National Grid Electricity Transmission (NGET). The Ministry of Defence is a Statutory Consultee under the Planning Act, and the Government understands that NGET are engaging with RAF Wattisham on any potential impacts of the project on Wattisham Air Base.

The Government raised this in its technical consultation on the Energy Bills Support Scheme. The responses to this consultation are being analysed and will be published later in the summer.

Vulnerable consumers, including park home residents will be eligible for a £150 contribution towards their energy bills each winter through the Government’s Warm Home Discount Scheme. It is anticipated that the Park Homes Warm Home Discount scheme will re-open again in September 2022. There will also be payments to households on means tested benefits and pensioner and disability cost of living payments. Other support available includes the Winter Fuel Payments and Cold Weather Payments.

I refer my hon. Friend to the answer I gave the hon. Member for St Albans on 20th June 2022 to Question 18990.

Ofgem’s Maximum Resale Price provisions prevent landlords from reselling energy to residents at a higher price than they paid to the licensed energy supplier.

Customers without a domestic electricity supply contract are not eligible for the Energy Bills Support Scheme, so the Government is exploring options for other ways in which they might receive similar support. This was raised in a recent Government consultation and a response will be published later in the summer. The Government has also provided £144 million of discretionary funding for Local Authorities to support households who need support but are not eligible for the Council Tax reduction.

The Government recognises the need to preserve the UK’s farmland. Planning guidance encourages solar projects to use previously developed land, and be designed to avoid, mitigate, and compensate for their impacts.

Information on the location of current solar installations is available here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/renewable-energy-planning-database-monthly-extract

The Government recognises the need to preserve the UK’s farmland. Planning guidance encourages solar projects to use previously developed land, and be designed to avoid, mitigate, and compensate for their impacts.

The UK’s high degree of food security is based on diversified supply, strong domestic production, and stable imports. The UK produces 60% of all the food it needs, and 74% of food that can be produced in the UK. These figures have changed little over the last 20 years. It is possible to maintain and increase food production sustainably in some areas, while seeing land use change in others.

The Government is aware of the pressures on business caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and has sought to protect R&D intensive businesses throughout the crisis, so they can continue to develop new innovative products and help power the UK’s recovery.

In April 2020, we announced a £1.25 billion package to help innovative firms through the pandemic. The comprehensive package included £750 million of targeted grant and loan support, delivered by Innovate UK, for small and medium sized businesses focusing on research and development.

In order to be eligible for the Government’s Covid-19 debt schemes, businesses previously had to demonstrate that they were not an ‘undertaking in difficulty’ as of 31 December 2019. These requirements stem from EU state aid law.

In September 2020 the Government took advantage of increased flexibility in the Temporary Framework, allowing more businesses to gain eligibility for Government support – including the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) and the Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS). The new measures allowed for the assessment to be made at the date of application for the schemes.

A total of 182,196 businesses in the Professional, Scientific and Technical Activities sector, which includes a significant proportion of R&D businesses, have received over £1.72bn worth of support through these schemes. The Recovery Loan Scheme, which launched in April 2021, enables UK businesses to access loans and other kinds of finance up to £10 million per business as they grow and recover from the disruption of the Covid-19 pandemic. The scheme is open to R&D companies that are defined as an ‘undertaking in difficulty’, so long as the business is outside the scope of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

This unprecedented package of support comes in addition to £14.9 billion of investment that we have committed to research and development in 2021/22, which puts UK Government R&D spending at its highest level in four decades.

The Restart Grants announced by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 3 March 2021 are one-off grants to businesses in the non-essential retail, hospitality, leisure, personal care and accommodation sectors, to support businesses to reopen as Covid-19 restrictions are relaxed. Non-essential retail businesses, such as travel agencies, are able to receive Restart Grants of up to £6,000.

All support is available through Local Authorities in England, as they administer all grant funding and take decisions on eligibility and the value of grant to be paid. The Government is working closely with Local Authorities to ensure that funding can get to the right places as quickly as practicable.

The main service principle will ultimately determine which threshold of Restart funding a business receives; this is based on what constitutes fifty per cent or more of the activity of the business in question. Businesses will need to declare their main service.

Local Authorities will need to exercise their reasonable judgement to determine whether or not a business is eligible for a grant, and under which funding threshold, and be satisfied that they have taken reasonable and practicable steps to pay eligible businesses, and to pay them the correct amount.

Further guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-restrictions-support-grants-lrsg-and-additional-restrictions-grant-arg-guidance-for-local-authorities.

As detailed in the Government’s “COVID-19 Response – Spring 2021”, from no earlier than 12 April, weddings and receptions are permitted for up to 15 people. Further guidance will be published ahead of step 2 of reopening.

As part of his assessment of the Sizewell C application, my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State may have to consider the extent of possible post-consent community engagement on a number of issues. Because of his quasi-judicial responsibility in respect of the decision on whether or not to grant development consent and, if he were to decide to grant consent, what form that consent would take, we cannot comment on the extent of measures which might be included in any consent that the Secretary of State might decide to grant.

Interested parties may wish to make representations about the composition of the Transport Review Group during the examination of the application for development consent for the Sizewell C nuclear power station. As that matter may form part of the examination and my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State’s consideration of that application, we are not able to comment further about the composition of that group.

The Government recognises the challenges some businesses are experiencing in processing refunds for cancelled travel arrangements. Package travel agencies are required to comply with the Package Travel and Linked Travel Arrangements Regulations 2018, which protect consumers who have bought package holidays. Consumers are entitled to a full refund?if a package holiday is cancelled due to unavoidable and extraordinary circumstances, which should be issued?within 14 days. Many businesses are also offering consumers refund credit notes or alternative dates, which consumers are able to choose should they wish. Travel operators should be clear with consumers as to the terms of refund credit notes provided, including what insolvency protections underpin them. The Government is clear that refunds must be paid when asked for by the consumer.

EPCs are a widely used measure of the energy performance of buildings, both in the residential and commercial sectors, and are a key tool in promoting energy efficiency improvements to buildings.

The EPC Call for Evidence ran from 26 July 2018 to 19 October 2018 and sought evidence on how EPCs performed against three attributes: quality, availability, and encouraging action to improve energy efficiency. The forthcoming Call for Evidence Summary of Responses will outline the responses received from the Call for Evidence, including on effectiveness of EPCs.

Alongside this, an EPC Action Plan will build on the views expressed as part of the Call for Evidence, alongside government policy work, to set out a series of actions which the government will take forward to maximise the effectiveness of EPCs as a tool for the future.

The Standard Assessment Procedure (SAP) and Reduced Data SAP (RdSAP) methodologies which underpin EPCs provide accurate and reliable assessments of the Energy Efficiency Rating (EER), an indicator of the assumed energy cost per square metre of a home, and the Environmental Impact Rating (EIR), an indicator of the carbon dioxide emissions intensity per square metre, of a home. They are updated regularly in line with updates to Part L of the Building Regulations. We will keep the ratings we use under review as we develop policies and plans for improving the energy efficiency of homes and reducing fuel poverty, including those in rural areas.

The Clean Growth Strategy also committed to ‘phase out installation of high carbon fossil fuel heating in buildings not connected to the gas grid, starting with new build, during the 2020s’. In 2018 we ran an extensive programme of engagement with industry and consumers, to seek views on how industry, government and consumers could work together to phase out the installation of high carbon fossil fuels from homes and businesses off the gas grid, and we will be consulting on proposals in due course.

We will publish a Heat and Buildings Strategy in due course which will set out the comprehensive set of action to decarbonise buildings, joining up approaches to improving energy efficiency of the building stock and the roll-out of low carbon heating.

The Government is committed to exploring the development of hydrogen as a strategic decarbonised energy carrier. As such we are currently developing our strategic approach to hydrogen and its potential to deliver against our net zero goals. We are undertaking extensive stakeholder engagement as we develop new policy to help bring forward the technologies and supply chain we will need to grow the UK hydrogen economy. This includes business models to support the deployment of, and investment in, low carbon hydrogen production and a £100m Low Carbon Hydrogen Production Fund to stimulate capital investment. We will be further engaging with industry on both schemes throughout the year.

The Development Consent application for the proposed new nuclear power station, known as Sizewell C, was submitted to the Planning Inspectorate on 27 May 2020.

The Planning Act 2008 ensures a robust Environmental Impact Assessment is undertaken by the Planning Inspectorate on behalf of my Rt. Hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to consider relevant matters. Relevant matters include the environmental and conservation grounds, such as the potential effects on Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites of Special Scientific Interest.

The Secretary of State will also undertake a Habitats Regulations Assessment of potential impacts on internationally designated Natura 2000 sites. If the application is accepted, the Examining Authority will thoroughly assess these matters before providing its recommendation to the Secretary of State. The development will also require environmental permits to be granted by the Environmental Agency.

Our published Safer Working guidance is clear: if you are already using PPE in your work activity to protect against non-COVID-19 risks, you should continue to do so.

Workplaces should not encourage the precautionary use of extra PPE to protect against COVID-19 outside clinical settings or when responding to a suspected or confirmed case of COVID-19.

Unless you are in a situation where the risk of COVID-19 transmission is very high, your risk assessment should reflect the fact that the role of PPE in providing additional protection is extremely limited. However, if your risk assessment does show that PPE is required, then you must provide this PPE free of charge to workers who need it. Any PPE provided must fit properly.

On 11 May, we published guidance for businesses to help ensure workplaces are as safe as possible. This guidance covered a range of work environments including in factories, plants and warehouse which covers meat packing businesses and can be found at www.gov.uk/workingsafely.

The published guidance sets out how businesses should carry out risk assessments and gives suggestions for practical steps they can consider to mitigate the risks identified related to COVID-19, including how to reduce the spread of the disease.

If staff are concerned that an employer is not taking all practical steps to promote social distancing then they can report this to their local authority or the Health and Safety Executive who can take a range of action to improve control of workplace risks.

These actions include the provision of specific advice to employers through to issuing enforcement notices to help secure improvements with the guidance.

On 11 May, we published guidance for businesses to help ensure workplaces are as safe as possible. This guidance covered a range or work environments including in factories, plants and warehouse covering food processing businesses and can be found at www.gov.uk/workingsafely.

The published guidance sets out how businesses should carry out risk assessments and suggestions for practical steps they can consider to mitigate the risks identified related to COVID-19, including how to reduce the spread of the disease.

If a business is not operating in line with the Government guidance, there is a role for the relevant health and safety enforcing authority - the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) or Local Authority. Where the enforcing authority identifies employers who are not taking action to comply with the relevant public health legislation and guidance to control public health risks, for example, employers not taking appropriate action to socially distance, the enforcing authority will consider taking a range of actions to improve control of workplace risks. These actions include the provision of specific advice to employers through to issuing enforcement notices to help secure improvements with the guidance.

The Government has made £12.3 billion available to businesses under the Small Business Grants Fund and the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grants Fund. Local authorities are contacting businesses directly to deliver these grants.

As of 26 April, over 610,000 business premises have received grants across the two schemes, totalling over £7.59 billion. We do not receive management information from local authorities broken down by sector. However, we have published a full breakdown of grant funding allocated to and distributed by each local authority at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-grant-funding-localauthority-payments-to-small-and-medium-businesses. This breakdown is being updated regularly.

The Government has introduced a number of measures which are available to businesses in the hospitality sector to provide support during the current COVID-19 outbreak. These include the Retail, Hospitality and Leisure Grants and Business Rates Holiday schemes, the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme, as well as the Job Retention and Self-Employed Income Support schemes. The full details on all of the measures available to these businesses have been published at: https://www.businesssupport.gov.uk/coronavirus-business-support/. The Government is also continuing to keep these measures under review.

The Government recognises the huge impact that the COVID-19 outbreak is having on the hospitality sector and is engaging regularly with representatives from across the industry to assess the effects on hospitality businesses.