Asked by: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what information his Department holds on how many households are on energy suppliers' standard variable rates.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
BEIS run a quarterly survey of domestic electricity and gas suppliers. This survey has coverage of around 85 per cent of the market. Data is supplied to BEIS, on numbers of customers by tariff by region by payment type, but as this data is supplied in confidence, individual tariff or company data cannot be made publically available.
Aggregate statistics are produced and published as part of our quarterly energy prices (QEP) publication. In quarter 1 2017, we estimate 66 per cent of standard electricity and 65 per cent of gas customers were on variable tariffs. Our current methodology does not breakout standard variable tariffs from other variable tariffs.
Data can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/quarterly-domestic-energy-price-stastics
Asked by: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps are being taken to encourage householders to seek the cheapest energy deals available to them to help them to cut energy bills.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
We are working with the sector to make it quicker and easier to switch supplier and are working with Ofgem to move to even faster and more reliable switching.
Ofgem are working on developing better ways to engage consumers and on 3 July announced trials to help customers on expensive standard tariffs find and switch to cheaper energy deals.
Asked by: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps are being taken to protect poorer households from fuel poverty caused by the high prices of pre-payment energy meters.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
Customers in fuel poverty use a range of methods to pay their energy bills. Latest BEIS Fuel Poverty data published on 29 June 2017 shows that in 2015, of the 2,885,000 households who paid for their gas supply by prepayment meter, 613,000 were fuel poor. Of the 3,550,000 million households who paid for their electricity supply by prepayment meter, 776,000 were fuel poor.
From 1 April this year, as a result of action by Competition Markets Authority, a cap on the amount energy suppliers can charge prepayment customers was introduced. The cap covers 4.5 million households saving many dual fuel customers £80 a year.
On 3 July Ofgem announced proposals to cap warrant charges to install prepayment meters and ban these charges altogether for the most vulnerable.
Asked by: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the National minimum wage: Low Pay Commission autumn 2016 report, published in November 2016, what measures are being taken to address the findings of the Apprentice Pay Survey that some apprentices are being paid less than the £3.40 minimum set by the Government.
Answered by Margot James
The Government takes the enforcement of National Minimum Wage (NMW) and National Living Wage (NLW) very seriously. HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) respond to every complaint they receive and proactively target high-risk sectors to improve compliance. The HMRC enforcement budget has increased from £13m in 2015/16 to £25m for 2017/18.
In 2015/16, HMRC closed 263 investigations involving apprentices. NMW underpayment was found in 75% of these cases and arrears of £558,618 were found for 632 workers.
The Skills Funding Agency (SFA) will specifically target apprentices and their employers with information from the £1.7m National Minimum Wage communications campaign, which is designed to improve awareness ahead of the new rates in April 2017.
The SFA continue to rigorously check that the advertised rates of pay of all apprenticeship vacancies on the gov.uk site are compliant with the national minimum wage. Additionally, my hon Friend the Minister for Skills writes to every Level 2 and 3 apprentice in England, congratulating them on beginning an apprenticeship and informing them of their NMW entitlements.
Any apprentice who believes they are underpaid the NMW should call the ACAS helpline on 0300 123 1100 for expert and confidential advice.
Asked by: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how much Ashfield constituency has received from the Regional Growth Fund since that fund's inception; and what the average funding per parliamentary constituency has been over that period.
Answered by Margot James
The Regional Growth Fund (RGF) has provided £2.6bn of support via individual projects, or regional/national programmes across England. Whilst none of the individual projects were in the Ashfield constituency, RGF programmes including the Nottingham City Growth Fund; the University of Nottingham N2 Business Growth Programme; the University of Derby Invest to Innovate Fund and the Textiles Growth Programme all offered support to the Nottingham area.
Asked by: Gloria De Piero (Labour - Ashfield)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what estimate he has made of how much the Government will receive from the Mineworkers' Pension Scheme in (a) 2016-17, (b) 2017-18 and (c) 2018-19.
Answered by Jesse Norman - Shadow Leader of the House of Commons
The Government, in its role as Guarantor, is due to receive £51m from the Mineworkers’ Pension Scheme in each of the above years.