Kerry McCarthy
Main Page: Kerry McCarthy (Labour - Bristol East)
Andrea Leadsom
I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his new position. He is right. We want investor certainty. Our priority for the Department is to keep the bills down, to keep energy security and to decarbonise. In order to do that, we recognise that significant private sector investment is needed. We want to give certainty as soon as possible, and that is what we will be doing.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Amber Rudd)
I would like to take this opportunity to highlight an issue that crossed my desk earlier this week. Tuesday was National Women in Engineering Day, and in a visit to National Grid I was pleased not only to see the robust arrangements that it has in place to ensure the security of our energy supply, but to meet some of its fantastic female engineers. We had an excellent discussion in which I heard their views on what more we need to do to encourage girls and women to become engineers, including identifying more role models and challenging stereotypes, which are often reinforced from a young age. Only 6% of UK engineers are female—clearly, too few. That demonstrates how much remains to be done, and I was delighted to meet this group of inspiring women who go out and act as role models.
Kerry McCarthy
The Competition and Markets Authority will publish its remedies for the energy retail market next week, but what does the Minister think should be done to address the persistent exploitation by the big six of their most loyal customers? New customers are attracted with loss-leading tariffs, whereas the most vulnerable customers are often kept on the highest tariffs. What consideration has the Secretary of State given to a proposal by Ovo Energy that Ofgem set a 12-month social tariff for which all the suppliers’ most vulnerable customers should be auto-enrolled?
Amber Rudd
The hon. Lady raises an important point. We have taken several helpful steps to encourage switching; we had a campaign to do that at the end of the previous Parliament, and we had outreach campaigns to support local communities in getting to the harder-to-reach people, so there are great opportunities for switching. However, I accept her point that there are still people on a default tariff, so something needs to be done to access them. That is why we referred this to the Competition and Markets Authority, and I very much look forward to its response and, hopefully, to taking its guidelines to ensure we address that.