Winter Heating Initiatives

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The House and I need no convincing of the value of energy efficiency. As I constantly remind the House, we are already spending considerable sums on energy-efficiency schemes, but I am sure that there is always more that can be done.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

First, as well as the improvements that the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, wisely suggested, has my noble friend noticed that international oil and gas prices are falling quite quickly? They are well away from their original peak. Should we not be ensuring that somehow these benefits get through to households before they are hit by an enormous energy bill increase in the future? Secondly, does my noble friend accept that if we took half the fuel duty revenue off consumers, that would be a huge hit on public revenues, but it would be an even larger saving in public expenditure from the public payments that have to be made linked to indexes? As a result of the fall in the CPI, that would be a win all round. Will he pass that on to the Treasury?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I will certainly pass my noble friend’s thoughts on to whoever occupies those great offices in the Treasury in the next few weeks. Regarding his first point, we want to ensure that any reductions in international energy prices are passed on to consumers as quickly as possible.