Energy Prices: Energy-intensive Industries

Lord Offord of Garvel Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

My Lords, the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the OECD. We have discussed this many times in your Lordships’ House. Our prices are 45 times more expensive than in the USA and seven times more expensive than in China. Without cheap energy we are deindustrialising through the back door. Just last week, on 1 May, the Times reported that:

“Three in five British companies have said that ‘rising and unstable’ energy costs are undermining growth plans”.


So will the Minister please listen to the advice of industry, and reconsider this accelerated plan to decarbonise the grid at any cost to prevent more British jobs being lost in our flagship energy-intensive industries?

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Lord Hunt of Kings Heath)]

My Lords, I of course recognise the challenge that high energy prices pose for UK businesses. I am very well aware that the Urgent Question in the Commons related to a ceramics company in the potteries, Moorcroft. Let me say at once that my thoughts are with all those workers affected, and I know that Ministers are working very hard with the company and the industry to talk through some of those issues.

I say to the noble Lord that the structure we have in relation to energy prices is the same as the one his Government left when they left office last July. We know that the main reason why we have high energy prices is our reliance on international gas and oil markets, which related back to the shock to the system from Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. We believe as a Government that the faster we move to decarbonise, the more we can provide energy security and cheaper energy, and that this is the best way to go forward. If anything came from the previous Question about the advice of the Climate Change Committee, it is that we cannot afford to let go or slow down in relation to climate change. We do not have that luxury; we need to press on.