Energy Price Cap: Residential Buildings with Communal Heating Systems
Debate between Mark Pritchard and Matthew Pennycook(2 years ago)
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Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
I will be incredibly brief—I think we will be voting shortly—and will pick up on a couple of points made by others in this debate. I have been raising issues about the lack of consumer protection for customers of communal heat networks since I was elected in 2015. It is a very long-standing issue, and there has been a tangible lack of progress in addressing it.
The first issue is the statutory regulation of the sector. We have come a long way. I remember raising this matter when I was a member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change before the Department was abolished, and Ministers would tell me that statutory regulation of the sector was not required, that introducing it risked strangling an emerging industry at birth and that they were not going anywhere near it. I remember asking the CMA—[Interruption.]
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. I have to suspend the sitting for a Division, and I understand that we will be having a lot of them. The first suspension will be for 15 minutes, but it will be 10 minutes for subsequent votes. If Members could make their way back a little faster after the final vote, we can get off to a quick start.