Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2025 General Committees

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition.

The draft order makes modest technical changes to the administration of the energy company obligation scheme, and we will not press it to a vote today. We agree that it is important for low-income households to get the help they need to save money on their energy bills and escape the hardships of fuel poverty. However, Ministers should reflect on how their policies are making energy more expensive for everyone by increasing dependency on costly and unreliable renewables. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, environmental levies will increase from £9.9 billion last year to £14.8 billion by 2030. That is a result of policy choices made by this Government, and the cost will inevitably fall on the vulnerable and make fuel poverty harder to escape.

Last week, I raised with the Minister Labour’s claim on social media: “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. Will she accept that that was wrong, because that fall in prices was driven by reductions in wholesale gas prices? The Government are trying to take the country off gas, while policy costs imposed by Ministers are actually increasing. She disassociated herself from those social media posts last week, so—

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

Is the position of the official Opposition now to oppose the good jobs generated by the net zero industry, in particular in my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages, where the largest employer is a manufacturer for the offshore wind sector?

[The Chair]

Order. I would be grateful if hon. Members focused on the statutory instrument, which is relatively narrowly drawn.

[Nick Timothy]

I will just invite the hon. Lady to look at the bigger picture. Manufacturing jobs are being lost because of high energy prices driven by Government policy, the costs of which are increasing, so I invite the Minister to respond to my question. Instead of allowing policy to run faster than the technology will allow, Ministers should focus on how to make energy cheaper and more reliable. That is the real pathway to fighting fuel poverty.

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I thank the shadow Minister for his support for these important technical standards. I will address his question and then reiterate why we believe that the proposed changes are so important.

It is incredibly important to stress that levies on bills are funding critical infrastructure. We inherited a situation of under-investment in our networks and transmission and, critically, in the energy mix that we need in order to diversify our energy supply and ensure energy security. That was the Conservative legacy. We are now fixing it, which requires investment, but we are absolutely clear that every pound of investment has to be combined with a very clear plan to get to clean power. That is important because the last five years have shown us that our dependence on fossil fuel markets has left consumers exposed; people have faced record energy bills because of it. The Conservatives were happy with that when they were in government, but it is not something that we are happy with, which is why we are committed to getting to clean power.

[Nick Timothy]

If it was clear for such a long time that infrastructure needed to be improved and that the right way to do that was increasing levies on bills, why was that not in the Labour manifesto? Why did the Labour manifesto instead promise that bills would be £300 a year cheaper?

[The Chair]

Please reply briefly, Minister. We are getting off the subject of the statutory instrument.