Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what Government funding has been allocated to research and development into the use of hydrogen storage to store surplus renewable energy for the electricity grid.
Answered by Claire Perry
The Government is undertaking a range of work to assess the potential use of hydrogen as a store of renewable energy.
The Offshore Wind Sector Deal, which was published in March 2019, sets out that the offshore wind sector will establish a Systems Management and Optimisation Task Group. This Group will publish a roadmap to identify opportunities for the offshore wind sector to collaborate on pioneering technologies for system integration, such as co-located storage and wind to hydrogen.
Alongside this, BEIS supports hydrogen storage innovation through the government’s £505 million Energy Innovation Programme. Within this Programme, BEIS is running a Storage at Scale competition which will provide up to £20 million to support demonstration projects using innovative energy storage technologies, including storing hydrogen produced by electricity. The scope of the Storage at Scale competition was informed by desk-based Energy Storage Feasibility Studies and the Energy Storage Cost Reduction projects, also funded by the Energy Innovation Programme.
BEIS is also supporting hydrogen storage through the £20m Hydrogen Supply Competition, this programme supports the development of large-scale production and storage of hydrogen which could take advantage of surplus renewable electricity.
Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent assessment he has made of national minimum wage compliance in the catering sector.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
This Government is committed to cracking down on employers who fail to pay the National Minimum and Living Wage (NMW). We almost doubled HM Revenue & Customs’ (HMRC) budget to enforce the NMW from £13.2 million to £26.3 million between 2015/16 and 2018/19.
This increase in resources enabled HMRC to identify a record £15.6 million of arrears for more than 200,000 workers in 2017/18. These totals include arrears worth £469,468 owed to 6,526 workers in relation to food and beverage service employers.
In addition to undertaking proactive enforcement work in high risk sectors, HMRC respond to each and every worker complaint received. In April 2016, the financial penalty paid by employers was doubled to 200% of the arrears identified, up to a maximum of £20,000 per worker.
Asked by: Paul Blomfield (Labour - Sheffield Central)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when he plans to undertake a consultation on the transposition of the Posting of Workers Directive (96/71/EC) into domestic law.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The UK has already implemented the Posting of Workers Directive (96/71/EC). Under the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK will need to implement the recent Directive amending the Posting of Workers Directive (2018/957/EU) by 30 July 2020. We intend to consult on the implementation of this Directive later this year. This will give us enough time to pass the necessary legislation, if any is required.