Cost of Heating Oil

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Wednesday 15th April 2026 Westminster Hall

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. I thank the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) for securing this timely debate, and I thank the Minister for visiting the Western Isles last month to hear directly from my constituents in Na h-Eileanan an Iar how the spike in prices has affected them. As he heard from consumers, prices have doubled since the conflict broke out. There is huge demand, limited competition and, of course, an island premium on deliveries.

People appreciate the emergency heating oil fund announced by the Government, which will send £4.6 million of support to Scotland for consumers in need. This being Scotland, of course the SNP wants to do things differently. The Scottish Government have doubled the sum to £10 million, which is welcome, but announced that instead of funds being distributed through local authorities, which know their area and their constituents, the fund is operated through Advice Direct Scotland, a Scottish charity that gives free, impartial advice to people across Scotland.

As soon as the scheme was announced, my constituents reported a glitch in the system. People applying from the Western Isles found their online applications bouncing back. When they called the helpline, they heard a recorded message instructing them to apply without supporting evidence, informing them that they would then receive an email to which they could attach receipts of eligibility and evidence of supply. This kind of ping-pong shambles benefits no one, and I fear it will lead to a lack of uptake of support.

In talks with Advice Direct Scotland, officials assured me that the scheme is operating, that nearly 5,000 people have applied and that 16,000 applicants are expected across the six months the scheme is open. By rough calculation, 16,000 times £300 is £4.8 million, which is only half the amount the SNP Government claim to have allocated to the scheme. I do not want heating oil support by stunt, whereby only half the fund is distributed.

I urge my constituents to apply early for support as soon as they have receipt of their oil delivery, and I call on the Scottish Government, the UK Government and Advice Direct Scotland to be fully transparent about the distribution of funding both during and after the scheme, and in terms of amounts and geographical distribution.

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[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Steff Aquarone) on securing this important debate.

In his statement to Parliament yesterday, the Prime Minister said that energy bills had gone down on 1 April, yet for literally tens of thousands of my constituents, that is simply not true. It is estimated that in my constituency alone, 22,500 households—approaching 50,000 constituents—are not connected to the gas grid. Thousands of those homes are reliant on oil and LPG tank gas to heat their homes.

Let us delve a bit deeper. One low-income house in Newtonmore, which is in the Cairngorms national park, an arctic-alpine mountain environment, went from paying £640 to £1,220. The supplier told them there was a minimum order of 1,000 litres. A constituent in Forres went from paying £307 plus VAT in December, to £827 in March for 500 litres. That constituent is disabled, with multiple health conditions.

This inequity is not new. When it comes to their electricity bills, people in Moray, the highlands and across Scotland are paying among the highest energy prices in Europe, and substantially more than most of the rest of the UK, despite vast amounts of that energy being produced right beside them.

[Torcuil Crichton]

Like the hon. Member’s constituency, many businesses in my constituency, including distilleries, rely on kerosene heating oil for manufacturing processes. Would he urge the UK Government and the Scottish Government to devise a loan scheme to help these businesses to get over this Trump spike?

[Graham Leadbitter]

I will come on to the energy powers that should be devolved, but it is currently the UK Government’s responsibility.

Over the years, Scotland has sent over £350 billion to the Treasury from oil and gas activity, yet when it comes to the crunch, all the Treasury can come up with is the equivalent of £35 per household for oil. Yet again, the Scottish Government have had to step in and boost support by more than doubling the fund, for an issue that the UK Government have failed to address properly in the first place.

Rural homes and communities in Scotland are being overlooked and ignored. Is the Minister really happy that he is presiding over discrimination that is putting so much financial stress on vulnerable households? Will the Government take urgent measures to increase significantly the support funding? Will they provide support to those reliant on LPG gas for their heating? Will they properly regulate heating oil with a price cap, which I fully support?

If the Government are unwilling to take those actions, will they devolve energy powers and budgets to the people of Scotland, so that they can make their own decisions in their own Parliament on these vital and urgent issues?

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[Martin McCluskey]

As I said, once the funds are disbursed in Northern Ireland, just as across the whole of the United Kingdom, we will make an assessment as to what further work might need to take place. I will have further discussions with the Northern Ireland Executive. We are obviously keeping every option under review, especially as we start to think about later in the year and into the winter. In Northern Ireland, we are still to see what happens when the funds are disbursed.

In Scotland, we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) about how Advice Direct Scotland is disbursing those funds. However, we cannot know at the moment how much is being given out, because the Scottish Government will not let Advice Direct Scotland provide us with that data, so there is no way for us to know what the situation in Scotland looks like.

In England, we are having weekly stocktakes with the DWP, which is the Department responsible for the crisis and resilience fund. It is providing us with assurance on the disbursal of those funds, and we hope to have a dataset available in May that looks at how many applications and payments have been made, and what those payments look like across the country.

[Torcuil Crichton]

If officials from Advice Direct Scotland can tell me, as a constituency MP, the number of applicants they have, and the estimated number they will have—16,000, with 5,000 applications already last week—surely they can provide that information to the UK Government as well.

[Martin McCluskey]

Unfortunately, the Scottish Government are not allowing the data to be shared because of the pre-election period. I would argue that that is not what the pre-election period is meant for, and I will continue to have those discussions with the Scottish Government. I know that other hon. Members in Scottish constituencies have faced a similar problem in getting any data about their constituencies from Advice Direct Scotland because of this prohibition from the Scottish Government.

I am conscious of time, so I turn to the issue of wider market reform. There is obviously evidence that the market as it exists at the moment is not working. I find it difficult to listen to the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith), who was a Minister in the Department for Business and Trade under the last Government—