Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the report Cutting the cost of keeping warm: a fuel poverty strategy for England, published in March 2015, cm 9019, what progress the Government has made on reducing fuel poverty in (a) Oxfordshire and (b) England since the publication of that report.

We have not yet quantify progress in reducing fuel poverty in Oxfordshire since the year 2015. The latest official statistics cover the year 2015 and show that 9.6% of homes in Oxfordshire were fuel poor, which is below the national average of 11%. Official statistics for the year 2016 will be published this summer.

Since 2015 Government has taken action to tackle fuel poverty. This includes reforming the £640m Energy Company Obligation to increase the expenditure under the scheme which is focused in low income households from £310m to £450m in 2017. We will be consulting soon on focussing the whole of ECO on low income and vulnerable households from October 2018.