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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to ensure that energy costs are competitive to support manufacturing industries.

The Government is working hard to ensure energy costs are not a barrier to growth and investment in the UK.

We have put in place a package of measures to alleviate the impact of electricity policy costs passed through in energy intensive businesses electricity bills. Due to this action, by 2020, this Government will have reduced the impacts of energy and climate change policies passed through in energy bills for the most energy intensive businesses by 80%.

To date, we have paid 105 companies including nine steel companies a total of £294m to address these costs. A number of energy intensive sectors are also exempted from the costs of the Climate Change Levy.

Additionally the Government is working closely with eight key energy intensive sectors to support energy efficiency and decarbonisation measures to help reduce energy costs, improve their competitiveness and cut emissions.