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 enable smart meters to be read by all energy suppliers and not exclusively by the company installing the smart meter; and if he will make a statement.

Energy suppliers will be able to read meters (‘SMETS2’ meters) installed onto the new smart metering national data and communications infrastructure, when a consumer switches supplier. This is up and running in the majority of the country and will be available across the country in the next few weeks.

Work by both the Data and Communications Company and SMETS1 communications service providers is underway on ways to make SMETS1 meters interoperable. Once this is complete, consumers with SMETS1 meters will also be able to retain smart services on switching energy supplier.