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

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many people are registered as using a pre-payment meter to access their electricity and other utilities in (a) Wansbeck constituency, (b) the North East and (c) nationally.

The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy collects data, including customers’ tariff information, from the energy companies as part of the domestic fuels inquiry This data is collected by region and not by constituency.

In the second quarter of 2016, 14 % of domestic standard electricity customers and 15% of domestic gas customers in the North East paid for their energy by pre-payment meter. By comparison 15% of domestic standard electricity customers and 14% of domestic gas customers in England and Wales combined paid for their energy by pre-payment meter. This data is published within our Quarterly Energy Prices publication and can be found in Tables 2.4.2 and 2.5.2 which is available here: www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-sets/quarterly-domestic-energy-price-statics