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 Use of electricity meter and gas meter personal data collected through the Energy Price Guarantee scheme: privacy notice guidance published on 1 October 2022, how often his Department will collect data from individual (a) traditional gas meters, (b) traditional electricity meters, (c) electricity smart meters and (d) gas smart meters.

The scope of the data required for the Energy Price Guarantee (EPG) scheme, and how regularly it is collected and processed, is still being defined. The Government will safeguard consumers’ privacy, whilst enabling proportionate access to energy consumption data to support the monitoring, evaluation, fraud prevention and scrutiny of the EPG. Robust security measures are in place to protect data, such as firewalls and passwords and the Government will only retain data for as long as it is required. The Government will collect any data (e.g. energy consumption) via a secure transfer from the energy suppliers. Once the scope of the data has been agreed, and before it is collected and processed, a Data Protection Impact Assessment will be completed.