Lord Leong (Lab)

I thank the noble Earl for that and for his support for the energy schemes. We recognise that high electricity costs are a key challenge for the United Kingdom’s businesses, and we as a Government want to provide the support necessary for energy-intensive industries to improve their competitiveness. We hear this from businesses every day. That is why we have announced, as the noble Earl mentioned, the British industrial competitiveness scheme, which will slash industrial electricity prices by somewhere between 20% and 25%. We will conduct a consultation to find out about some of these high-intensity businesses. Some 7,000 manufacturing businesses, including car makers and defence manufacturers, employ some 300,000 skilled people. This is where we need to support. In addition to that, we have the network charging compensation scheme, under which some businesses will get an uplift from 60% to 90%. We are putting in place support for high-intensity electricity users to help them manage their business more effectively and more competitively.