Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to put a couple of questions on these regulations. Having represented a high energy user, a York brick company, for a number of years in the other place, I am well aware of the disproportionate energy costs for high energy-use industry. There is a theme here and it is put very well on page 8 of the impact assessment attached to the regulations, where at paragraph 6 it states: “Electricity network costs paid by GB based EIIs are higher than in many other EU countries largely due to the discounts offered in some jurisdictions to EIIs that meet certain eligibility criteria regarding electricity consumption and off-peak grid utilisation”. That explains the background neatly. Does the Minister agree that we have per se, across the board, higher energy costs in this country for both energy users and domestic users? What then concerns me is that it seems to be smoke and mirrors. If I have understood the purport and thrust of the regulations as best I can, the Government’s intention is to pass on to domestic consumers and non-domestic customers the differential between what the original costs would have been and now the reduction proposals under the EIIs and the supercharger scheme. I am grateful to the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which looked at this briefly. It states in paragraph 2 of the 49th report: “The Impact Assessment estimates that some 320 EII businesses will save a total of £131 million per year because of the uplift to 90%, while average household electricity bills are expected to rise by not more than £1.50 per year.” I pause there because that is £1.50 a year extra to what we are already paying. I understand that, at Prime Minister’s Questions today, the Prime Minister applauded the fact that the energy pricing cap will be reduced on average by £17, which all of us in the Committee would welcome. But NESTA, a government body set up to look at energy use, states, if you key in the question, “what is the cost per household of green energy projects?”: “These levies make up 16% of the final price of electricity and 5.5% of the final price of gas. For a typical household, they add about £140 to the annual electricity bill and £50 to the gas bill”. I know that all this started under a previous Government, but that does not make the situation any happier. It might be that those of us in this Room feel that we have broad shoulders and can carry this, but that is a staggering cost, especially when then adding another £1.50 to that. I also realise that 82% of the revenue raised from domestic levies comes from electricity bills and only 18% from gas bills, despite households consuming around three times as much gas each year, presumably, as electricity. My point is that this is an unacceptable additional cost.