argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Mark Julian Francis Pawsey (Conservative, Centre-right): Does the hon. Lady support the sunset clause, which means that this legislation will not apply indefinitely as we will reach a stage where there is sufficient competition, or would she rather see a permanent price cap that lasts forever?
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
John David Penrose (Conservative, Centre-right): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I will try to edit as I go Today is a great day. To those who say that politicians never deliver on their election promises, we can collectively send a blaring foghorn reply of "You’re wrong." Today’s energy price cap Bill is an incredibly rare political unicorn: a pledge that not only has cross-party support, but is being fulfilled. As the organiser of the cross-party letter, which gathered an exceptional and unprecedented 213 MPs’ signatures, I thank my co-convenors, the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), for their help. I also thank every MP who signed the letter and the Ministers who have listened and brought its contents forward. Without their help, we would not be here today The Secretary of State has already ably described the problem. It is a two-tier market in which millions of customers are penalised for being loyal. Sneaky price hikes mean that people who have forgotten to switch are gouged on super-expensive rates to which they never agreed. Customers are being taken for granted and taken for a ride. So it is a great day, but in spite of all that we still have some pitfalls to step around. First, it is vital that the price cap is temporary. The long-term answer for most people is not an endless cap; it is making the customer king and putting them in the driving seat, so that the energy industry provides the same good-value and sensible deals that we take for granted in every other walk of life.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Stephen Crabb (Conservative, Centre-right): I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his hard work in ensuring that the Bill was brought forward. He makes an important point about consumers. He described them as behaving in a "loyal" way, but for many people, particularly the most vulnerable and those on the lowest incomes, this is about inertia. We need to change behaviours and get better engagement from some of the most vulnerable energy customers, which will be key to making this Bill work.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
John David Penrose (Conservative, Centre-right): My right hon. Friend is a co-signatory to the letter, for which I thank him, and he makes an important point. It is not just vulnerable customers, of course; it is the many of the rest of us who are time poor. This is a far broader question than just vulnerable customers, although they are a key part of it. Many other families, either because they are loyal or because they just have not got round to it, have not switched. We need to persuade them to change their behaviour, and we need to change the market to help them to do so Choosing a new supplier should be no more complicated than changing our brand of coffee or corn flakes. The big six should have to work a lot harder to attract and keep our business. To be fair, as we have heard and as I think my right hon. Friend was alluding to, the regulator, Ofgem, has made a start. We have more than 50 new competing firms that are scrambling to take business off the big six. Smart meters are coming, and switching is slowly getting simpler, quicker, easier and less scary The Bill rightly says that the price cap should die after a couple of years, but what about the other details? Price caps, as we have heard, are dangerous things. They are fiendishly difficult to get right: they drive suppliers away if the price is set too low, and they gouge customers if the price is set too high So how do we design a cap that does not make things worse rather than better? Well, the Bill says that the price will be set by an all-knowing committee of Ofgem regulators every six months, but the international price of energy moves around every day. Although I am sure Ofgem is full of clever and well-intentioned people, no one is that clever. Any energy trader will tell us it is impossible to know what the price will be in the next six minutes, let alone the next six months.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
John David Penrose (Conservative, Centre-right): The right hon. Lady is one of the co-organisers of the letter, and I thank her again for her help. No matter how clever, good and high calibre the committee, people are just not as good as the market at price discovery, provided the market runs properly. When she was shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, I heard her talk about having to get a better energy market with better price discovery and having to re-establish an energy pool precisely because of that point. Ofgem, no matter how hard it tries or how well intentioned it may be, just will not get it right a large proportion of the time.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
Abimbola Afolami (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend knows a great deal about this issue. Is not the point that this is not a price freeze but a price cap? Those two things are different and allow a sensible regulator, as the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) suggests, to set a ceiling rather than an absolute price.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
John David Penrose (Conservative, Centre-right): I agree that there is a difference between a freeze and a cap, but there are a couple of things that, none the less, make it an extremely risky and dangerous proposition to go down that road. For example, what if Ofgem picks a number and the international price of energy falls the very next day? What then? Switching customers in the ultra-competitive part of the market would find their prices drop quickly as energy firms react to the news, but Ofgem’s capped prices for loyal, non-switching customers on default tariffs—that is the example my hon. Friend talks about—would not move at all for another six months, when the cap can be reset according to the terms of the Bill. In that situation, the cap would be ineffective at protecting the customers it is designed to help and, because it is officially blessed by Ofgem, it would embed and legitimise high prices. Things would get worse rather than better It is not just me who is worried about that. Which? says it is "not certain that customers on a capped default tariff will benefit as market conditions change in future".
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): As my hon. Friend knows, I have some sympathy with his arguments. Does he recognise that, as drafted, the Bill enables Ofgem to set the cap by formula, which could be related to wholesale prices and have the flexibility required to overcome the problem he describes?
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Government Operations
John David Penrose (Conservative, Centre-right): I wish I shared my right hon. Friend’s confidence in Ofgem. All the discussion of the Bill so far from Ministers, from comments on the Bill and from people inside Ofgem is not what he describes. They are talking about an absolute cap in which people sit in a room and come up with a number, which stays that way until it is reset after six months—that is the way the Bill is drafted If the Bill can be amended in a way that allows it to be far more flexible—that is one of the things I hope to encourage both Members here present and Ministers at later stages to consider—we might be able to iron out some of these issues, but I do not share my right hon. Friend’s optimism in that regard.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): Looking at clause 2(1)(b), as drafted, it seems perfectly clear to me that Ofgem will have to set out how the cap is to be calculated, which positively points in the direction of a formulaic rather than an absolute position.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Robert Henry Halfon (Conservative, Centre-right): I would normally be pleased to take interventions but, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I will not give way because of the demands on time. There are a lot of speakers and Madam Deputy Speaker has asked us to cut down our contributions My next point is about injecting competition into the market that is currently dominated by the big six. We have a problem because, although this is very much about competition in the private sector, energy is actually a public good. The Government need to do much more to support not-for-profit providers. The hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) mentioned co-operatives, of which I am very supportive. Robin Hood Energy, launched by Nottingham City Council, is an example of a not-for-profit provider. Although we need market competition, we need to look much more at the co-operative model when we are talking about a public good. I do not believe in nationalisation, but I do think that we should have not-for-profit models in essential services, because energy is the lifeblood of our country and, without it, we would be in the dark ages. For too long, to use a well-known phrase, the market has been dominated by the few, not the many I very much support the Bill because it is the right thing to do symbolically. It sets the tone of what this Government are about—helping the most vulnerable. It is also the right thing to do practically. To me, this is not an argument about big government or small government; it is simply an argument about good government.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Mark Julian Francis Pawsey (Conservative, Centre-right): We heard a lot of evidence from the challenger companies. There are 60 suppliers in the energy market now, and while switching rates are not increasing fast enough, they are increasing. Does the hon. Lady share my concern that with a cap, there will be precious little incentive for people to look at alternative suppliers and change and that the rate of switching we have managed to get in recent years will start to fall back?
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): In the interests of brevity, I want to make one point about the rationale for the cap that I do not think has yet been stated in this debate, and two points to reassure my hon. Friends about issues that have arisen. On the rationale, it is true that Ramsey pricing—the gouging of so-called loyal or, in other words, inertial customers—is a major issue, but predatory pricing on the other side of the balance sheet is equally important. As the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) said, large suppliers are making uncovenanted surpluses out of the default tariffs, which they are using to cross-subsidise their competitive tariffs to exclude entrants from the market to the greatest possible extent. Once they are deprived of the ability to generate oligopolistic returns from the default tariffs, as my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (John Penrose) mentioned, they will have to do what they are very reluctant to do —namely, recognise more closely the true cost of their own inefficiencies in their more competitive tariffs, thereby allowing much greater penetration of the market by small challengers That is why I celebrate the fact that the Government have made the cap a temporary one with reviews. The shadow Secretary of State, when she was engaging in what sounded on this side of the Chamber suspiciously like scraping the barrel to find things to object to, asked the question: how will we know that the time is ripe for the cap to be removed? The answer is when the challengers have actually been able to move into the market in great numbers, because the cross-subsidy in the predatory pricing model has faded away and we therefore have a proper energy supply market Of my two crumbs of comfort, I want to offer one directly to my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare. We all owe him a great debt of gratitude for banging on about this for a very long time and thinking about it deeply. I assure him that the Bill, whatever anybody may have said about it, clearly allows for a cap that, far from being a freeze, will never be a freeze, as he recognises, and will also not be an absolute point tariff either—or need not be an absolute point tariff. It is entirely in Ofgem’s gift to decide how the cap varies or does not vary depending on circumstances in the external supply markets for energy Knowing the current personnel in Ofgem, and having talked to them about this—I am grateful to the Minister for Energy and Clean Growth for facilitating some of those discussions—I am absolutely convinced that they will in fact make this a calculated, formulaic cap that properly reflects the changes in external international circumstances. It will therefore be miles away from the lunacies, although they were politically attractive lunacies at the time, of the Labour party’s original proposal for an absolute price freeze, which, incidentally, would have crippled customers at a time when energy prices were falling The second point I want to make to my hon. Friends is that this is the right kind of structure.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Macroeconomics
John David Penrose (Conservative, Centre-right): I seek a little further reassurance from my right hon. Friend. He seems to be coming up with an elegant mechanism for redefining an absolute cap to encompass relative caps, but just relative to the wholesale market rather than relative to other tariffs. If so, that would be incredibly elegant. Does he believe that that would allow repricing within the six-month period before the Ofgem committee sat again?
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): Who knows? The point I was just about to make is that the Bill will hand the whole thing over to Ofgem. This is basically an "Ofgem—you get to decide it" Bill, so we will only know when we see what it produces. However, I would bet my bottom dollar—not that I have very many bottom dollars—that Ofgem will actually produce a formula, not a number, so the cap will vary continuously, or pretty much continuously. Ofgem is pretty sophisticated economically and it knows perfectly well what happens in the wholesale markets. I do not think it will lock itself in to an unvarying cap My main point is structural: the Bill will hand the issue to Ofgem. The good news is that that is not nationalising the pricing of the energy markets. It is not taking it into the hands of the Government. What my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said is true—one of the great achievements of the last 30 or 40 years of the evolution of our utilities markets as a whole is that we have reinvented what the Victorians once had, which we lost in the early and middle part of the 20th century, which was the whole idea of the Government establishing a set of technocrats who are not politically motivated or driven by electoral dynamics, and so are not inclined to do things that are stupid in the long run but look good because they win votes in the short term. Instead, they try to get economically rational results Ofgem is such a case. It is not perfect—no regulator is—but it will be a hell of a lot better than politicians at setting prices over time. The Bill therefore has the right structure. It is not a Marxist takeover, a price freeze or a recipe for point tariffs. It is a recipe for allowing a regulator to set an economically rational means of preventing a combination of Ramsey pricing and predatory pricing, and as such those of us who believe in the purities of markets can perfectly well subscribe to it.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Antoinette Geraldine Sherratt (Sandbach) (Conservative, Centre-right): Judicial review provides a remedy when Ofgem is acting unreasonably. If it is acting reasonably, it would not be possible for the energy companies to review the matter, but what they would do, as evidence given to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee suggests, is to seek to delay the process through endless appeals to the Competition and Markets Authority.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Government Operations
Gregory David Clark (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend raises reasonable questions about whether the approach that is taken will be fair. That is why Ofgem will have to consult on the methodology. Applying it in particular cases is simply the mechanical application of something that has already had the degree of scrutiny that he is looking for.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Oliver Letwin (Conservative, Centre-right): I am listening with increasing admiration to the right hon. Lady’s speech, which reminds me of why there was once a Labour party with which I had a great deal more sympathy than I do at present. I strongly agree with what she says about green tariffs. We want to promote green energy, but to do so on a basis that is economically rational.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
James Stephen Heappey (Conservative, Centre-right): This is an important Bill that comes from a very good manifesto commitment. Our energy market is undoubtedly broken, with millions of consumers stuck on the most expensive tariffs. Many are taken for granted and, arguably, even exploited for their loyalty, and it is right that the Government have intervened to protect them In many ways, in delivering this cap we have accepted that we failed over the last few decades to create the culture of switching that we hoped for. That is not to say that impressive progress has not been made; it has been, and we have seen further progress in the last few months, but even if that recent improvement in progress were to continue, we would still have far too many people—disproportionately concentrated among the most vulnerable and the lowest income consumers—left on the most expensive tariffs. We should also note that some of the biggest energy suppliers have changed the way they operate SVT-type products over the past nine months, which is very welcome. One suspects that they saw what was coming down the tracks. None the less, I know that they will feel aggrieved by the Bill after voluntarily acting to tackle the problem of those stuck on rip-off SVTs The progress on switching and the improved behaviour of the big suppliers underlines why the cap need only be temporary. My hope is that the Secretary of State will encourage the industry to respond quickly to the cap so that tariff structures become fairer for the most loyal consumers. Clear criteria for ending the cap would be most welcome. While the cap is in force, let us not take our foot off the accelerator in encouraging more people to start switching. In short, the cap must be regarded as a means to an end, not—I suspect this is the view of some Opposition Members—as an end in itself.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Abimbola Afolami (Conservative, Centre-right): Does not the Bill show the Government’s general approach to intervention in markets, which we have heard a lot about this afternoon, which is about markets not as a means in themselves, but as a means to an end, which is good, cheap and reliable energy for the British people?
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
James Stephen Heappey (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is indeed right. To resort to my former career as a soldier, I hope that the Government see this as a raid into the energy market, rather than an occupation In her opening remarks, the shadow Secretary of State made the important point that an amazing energy future is emerging in the margins of our current broken market, although I disagree with her analysis that the Government are not embracing that, because the clean growth strategy is a passionate embrace of those opportunities. Insurgent companies such as Octopus Energy are relishing bringing the new time-of-use tariffs to the market, giving consumers the benefits of fluctuating wholesale energy prices. Others are looking at how localised generation or aggregated shifts in demand might allow consumers to access cheaper energy or monetise their flexibility. Others still are looking at delivering heat and power as a service, often enabled by clean tech provided by the supplier for free, with the supplier then monetising the customer’s flexibility in order to make their margin. These and countless other innovations are accelerating our decarbonisation, increasing system flexibility—and therefore our energy security—and will mean lower bills for consumers We must also create an energy system that allows the full price-reducing power of clean technologies to bring down prices for the consumer. This will require significant regulatory change in order properly to unlock storage, demand-side response and the advantages of generating and consuming energy locally. We must also encourage the deployment of more renewables, no longer because they are the cleanest method of generation, although they still are, but because they are now so obviously the cheapest.
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
Rebecca Faye Clark (Pow) (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend has great knowledge of this subject. Will he comment on the fact that we need to concentrate not only on energy efficiency, but on cutting energy waste, particularly in our domestic systems, because there is a lot of great new technology that could be harnessed?
Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Bill — House of Commons, 2018-03-06
Topic: Energy
James Stephen Heappey (Conservative, Centre-right): I very much agree. Let us be clear that energy efficiency measures are no longer simply barrier technologies—in windows, walls and roofs—but digital technologies that ensure that we use less energy, or that devices immediately stop working when we no longer need them, rather than being left on unnecessarily Ofgem has a key role in delivering the Bill, but that work must be no more of a priority for it than ensuring the much-needed regulatory change that will be delivered through the unlocking of wholesale disruption of our energy system and market. Let us be clear that the real prize is not the correction of the old, analogue, broken market system of today, but the arrival of a digitised, decentralised, dynamic and disrupted energy system with a market that allows consumers to benefit fully from the price reduction that these technologies will deliver. A cap that saves consumers £100 or £200 is very welcome, so I support the Bill wholeheartedly, but not at the expense of the much greater savings that await consumers with the green, clean energy system of tomorrow.