Martin McCluskey MP: speeches

Speeches

• 18 Mar 2026 · Draft Warm Home Discount (England and Wales) Regulations 2026 · Hansard source

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  I am happy to be barracked under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Turning to the point that the hon. Member for Broxbourne raised, he knows that it would not matter if additional oil were extracted from the North Sea—it would not reduce the price of domestic energy in this country. It would not have any impact. If he has evidence to the contrary, I will be more than happy to take another intervention for him to demonstrate that energy prices would reduce if we extracted more oil from the North sea. No? Okay. Moving on to the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, I thank her for the constructive tone of her speech. On the point around debt, Ofgem have consulted on a debt relief scheme, and more will be coming on that in the near future. On data sharing, I share her desire to ensure that there is far more data sharing. That is something that I have had discussions about, not just with the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology—and she may be aware of the kickstarter programme that is looking at how we can better share household income data—but with the Department for Health and Social Care too, specifically, around how we share data on vulnerability and health. There are some really great examples at a local level. For example, Beat the Cold is an organisation in Stoke that is already sharing data between local NHS organisations and third sector organisations in order to reach the right people with vulnerability. The point for me is, if that can be achieved on a local level, we should be able to achieve something similar on a national level. The hon. Lady talks about cold, leaky homes, and that is obviously a focus of the Government’s £15 billion warm homes plan, which is investing in that area. I will gently say to her that, while we did cancel the ECO programme, that was because it failed and did not provide good value for money. We have put an additional £1.5 billion into capital schemes through DESNZ, which will reach low-income people across the country. I point towards the announcement that was made by the Secretary of State on Sunday about the additional funding that will go into mayoral combined authorities, and elsewhere, for low-income schemes. That is from that £1.5 billion that resulted from the cancellation of ECO. On ECO, there were instances where, for example, about half of the cost was going into finding people to apply measures to, rather than actually applying measures, so from a value for money point of view, we needed to make sure that that worked far more effectively. To sum up, we are committed to delivering the £150 warm home discount for at least another five years to support the households in England and Wales who need our help most. The regulations will deliver a warm home discount scheme that is more transparent and provides stronger consumer protection and greater clarity around eligibility. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee. Question put and agreed to.

• 10 Feb 2026 · Great British Energy: Bills · Hansard source

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  Great British Energy’s mission is to power Britain with clean, secure and home-grown energy. It has already started that work, with Great British Energy and the Government funding around 250 school and 260 hospital solar installations, including at Rakegate primary school and Ormiston NEW Academy in my hon. Friend’s constituency.