Dave Thompson MSP

AS new figures reveal that his constituents face home heating bills 40 to 50 per cent higher than equivalent homes in the south of England, Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch MSP Dave Thompson has called on the UK Government to help regulate the energy market.

Mr Thompson noted that soaring energy prices have resulted in a £150 million bonus for the UK Treasury from VAT on domestic energy bills from a total VAT receipt from household energy bills of £1.4 billion, and called on the UK Government to use this windfall to ease pressure on consumers who face higher bills. Scottish Government statistics released this month show that household electricity bills to heat a home in Inverness were 41 per cent higher than for similar homes in Bristol, while the figure for Aviemore was 42 per cent higher.

Further research Mr Thompson commissioned recently, and which has just become available, has shown the equivalent figure to heat a home in Portree costs 45 per cent more than a similar property in Bristol.

“While the Chancellor of the Exchequer in London is collecting an additional £150 million from the public via the VAT on their domestic heating bills, householders in my constituency are wondering how they will cope with ever-increasing bills,” said Mr Thompson.

“The most vulnerable are helped when temperatures drop through cold weather payments and that is, of course, very welcome but soaring energy prices mean that an increasing number of families are slipping into fuel poverty.

“The SNP Scottish Government is doing what it can to improve energy efficiency in Scottish homes through the £50 million Warm Homes Fund and the Energy Assistance Package but regulation of the energy industry is a matter currently reserved to Westminster so regulation must come from London.

“Therefore I call on the Chancellor and his right-hand man Danny Alexander, a Highland MP no less, to examine what action is possible to provide relief for hard-pressed households.

Statistics about the additional cost of keeping a house in different parts of Scotland was provided by Cabinet Secretary Alex Neil in response to a question from Western Isles MSP Alasdair Allan.

Following this Mr Thompson commissioned further research to detail equivalent figures for Skye.

Notes:

Question S3W-38093: Alasdair Allan, Western Isles, Scottish National Party, Date Lodged: 06/12/2010: To ask the Scottish Executive what information it has on the estimated percentage of the extra fuel required to heat houses in (a) Edinburgh, (b) Glasgow, (c) Aberdeen, (d) Dundee, (e) Stornoway, (f) Braemar, (g) Inverness and (h) Aviemore compared with equivalent houses in Bristol.

Answered by Alex Neil (14/12/2010): The information is not held centrally but the Scottish Government is able to estimate the extra fuel required by using data held in the Scottish House Condition Survey. This is modelled information using a standard heating regime to remove the vagaries of individual household use and behaviours but provides consistency of output for each of the areas concerned.

The output for each area would reflect the differences in:

Profile of housing stock types;

Fuel use distribution across each of those dwelling types;

Geographical differences such as latitude and elevation, and

Climatic variation such as the degree day region and average wind-speed.

The following table shows the estimated percentage for the differences in the principal heating system fuels and the difference overall.

Percentage Difference, by Area, of Heating Fuel Required Relative to Bristol

Source: Scottish House Condition Survey 2009.

Total domestic sales of electricity and gas in 2010 were £27 billion (before VAT) making VAT receipts around £1.4 billion (Digest of UK energy statistics 2011, DECC). If current prices remain in place for a year, and consumption remains at exactly 2010 levels then VAT receipts would increase to by around £150 million (ONS Series DOBY, DOBX).