Today I questioned the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the replacement for the Energy Intensive Industries Compensation Scheme:

Stephen Kinnock: Thank you Mr Speaker. The Energy Intensive Industries Compensation Scheme is due to end in April 2017. The Government has promised to bring forward legislation to exempt energy intensive industries from renewable obligations and feed-in-tariffs, we are still waiting for that to happen. As it stands therefore, the steel industry is looking down the barrel of having to go back to the crippling energy costs that it faced until the compensation package was in place. Can the Secretary of State assure us that measures will be put in place to ensure that we don’t go back to that situation before April 2017.

Greg Clark: Mr Speaker, what I would say is that the discussions we have had with the steel sector obviously emphasise the importance of energy costs and our commitment is to work with the sector to bring them down.