Chamber and committees

I cannot give you a figure off the top of my head for the number of civil servants who are involved in tackling fuel poverty, but I am more than happy to provide you with that information. Of course, many of them will be involved not just in fuel poverty but in wider social policy areas such as child poverty and household poverty. In other words, they will work not just on one specific bit of poverty but across a range of areas, because they are all interlinked. The households that are experiencing child poverty are often the same households that are experiencing fuel poverty, and those who are experiencing poverty in general often experience fuel poverty, too.

The danger in a governmental sense lies in taking a silo-thinking approach to this rather than a cross-departmental approach. However, I am more than happy to come back to you with the number of civil servants who are employed in tackling poverty, including fuel poverty.

Potentially, yes.

I am not aware of the £500 million that you are referring to, but if you can provide more information, I am more than happy to take the matter away and get clarification on it. As I have not been sighted on that, I would prefer to get some details on it and then clarify things with the finance secretary.

I do not believe that there should be a windfall tax only on energy companies; our view is that there should be a windfall tax on companies that have made a significant profit during the pandemic, including the oil and gas sector—in other words, the energy sector itself. That would expand the range of any windfall tax and, potentially, increase the pot available to the UK Government to create measures to address the cost of living crisis. I sense that the chancellor’s position on that changed during the weekend in a way that suggests that he is starting to think about the possibility of introducing a windfall tax on the energy sector.

Presently, we are not looking at an emergency budget. That is because we have a fixed budget, which means that we would not be able to draw in extra resource. We are looking at the present allocation of funding across different portfolios to see whether we can target more of it at people who are experiencing particular difficulty during the cost of living crisis. That work is being done now. However, given that we have a fixed budget, there are no plans for an emergency budget at the present time.

I recognise that they are under greater pressure because of the cost of living crisis. We have taken specific measures. As I mentioned, we have expanded the Home Energy Scotland programme by 20 per cent and doubled the bit that is specifically for those who are most vulnerable. We have also put another £10 million into the fuel insecurity fund, which is administered by third sector organisations on our behalf, to provide financial resource.

Some third sector organisations have faced challenges because of concerns about future funding. I suspect that most of that is linked to UK Government delays in taking forward the warm home discount scheme, which has created points of vulnerability for third sector organisations in relation to whether they will have funding going into the new financial year. I believe that the UK Government has now sought to address that in the regulations that it set out in February to roll forward the programme.

We are trying to provide resource to third sector organisations to support them where we can. I am also very conscious that this is about more than energy—some third sector organisations that provide advice and information are dealing with other aspects of the cost of living crisis. We are considering whether we can do further work to support third sector organisations, given the increasing demand that they are facing over and above the additional support that we have already provided. I fully recognise and acknowledge that they are under considerable pressure and demands, given the cost of living crisis that many households are facing.

As I have said previously at committee, our priority is to move towards a public energy agency company in Scotland, which is a piece of work that we are taking forward at present. That has not changed. Nonetheless, it remains our view—and my view—that, in order to operate an effective public energy agency company, we would require to be able to enter not only the retail market but the energy generation market, and to control aspects of the grid network. As it stands, we do not have that power.

My view is that the best way in which we can deliver a public energy agency company in Scotland that can do all those things is through Scotland being a normal independent country. That would involve our taking responsibility for these matters and being able to borrow the capital needed to invest in those types of projects, in the exact same way that many other countries in the Scandinavian region of Europe have been able to do in recent years. Some of those countries are now investing in Scottish renewable energy projects, because they have been able to secure the capital necessary to enable them to do so.

The proposal still has merit, but to do it effectively and properly, we would require all the powers that we need with regard to energy. We also need the borrowing powers that are necessary to deliver the type of investment required to create renewable energy projects. Beyond that, our priority is the agency, as I have set out previously.

One of the purposes of the energy insecurity fund is to support some of the most vulnerable households, particularly those that are on prepayment meters. We provide some of that funding to the Fuel Bank Foundation, which supports vulnerable people on prepayment meters, I think, to reduce the risk, including by making available same-day money to stop people from self-disconnecting. There is no doubt in my mind that, across the UK, thousands if not millions of households on prepayment meters will find themselves thinking about self-disconnecting because they just cannot load up their meters. For that reason, we need to do more throughout the UK to meet the needs of people who are experiencing fuel insecurity.

Our £10 million fund is designed specifically to help to meet the needs of those households, but there is no doubt that households across the whole of the UK face the same problems. Much more needs to be done to meet the challenges that those households face.

We used to have gas storage capacity, but when the sector was privatised, it was all got rid of. Interestingly, some European countries are putting in gas storage capacity. Germany is doing that, and the Netherlands might be doing the same, with a view to future proofing in relation to hydrogen.

As things stand, as I understand it, gas production in the UK basins is already at capacity. There is no residual or spare capacity to produce more, and it would probably take several years to bring additional capacity in from other fields. That would not help us in the here and now.

Even though there is additional gas in the UK sector at the moment, gas is traded on the international markets and it is those markets that determine the price. At times, we bring in gas from Norway and we also export some to mainland Europe. It is all traded—-it is a commodity that is traded internationally. The price of gas is set by the international wholesale price.

Even if we could bring on 50 per cent extra capacity in the UK sector, that would not have much of an effect on the international markets, because the UK sector is too small a part of the international sector. At the same time, the price will be determined by the international markets that trade in it.

We are not seeing the benefit of the additional gas that we have in the UK at the moment because gas is a commodity that is traded internationally, and the price is set by the international wholesale price.

I am happy to take the matter away and look at whether there is a way of capturing that information. We have the rurality aspect, so we know that those in rural communities are at greater risk, but as I have said, I am happy to take the issue away and see whether we can do something.

I can assure you that we are not experiencing underspends in my portfolio budget, and there is certainly no underspend as far as the Scottish Government itself is concerned. We ensure that we utilise every aspect of our resource to our maximum ability.

Of course, we have a fixed budget, and we do not have borrowing powers or the ability to implement, say, a windfall tax to bring in additional resource to meet the crisis that households are facing. If we take money from one area and put it into another, we have to stop doing things. With a fixed budget, we have to shift money around in the same way that most households have to.

The UK Government benefits from having many more levers to bring in the level of money and funding that is necessary to deal with this crisis, including the ability to introduce a windfall tax to tackle issues such as fuel poverty and to provide the Scottish Government with funding that would allow us to make even faster progress in tackling these matters. If we had greater financial flexibility, we would have much more effective means of tackling those issues than we have.

On your first question, however, I am more than happy to come back to you with a more detailed explanation if you give me the details.