Written Answers from the Department for Business and Trade

Department for Business and Trade provided the following answer to your written parliamentary question (187008):

Question:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, how much the Government spent on subsidies to high energy using industries last year. (187008)

Tabled on: 02 June 2023

Answer:
Ms Nusrat Ghani:

Over £450 million was provided across the Energy Intensive Industry schemes in 2022. This was in addition to support provided by the Energy Bill Relief Scheme (EBRS) for businesses and other non-domestic customers. The EBRS ended on 31 March 2023 and provided around £7 billion of support to businesses, including high energy using industries.

The answer was submitted on 07 Jun 2023 at 16:29.

25 Comments

  1. Javelin
    June 15, 2023

    NetZero and Lockdowns were caused by wildly inaccurate computer models.

    Both NetZero and Lockdowns predicted death and destruction but they themselves caused death and destruction of approximately an order of magnitude greater.

    A similar thing can be said for computer models predicting a demographic time bomb and a need for mass migration.

    The “managerial class” have taken over democracy and the result is the same as when the Germans and Russians took over democracy. Death and destruction.

    INDIVIDUALS understand their finance better than committees of managers and individuals will vote these disastrous managers out of office.

    1. Cuibono
      June 16, 2023

      And the little HAL-like creature on here was busily taking its own decisions!

      “Error: the comment could not be saved. Please try again later.”

      Our very scary future.

    2. Donna
      June 16, 2023

      Correct. This individual will certainly be voting against the Not-a-Conservative where I live. And if that means we get an Illiberal-UnDem, so be it. It’ll be hard to notice any difference.

  2. Jeffers
    June 15, 2023

    Your Questions – some were fielded on the 2nd June and answered on 12th etc etc – very interesting

    But the news story today is about the way Boris lied to us all – more than that it’s about the number of supposedly honourable politicos in his corner – the ones who also lied and were prepared to defend him to the end no matter what?

    1. a-tracy
      June 16, 2023

      Write your own blog Jeffers if you think enough people are interested in what you’re most interested in. The House has set itself up for everyone who ‘misleads, lies, feeds back their own opinion’ to be called liars in the future and be suspended; this is going to be fun if people like you think only Boris presents his version of reality in that place!

  3. Winston Smith
    June 15, 2023

    The UK is borrowing money to make these “investments” into CCUS which the UK can ill afford being already in such high debt. It would be better to invest in “manufacturing” to create more revenue alongside The City’s financial services to better pay off the UK’s debts. The problem of the UK being broke goes back to before GBP lost its reserve currency status when the “accountants” like KPMG, Price Waterhouse etc became the main advisers to the Government. Accountants are backward looking not visionary and BMC/BLMC/Rootes Group/Rover Group/Jaguar/British Steel etc all suffered poor investment until eventually they were sold for a song. The UK continues to suffer financing projects from revenue and has no plans to grow capital because that in itself takes capital the UK doesn’t have hence the welcome of so called “inward investment” which is simply selling off more of the UK’s crown jewels. The UK has few engineers/industrialists in Government and few consultants with a manufacturing background. All engineering projects, even high speed rail, need huge capital investment which the UK cannot afford. Remember Gordon Brown and the expensive mortgages he created to build hospitals, then Boris and his hospital building plans were only possible on further borrowed money. The UK Government needs to be honest with the people and admit the UK is broke, then we can start to rebuild the economy. “Blobonomics” has no visionary element.

  4. MFD
    June 15, 2023

    A lot of these business are foreign owned, why is the tax payer being fleeced for their benefit?
    Home industry must be the focus. I personally would also take steel making into public ownership as it is vital to most other British industry and it should not be in foreign control.

    1. Mark
      June 16, 2023

      At least they are supporting UK jobs. There would be lot more of them if government hadn’t made life so difficult for industry that it became uncompetitive, widening our balance of trade deficit, which was financed by selling off industry to foreign interests. Much of it simply moved abroad, worsening the problem.

  5. Elli Ron
    June 15, 2023

    I wonder how they account for the massive subsidies to the renewable sector.
    A further point is that the government is heaping huge amounts on our energy bills for Hydrogen, more windmills and solar.
    Re Solar panels: Apparently they don’t work well when the ambient temperature is above 25 C (summer), we know full well that they don’t work well in winter due to the cloud cover.
    This is the technology we want to rely on for our lives and our industry?

    1. Mark
      June 16, 2023

      The big problem with large numbers of solar panels is that they all produce close to capacity in the middle of sunny summer days, which would result in large surpluses of power that there really is no market for, so they would have to be curtailed, denting the economics considerably. Storage is not really an economic option since the surpluses are just a summer phenomenon, so the storage would not be earning its keep otherwise – and battery storage is very expensive and needs to be replacedevery few years.

      Government plans for up to 70GW of solar are frankly crackpot. Even in su,mer it provides nothing at night, so we have to have backup. Why spend twice and more?

  6. Beecee
    June 15, 2023

    Happy birthday Sir John.

    Try to ignore the Country’s problems and relax with your family and friends.

    1. glen cullen
      June 16, 2023

      hear hear

    2. a-tracy
      June 16, 2023

      Happy belated birthday.

  7. Bloke
    June 15, 2023

    Facebook is one of the world’s highest consumers of electricity.
    Too much of that is spent on generating junk.
    Many Govt answers are similarly of a low standard.

  8. Derek
    June 15, 2023

    These answers are as bad as those provided in PMQs most days. Either they do not answer the question or they are so vague they become meaningless. And the “investments” are far too small compared with the expenditure we now make to provide nice hotel accommodation to illegal immigrants into our LITTLE Britain.
    When are we going to get competent persons to run this country? These sound so very much like the offspring of Sir Humphrey and of course, way out of date. Perhaps Starmer or Davey can do better? No? I thought not.

  9. Matt
    June 15, 2023

    Sir John you will have to tell us straight now about how you stand over Boris report- because I don’t think there is much point in making comment here if you continue in denial.

    1. Philip P.
      June 16, 2023

      I note that that the six gatherings at 10 Downing St took place only from late May 2020 onwards, when Covid restrictions were starting to be relaxed in some countries. By then it was clear to many that Covid was not the ‘killer-virus-threat-to-us-all’ that it had been portrayed as. Johnson should have kept to his promise of a two-week lockdown to flatten the curve, then he would have avoided all the trouble. When his government kept extending the measures by statutory instrument was when I realised that government statements on Covid policy could not be trusted.

      1. Sharon
        June 16, 2023

        Philip P

        It was when I heard the phrase, ‘the new normal’ all over media etc, that my alarms really rang loudly. That and the extensions to the lockdown.

    2. a-tracy
      June 16, 2023

      John, immediately stop everything else you consider more important and answer Matt, whoever he is. LOL! I hope having a few days of peace and quiet without us all bothering you with our thoughts hasn’t put you off blogging altogether!

  10. Bert+Young
    June 15, 2023

    I wish you a very ” Happy Birthday ” and many many more .
    All the best , Bert .

  11. Mike Wilson
    June 15, 2023

    Test comment

  12. Lindsay+McDougall
    June 16, 2023

    Sir John is unearthing lots of little bits and pieces of subsidy, which may not be doing any good. Public expenditure is now of to 47% of GDP, which isn’t very Conservative. UK Government borrowing in April and May 2023 totalled over £40 billion. Extrapolating that to a full year yields total Government borrowing of £250 billion.
    Funnily enough, this is the annual borrowing total that Liz Truss’s “unfunded tax cuts” was going to produce. So “unfunded tax cuts” are taboo but “unfunded public expenditure increases” are OK? Surely shome mishtake.

    The UK is governed by a Woke centre left anti-Brexit mafia, which includes the Monarch and the Royal family, the Labour Party and most of the Opposition parties, much of the Conservative Party, CCHQ, the House of Lords, the Supreme Court and most of the top lawyers. Any “independent” commission is drawn from their numbers. So how to decapitate it? We already have House of Lords and judicial appointments commissions. Make those electable by universal suffrage – 11 English commissioners, 2 Scottish, 1 Welsh and 1 Northern Irish – and give them carte blanche to replace the entire House of Lords and Supreme Court. To gain acceptance of this idea, it needs to go in a manifesto. How about writing one, Sir John – a pre-emptive strike?

  13. Original Richard
    June 16, 2023

    Please ask the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero why they consider a carbon tax and the planned CBAM (Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism) to be necessary when the UK is to become the “Saudi Arabia of wind” coupled with their belief that energy from renewables is now 9 times cheaper than energy generated by fossil fuels.

    Our high energy industries using our renewables, should have enormous price advantages over the coal-fired Chinese and no subsidies should be required either for renewables or for the high energy using industries.

    1. Mark
      June 16, 2023

      The financial results for the Hywind floating offshore wind farm for 2022 have just been published. They show it earned revenues averaging £343/MWh for the year, of which £164/MWh was ROC subsidies. I don’t know where Mr Shapps gets the idea that wind is cheap from. I suspect he is wrestling with a poor showing of interest in the AR5 CFD auction.

    2. Ashley
      June 16, 2023

      +1 but because “the UK is to become the “Saudi Arabia of wind” coupled with their belief that energy from renewables is now 9 times cheaper than energy generated by fossil fuels” this is all clearly moronic & blatant lies!

Comments are closed.