Chamber and committees

The Scottish Government does not have direct responsibility for the regulation of energy markets and, through them, regulation of the prices that consumers pay, which remain a ‘reserved’ responsibility of UK Ministers under the provisions of the Scotland Act 1998, as amended, and the UK regulator, Ofgem. Scottish Ministers are consulted on matters affecting electricity and gas consumers in Scotland, and respond to those consultations diligently, but cannot direct UK Government policy decisions or Ofgem market determinations on those matters. It would therefore inappropriate for Scottish Government to provide a guarantee over a matter that is not within our gift, albeit we strive to support those faced with fuel poverty and have adopted statutory fuel poverty targets to drive our own policy interventions.

Fuel poverty is recognised as being damaging to the wellbeing of those it affects and the Scottish Government has therefore has intervened to support households living in fuel poverty, with the costs of retrofitting energy efficiency and low carbon heat measures being fully or partially met through our energy efficiency and heat decarbonisation programmes.

Our Warmer Homes Scotland programme, which utilises significant funding from Scottish Government, has helped more than 20,000 households living in or at risk of fuel poverty across Scotland since it commenced in September 2015. We will continue to embed support for zero emission heating in our Warmer Homes Scotland programme, including increasing the support available to enable a ‘zero carbon first’ approach to offer a greater number of households zero emission heating systems, such as air source heat pumps.