I thank the hon. Lady for her question. The Northern Ireland energy Bills support scheme will provide £400 to households in Northern Ireland this winter. In addition, it has been decided that the alternative fuel payment of £200 will, unlike in Great Britain, be paid to every household in Northern Ireland because of the high preponderance of the use of heating oil in particular. On top of that, support is already being provided to households in Northern Ireland through the energy price guarantee, which brings an automatic reduction in bills.

Energy is devolved, so this scheme should have been administered by the Executive in Northern Ireland. In Great Britain, my Department has been working since February to deal with this very complex and challenging task. We do not live in a society with a centralised database, so standing up the support has proved extremely challenging. It was not until August that the Executive asked the Government and therefore my Department to take on responsibility for it, which is one reason why we have been behind.

There is also a different system and a different regulator. As energy is a devolved matter, the Department was not used to working with the system on a day-to-day basis. Since then, we have identified that we needed powers that we lacked in the Northern Ireland context and we were able to seek those powers through emergency legislation—the Energy Prices Act 2022. We then sought to find the right route to get through to consumers in Northern Ireland.

We found that working through suppliers, because of their established relationships, is the best way—if not the only way—realistically and in a reasonable timeframe to reach consumers in Northern Ireland. By using those systems, we hope to expedite delivery, but there is a different set of suppliers from Great Britain and they have their own processes that need to be adapted to deliver the support. Detailed work is under way to establish how suppliers can use their systems to pass funds to consumers in a way that will meet consumer needs and ensure that public money is properly protected. That is where the biggest issue has come about.

I would like to see the AFP and the EBSS added together so that a £600 payment can go to households in Northern Ireland, and I would like it to be available for them to use this winter to meet their heating oil bills and the cost of living crisis. I do not want them to have stranded electricity credit that they may not use up until the following winter. That has been the crux of the challenge when dealing with suppliers and that is what we are working on to make sure—