I congratulate Carla Lockhart on being granted this urgent question. I will put on record some statistics from the Northern Ireland Consumer Council to give some context to what we are talking about. Some 44% of households in Northern Ireland have no savings compared with the UK average of 16%. Households in Northern Ireland are the most vulnerable in our country to the cost of living crisis, with a weekly discretionary spend of £93 compared with the UK average of £204.

Even with the Government’s measures, the University of York estimates that more than 10 million families will be in Fuel Poverty. Under the new Government’s plans, Bills will rise by £900 to £3,000 on average from April. That would mean that 18 million households were in fuel poverty across the UK, with Northern Ireland hit among the hardest. To make matters worse, two thirds of households in Northern Ireland use heating oil, so are not supported by the energy price guarantee.

Providing support for households in Northern Ireland should have been a priority as they will be hit harder by the rise in energy bills. Instead, the Government seem to have forgotten them. The energy market is complicated but the Government have been aware of these issues for six months. In May, the then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Mr Clarke, wrote in the Belfast News Letter to promise that the Government were

“urgently working to ensure that the people of NI receive the equivalent of this”— energy bill support—

“as soon as possible.”

There has been little sign, however, that the Government have been working on the issue at all since then.

A taskforce was set up in August, but has met only twice. The former Prime Minister, during her very short tenure, told the people in Northern Ireland that payment would be delivered in November—today is 30 November. It is not good enough to let the issue drift. The Northern Ireland utility regulator said in August that he believed there was a simple mechanism to get the money out and he had been left frustrated that the Government had not taken it forward. Can the Minister explain why the option put forward by the Northern Ireland utility regulator has not been taken forward? How much longer will people in Northern Ireland have to wait for this support?