Ed Miliband rejects claim southerners would pay more for electricity under zonal pricing plan – UK politics live | Politics

John Swinney, the first minister of Scotland, is attending the funeral of the Pope on Saturday, the Scottish government has announced. In a statement Swinney said:

His Holiness Pope Francis was a voice for peace, tolerance and reconciliation who had a natural ability to connect with people of all ages, nationalities and beliefs.
On behalf of the people of Scotland, I am deeply honoured to attend the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome to express my sorrow, thanks and deep respect for the compassion, assurance and hope that he brought to so many.

Downing Street has already announced that Keir Starmer is also attending.

Keir Starmer is now scripting Reform UK’s campaign adverts. After Starmer told MPs at PMQs yesterday that Nigel Farage would “eat the Tory party for breakfast”, Farage has posted this image on social media, with the caption.

Eating the Tories for breakfast. @Keir_Starmer

In his speech at the opening of the energy security conference, Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, complained about the UK being “a price taker, not a price maker” in international oil and gas markets. (See 9.25am.) Dale Vince, the Ecotricity founder, explained this more in his Today progamme interview – while at the same time saying he thought the system was mad.

He said:

Quite simply, we allow the global price of gas to set the price of all electricity in our country, even when we make it from the wind and sun. And when there’s an international crisis, like we saw a few years ago with the Ukraine war and the energy crisis, the price of gas soars, and it takes with it all of the electricity we make in our country.
So we can get to 100% green electricity by 2030 maybe, more or less. But that won’t protect us from these spikes in prices.

Asked why prices were set like this, Vince said it was a “mad mechanism” that enriched producers. He explained:

Every half an hour of the day, generators bid to the national grid to be on the system providing power. And there’s a merit order of prices from lowest to highest, until the national grid has all the power it needs.
The last price in is always the highest. It’s always gas.
And then everybody below gets paid the same price. They get uplifted to the gas price, which is madness.

Vince said the government should change this system.

In his own interview on the Today programme, asked why energy prices were so high in the UK, Miliband replied:

Because we’re so reliant on gas and fossil fuel markets, and that has been the long-standing situation. And that is why our plan for homegrown, clean power, our 2030 plan, is so important.

Miliband said that, even if the UK allowed fracking, and more drilling in the North Sea, that would not bring down prices in the UK. Prices were lower in the US because of the size of its market, he said. But the UK was connected to the European energy market and “nobody has ever come to me with a proposal that could somehow say we can get out of those markets”, Miliband said.

Asked if Dale Vince was right to say that the government should break the link between electricity prices and gas prices, as Vince argued in his own Today programme interview, Miliband said the government’s clean energy programme would allow this to happen. He said:

By 2030 we’re going to go from a situation where gas sets the price the majority of the time to one where it sets the price of minority time.
And here is the crucial point – even when gas sets the price, renewables, the vast majority of renewables, will not be linked to that price. It’s because of the contracts for difference that we’re introducing.

Asked if that meant 2030 was the moment when the reduction in prices would happen, Miliband said: “100% right, yes, 100% right.”

Miliband confirmed that at this point renewable energy companies supplying energy to the grid would receive less money than they do now.

When it was put to him that this implied the government overpaying for energy now, he said that was why there was a windfall tax in place on energy companies.

He went on:

The big picture here is Dale is absolutely right about this. This is about breaking the link with gas prices, which we don’t control. And that is 100% what our clean power mission is about.
But we only get it by moving towards clean power, which lots of people in politics oppose because they say it’s the wrong thing to do.

In a separate interview with LBC, Miliband went into a bit more detail on how electricity prices are being de-coupled from global gas prices. He said:

At the moment gas sets a price [for electricity] two thirds of the time in our country. And even with renewables, when renewables are being bought on the system, something like two thirds of them, bit less than that, are linked to the gas prices.
With our clean power reforms, as we accelerate those reforms, by 2030 gas will set the price one third of the time. And here’s the really good news – six out of seven renewable contracts will not be set by the gas price.

Miliband ends his speech by reading out a message from King Charles, who, he says, is very interested in this summit.

In his message the king said:

As we all navigate the transition to cleaner energy for our planet and energy security for our citizens, summits such as these are of vital importance in facilitating shared learning between nations, particularly those in the global south and across the Commonwealth.
Events over recent years have shown that, when well managed, the transition to more sustainable energy sources can itself lead to more resilient and secure energy systems.
While each country will follow its individual path, there are many shared challenges and opportunities on which we can work together as partners.
I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you for participating in this summit on the future of energy security, and to send my warmest best wishes for productive discussions over the coming days.

Miliband says there are huge benefits from countries coperating on energy security.

And he says the supporters of clean energy solutions are the “optimists”.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we saw family finances, business finances, public finances wrecked as fossil fuel prices rocketed on the global market …
As with many other countries, we’re a price taker, not a price maker in international fossil fuel markets.
So our vision of low carbon power goes well beyond the climate imperative, important as that is. Homegrown, low carbon power is our nationally chosen route to energy security.

Miliband says the government’s starting point is that there can be no international security without energy security.

He says the IEA was set up after the oil crisis of 1973.

[Since then] the challenges we face have changed, but I think the principle underpinning the IEA’s work, that countries need to collaborate to secure the uninterrupted supply of energy at an affordable price, remains the same.

Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, is speaking now at the opening of the international energy security summit in London. There is a live feed at the top of the page.

He starts with a tribute to the International Energy Agency (IEA), which has organised the conference, and its leader, Fatih Birol.

Social media and other internet platforms will be legally required to block children’s access to harmful content from July or face large fines, Ofcom has announced. Dan Milmo has the story.

Dale Vince, founder of the green energy company Ecotricity, was also on the Today programme this morning. He said that zonal pricing for electricity – the proposal that Ed Miliband confirmed he was considering (see 8.41am) – would be a “terrrible idea”. He explained:

We’re going to take a single energy market we have in our country today that works very well, break it into 12 different regions and in five regions – the people behind this idea produced a report that says in five regions in our country,people will pay more. That’s where 41 million people live. And I haven’t seen the single benefit from zonal pricing anybody’s reporting so far.

Good morning. Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, has been doing an interview round this morning. The government wants to talk about a £300m investment in offshore wind. The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero sums it up in its news release like this.

Workers and businesses in the UK’s industrial heartlands will benefit from an initial £300m of funding through Great British Energy to invest in supply chains for domestic offshore wind. It is expected that the investment will directly and indirectly mobilise billions in additional private investment – helping de-risk clean energy projects and supporting thousands of jobs and revitalising the UK’s industrial heartlands.
The public investment complements the £43bn of private investment pledged for clean energy projects since July.

But Miliband has spent more time talking about a story on the front page of the Daily Telegraph this morning saying that Miliband is “poised to approve changes that would mean households in the south pay more for electricity than those in Scotland and the north”. The Telegraph says:

The energy secretary has been weighing up whether to push ahead with zonal pricing, which would split the country’s single national power market into different regions.
Supporters say the change will cut household electricity bills overall by reducing the need for grid upgrades, while opponents counter that it will create a “postcode lottery” and deter investment in wind and solar farms.
But in a blow to critics, The Telegraph has been told that government officials have advised Mr Miliband to press ahead with the policy.

Speaking to the Today programme this morning, Miliband said claims that he would be jacking up electricity prices for southerners were

Asked about the report, he said:

Copper-bottomed nonsense than the Daily Telegraph. No decision has been made on this issue.
This is an incredibly complex question that we are looking at about how we reform our energy market.
There are two options, zonal pricing and reformed national pricing.
Whatever route we go down, my bottom line is bills have got to fall, and they should fall throughout the country. I’m not about to introduce a post code lottery. I’m determined we don’t do that. But absolutely no decision has been made. We’re going to take our time over this very complex and important decision.

Alert readers will notice that he did not deny that zonal pricing was an option, as the Telegraph reported. But he was denying that he might implement a change that would put prices up in parts of the country.

Miliband said zonal pricing was an option when the last government started the process of considering electricity market reform.

Asked what factors Miliband would consider when deciding whether or not to change the way the electricity market operates, he replied:

My test of any reform – I’m not going to get into the detail now – is will it cut bills and will it do it across the country in a fair way.
I’m not in favour of a post code lottery on these on bills.
Actually, it’s already the case that different parts of the country to pay different amounts for bills.
But what I do not want to do is to make that situation worse, or somehow jack up bills in one part of the country in favour of another.

I will post more from his interviews soon.

Here is the agenda for the day.

Morning: Keir Starmer is visiting the aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales before it sets off on a voyage to the Indo-Pacific. He will be speaking to broadcasters.

9.05am: Ed Miliband, the energy secretary, speaks at the opening of a two-day energy security summit in London.

9.30am: The Office for National Statistics publishes crime figures for England and Wales in 2024.

11am: Nigel Farage, the Reform UK leader, holds a press conference in Dover.

11.30am: Downing Street holds a lobby briefing.

Morning: Ed Davey, the Lib Dem leader, is campaigning in Warwickshire.

Afternoon (UK time): Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, is giving interviews in Washington to US broadcasters, including Fox News.

3pm: Starmer is meeting Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, for talks in No 10.

Afternoon: Kemi Badenoch, the Conservative leader, is on a campaign visit in the East Midlands.

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