Great British Energy Bill Report Stage: Amendment 4

Parliament voted on Amendment 4 to the Great British Energy Bill during its Report Stage on 29 October 2024. The amendment, tabled by Liberal Democrat MP Pippa Heylings, would have given Great British Energy an explicit duty to help deliver energy efficiency through an emergency home insulation programme with targeted support for people on low incomes, alongside its existing renewable energy objectives. The amendment was defeated by 353 votes to 96.

The result means the Great British Energy Bill will proceed without a statutory obligation to run an emergency home insulation programme. Great British Energy, the government's proposed publicly owned clean energy company, will retain a broader set of objectives rather than the more specific duties the amendment sought to impose. People on low incomes who face high heating costs will not gain the direct legislative guarantee of insulation support that the amendment would have created, though the government argues such support can be delivered through existing policy mechanisms without being written into the Bill.

The vote divided broadly along government versus opposition lines, though not in the usual Conservative versus Labour pattern. Labour and Labour Co-operative MPs voted overwhelmingly against the amendment, providing 351 of the 353 no votes. The Liberal Democrats provided 70 of the 96 aye votes, with the Scottish National Party (9), Independents (6), the Democratic Unionist Party (5), Plaid Cymru (4), the Green Party (3), and the Ulster Unionist Party (1) also voting in favour. The Conservative Party, which had tabled its own separate amendment to the Bill on the same day, does not appear in either lobby for this particular vote, an unusual configuration reflecting the cross-cutting nature of the amendments under consideration.