Written questions by Cooper.

What steps he is taking to support the development of carbon capture and storage technology.

Carbon Capture has a fundamental role to play in our clean energy future. That’s why we’ve committed £21.7bn to kickstart the industry. And last week, we saw an historic deal signed to get the UK’s first project, the East Coast Cluster, off the ground. That project will create thousands of jobs across the northeast, ensuring our industrial communities, particularly in Teesside, benefit from new opportunities in the industries of the future.

If he will make an assessment of the potential merits of requiring mortgage providers to reflect the EPC rating of properties in their mortgage rate offers to consumers.

The pricing of mortgages is a commercial decision for lenders. Currently the market provides a range of products such as green mortgages that can offer reduced rates or cashback for borrowers where certain conditions are met. Any borrower seeking one of these products should speak to a mortgage broker, who will be able to assist them in finding the best possible product for their circumstances. As part of the Warm Homes Plan, Government is exploring options for working with lenders to further scale up and diversify the private green finance options available to homeowners to support low carbon heating and energy efficiency retrofit.

If he will make an estimate of the proportion of households in (a) Mid Cheshire constituency, (b) Cheshire and (c) England that spent more than 10% of their income on energy costs in each of the last three years.

The latest statistics for the number of households in fuel poverty (using the Low Income Low Energy Efficiency fuel poverty metric) in parliamentary constituencies in England, can be found in the published sub-regional fuel poverty statistics, in Table 4: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/sub-regional-fuel-poverty-2023-2021-data The latest official Fuel Poverty Statistics for England were published in February 2024 here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/fuel-poverty-statistics#2023-statistics Annex D of the report and table 20 of the Trends tables include statistics from 2010 to 2024 using an affordability measure of the number of households required to spend more than 10 per cent of their income on domestic energy. Affordability measure estimates are not held at sub-national level.