 The next item of business is consideration of business motion number 15592, in the name of Joffiths Patrick on behalf of the Parliamentary Bureau, setting out a revision to the business programme for this week. Any member who wishes to speak against the motion should press the request speak button now, and I call on Joffiths Patrick to move motion number 15592. Formally moved. No member has asked to speak against the motion, therefore I now put the question to the chamber. The question is that motion number 15592, in the name of Joffiths Patrick, be agreed to. Are we all agreed? The motion is, therefore, agreed to. Next item of business is topical questions. Question number one, Jim Hulme. Thank you very much. To ask the Scottish Government what its position is on reports of a 50 per cent increase in households requesting financial assistance to pay fuel and heating bills. Minister Margaret Barton. The Scottish Government is committed to eradicating fuel poverty and has allocated over half a billion pounds since 2009 on a raft of programmes to help people in Scotland to heat their homes affordably. It is fuel prices that we have no control over that has driven up fuel poverty. The fuel poverty rate for 2014 would have been around 9.5 per cent instead of nearly 35 per cent if fuel prices had only risen in line with inflation between 2002 and 2014. All of the increase in fuel poverty since the introduction of the fuel poverty target can be explained by above inflation energy price increases. The UK Government is planning a further £12 billion pounds of cuts to the welfare budget by 2019-20. That goes too far and is impacting on the most vulnerable households by decreasing their income. We are doing what we can to protect household incomes and to mitigate the impacts of the UK Government's welfare cuts. That includes ensuring that the Scottish welfare fund is available to be a safety net for the most vulnerable households across the country. Around 178,000 households have benefited from lifeline, with £81 million being spent to date, half of which went to communities in the 20 per cent most deprived areas of Scotland. I thank the minister for that response. The minister mentioned times between 2002 and 2014, but that is a 50 per cent increase in one year. We were told that fuel poverty in the poorest households had been mitigated by SNP spending, but it hasn't. SNP ministers said, and I quote, that there is no complacency about the issue whatsoever, but meanwhile they cut from their budget 13 per cent from the fuel poverty budget. If the minister believes that the Scottish Government is doing everything that it can to reduce fuel poverty, will she then explain how her Government's decision has led to a 50 per cent increase in applications for help with heating bills in just one year? What I would say to the member is that the very purpose of the Scottish welfare fund was to help people in low income, struggling to meet essential expenditure such as struggling with fuel bills. Many of those people are already in homes that have had energy efficiency measures installed in them. It is the cost of the fuel, it is the low income that they are struggling to meet the cost of the bills because of the low income. Even 19 per cent of households that are bandied and above are in fuel poverty, and that is because of the cost of the fuel. That is the very purpose of the Scottish welfare fund to help out people in those circumstances. I would have hoped that Jim Hume would have welcomed that. I thank you very much for the response again, but 845,000 households are currently in fuel poverty and the Scottish Government's response is to install energy efficiency measures in 14,000 homes. I believe that ministers have failed to grasp the scale of the problem and have heard that it is everybody else's fault, but they have powers themselves. Will the minister today commit to additional measures so that people do not have to rely on crisis grants to keep their homes warm? What I would say to the member is that we have already installed measures in 700,000 homes across Scotland. 900,000 measures have been installed and the money that we have set aside this year will improve energy efficiency measures in a further 14,000 homes. We are working very hard to set up a strategic working group to work alongside the school, the full fuel poverty forum and the rural fuel poverty task force to build on the efforts that we have already made to drive a forward the full fuel poverty agenda. There is no complacency in it. We have no control over fuel prices. We have set measures in place to help those in a low income and we will continue to do that. On report in Scotland last week, I heard an organisation tackling household affordable warmth from Orkney, Thor, saying that the main reason for fuel poverty is the high price of electricity, as the minister has said. In the Highlands and Islands, the 2p supplement on top makes it the dearest in the UK, which the Liberal and Tory coalition and the Tory Government since have not tried to mitigate. Will the Scottish Government press the UK Government to end this main cause of fuel poverty in my area? The member makes a very good point there. It is a point that we have made previously to the UK Government and will continue to make to the UK Government. At the same time, we will call on the energy companies to reduce the cost of energy costs further by passing over the wholesale cost savings to customers now, both to gas and electricity customers, to help to bring down the cost of fuel, which, as the member says, is the main driver of fuel poverty in Scotland. Will the Scottish Government provide an update on the productivity of the Lagan and Tormor Fields west of Shetland? The Scottish Government welcomes the announcement from Total that production has started from the west of Shetland, Lagan and Tormor Fields. The gas in those fields will be sent to the newly constructed Shetland gas plant, where it will be treated and processed before being exported to the mainland. It is a success of large investment projects such as this, which will see the Shetland Islands remain a key hub for oil and gas production in the North Sea. Production from the North Sea as a whole is now increasing and cost efficiencies are being achieved. The Lagan and Tormor Fields, which have a lifespan of 20 years, will provide a further boost to North Sea production. Given reports that the gas produced from the Lagan and Tormor Fields is expected to provide around 8 per cent of the UK's gas needs, the equivalent of about 2 million homes, does the cabinet secretary agree that this is a significant boost to the North Sea production and that, with 22 billion barrels of recoverable oil in the North Sea remaining, the oil and gas sector still has a viable and indeed a bright future and that the UK Government needs to act now in this industry's time of need to provide an appropriate fiscal regime that helps to maximise economic return? It is very clear from the experience of Total in relation to the Lagan and Tormor Fields that the existence of tax allowance for deep water gas developments has undoubtedly assisted in the process of securing that advancement, which rather makes the point that Mr McKenzie has raised in his supplementary question to me. I welcome the steps that were taken in the budget last spring by the chancellor to improve the fiscal regime in the North Sea. It certainly needed to be improved and it was improved and we would encourage further developments as part of the preparation for the budget later this year, which would enable us to address some of the further challenges that are required to be addressed to improve the fiscal position of North Sea oil and gas companies. I agree with the Deputy First Minister's broad analysis of Total's reasons for the investment and indeed their commitment to staying the course on this project given gas prices. Will the Deputy First Minister accept in his representations to the chancellor prior to the budget that there is going to be a deal of decommissioning in the East Shetland Basin in particular? It is very important that the tax relief that is provided for decommissioning goes to ensure that work stays in the UK—we would rather have it in Scotland—but certainly that it should stay in the UK and not go to Norway, as some already have. I entirely agree with Mr Scott's point. Of course, he will be familiar with the assistance that the Government has given to assist and the development of decommissioning capability within the Shetland Islands, and I think that that has been an important contribution to ensuring. I also have to say that the opportunities have been very strongly embraced by the Lerwick Port Authority and by the Shetland community. Mr Scott correctly highlights a significant economic opportunity. We will ensure that the representations that we make adequately make the case for the points that have been raised by Mr Scott, because there is inevitably going to be a focus on decommissioning. However, we have to make sure that as much of that activity happens as close to home as it possibly can. Although there is an acceptance that there will be an increase in the level of decommissioning activity, we have to make sure that that is not premature activity and that the other steps that we take to ensure that there is a viable fiscal regime in place to support the development of individual companies and the propositions that they take forward, to ensure that we maximise the capability to extract the resources sustainably that exist in the North Zealand gas sector.