{"id":703340,"date":"2026-07-21T12:33:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-21T12:33:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703340\/"},"modified":"2026-07-21T12:33:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-21T12:33:11","slug":"electricity-bills-vat-cut-will-not-apply-in-ni","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/703340\/","title":{"rendered":"Electricity bills: VAT cut will not apply in NI"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Treasury said: “Under the terms of\u202fthe\u202fUK’s exit from\u202fthe\u202fEU,\u202f\u202fEU VAT rates\u202fapply\u202fin NI\u202fon\u202fgoods, including electricity.<\/p>\n

“Agreement from the EU to implement in NI would be necessary.<\/p>\n

“Therefore to ensure that households in NI receive the same support as quickly as the rest of the UK, the NI Executive will receive\u202fcomparable\u202ffunding\u202fto enable it to support NI households with the cost of living.”<\/p>\n

VAT in Northern Ireland first emerged as a post-Brexit issue in 2022 when the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, reduced VAT on “energy goods” such as solar panels and heat pumps from 5% to 0%.<\/p>\n

That cut could not be automatically applied here due to EU rules limiting the range of goods to which can be sold without VAT.<\/p>\n

The issue was partially addressed in the Windsor Framework deal in 2023 and the VAT cut was then applied in Northern Ireland.<\/a><\/p>\n

Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster’s The Nolan Show<\/a>, Communities Minister Gordon Lyons criticised the government’s decision to compensate Northern Ireland through extra funding rather than applying the same VAT changes as the rest of the UK, arguing it would create unnecessary complexity.<\/p>\n

He said that, instead of extending the VAT cut, the government were effectively saying: “Here you go, we’ll give you the money and you can sort that out yourselves.”<\/p>\n

Lyons said it was too early to say how such an arrangement would work.<\/p>\n

“I don’t know what that will look like yet. I haven’t had time to talk to my own team about that but I can assure you that it will not be simple.”<\/p>\n

He also criticised the government for failing to seek a solution with the EU, arguing there was “no threat to anybody else in the EU” from such an arrangement and that the situation highlighted “the nonsense of the new rules that have been put in place”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Treasury said: “Under the terms of\u202fthe\u202fUK’s exit from\u202fthe\u202fEU,\u202f\u202fEU VAT rates\u202fapply\u202fin NI\u202fon\u202fgoods, including electricity. “Agreement from the EU…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":703341,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-703340","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703340","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=703340"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/703340\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/703341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=703340"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=703340"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=703340"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}