PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Topical Questions - 8 October 2024 (Commons/Commons Chamber)

As well as our measures on onshore wind, solar and renewables, this Government have begun legislating for Great British Energy and setting out our plan for proper standards for private and social renters to take 1 million families out of fuel poverty, and on Friday we announced deals to kick-start Britain’s carbon capture industry. All of this will deliver our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. It is right for bills, right for energy security, right for jobs and right for climate leadership.

I welcome the actions outlined by my right hon. Friend, particularly the recent announcement that GB Energy will be headquartered in Aberdeen, with satellite offices in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Can he outline the role that he expects the satellite offices to take? Given the investment already under way in the port of Leith for a number of renewable companies, as well as the prospects for the supply chain and manufacturing, will he consider Leith as the location for the Edinburgh site?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to our announcement on Aberdeen as the headquarters of Great British Energy and the important role that it will play, and also to the importance of the satellite offices. I know from my visit to her constituency of the huge potential of her area on these issues, and we want to drive jobs throughout the supply chain through Great British Energy.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

The Secretary of State promised in the general election to cut everyone’s bills by £300 by 2030—a pledge he will not repeat now that he is in office. In fact, one of his first acts has been to snatch the same amount away from millions of pensioners in poverty. The right hon. Gentleman likes to preach, to politicise and, dare I say it, to patronise, but I have one simple question for him. To the millions of pensioners who are worried about their heating bills this Christmas, will he apologise?

The people who should be apologising are the last Government, who left this country in a total mess—a £22 billion black hole. I have to say to the right hon. Lady that she does have a brass neck. She said of the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), whom she is backing in the leadership contest, that she “tells the truth”, and what did the right hon. Member for North West Essex say? She said:

“I have people in my constituency telling me that they don’t need the winter fuel payments…Why do we not have a…mechanism for means-testing?”

That is her position.

There we have it: no apology; no recognition that it is the right hon. Gentleman’s Government’s decisions that are going to leave pensioners in the cold this winter. He has to acknowledge this: from the trade unions to the CBI, from blue Labour to Blairites and from the left to the right of his party, people are sounding the alarm that his ideological approach will see jobs lost and bills go through the roof. Even his old pal Ed Balls does not think that GB Energy is going to deliver the green transition, and I read this morning that the Prime Minister’s brand-new chief of staff is a sceptic of the Secretary of State’s approach. The Secretary of State is increasingly isolated in his party, so when will he do the decent thing and set out the full systems cost of his approach, so that the British public can see what he is going to do to their bills?

Oh dear, oh dear. The truth is that after three months of this Government, people have breathed a sigh of relief that there is finally a Government with a plan for the country. [Interruption.] I think the right hon. Lady should listen to what her own ministerial team has been saying about her. The former networks Minister has said that their infrastructure approach is hopeless. The former Energy Minister says that the onshore wind ban was “always mad”, and Lord Callanan said that the right hon. Lady had kicked the solar consents “into the long grass”. If I were her, I would be hoping for just one thing from the next Tory leader: a shadow Cabinet reshuffle.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that that issue is holding back projects across the country, which is why we have tackled it from day one. We are attempting to release network capacity, which can then be reallocated to accelerate the connection of viable projects. There is a lot of work to do, and we are building on what the previous Government did to prioritise the queue and to build the necessary infrastructure that should have been built over the past 14 years.

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. Nuclear is an essential part of the energy mix. We are mainly going to have a renewable system, but nuclear is an essential accompaniment. I fully support all the projects he mentions.

Whether it is our ending of the onshore wind ban, the CCUS funding we announced last week, our plans for Great British Energy or our warm homes plan, we are hitting the ground running to deliver our clean power mission. The Conservatives spent 14 years dithering and delaying, leaving ordinary people to pay the price, but we will get on with the job of delivering energy security so that we can secure financial security for families, good jobs and climate action.

The hon. Lady raises a question about the problems of grid connection that is familiar to many Members. We are building on work done by Nick Winser, the former electricity networks commissioner, and we want to go further to tackle the problem of grid connections once and for all.

My hon. Friend asks an important question. Of course, we and the Opposition have fundamentally different views. We believe in an industrial strategy that will help to deliver our supply chains. We believe in Great British Energy, and we believe in a sovereign wealth fund, which so many other countries have and the previous Government failed to deliver. We will make sure we have resilient supply chains that create jobs, deliver energy security and maximise the economic benefits of the transition.

The hon. Gentleman raises a very important issue that I am afraid was not solved by the last Government. We are working at pace with National Grid, and I am sure the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), will be happy to talk to him further about the work we are doing.

Batteries will play an important part in the short-duration storage required for the energy system we are building for the future. It is a question of balance. Communities will be engaged in the consultation process, and I will be convening a roundtable with providers of battery technology and other short-duration storage in the next few months to learn both from projects that have worked well and from projects on which we could do better in future. I will happily share any information from that with my hon. Friend.

The hon. Lady raises the important issue that, as a country, we are massively underpowered on community energy. As part of the GB Energy local power plan we will be trying to change that, learning from countries such as Germany and Denmark, which do much better than us. We will certainly look at the issues she raises.

The clean power by 2030 mission shows the clear intention of this Government to get on with the just transition. Energy workers in Falkirk, Grangemouth and across the central belt are rightly concerned about jobs. Between 2013 and 2023, under the previous Government, jobs in the UK oil and gas sector halved. Unfortunately, some of the Opposition parties have opposed the stream of funding for clean infrastructure and jobs of the future that will come from an increase in the energy profits levy on the record profits of oil and gas giants. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is time Opposition parties started putting their own plans forward on how they would get on with the just transition and deliver clean energy jobs at a critical time for workers and the climate?

My hon. Friend raises the important issue that what will define the future for North sea workers is whether there is a plan for future jobs in offshore wind, carbon capture and hydrogen. There was no plan from the previous Government; this Government are absolutely determined to ensure a just transition for those workers, using the power of Government and a proper industrial policy to make it happen.

On petrol prices, for the past 11 years the Government froze fuel duty; they cut it in 2002 and then froze it again. The Government instructed the Competition and Markets Authority to carry out a review, and we came up with the pumpwatch scheme. A consultation was undertaken in January, but when I wrote to the Government in September to ask about its results, they said they were looking at it and would consider it in due course. Is the scheme a priority for the Government? If not, in what other ways will they ensure petrol prices are kept low at the pump? Are they going to freeze fuel duty?

I will not comment on the Budget, obviously. We are very sympathetic to pumpwatch—it is important that there is a fair deal for consumers at the pump.

My hon. Friend raises such an important issue. Across the House, we can have different views on ground-mounted solar, but we need to do more on rooftops and to ensure that tenants, for example council tenants, benefit from such technologies. That is a huge priority for us and we are working on it with colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government.

What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Scottish Government regarding the major planning application for an offshore wind farm between Scotland and Northern Ireland, which may well have significant implications for the Giant’s Causeway world heritage site?

The hon. Gentleman will understand that I have to be careful in what I say about planning issues, but he should rest assured that I have frequent conversations with my counterpart in the Scottish Government and, no doubt, that is one issue we will be discussing.

Warwick and Leamington must be one of the sunniest places in the United Kingdom given the flurry of applications we have had for solar farms. There is a “loss of amenity” caused by one application, but if that community were prepared to welcome onshore wind turbines, of which we have none in Warwickshire, rather than a solar farm, would the Secretary of State or the Minister agree to support that? Will they meet me to discuss the issue?

Every planning application and development consent order is assessed on its merits. Importantly, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Streatham and Croydon North (Steve Reed), is polishing a land use framework, which has long been needed in this country. It will set out the balance between food security, the use of renewable energy, the restoration of nature and the role of farming. I hope that will help with some of the issues that hon. Members are facing.

The Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), have spoken passionately about the need to upgrade the national grid, but do they recognise the concerns of people across the east of England, including in the Witham constituency, about what that means for their local communities? The Under-Secretary has said that he will meet Members of Parliament, but I ask him very politely whether he and representatives and Ministers from the Department will also meet members of the communities that are affected by this matter.

I know from the questions that I have received from the Opposition that the right hon. Lady has been a tireless advocate on these issues. I do understand the concerns of local communities about clean energy infrastructure, which is why I am so keen on the idea of community benefit. It is important that communities receive benefit for hosting that infrastructure. We must have a discussion about this matter in the House and across the country. If we are to end our exposure to international fossil fuels and the kind of the cost of living crisis that we have seen over the past few years, which has devastated communities across Britain, this infrastructure does need to be built.

Last week’s announcement on carbon capture and hydrogen in my constituency demonstrates that we now have a Government of substance, not of hollow slogans. What discussions have the Secretary of State and Ministers had with the trade unions to ensure that we build those facilities with unionised labour?

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. After 14 years of failure and inaction, we now have a Government who believe in working with our trade unions, who have the backing of our trade unions, and who want to work to create good jobs in the industries of the future. Our announcement on carbon capture, which was groundbreaking and world beating, will deliver just that.

The Institution of Civil Engineers has called for a spatial energy plan to utilise new and emerging technologies to facilitate future net zero infrastructure planning. Will the Government look to bring forward a spatial energy plan and meet me to discuss that?

Yes, we will be bringing forward a spatial energy plan. That is one of the responsibilities of the National Energy System Operator. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point: we need a plan for the system. We can have a plan for the 2030 system done by the NESO and, indeed, a wider strategic spatial energy plan, which will be crucial for the country.

The warm homes plan is excellent and much needed in towns such as mine, but on warm homes grants for insulation, during recess I met a large number of constituents who had been victims of failed insulation and cowboy workmanship under such Government schemes. Some are living in horrific conditions with useless warranties. Is the Minister aware of their plight? Will she ensure that regulation is strong enough, and will she meet me and victims to make sure that this never happens again?

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We are aware of those cases of bad insulation and we are clear that we need to get a firmer grip on them. To persuade everyone that we should be insulating and upgrading all of our homes, we need the highest standard possible. I agree to meet him to discuss this matter further.

In my constituency, a new solar farm at Barkham is being delivered that will provide clean energy for more than 4,000 homes and provide a funding boost for Wokingham borough council. It will be connected in 2026, but there were concerns that connection to the grid could be delayed by 11 years. What steps will the Minister take to reduce similar delays, and does he think that the Government can meet their net zero targets if the new renewable energy infrastructure cannot be quickly connected to the grid?

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. A similar point has been raised by many hon. Members across the House. This issue affects areas right across the country. We are doing what we can at the moment to prioritise the connections queue, so that the most important projects, or those most able to be delivered, can move forward. There is much more that we can do on that, but, fundamentally, we need to build much more network infrastructure in the first place so that we can speed up and reduce the cost of these connections for schemes such as the one he mentions.