18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 108 / Noes: 323 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)
It is a privilege to speak in support of this Gracious Speech. This debate takes place in the shadow of the second fossil fuel shock in four years. Families and businesses across the country are deeply concerned about the impact of the Iran war on the cost of living—a war which this country did not start and this Government chose not to join, but which is having significant effects here at home, just like when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and energy bills rocketed, and the British people and firms paid the price.
The argument at the heart of this Gracious Speech is that there is one overriding lesson of these two crises: while we remain exposed to the fossil fuel rollercoaster, we are deeply vulnerable as a country. Our sovereignty, our security and the British people’s living standards are undermined by this dependence and exposure, for a simple reason: we do not control the price of oil and gas, which is set on international markets. It is different from what it was like in the 1970s when we had fossil fuel shocks. There is an answer staring us in the face: energy independence through clean home-grown power that we control—clean home-grown energy that comes from our own wind, sun and nuclear resources that cannot be disrupted by foreign wars, that cannot be controlled by the whims of petrostates and dictators, and that means that our national security and energy security cannot be held hostage.
One commentator put it incredibly well in 2023, after Russia invaded Ukraine:
“Moving to home-based, clean power mitigates risks to bill payers, now and in the future”,
protecting consumers from
“volatility in international fossil fuel markets.”—[Official Report, 16 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 53-54WS.]
I agree with that commentator—it was the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), the shadow Energy Secretary, in Hansard on 16 November 2023. I agree with her. The problem is that she no longer agrees with herself. Where the evidence says we need more renewables, not less, she opposes them. Where the evidence says we should electrify as much as we can, she says we should abandon support for people to get heat pumps. Where the evidence says electric vehicles can protect consumers, she opposes action for their take-up—not because the facts have changed, not because the evidence has changed, but because she has jumped on the anti-clean energy, anti-net zero bandwagon. I am very happy to give way to her, so that she can tell the House whether she agrees with herself.
Claire Coutinho
I will very happily ask the Secretary of State the question—[Interruption.] Well, he said he would happily give way; he does not look so happy now. In government, I started work on the true costing of renewables, because the Department does not have an accurate costing of energy—it does not have an accurate costing of clean power 2030. Why has he not published one?
Ed Miliband
It was not worth giving way after all. The shadow Secretary of State cannot answer the question.
Ed Miliband
I will not give way. [Interruption.] I will later on.
What a sorry state of affairs: the shadow Secretary of State cannot even agree with herself. There was a gaping contradiction at the heart of the shadow Secretary of State’s speech just now. For all the verbiage—for everything she said—she has no answer to the crisis before us, because even she cannot seriously believe what she is putting forward. The idea that new exploration licences for oil and gas will solve our energy security challenges is obviously nonsense. According to the National Energy System Operator, new licences will make no material difference to capacity and therefore security of supply. Nor will new drilling take a single penny off bills. Members should not take my word for it. When asked if new oil and gas would cut bills, the shadow Secretary of State said new licences
“wouldn’t necessarily bring energy bills down, that’s not what we’re saying.”
Several hon. Members rose—
Ed Miliband
I will not give way for a minute.
The shadow Secretary of State comes to the House with a plan which will not take a penny off bills, which will not give us energy security and which rejects the things she used to believe.
Ed Miliband
I am not going to give way again.
This is the difference with Labour: we are learning the lessons of the fossil fuel crises we face, and we are acting.
Dave Doogan
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He is accused of being messianic in his approach to proscribing new oil and gas licences in the North sea. If it can be demonstrated that UK consumption of oil and gas is not falling at a rate that is equal to, or faster than, the rate of production in the United Kingdom, will he release his screeching U-turn on new oil and gas licences in the North sea?
Ed Miliband
The SNP has had more positions on this than the Kama Sutra, so it is genuinely hard to keep up. We have a very simple position: we want to keep existing oil and gas fields open for their lifetime. One of the things that the energy independence Bill will do is introduce transitional energy certificates—so-called tiebacks—which is what industry has called for. We are not in favour of a “turning off the taps” position, but I will be honest with the House: nor are we in favour of a “drilling every last drop” position.
Ed Miliband
Because if we did that, we would end up in climate disaster. That is the truth.
Ed Miliband
I am not going to give way.
Don’t take my word for it. This is what the Energy Transitions Commission, which includes energy companies, says:
“Any national strategy which assumes that all fossil fuel reserves must be exploited is incompatible with limiting global warming to safe levels”.
The truth is that new licences are totally marginal to the North sea.
Ed Miliband
I am going to make some progress, and then I will give way.
For nearly two years, we have been moving at speed on our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. We came to office amid a legacy of the irrational onshore wind ban; the fiasco of the allocation round 5 auction, with no offshore wind secured; and years of dither and delay on nuclear—the shadow Secretary of State amused me on nuclear, and I will come to that in a second. The Conservative Government left us exposed through 14 years of neglect, and we are clearing up their mess.
In less than two years—opposed every step of the way by the Conservative party—we have secured enough clean energy for the equivalent of 23 million homes through two record-breaking renewables auctions, but the lesson of these two fossil fuel crises is that we need to go further and faster.
Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Ed Miliband
I will make a bit more progress.
That is why we have already brought forward our next renewables auction and taken steps to fast-track the roll-out of renewables on public land. But renewables are only part of the story, and I want to come to nuclear, because this is going to be fun. Those drafting the Opposition amendment obviously have a real sense of humour. Here is the truth about their record. They promised a final investment decision on Sizewell C in the last Parliament and did not deliver. They promised SMRs and never delivered. They promised fusion and never delivered. We have delivered them all, and they have the cheek to complain when we are delivering the biggest nuclear building programme in half a century—delivered by this Labour Government.
I should welcome the fact that the shadow Secretary of State supports our nuclear regulation Bill, but I am bound to ask: why did her party not do it? Was it incompetence, idleness, ideology or a combination of all three? There is always a great quote from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) that we can read out. This is what he said following the last general election: “After 14 years of Conservative Government, we are now in a position where it’s more difficult to build critical infrastructure than it was when we came into power”. It is a Labour Government clearing up their mess.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Included in that list of achievements is the £12 billion deal signed last September to bring new nuclear to Hartlepool, making Hartlepool one of the biggest clean energy economies in this country. Does the Secretary of State agree that as we secure energy security, we must also secure economic security for those parts of the country that are left behind?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and this is what is so exciting. Contrary to what the shadow Energy Secretary said, we are seeing a renaissance of nuclear in this country, and not just through the Rolls-Royce programme—although we were very pleased to sign the agreement with Rolls-Royce alongside the Chancellor recently; there are also other routes to markets. We are very encouraging of the efforts of my hon. Friend, and others.
Ed Miliband
I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, because he and I go back a long way.
Sir John Hayes
The Secretary of State and I do go back a long way, and we agree, actually, about the crisis of capitalism, in terms of the sacrifice of domestic production for imports; he and I have lot in common in that regard. He will understand that the economic uncertainty he describes and the need for greater national economic resilience applies to food too, so—while accepting that we should put solar on buildings and have offshore wind—surely he understands that by putting solar plants at scale on the most productive farmland, which is needed to deliver food security, his argument about economic resilience falls flat. Will he look at that again? There is a middle way. He and I do indeed go back a long way, so for heaven’s sake let’s compromise.
Ed Miliband
Well, we may agree on some things, but not on this. I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, so let me say this. Even the most ambitious plans for solar involve less than 1% of agricultural land—something like 0.6%. I say to Conservative Members that it is somewhat irrational that in relation to nuclear, they want to be builders not blockers, but in relation to everything else, they want to be blockers not builders. If we support the nuclear power plant, we have got to support the grid to connect that nuclear power plant. If we want to get away, as the right hon. Gentleman says he does, from our dependence on international fossil fuel markets, we need to support the cheapest, cleanest form of power, which is solar power. What an array of choices.
Jim Shannon
I want to see nuclear power in Northern Ireland, although unfortunately that is down to the Northern Ireland Assembly and it looks like there might be some obstacles. I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to tidal power, battery storage and green hydrogen. He has always been keen to ensure that Northern Ireland can also be part of the growth that is coming from here. Will he give Northern Ireland some encouragement that when it comes to moving forward with green energy, we are part of that plan across this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?
Ed Miliband
I am always happy to work with the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, as are my team of Ministers.
Mr Perkins
The shadow Secretary of State did not take my second intervention when I attempted to get an answer from her. We know that Conservative Members propose to get rid of the energy profits levy, costing the Government about £12 billion, and they want to get rid of VAT, costing about £5 billion or £6 billion. We know they have a plan for oil or gas that might be here in four or 10 years, although it is owned by somebody else, and they believe they will use that collection of policies to reduce people’s energy prices. Does my right hon. Friend see any credibility in the plans from Conservative Members that he can share with us, because we have not heard it from them?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend makes his point incredibly well, and I do want to say something about renewables before I move on. At the time of the AR7 auction, the right hon. Member for East Surrey said that we should cancel that auction. As I said, that auction secured power for the equivalent of 16 million homes—[Interruption.] Perhaps Opposition Members could listen for a second. That included offshore wind at prices that are 40% cheaper to build and operate than new gas. At the time, the right hon. Lady shouted out from a sedentary position “Gas is falling!”, as a justification for her position—[Interruption.] She did say that. Today, the gas price is around 50% higher than it was then.
There is a really important point here: there can be no clearer demonstration of the gamble that Conservative Members wanted us to take. What a terrible call; what a foolish position. We are at a time of the greatest geopolitical instability in generations. Anyone who would rationally learn the lessons from when Russia invaded Ukraine would say, “We cannot gamble on low fossil fuel prices, because this is what happens.”
Ed Miliband
I am going to make some progress. By contrast, we stand for national security through energy security and energy independence.
How we protect consumers is very important. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor showed at the Budget last year that she took decisions to raise taxes, including on the wealthiest, so that we could cut bills for everyone, and we saw that happen in April. The Gracious Speech also includes legislation to raise the rate of the electricity generator levy from 45% to 55%, as part of our plan to break the link between electricity and gas prices, and act on the excess profits that arise from that link. We are also making a big call: keeping in place the windfall tax on oil and gas profits during this conflict. In the last few weeks, we have seen profits from major oil and gas companies soar.
Ed Miliband
No, I am not going to give way. These are unearned profits as a result of the war.
Ed Miliband
I will just make a bit of progress. We say tax those profits to help the British people.
Ed Miliband
No, I am not giving way. The energy profits levy has raised £12 billion since it was introduced in 2022.
Several hon. Members rose—
Ed Miliband
I am not giving way, no. Let me quote the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), the former Prime Minister, who was the Chancellor at the time. These are not my words—this is not Red Ed; it’s Red Rishi! He said:
“The oil and gas sector is making extraordinary profits, not as the result of recent changes to risk taking or innovation or efficiency, but as the result of surging…commodity prices,”—[Official Report, 26 May 2022; Vol. 715, c. 450.]
He was right.
Ed Miliband
No, I am not giving way.
At this moment, what have the official Opposition, alongside the SNP, decided to call for? They have called for the Government to dump that policy. Let us get this straight: at the precise moment that the British people struggle with the effects of the war, those parties say that the priority with scarce resources is to cut taxes for the largest oil and gas companies making record profits. Let us be clear: no amount of false accounting or fuzzy maths can hide the facts about the idea of cutting these taxes at this moment of windfall profits to improve revenues.
Harriet Cross
I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. Just so that no one is under any false interpretation of what that tax does and how it works, does the Secretary of State understand that the tax does not apply to trading nor to overseas production? It is on production from the North sea, which is not where those profits are being made, is it?
Ed Miliband
The hon. Lady obviously does not understand that prices are going up, including from the North sea. Let us look at the amount that the tax raises. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, even before this crisis the windfall tax was forecast to raise £5 billion by September 2027. Conservative Members—the official Opposition—have to explain: where is the money going to come from, then? They are going to cut that tax of £5 billion for the biggest oil and gas companies. By contrast, we believe that we should tax fairly and use the resources to help the British people.
Ed Miliband
I am not going to give way as I need to finish soon.
The energy independence Bill will legislate to help deliver the biggest investment in home upgrades in British history through our £15 billion warm homes plan. As part of this, we will act to help private renters. This is important, because it is about how we make sure that, in the drive to clean power, we help everybody in our society. It is a scandal that 1.6 million children living in private rented homes are suffering from cold, damp or mould, according to Citizens Advice. We say it is time to act. Minimum energy efficiency standards for renters were promised by the previous Government, then scrapped. The energy independence Bill will legislate for them by cutting bills for renters, and lifting 400,000 families out of fuel poverty by 2030.
Part of this goes to the question asked by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place. We believe that the drive for energy independence can deliver for workers and communities. We are already seeing the jobs that clean energy is creating across the country: 11,000 more workers in nuclear, according to the industry’s latest estimates, 8,000 more in offshore wind, with thousands more upgrading the grid, on the way to 400,000 extra clean energy jobs by 2030, and £90 billion of private investment announced since the election.
Ed Miliband
I am not going to give way.
We want to ensure that those jobs are good jobs, so we will amend employment rights legislation, as part of the energy independence Bill, to enable us to bring the rights of offshore renewables workers in line with those working in oil and gas. It is by driving forward in clean energy that we have the best chance of a fair transition in the North sea. Some 70,000 jobs were lost in less than a decade under the last Government. We are determined to lead the world in industries such as offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture, and we will continue to use North sea oil and gas for decades to come by keeping existing fields open for their lifetime. That is why the energy independence Bill will legislate to introduce transitional energy certificates, something the industry has welcomed. I also say to Reform Members that we look forward to debating their plans for fracking during the debate on the EIB, because fracking will make no difference to bills. It is dangerous and roundly opposed by local communities, and we will act on it.
Lizzi Collinge
Part of my constituency is in Lancashire, where fracking testing took place. We suffered earth tremors as a result. Does the Secretary of State agree that the British people do not want fracking in our communities, and do not want the risks that we saw in Lancashire?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend puts it well. There is something ironic about the fact that Reform says nationally that it wants fracking, but its representatives in Scarborough and Lancashire seem to say that they are against it. From now until the general election, we are going to be asking where Reform candidates stand: is it with their local community, or is it with the fracking industry?
Ed Miliband
No.
I have set out the approach to energy security that underpins this Gracious Speech. Above all, we will learn the lessons of the fossil fuel crises of our age. We will build our energy independence, tackle the affordability crisis, deliver good jobs and investment in our communities, and make the right decisions for today’s generation and future generations. I commend the Gracious Speech to the House.
Several hon. Members rose—
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the measures in the King’s Speech on energy security, as on many other issues. The Opposition’s wrong-headed approach would leave us tethered to global markets that we cannot control. They would lock our country out of much-needed jobs and condemn Brits to higher bills. The energy independence and nuclear regulation Bills, in contrast, are further leaps towards the stronger energy security we need.
In my speech, I want to tackle an issue—it was actually touched on by the previous speaker, the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale)—which will increasingly drive the amount of energy our country needs to generate: the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. The Government did not bring forward in this King’s Speech our manifesto commitment to
“ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models”.
Indeed, AI was not mentioned in the speech. The Government have acted decisively on one symptom of the lack of regulation: the widespread production of sexualised images. That, however, followed 3 million such images being generated. Harm was already done, and I underline here the recent comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips).
The Government have, rightly in my view, launched their sovereign AI fund, supporting innovative start-ups to scale up and generate value here in the UK, including access to compute. I know that many Ministers in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have been working hard to ensure that the capacity is there to deliver that additional compute. However, when it comes to the design and use of AI systems and models, we have only the AI Security Institute, a world-first, expert-led organisation, but one that lacks statutory powers and has to ask companies politely to engage. Even the Trump Administration now appear to recognise the need for the evaluation of frontier AI models before release. If we are genuinely serious about our country’s economic security, we must devote as much attention to AI and its astonishingly transformative, productive and disruptive potential as we are rightly devoting to energy security and the delivery of home-grown renewables. That will first require working with the EU on digital regulation, and I will push for that to be reflected in the welcome EU partnership Bill.
In the briefing pack for the King’s Speech, the Government maintain that nearly one third of UK AI start-up leaders are considering relocating overseas due to regulatory complexity and capital constraints. Given that regulatory complexity will often relate to cross-border issues, the prescription is not deregulation but regulatory co-ordination.
Danny Kruger (East Wiltshire) (Reform)
Will the right hon. Member give way?
Anneliese Dodds
In order to keep to time, I will not.
Capital constraints, and relatedly, constraints in compute, are real. We must recognise that while unilateral measures to support sovereign AI are important, their scope is necessarily limited. We must again work with reliable partners that share our values, not least within the EU.
Finally, we must be brave enough to open up the discussion on the fiscal framework for AI. We currently tax labour, the very thing that AI will—in some sectors and in specific ways—displace. We must examine now how we might use the public stake from our sovereign AI investments, or mechanisms such as a token tax or reform to capital gains, as the TUC has suggested, to build up the resources that may be needed. There is potential for significant disruption to the labour market, and we must be more ready for it.
Research out today from King’s College London suggests that 69% of workers and 64% of employers are worried about the economic impact of AI-related job losses. A majority of all groups surveyed predicted that AI’s benefits will mainly go to wealthy investors or companies, not workers or society. A majority of all groups also backed Government intervention. If we are to secure the fastest adoption of AI in the G7, as is the Government’s intention, we must deal with those issues too. Our young people will not forgive us if we fail to engage with this generational challenge.
The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)
It is a privilege to close this debate on the Gracious Speech. It has been a pleasure to sit here all afternoon and listen to all the contributions in what turned out to be a far more wide-ranging debate than one just on energy policy, and I thank all Members for that.
I will respond to a few specific points raised in the debate in due course, although I will single out a few contributions from Members on the Labour Benches at the outset. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) was absolutely right in a number of areas of his speech, particularly in saying that we should be very cautious about taking any advice from the shadow Secretary of State lest she change her mind, as she has done so often in this policy area.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) spoke quite rightly about her pride in Blyth and the workers there. I was really pleased to be there a few months ago to celebrate the 25th birthday of offshore wind, which of course was started in Blyth. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale), for East Thanet (Ms Billington) and for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) all made important contributions.
My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton), who I had the great pleasure of joining in Stornoway recently, rightly congratulated Donald MacKinnon MSP. I also put on record my congratulations to Donald on his fantastic election as the Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Western Isles.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West gave a fantastic sales pitch for her community and the role it is playing in the clean power transition. She also mentioned the Dorset clean energy super cluster, which I would be delighted to visit.
Contributions from hon. Members on all sides of the House were interesting. I particularly welcome the consensus on nuclear, which is hugely important. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) gave a wide-ranging lecture—an important contribution—on the economy. I completely agree with his points on skills. We need some balance in how we approach the future of skills development in the country, so that we have the skilled workforce we need to do all that we want to do.
The hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson), who I think is no longer in his place, made a bizarre argument in which he said the last Government did a fantastic job and did everything right, but that we should now do none of the things that they did into the future. That was slightly odd.
The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), stole my thunder with his remarks on the speech by the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord). I particularly enjoyed the intervention from the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), who essentially said that nobody really likes any of us and it is all the fault of first past the post. That was a great contribution!
I want to single out the contribution of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who gave an excellent speech. He emphasised absolutely rightly that Britain is not broken but that we must be better. That was a really important charge for us all. This debate has shown that the whole House agrees on the need to strengthen our energy security as we respond to the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years.
Michael Shanks
I will make a bit of progress.
Where the House diverges is on how we respond to that shock. For Members on the Labour Benches, the overriding lesson from both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the present crisis in the middle east is that every day we spend exposed to fossil fuels, which we can never control, is another day of insecurity. It is another day of being buffeted by conflicts that we had no part in starting, and of working people opening their energy bills and finding the cost of someone else’s war. It is another day of Britain’s future being held back by a global market in which we are and will always be price takers.
The Opposition say that they too have learned a lesson from the second fossil fuel price shock. They have studied the evidence and weighed up the options, and their conclusion—their amendment to the Humble Address—is that the answer to a fossil fuel crisis lies in more fossil fuels. I like to give credit where I can, so I will give them this: it takes a particular kind of courage to stand up in this House at this time and make that argument with a straight face.
Dave Doogan
The Minister will know that Scotland has almost all the oil in the United Kingdom. We have the vast majority of the gas. We have the most onshore renewables and the most hydro. And yet, under his watch, his constituents and mine in Scotland pay the highest electricity bills anywhere on these islands. What does he say to our constituents?
Michael Shanks
I say that the Scottish National party’s plan for independence for energy was the flimsiest of flimsy documents. It had no plan for how independence would bring down bills, because the truth of the matter is that independence would tear apart any argument on energy security and drive up bills for people right across Scotland. That is why people rejected it in the referendum 10 years ago.
The Tories and their former friends and colleagues now sitting on the Reform Benches want to solve a dependence problem by becoming even more dependent. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outlined earlier, we will not be taking that course. This is the moment to end our reliance on fossil fuels, to electrify the wider economy and to speed up our transition to clean, secure, home-grown energy, which does give us energy sovereignty. That is the road to national security. Along the way, we seize the economic opportunity of the 21st century, with 400,000 extra good energy jobs and billions of pounds in investment by 2030 alone.
Graham Stuart
I wonder whether the Minister will agree to meet me and my hon. Friend the Member for Bridlington and The Wolds (Charlie Dewhirst). The Atwick gas storage site in my hon. Friend’s constituency is a critical part of our energy infrastructure, but at 47 years old, it is nearing end of life. Does he have plans to ensure that our gas storage is maintained, and will he meet me and my colleague to discuss the issue?
Michael Shanks
We are consulting on the future of gas storage. I have made it my policy to meet every MP who wants to meet me, and I have always had—[Interruption.] The shadow Minister says, “Even him?” I have always had very good conversations with the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart). He is in the wrong party—they all hate him. [Laughter.]
Now is not the time to look away from the biggest long-term threat we face: climate change. It is a threat that we can no longer ignore, so we will build the energy system of the future. Since we came into power, we have had two record-breaking renewables auctions after the catastrophic failure of AR5 under the last Government. Despite the shadow Secretary of State’s advice to cancel AR7, we have secured clean, home-grown power for the equivalent of 23 million homes. That is power that, since the middle east crisis began, is saving the country millions of pounds every single day in gas that we no longer have to buy. But good is not enough; we are determined to go further and faster. That is why we are bringing forward the next auction round to July, and why the energy independence Bill will accelerate the build-out of grid infrastructure by reforming planning and getting clean power built at the speed that the moment demands.
We have the biggest nuclear building programme in half a century, not vague promises that never materialised for 14 years—or the endless rounds of consultation that the shadow Minister loves to tell us about so much—but actual nuclear being built. With a nuclear regulation Bill, which is genuinely pro-nuclear and pro-nature, we will cut costs and timeframes without cutting corners on safety. That is regulation reform that the Tories now claim they would have loved to have done, but just never found the time for during 14 years in government. Well, we are going to get it done. We have to be honest about what we inherited. The environmental impact assessment for Sizewell C ran to 44,000 pages and it still left nobody happy. That is not caution; it is paralysis dressed up as paperwork. This Government will end it, so that we can get Britain building again and deliver the energy independence that people have waited for.
As we build for the future, we also have to protect people right now. Six million families are receiving the expanded warm home discount. We also have the £15 billion warm homes plan—the largest upgrade programme in British history—and, as a result of actions that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor took in the Budget, the price cap fell by £117 in April.
Kirsty Blackman
On protecting people right now, my constituents are losing jobs. Thousands of jobs are being lost every few months in the north-east of Scotland because of the Government’s continuing to keep the energy profits levy: Labour’s tax on Scotland’s jobs. Will the Minister make a commitment to move from the EPL to the oil and gas price mechanism in order to protect jobs for my constituents?
Michael Shanks
I will come to jobs in the North sea in just a moment—a section of my speech is about that, given its importance. I have to say that I am absolutely incredulous: I can almost understand it from the Tories—thinking that a moment of windfall profits was the moment to cut taxes on oil and gas companies—but now we have a partnership of the SNP and the Tories who believe that now is the moment not to help people with their energy bills but to cut taxes for the biggest companies. That is an interesting lesson that we have learned.
The energy independence Bill is about how we go further. A number of hon. Members have raised fuel poverty. Fuel poverty in this country is not a misfortune; it is a scandal. More than a third of school pupils have told their teachers that they are cold at home. In one of the world’s largest economies, a third of children go to school to get warm. We must bring this to an end with new minimum energy efficiency standards for renters, a new warm homes agency to ensure that high home grades are not, as they have been for too long, the preserve of just the well off, and a strengthened Ofgem with the powers of a genuine consumer champion, not just a regulator in name. That is what fighting the corner of working people looks like.
Let me say something about the people who power this country. I speak at industry conferences regularly and I always talk about my pride in the North sea, not as a Minister reading from a brief, but as someone who has friends and family who work offshore and as a Scottish MP who knows more than many about what the sector means. It is about people right now doing skilled, dangerous and vital work—work that this country has depended on for decades, and which does not get taken for granted—[Interruption.] We are not taking it for granted, actually; that is just nonsense.
The question in front of us is how we secure those people’s long-term future. The answer is not, as some on the Opposition Benches have suggested, to pretend that the North sea is not a maturing basin in natural decline. It is not about nostalgia for some new age of discovery. We are neither a “turn off the taps” nor a “drill every last drop” party. Neither is a credible plan. We will introduce transitional energy certificates, as industry has called for, to enable tiebacks and manage existing fields for their lifespan; for the first time, we will give the North Sea Transition Authority a statutory responsibility to consider workers, communities and supply chains; and we will launch a new North sea jobs service to support people through every stage of the transition. This energy transition only works if we bring people with us on what we are building next, and that is already taking shape.
Michael Shanks
I do not have time; I am sorry.
That system is already taking shape, whether through nuclear engineers in Ynys Môn following in their parents’ footsteps, apprentices learning to weld in the Aberdeen energy transition zone or wind turbine blades being forged in Hull—tens of thousands of jobs, record investment, real communities, real wages and a real future. The North sea made Britain an energy nation; the Bill ensures that it will remain one.
Sometimes, in the noise of this place, we lose sight of what is actually at stake. Half of Britain’s recessions since the 1970s were caused by fossil fuel shocks—not bad luck, not acts of God, but the predictable, repeated consequence of building our future on an energy source that we can never have control over. What we have heard today is that Opposition parties have not only chosen to ignore what is going on all around us, but they actively want us to go even further, to risk even more and to gamble with the futures of every single one of our constituents. The warning signs were there in 1973, in 1979 and in 2022, and they were ignored. The warning signs are back now, and it is right that we learn the right lessons.
Just a few weeks ago, 98% of our electricity came from clean sources. It was for a small period of time—I recognise that—but 98% of our electricity came from low-carbon sources. This country, when it commits to something, is capable of achieving extraordinary things. This is not ideology; it is the most basic duty of Government to protect the people of this country from dangers that we can see coming. The energy Bills contained in the King’s Speech are the path to a stronger future for Britain: energy security that no blockade can threaten; warm homes for families who have gone cold for far too long; good jobs in communities that have faced deindustrialisation for decades because of Governments who just did not care about industrial strategy; and a climate that we can hand to our children without shame. I commend the King’s Speech to the House.
Question put, That the amendment be made.