Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Damian Hinds and Nigel Huddleston(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Damian Hinds
I look forward to reading the hon. Lady’s report. The Treasury takes a balanced approach to making sure that we stay on target to meet our commitments. We are on target to meet our commitment of 15% of renewable energy by 2020, but we must do so in a cost-effective way, recognising that the subsidies to early stage technologies can only be paid for by taxpayers.
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
Will the Exchequer Secretary join me in congratulating the UK solar power industry on being one of the top 10 in the world? It is larger than that in Australia and slightly smaller than that in Spain, despite having a rather less advantageous climate.
Damian Hinds
Indeed. Were it only the case that the sun would always shine. Under Labour, we had the highest dependency on fossil fuels in the G8 and the lowest contribution from renewable energy of any major EU country. As I said earlier, the deployment of solar power has been a great success story since 2010.