Russian Oil Import Ban

Alan Brown Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend will appreciate that there is a diversity of sources for coking coal; we are not just looking to Russia. He makes an excellent point about critical minerals, and he will appreciate that this is the first Government ever to have a critical minerals strategy. It will be published in the next few weeks, and the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) is leading on that within the Department.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Electricity from gas power stations is one of the ways that we meet peak electricity demand. The Secretary of State knows that dispatchable energy can also be created from pumped-storage hydro, which is a completely renewable source. To minimise our reliance on gas and our switch to renewables, he knows that SSE is ready to go ahead and build Coire Glas in the highlands. Will he commit to agreeing a minimum floor price with the SSE, so that it can get on and build, and will he confirm the timescale for such an agreement?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am really delighted that the hon. Member raises this. I think he has raised it at every BEIS questions for the past 18 months, and I will keep saying what I have said before. We are interested in the technology, but I need to look at the specific proposals he is suggesting, and we obviously need to work out whether it is value for money. Those are the parameters we always look at.