Oral Answers to Questions Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateAlan Whitehead
Main Page: Alan Whitehead (Labour - Southampton, Test)Department Debates - View all Alan Whitehead's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(6 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberThere is a lot of chuntering from a sedentary position, which I will not take any notice of. I would like to answer the question if Opposition Members will allow me.
My hon. Friend should know that the cost of renewable energy is coming down. The cost of electricity from offshore wind farms, for example, has halved in price since they were first introduced. The Opposition may interpret this to mean that my hon. Friend is wrong. I would say that he is not wrong but he needs further education on this subject, and I will be delighted to meet him at any time to discuss it.
Our clean growth strategy is rightly ambitious, and the Climate Change Act allows us to be flexible in our means of achieving the goals that we have set out. As I have just said, we are ahead of our targets on the second and third carbon budgets.
In the recent Budget the Treasury, I assume following consultation with the Minister’s Department, pulled the plug on all future support for renewable energy deployment except for the already allocated near-term support for offshore wind. Does the Minister himself support such action, and does it help or hinder the UK’s progress towards meeting its carbon reduction targets?
As I have said, our position is that we have met our first carbon target, and we are on track to exceed the second and third. The Government are taking this agenda exceptionally seriously. In fact we are leading the world on it, having legislated with the Climate Change Act and put clean growth at the very heart of this country’s industrial strategy.