Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Tuesday 25th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Let me first pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work as a net zero business champion for COP26; he is doing an extraordinary amount of work, and has been tireless in his efforts to support the country’s business community to showcase its extraordinary leadership in tackling climate change and heading to net zero.

Tidal generation does indeed have a potentially important role in the long-term decarbonisation of the UK. Projects will need to demonstrate value for money to compete with other renewables over the long term. The Secretary of State and I are very keen to hear from those who want to progress such projects.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

In terms of increasing the production of renewable energy, does the Minister feel rather embarrassed about the deep neglect that there has been of the development of deep geothermal energy in the UK over recent years? Is she aware of a report published on 19 May suggesting a new future for deep geothermal energy, and particularly a mechanism for supporting deep geothermal through a successor to the renewable heat incentive? Does she intend to respond positively to that report and its proposals, and will she acknowledge that deep geothermal is indeed one of the cleanest and most efficient renewable energy sources that we can have in the UK?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I have not had a chance to look at the report, but I absolutely commit to doing so. The Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy has been doing a lot of work with local communities where there are geothermal projects, and we will continue to look at them and see how we can help to support them. It will be, as ever, one of those ongoing areas of policy; in the long term, we want to use all the renewable resources available to us as a country to ensure that we maximise their use, while, as I said earlier, ensuring that they also provide value for money for the taxpayer.

Electricity

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Tuesday 27th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, and I will make sure we give him the detail of the figures in due course.

I am really pleased that there is agreement across the House that low-income and vulnerable households should continue to receive the valuable support provided by the warm home discount at a time when they most need it. Over the 10 years of the discount scheme so far, more than £3 billion in direct assistance has been provided to low-income and vulnerable households.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the Minister very much for giving way. I detect that she may be coming towards the end of her comments. I wonder if she might pause to reflect briefly on the whole question of thresholds and obligations, and how they might work out over the next year, particularly with the new scheme as it comes forward after her proposed consultation period.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I fear the hon. Gentleman may have to wait for our consultation to consider that, but I absolutely hear his point and reassure him that we will be looking at that in the round. I think we will have capacity. It is so important that we get to grips now, at the start of this really big challenge on buildings efficiency, and think in the round to help those most vulnerable households, and ensure we are as effective as we can be with taxpayers’ money and as impactful as we can be for each and every one of those homes regardless of their situation. I hope he will be reassured, as the consultation gets going, that we will look at that across the board.

The regulations will enable the continuation of support for a further winter. One million of our poorest pensioners and a further 1.2 million households in or at risk of fuel poverty will continue to receive £140 off their bills. I encourage all Members to continue to use the messaging—I am happy to share the detail with them—to reach out to their constituents who might be eligible for pension credit but have not applied for it. We want to ensure that people apply for it. The numbers are lower than we think they should be, so I encourage all colleagues to ensure that all their constituents who are eligible receive it.

As we outlined in the energy White Paper, beyond this extension we are committed to extending the scheme from 2022 until at least 2025-26, and to expanding the spending envelope to £475 million to enable us to reach a further 750,000 households, while consulting on reform of the scheme to better target fuel poverty spending. We intend to consult on the scheme beyond 2022 later this year. I commend the draft regulations to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Draft NuclEar Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Tuesday 13th April 2021 General Committees

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support, his forensic analysis and his challenge to the Government on process. Once I and officials have looked at his points in detail, I will absolutely write to him.

As the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, the UK and Japan have previously had relevant nuclear co-operation agreements in force—the 1998 UK-Japan bilateral nuclear co-operation agreement and the 2007 Euratom-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement—which was not the case with the US, Canada and Australia. Of course, the 2007 agreement ceased to apply when we stepped away from the EU, but the 1998 nuclear co-operation agreement remains in force.

Given that the policy changes made to the 1998 UK-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement were minor, it was not deemed necessary to agree a whole new nuclear co-operation agreement. Instead, a protocol to the agreement was deemed to be the most appropriate measure. There was an exchange of notes, which was considered a temporary solution that would come into force in any scenario where Euratom arrangements ceased to apply, which indeed they did, and the protocol had not then come into force. This protocol obviously represents a robust solution for our UK-Japan civil nuclear trade and co-operation, following our departure from Euratom, and it ensures continuity with an important partner.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the Minister for that partial elucidation. However, does she appreciate that, in terms of our leaving Euratom, at the very least this did not appear to have been made in time for the arrangements set out under the 2018 Act? I think she has partly confirmed that in her consideration of the status of the original protocol and what needed to be added to it in order to get us to a proper position—which is, indeed, the position we are now in today.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I hope that I have provided the necessary assurances for now and I absolutely commit to writing to him with the finer points of detail that I hope will give him the reassurance he needs that the UK-Japanese relationship is absolutely watertight and continues to be of great importance to both countries.

As I said at the start, these draft regulations will ensure that the United Kingdom can comply with the provisions of the protocol agreed between the Governments of the United Kingdom and Japan, and by extension will help to maintain mutually beneficial civil nuclear trade and co-operation between ourselves and Japan. Therefore, I commend these regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

May I say that Opposition Members wish to be strongly associated with your words this morning, Mr Speaker, and that I am sure that goes for everybody else in the Chamber today?

The Government’s flagship programme to improve energy efficiency in homes, the green homes grant scheme, has produced figures for the latest month: vouchers applied for—18,526: vouchers issued—1,186; measures installed—99; and, I am not making this up, measures paid for—20. Does the Minister take responsibility for this catastrophic failure of a scheme? Will she say now whether she intends to extend the programme and roll the funding over so that it has a chance to succeed in the end? If she does, will she be sacking the US-based private consultancy firm she hired to run this awful mess?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

May I, too, associate myself with your words earlier, Mr Speaker? I think we have all, sadly, been touched by the loss of someone, or more than one person, whom we have known to this dreadful disease in the past year. Thank you for your words, because it is so important that we are able to hold this moment together.

The green homes grant voucher scheme has made significant strides since its launch in September 2020. We have received more than 90,000 applications and issued 33,000 vouchers, worth £142 million, and an additional £500 million has been given to local authorities to improve the energy efficiency of low-income households, helping to reduce fuel poverty for about 50,000 households by the end of this year. This is such an important part of the just transition that we want to ensure that we achieve with net zero. We recognise that the scheme has faced a number of delivery challenges, as many new mechanisms do, which has meant it has not delivered at the rate or the scale that we had originally hoped it would. However, we are working with the scheme administrator to process the backlog of voucher applications, streamlining the voucher issuance and redemption process as a top priority. Some delays in voucher processing are due to our robust fraud and gaming checks, which we have implemented by learning from previous schemes.

Electricity

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank hon. Members for their valuable contributions to the debate. I will do my best to answer their questions and commit to replying by letter or having meetings with any of them if they wish to follow up on any of the issues that I do not cover.

In answer to the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), periodicity for future years of pricing is not yet determined. However, as he rightly set out, the challenges of the past year have meant that we felt it was more appropriate to look at it on a single-year basis this year, hoping, clearly, that things will settle and we will get back to some sort of normality in the year ahead.

The budgetary increase for the LCCC is in fact 19%. There are three main reasons for that. It is partly due to the impact of covid on energy and insurance markets. The LCCC will now be managing an increased number of CfDs in the year ahead. It is also having to move to a new building this year because the one it has been in is being demolished, so that is a technical reason for having to invest in a new site. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) raised the question of savings. In fact, with the new building, the LCCC has taken the opportunity to look at staff working patterns and the flexibility that some staff will want to use, and that has brought a saving of £184,000 on the overall costs, which is a good thing.

Interestingly, in relation to the hon. Gentleman’s point about pumped hydro, he is the second person today who has raised that with me and asked that we can look at it, so I look forward to speaking to him and others on the subject. There are three pots for the contracts for difference. Pot 1 will cover onshore wind and solar, pot 2 is for the less developed technologies like tidal, wave and geothermal—that is perhaps where pumped hydro might sit if we look to do that—and pot 3 is for offshore wind, which is obviously a fast-growing sector. I hope that answers hon. Members’ questions, but if there is anything I have missed, I am happy to write to them.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raised the important question of the challenges with fuel bills for many of our constituents following a really difficult year. I was in fact discussing exactly that with Ofgem this morning, and we will be doing a piece of work to make sure that we are as apprised as we can be of the challenges.

[Dr Whitehead]

The question that I asked at the end of my contribution was whether, in the light of those increases and of greater increases in the future, as I think we both agree will be the case in terms of counterparty costs, the Minister is actively thinking about other ways of funding that, or is she happy to continue with the levy arrangements we have discussed this afternoon?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

It is very much a live issue, and, across the multiplicity of the energy resources that we are looking at, we are thinking very much about how we will do that. I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman, if he would like, to discuss that in more detail in the weeks ahead.

I hope that I have been able to provide the necessary assurances for hon. Members to approve the statutory instrument, and I am grateful to them for indicating their support. As I said at the start of the debate, the regulations that the Government are seeking to amend through this instrument will revise the operational cost levies for the LCCC and ESC. These companies play a crucial role in delivering the contracts for difference scheme and the capacity market. They must be sufficiently funded to perform that role effectively, but those costs must be kept to a minimum. It is my view that the operational budget for 2021-22 strikes an appropriate balance between ensuring that companies are adequately funded and that consumer bills are minimised. I therefore commend the regulations to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

We are committed to making the UK a global leader in developing carbon capture and hydrogen production, so we are supporting both through new commercial frameworks and financial support, via our £1 billion for a carbon capture and storage infrastructure fund and £240 million for our net zero hydrogen fund.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

I welcome the Prime Minister’s 10-point plan announcement of the proposal to develop 5 GW of low-carbon hydrogen production capacity by 2030 and, as the Minister has mentioned, the £240 million net zero hydrogen fund to support that. Is it her intention to deploy that fund to support the production of green hydrogen and not to use any part of it to support production capacity consisting of grey or blue hydrogen?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for the 10-point plan, which I think the whole House believes is the right way forward. The £240 million net zero hydrogen fund is, of course, only one element of this, and we are supporting innovation, heat trials, standards, business models and a revenue mechanism to stimulate that private sector investment which is so important. This is going to put the UK firmly at the front of the pack. We will be setting out much more detailed work later in the year when I publish the hydrogen strategy.