Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Grant Shapps

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The reality is that the Government have committed to those targets, as has the whole House, because the law has already been passed. We have the carbon budgets, one to six; I think we exceeded one, two, three and four, but we are on track for five, and a few weeks ago, I set out in “Powering Up Britain” how we plan to meet carbon budget six as well. The conversation about whether the regulator has an individual duty is an interesting one, but the reality is that in truth, we are all headed towards that cleaner energy system.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will recognise that, to keep costs down, to get electricity to the places where it is needed and to avoid us having to pay offshore wind producers to switch off when there is no capacity, we need something like 600 km of electricity wires between now and 2031. Over the past eight years, we have built only about 32 km. Can I press him on the proposal in the 1922 Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy committee report that there should be a new planning allowance to have those cables going down the side of transport corridors such as motorways and train lines?

[Grant Shapps]

I met my right hon. Friend to discuss some of the ideas in the report and I am grateful for all of them, including the idea of cables running along existing transport routes. I am pleased to let her know that we are taking forward many of the suggestions from that particular committee, as well as those from elsewhere in the House. There is much in the Bill to assist with organising and planning, but there is much more to do as well. I am grateful for her assistance in all this.

By introducing business models, we want to get the advantage of that long-term potential geological storage, with revenues and a potential CCUS industry that could support something like 50,000 jobs, with another 12,000 in hydrogen by 2030. We will also build the market for low-carbon heat pumps to 600,000 installations a year by 2028, and accelerate the transition to ultra-efficient electric heat pumps to reduce our reliance on the volatile global gas market and improve our own energy security in return.

We will also bring forward reforms to test new methods of decarbonising heating, which is where we come back to the hydrogen trials. We will have a first-of-its-kind hydrogen village trial that will convert up to 2,000 properties to hydrogen for heating, instead of natural gas, and repurpose the existing gas network infrastructure for 100% hydrogen. Through that, we can find out about the efficiency, or otherwise, of building a hydrogen heating network. I put on record that I understand there are challenges, which is why we want to test this first.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend knows only too well our energy triple challenge of keeping the bills down, keeping the lights on and decarbonising. As chairman of the 1922 Backbench committee on Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I draw his attention to the fact that we have just published a report on the future of energy. In my humble opinion, the report is packed full of incisive and actionable policy suggestions. May I invite him to meet me and my vice-chairs to discuss it and the implications for his Department?

[Grant Shapps]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right in her analysis: I have not yet read her report but I look forward to receiving a personalised copy of it, and I certainly look forward to meeting her, alongside the Minister for Energy and Climate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart).

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Grant Shapps

Thursday 3rd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

If the hon. Lady is exempt from levelling up, we need to have a word with the Mayor of London about it, because transport in her constituency is run by him, of course. On a serious note, I am very interested in that scheme, and I will speak to her about it offline.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northampton- shire) (Con)]

T6. The HS2 Minister was kind enough to visit my constituency to see for himself the damage being caused by the preparation alone for this train project. He will be aware that ever more areas of South Northamptonshire are now being ruined and dug up just in preparation for the line. What steps can he take to make sure that they do not become a place for fly-tipping, which we are seeing all too frequently?

Local Government Financing

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Grant Shapps

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The right hon. Lady will share the concern that I had at turning up at a Ministry and being told that the £1.5 billion that had been presented to the Building Britain’s Future fund exactly a year ago, in July 2009 when programmes such as Kickstart were announced, just did not exist. We are now having to do what we can to support those important programmes. She can expect to hear further announcements on this front.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

If all the programmes that the Opposition are concerned that we will cut were so valuable, why were so few houses built under the last Administration? Why are there 1 million people not in education, employment or training—NEETs—in this country if the programmes were working so well?

[Grant Shapps]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, not least because of what happened in the debate on housing here just last week. The Opposition claim to be passionately interested in housing, but there was nobody at all on the Opposition Benches then: not a single Opposition Member turned up for a debate on a subject that they claim to care about so passionately.

Perhaps the answer lies in the figures on housing. We have only to look at the figures for house building last year, for example: fewer homes were built than during any peacetime period since 1924. It is not as if the top-down approach was working; the more the previous Government tried to centralise, dictate and impose housing on local communities, the fewer homes were built. That is why we intend to turn their policy on its head and ensure that in future incentives drive house performance and house building in this country.