Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fantastic announcement today by ScottishPower of £1 billion of investment here in the UK, building the infrastructure that we need, and delivering jobs and skills in this country as well. It is one of a number of announcements that we expect, because we are not agnostic in this Government on delivering the industrial strategy that we need. My hon. Friend the Minister for Industry is working on that at the moment. We will deliver the jobs in this country to build the clean power of the future. We will deliver good, well-paid jobs and the energy security we need.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

9. What steps she is taking to support job creation in the renewable energy sector.

[The Minister for Industry (Sarah Jones)]

Delivering good jobs is the driving force behind our growth and clean energy missions. Great British Energy and the national wealth fund will crowd in private sector investment to spread jobs across the country through investment in clean energy. I am delighted that the Prime Minister has today launched the clean industry bonus, which will incentivise developers to invest in the UK’s industrial heartlands, coastal areas and oil and gas communities, boosting jobs and delivering on another of our manifesto promises.

[Andrew Pakes]

I am also delighted with my hon. Friend’s commitment to delivering clean energy jobs. It is important to constituencies such as mine in Peterborough, which could be the King’s Cross for a new core hydrogen network—as recommended by the National Infrastructure Commission—thanks to National Gas’s Project Union. National Gas has its hydrogen-ready gas compression site in our city and we are about to open a new green technology centre to develop new green jobs and apprenticeships. Will the Minister commit to working with local authorities such as mine, colleges, and businesses such as National Gas, to deliver new jobs across the supply chain and in all parts of the country?

[Sarah Jones]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiment and commend the work that he is doing in his constituency. Low carbon technology will of course play a critical role in our future, from hydrogen to carbon capture and to renewable energy. I am pleased that, in the Budget, we saw the funding of 11 hydrogen projects, which will drive jobs and growth. I am really keen to talk to him about his plans for Peterborough becoming the King’s Cross for a hydrogen network and applaud the work that is going on in his constituency around green jobs.

Great British Energy Bill (Third sitting)

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Catherine Fookes (Monmouthshire) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to amendment 2, tabled by the hon. Member for Bath, which seeks to include community energy in the objects of the Bill. The amendment has gathered support from across the House. I find it encouraging that so many hon. Members understand the important role that community energy schemes play in our energy sector and our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower.

Community energy schemes currently generate 0.5% of the UK’s electricity. However, studies by the Environmental Audit Committee show that they could grow twentyfold in the next 10 years. They not only power many homes but reduce our dependence on energy imports and support the development of critical local infrastructure, and of course they create local jobs. It is clear to me that community energy schemes play a key part in tackling climate change. I have seen at first hand in my constituency of Monmouthshire great schemes such as the community solar project at Bridges community centre, which saves the centre money, which can then be reinvested in the community.

Further afield, in Bangor Aberconwy, we have Ynni Ogwen, which does fantastic work to produce electrical energy from hydro power using the Ogwen river. Again, the profits are used to fund community and environmental projects in the community. My commitment to community energy is clear, as is the Government’s. We are inviting communities to come forward with projects and to work with local leaders and devolved Governments to ensure that local people benefit from energy production.

Although the amendment is well intended, it is not necessary. The Government and the chair of GB Energy himself made it clear at the evidence session on Tuesday that community energy will be a “core part” of GB Energy.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

I want to join in the conversation about community energy, which I know is very important to the county that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire and I share. Lots of great initiatives are going on there. Having read the amendments and thought about them this morning, I am deeply encouraged by the comments that the Minister and Juergen Maier made in our session earlier in the week.

I think I am the only Co-operative MP here—[Interruption.] I can see my hon. Friend the Member for Redcar indicating that she is one, too. As someone who has worked in the co-operative energy sector for much of my adult life, this is the first time in many years that I have seen a Government genuinely committed to community energy and working with the mutual sector to deliver that. I am proud of the work that the Co-operative party and the Labour party have done to bring forward GB Energy and work with the co-op sector.

In recent weeks, as we have prepared for the Bill, I have met Central Co-op, Midcounties Co-op, Unity, Greater Manchester Community Renewables, and a range of agencies that are fully behind the Bill because they see the power of it. The scale of the Government’s ambition is clear. The Secretary of State himself has said that the local power plan will deliver the biggest expansion of community energy in history. It would also be remiss of us to consider the amendment without acknowledging the local power plan, which is part of GB Energy’s founding statement, which includes a clear commitment from the chair, Juergen Maier:

“We will be investing in community-owned energy generation, reducing the pressures on the transmission grid while giving local people a stake in their transition to net zero.”

The local power plan is also listed in GB Energy’s three initial priorities.

Although I sympathise with, and support and wish to work with, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire on community energy in Cambridgeshire in the localities that we operate in—it is really important that we keep a focus on that—this is a Bill that will transform our energy. The co-op movement is behind it and communities are behind it. It is important that we drive the Bill forward, so that it enables the local power plan, rather than—as it is almost the festive season—treating it like a Christmas tree, which is what I worry some legislation can become like. There are so many baubles that we could put on this legislation, when we should let the majesty of the tree speak for itself. We should get on and pass it, by Christmas or in six months or however long it takes. Community energy is coming, and we do not need an amendment to tell us it is on its way.

[Uma Kumaran (Stratford and Bow) (Lab)]

It is really good to see this cross-party support for community energy. I am sure all Members here today can speak to brilliant innovations in their constituencies. I have one in my constituency of Stratford and Bow, Community Energy Newham: its vision, very much like that of the Government, is to provide clean, affordable energy to homes and public buildings across the borough of Newham.

As we heard extensively on Second Reading, GB Energy will be owned by and for the British people, to help to promote energy independence, as well as to maintain Britain’s standing as a global leader. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire. The Bill has already baked in the fact that community energy will be possible. We heard extensively from our witnesses that if the Bill does not give GB Energy the ability to innovate and advance, or to be flexible, there may be constraints in the years ahead. That is why we do not need the amendment.

Community Energy Newham is looking to provide our local library with a cleaner source of energy. As I said, many Members have exciting projects in their constituencies. That is why it is so important to maintain this cross-party support for the Bill and get it through as quickly as possible, so that not only our constituents but the whole country can benefit from Great British Energy.

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[Torcuil Crichton]

It is difficult to argue against home insulation, but I do not know whether we need legislation or an amendment to the Bill to achieve it, particularly when it is happening already in community-owned power companies such as Point and Sandwick Trust in my constituency. The company raises £1 million a year for its community, and distributed in the last 18 months £250,000 to people living in fuel poverty, to help with home insulation and heating costs. That is the template, the model and the example that GB Energy could help and sustain without need for the amendment.

[Andrew Pakes]

I share huge empathy with the sentiments behind the amendment, but I believe that the answer to home insulation sits not in the Great British Energy Bill, but in the wider clean power and clean energy mission. I find it quite rich for Opposition Members, who used to be in government, to talk about supporting an emergency home insulation programme when they decimated the apprenticeship programme that delivered the workforce that could actually insulate our homes.

[Andrew Bowie]

The record of the last Government was that we increased the number of homes that were insulated in this country to EPC C or above from 14% to more than 50% over our time in government. That is a record of which we can be proud. Can we do more? Absolutely—that is one of the reasons why we are actually backing the Liberal Democrat amendment—but I think that to castigate our record as somehow disgraceful, or to say that we did not deliver for the British people, is wrong. I ask the hon. Gentleman to withdraw or rethink his remarks.

[Andrew Pakes]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being kind to me in the first intervention that I have ever taken in this House, but I will stick to my point: that we could achieve so much more in this country. We would be having a fundamentally different conversation about insulation efficiency and renewable energy if we had not gone through the last 14 years, in which budgets were cut. There are young people in my constituency of Peterborough who could have contributed, by moving from blue-collar to green-collar jobs, if we had had a further education system that was functioning and could train them—if we had a home insulation system that had a workforce that could get out and deliver.

Whatever we say in any resolution, motion or primary legislation in this place will not be enacted unless we have a people plan that delivers for it. That is why delivering on this issue should come in a different piece of legislation, even though I have huge empathy with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire.

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Although I entirely agree with the importance of the warm homes plan, I am getting really concerned that we are losing focus. We are looking to create a Bill that allows the scope and flexibility to ensure—I am glad the Minister mentioned this earlier—that the UK taxpayer gets the best bang for their buck. As the expert witnesses consistently testified, one of the key benefits of the Bill is that it is not overly or unnecessarily prescriptive and allows the scope to develop the strategic priorities, referred to in clause 5, that focus on ensuring that we get this right. I look forward to speaking to the Minister in due course about those priorities. GB Energy will work alongside and in partnership with the private sector, but we must avoid trying to be too prescriptive in a specific Bill focused on this area.

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[Andrew Bowie]

That might be in Full Fact, but if the hon. Member goes to Channel 4’s “FactCheck”, he will see that it says:

“During the election campaign Labour suggested bills would be brought down around £300 a year”

through its “net zero energy plans”, including the creation of GB Energy. The Prime Minister said:

“Yes, I do. I stand by everything in our manifesto and one of the things I made clear in the election campaign is I wouldn’t make a single promise or commitment that I didn’t think we could deliver in government.”

So the question is this: will energy bills be cut by £300 by 2030 and, if so, why is that not in the legislation before us?

[Andrew Pakes]

The hon. Member sets great stock in saying what this Government might do. To give us context, can he tell us what his Government did? Did bills go up or down in his tenure as a Minister?

[Andrew Bowie]

While we were in government, we paid half of every single person’s energy bill in this country to get us through the energy crisis, which was created as a result—

Great British Energy Bill (Fourth sitting)

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Bowie]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are many hard decisions to be taken in government, and every decision that the Government have to take has to provide value for money for the British taxpayer. I know that this Government recognise that, given the decision they have taken to remove £300 from every pensioner in the country—something I think they will come to regret.

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the Conservative Government built the first to fifth largest offshore wind farms in the world, ended coal for power generation and halved emissions at the fastest rate of any G7 power. In that regard, I know that everybody in the room is proud of the record of the Conservative Government just gone and will champion it in our work as we move forward.

Nevertheless, the issue of skills, and the lack of the skilled workforce required to deliver the next phase of the transition, was always at the forefront of Ministers’ minds. Indeed, because of that we established the nuclear skills fund when I was the Minister responsible for nuclear.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has forgotten to mention the onshore wind ban, which is really important. If he wants to celebrate his record, let us celebrate it in the full glare of light. Does he agree that one of our big challenges in this country is that we failed to make any progress on nuclear in the last 14 years? We talk about new jobs, but we are losing skilled engineering and nuclear jobs in this country today because they are going to other countries, because those countries are making the progress that we have failed to make.

[Andrew Bowie]

The hon. Gentleman draws me on to nuclear, which is a dangerous place for me to be drawn, as the Minister will know, because we could spend all afternoon talking about the Conservative Government’s legacy on nuclear—

Great British Energy Bill (First sitting)

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield Hallam) (Lab)]

My husband is company secretary of Sheffield Renewables, a community energy project in Sheffield that generates energy.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

This is registered, but I have been told to say it out loud: I am a member of the GMB, which is appearing before us later, and before the election I was the deputy general secretary of Prospect, which is also speaking to us this morning.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I am also a member of the GMB.

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[Stephen Flynn]

Q Thank you both for coming. In relation to that specific point, which is also in the written evidence that you provided, you referenced Ørsted, EDF, Vattenfall and Statkraft. GB Energy will be capitalised with £1.6 billion per annum. How does that equate to the delivery of projects similar to those of Ørsted, EDF, Vattenfall and Statkraft? Is that not quite a leap?

Mika Minio-Paluello: I mean, you would not build an Ørsted in one, two or five years. ESB, the Irish state-owned company, moved into offshore wind gradually, step by step. It took it about four or five years to get well inthere. We think we should aim to get there by 2040 or 2045. You start somewhere, so you start with the capitalisation. We can all talk about whether the Government could access more borrowing, and the fiscal heritage, but you can start with that. It will not be on that scale by 2030, but it can put in place the mechanisms and a plan so that by 2040 or 2045, we are a more powerful and richer country because we are finally on a par with our peers.

Mike Clancy: We have made some commentary about the treatment of public debt and this space in relation to GB Energy, and whether the debt rules, which are subject to current debate, should be adjusted so that public investment companies are appropriately excluded because they will provide a return to the Exchequer. We are also interested in the structure of GBE arising from the Bill in this regard. Clearly it is going to be a public investment vehicle, but if it is going to be an operator like Ørsted and so on—obviously we heard Juergen talk about the nature of the assets that it may bring under its control—these are significant engineering assets and propositions. If you are going to build a company in that respect, you had better start now, and you had better think about the labour markets in which you are going to obtain the skills, which are very competitive. I could keep you all morning talking about how that will not happen if it is constrained by public sector pay constraints.

A serious point is that there is more than one pathway for this entity, and if it is going to have a dual pathway, it needs to be thought through pretty early. That is because realising the floating offshore wind proposition—whatever sea it may be in—is a very significant endeavour, requiring an operational, management, engineering, construction, planning, and indeed operating capacity that need to be thought about right now, at the Bill stage.

[Andrew Pakes]

Q Thank you both for coming in. This Bill and GB Energy are a hugely exciting return to public steering, which we have not seen before for our energy system. One of our big challenges, before we even start building new systems, is the skills shortage we face, and the real challenge we have had in nuclear, renewables and other forms of energy production. I ask you both: how do you feel the Bill can stimulate and relate to the need to develop skills, deliver new jobs and ensure skills development in different regions of the country as well as in traditional areas?

Mike Clancy: Andrew, you are absolutely right. There are various things that need to be brought together that the Bill itself probably needs to consider, in terms of the skills profile generally and other forms of generation that are within this space. There is going to be an office of nuclear jobs developed by the Secretary of State, and so on. Our view is that it comes down to the extent to which the Bill can specify that GB Energy should be an exemplar company, and that it sets objectives for its board in relation to not only its community engagement, but how it conducts its processes to ensure that the short-termism that sometimes emerges from the private sector form of energy ownership is not characterised by a public company, which should be an absolute champion in these areas.

It comes down to governance and to the objectives and how they are set for a public company, and knitting them into the other parts of the skills landscape. That is why I also make the point—not in a usual trade union way, may I say—that we have to think about the labour markets in which GBE is going to play because they are very tight and very demanding, and there is a whole range of infrastructure that this country needs to invest in to deliver the growth mission.

Mika Minio-Paluello: There is good practice to learn from other countries: from Ørsted, Statoil—now Equinor —and Statkraft. They took a proactive role and identified where they thought the country needed to be in 10 years —not just where they might need to be from a minimalist, reactive position, but where the country needed to be—and then how to invest for the long run in those skills.

[The Chair]

Order. The Clerk is saying that we are straying from the scope of the Bill. We are okay for time because we have until 10.20 am, but it is getting a bit hypothetical about what will happen on top of the Bill, which, I am being told, is not really allowed.

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[The Chair]

We will now hear oral evidence from our third panel. We have Shaun Spiers, executive director of Green Alliance, Ravi Gurumurthy, chief executive officer of Nesta, and Marc Hedin, head of UK and Ireland research at Aurora Energy Research. We have until 11 am for this session. Could the witnesses please introduce themselves for the record?

Shaun Spiers: I am Shaun Spiers, executive director of Green Alliance, a think-tank and charity committed to environmental leadership.

Marc Hedin: I am Marc Hedin, head of research for UK and Ireland at Aurora Energy Research. We are a power market analytics company.

Ravi Gurumurthy: I am Ravi Gurumurthy. I am the CEO of Nesta and the behavioural insights team. Nesta designs, tests and scales solutions to big societal problems, including sustainability.

[Andrew Pakes]

Q Thank you all for coming in. Could you tell us a bit more about how GB Energy might benefit from or support the ecosystem of innovation and research we have? We know the Bill is limited; we have had that discussion. I am interested in your thoughts on how what is in the Bill might stimulate the innovation and research that the three of you represent.

Marc Hedin: I think we can reflect a little bit on the role of Great British Energy here. One of the areas for innovation is around investments in less mature technologies. It is one of the roles that was highlighted in the founding statement, published in July earlier this year. There is a role for that, but I would argue that there is also a possibility for dedicated schemes to deploy capital in less mature technologies. For instance, with regards to long-duration energy storage, we had a consultation earlier this year, generally welcomed by the industry, which looked into implementing a sort of capital flow regime to promote investment into long-duration energy storage. There is a role for GB Energy here, but there are also alternative routes that are potentially less capital-intensive.

The second aspect, touched on earlier, is around supply chain. There is huge scope here for Great British Energy, where, out of all its potential roles, it may provide the best value for money. In GB, the domestic supply chain has not generally benefited that much from the high level of renewable build-out that we have seen in the past decade or so. There is a role for providing visibility to the supply chain, and implementing innovation into the supply chain more generally in the energy sector.

Ravi Gurumurthy: If you think about different barriers to innovation, I think three stand out. One is co-ordination challenges; second is the provision of certain public goods, such as ports infrastructure, which are critical to investment; and third is risk appetite. I think GB Energy can potentially address all those in different ways.

On the risk side, co-investing—particularly in the novel technologies that Marc mentioned—can accelerate that innovation. Secondly, on things such as ports infrastructure, having a body that is trying to do whatever it takes to solve some of the co-ordination issues and the dependencies on public inputs can drive that innovation.

One other thing I would mention is that Government have a role, and have increasingly played a more co-ordinated role, in driving directed R&D through the net zero panel. I think Government can be better at that, if they are more informed, and one of the things I think GB Energy will do is to give a stronger insight into the constraints and opportunities in the market, and therefore potentially inform Government’s ability to drive innovation in a smarter way.

Shaun Spiers: I obviously agree with all that. The really difficult thing about clean power by 2030 is the last 10% or 20%. It is clear that the market on its own, at the moment, will not provide that, and just adding renewables and grid will not provide it. What GB Energy provides is the potential to invest in things like pump hydropower, compressed air and new technologies that we are going to need. That is going to be essential to achieving the 2030 power decarbonisation.

[Perran Moon]

Q My question is primarily to the Green Alliance. Shaun, what difference will GB Energy make to your analysis of the UK’s progress to date to decarbonise power generation?

Shaun Spiers: It is really quite hard to see how the UK will be able to decarbonise power generation, certainly by 2030. By 2035 was really ambitious and by 2030 is even more ambitious, so you do need a vehicle of this sort to crowd in investment and to give a really clear sense of direction to overseas investors and other investors who are looking for places to put their money. This gives a huge impetus to that mission. It is easy to set targets, but unless you have a vehicle to deliver them, they are going to be impossible to achieve. GB Energy is the key vehicle. I would say it is essential.

Ravi Gurumurthy: Nesta and Boehringer co-authored a report that I was part of, which included some of the time and cost savings that we think GB Energy can deliver—for instance, the role of GB Energy as what we call the pre-developer, where the Crown Estate takes on this role of basically preparing the sites, doing the planning consents, doing the grid connection and doing the environmental surveys before having potentially a single auction process rather than the current dual auction process. We thought that would reduce the time of getting offshore wind built by two to four years. We also produced some cost savings from doing that, including some reduction in rents. We think this institution can deliver genuine improvements in terms of time and cost.

I would not just stop at the vantage point of 2030, because although I think this will make some impact on 2030, remember that we have to double electricity capacity in this country if we are going to electrify heating and transport, so the 10 years beyond 2030 are just as important. I think GB Energy is an institution for the long term, not just for the next five years.

Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s question, although I do not agree. First, this is a long-term investment in the country’s future, and I think the Chancellor is far-sighted in recognising its importance. Secondly, there are hard-to-abate industries that, without carbon capture, will find it very hard to enter a decarbonised world. We have to protect those industries, but I agree that, where industries can decarbonise without CCS, of course we want them to do so.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, and I congratulate the trade unions, communities and campaigners that have campaigned for this for so long. His leadership stands in stark contrast with the asset-stripping of jobs, hopes and investment that we have seen in too many of our industrial heartlands. Does he agree that carbon capture is about not just net zero or boosting cluster areas, but boosting jobs, skills and futures in the supply chain in communities such as mine in Peterborough and across the country?

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend always speaks with great eloquence on these issues, and he is completely right. When we talk about the transition to clean energy creating the jobs of the future, and about it being the greatest economic opportunity of the 21st century, we have to show that it can actually happen. The problem with the last Government is that, although they used that rhetoric at times, they never actually delivered. Today, we are showing the difference.

Clean Energy Superpower Mission

Andrew Pakes Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman nods his head. I will be honest with him: we are not going to give community veto. The last Government did not give it either. There are nationally significant projects that the Government have to make decisions on. Obviously, we have to take into account the views of local communities, but the whole point of decision making on the nationally significant infrastructure programme is that we look at the needs of the nation as well. That is why community benefit is important. If we ask local communities to host clean energy infrastructure, sometimes they will not want it, or sometimes a minority will not want it—I am not making presumptions in this case—and then we should ensure that those communities benefit from it.

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

I welcome the Secretary of State and his team to the Chamber. It is a privilege to make my first contribution in this House on such an ambitious plan. It is ambitious not just on net zero, the climate crisis and energy security, but on jobs and opportunities for young people in places such as mine. In my constituency, Peterborough college is already building a green technology centre to develop new green apprenticeships, and we have plans for a clean energy transition centre. Will the Secretary of State put on record his commitment to working with trade unions, communities, colleges and others, so that we can move from blue-collar to green-collar apprenticeships, and give young people an opportunity to succeed in life as we meet our climate and energy needs?

[Edward Miliband]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his place. He raises the important question of how we ensure—this issue will be familiar to Members across the House—that we not only have the capacity to generate jobs in clean energy but can meet the skills needs of the country in order to fill them. This is frankly something on which we need to do a lot better as a country. My Department—I will talk about this in the next few weeks—will take on more of a function around looking at the skills needs of the clean energy economy, working with the Department for Education on how we meet them. He raises a crucial point in that context.