Oral Answers to Questions

Andy McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that for years not enough was done in our schools to encourage enterprise and entrepreneurship. When we know that so many of the jobs of the future will come from start-up businesses, small businesses and rapidly growing start-ups, it is absolutely right that we should be promoting enterprise in our schools, not only through teaching but through exercises and enabling young people to start businesses by giving them small grants.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Q6. Yesterday, Five-Quarter Energy, a north-east small and medium-sized enterprise, ceased to trade. Its goal was the extraction of gas from coal deep under the North sea. The Government failed to provide a supporting statement to secure foreign direct investment owing to their inability to comprehend that underground coal gasification would not only secure our energy supply but provide feedstocks to grow our industries, and that all that would be totally decarbonised. Will the Prime Minister look into that appalling loss of opportunity and urgently change course and develop a meaningful industrial energy strategy that British industry, workers and the planet so badly need?

[The Prime Minister]

I shall certainly look at the case the hon. Gentleman raises, because we back all energy projects that can create jobs and growth in our country, and we have a very active industrial strategy for that. I know that he is disappointed about our decision on carbon capture and storage, but I say to him that that is an extra £1 billion capital investment, and even after that there is no sign yet that carbon capture and storage can be even close to competitive with nuclear power or offshore wind. None the less, I will look carefully at the case that he mentions.