Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andy McDonald and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

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.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andy McDonald and Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

I will look carefully at what my hon. Friend says, but I think this does go to a larger point, which is that we are currently changing the way our country is run. These big devolution deals, first to Greater Manchester but now, with the announcements yesterday, to Liverpool and to the west midlands, mean that we are going to have powerful metro mayors who are accountable to local people for the decisions they make. That is a very direct form of accountability and that is why we can be confident of devolving health and social care to those authorities. For too long, our country has been too centralised. The great cities of Manchester, Birmingham and Liverpool—and soon Leeds, I hope—will benefit from these massive devolution deals, but if we devolve the power and we devolve the money, we have to devolve the trust and the accountability too.

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Q5. Against the backdrop of a tidal wave of local job losses, the Teesside Collective for industrial carbon capture has the very real potential to secure a major step change in our industrial renaissance. Ahead of the Paris conference, will the Prime Minister meet me and the industrial leaders driving this project so that we can secure these immense climate change gains with the UK leading this new industrial revolution, and make this initiative a reality for Teesside and the UK?

[The Prime Minister]

I know how important it is that we all work on behalf of Teesside, not least because of the difficulties there have been in Redcar. That is why we have the taskforce and why the additional resources are going in. I am very happy to look at the project the hon. Gentleman talks about. It may be best for him to meet the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, because we have to make important decisions about all these technologies in the run-up to the Paris conference and beyond.