Anne Main
Main Page: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Speaker
Order. This is not said pejoratively, but I have noticed that whenever the Minister is in the Chamber, Opposition Members seem to get very wound up and excited. I do not know whether it is his fault that he winds them up or their fault that they allow themselves to be wound up, but the House needs to calm down a little.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I appreciate that something had to be done about the overly large tariff subsidies, but Electrical and Testing Services in my constituency is worried about the speed of change. What advice and guidance will my hon. Friend give to small businesses so that they can get through the transition period without having to lose any staff?
Gregory Barker
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to look to the interests of small businesses, many of which were feeling slightly excluded, because of the speed with which larger firms were gobbling up the budget. It is because we want to preserve the budget over the longer term that it will be more sustainable for smaller businesses. However, I would recommend such businesses to look not just at solar PV, but at integrating a range of technologies into their offer—in particular, energy efficiency—and at how they might offer services for the green deal.