Anne Main
Main Page: Anne Main (Conservative - St Albans)(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main.
I would like to begin by thanking the Minister, who has already provided a huge amount of support to the Humber MPs in our campaign to make the Humber a renewable energy centre. He is already aware of much of what I will say today and we are grateful for the support that he has given. There are a couple of issues on which we would like to pin the Minister down, in the best sense of the phrase, as we try to move our campaign forward.
The campaign has support across the Humber and I assure you, Mrs Main, that the absence of other Humber MPs is not due to lack of interest. My neighbour, the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), is at a Select Committee hearing outside Westminster today. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) is away on parliamentary business, as is, I believe, the hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Austin Mitchell). However, this is a campaign that enjoys strong support across the banks of the Humber in north Lincolnshire and east Yorkshire. We are concerned primarily with doing what we can, as local MPs, with the support of our local councils and businesses, to ensure that we become a centre for offshore wind, and potentially a centre for wave and tidal power and other renewable energy opportunities, such as bioethanol. With your permission, Mrs Main—I have had contact with the Minister on this—my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) will speak for five minutes of my time.
Andrew Percy
Thank you, Mrs Main. I will focus most of my comments on wave and tidal technologies and the bioethanol industry.
I think that we all agree, across the House, that we want to ensure that the UK plays its part in the renewable energy sector and that we are not left behind as we have been in the past, particularly with onshore wind. Our campaign on renewable energy, as broad as it is, does not extend quite as far as onshore wind. The Minister is aware of our particular issues with onshore wind locally, but I just place them on the record again. As a country, however, we have missed the boat on manufacturing for onshore wind and we do not want to fall behind with the new technologies.
Why the Humber? Well, apart from the fact that everybody knows it is the best area in the UK in which to invest, has the best people and is potentially represented by some of the best people—I exclude myself from that; I talk of course of my neighbours—in the past 10 years the area has not made the progress it should have done, and as other parts of the country have. We lost private sector jobs in the past 10 years at a time when the economy was growing, and we remain one of the poorest parts of the UK. We have, however, a great deal going for us too: deep sea ports, plenty of land for development, an excellent motorway infrastructure that is not congested in the way that it is in other parts of the country, and a long history of manufacturing and manufacturing skills on which to build. As I mentioned, we also have strong support for this campaign from across the local area, including from some of our key stakeholders, MPs and councillors, but also from local newspapers. The Scunthorpe Telegraph, the Grimsby Telegraph and the Hull Daily Mail have been running their own campaign to support bringing more renewable energy projects to our area.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. I add my support to his campaign for the Humber, especially as I am a big supporter of wave and tidal. He makes a key point about bioethanol: it will be a huge economic driver for our region if we get it right. However, I add a note of caution, and would like to know what he thinks about it. Commodity prices are growing rapidly at present—
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. Interventions should be brief. The hon. Member for Brigg and Goole wants to hear the Minister’s response.
Julian Sturdy
The intervention is about commodity prices and the impact on food security.