Barry Gardiner
Main Page: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent West)Department Debates - View all Barry Gardiner's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years ago)
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Vince Cable
I would be delighted to visit the site, and the mountains, in my right hon. Friend’s constituency. The site to which he refers is extraordinary and in its prime, in the North sea oil boom, it built the largest mobile structure on the planet at 600,000 tonnes. It has great potential, and if this supply chain development takes place, 2,500 new jobs will be created. We want to do everything we can to make that possible, and the announcement yesterday certainly helps. He will know that the Catapult in Glasgow is working on the technology behind offshore wind developments, and we will do everything we possibly can to make sure that Kishorn and other UK ports develop on the back of that rapidly growing industry.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State speaks of a rapidly growing industry, but the commitment by the Government three years ago was to 40GW of offshore by 2020. The commitment yesterday was for 10GW. Why has that commitment shrunk to 25% of what it was?
Vince Cable
The hon. Gentleman seems to have forgotten that Britain has by far the largest offshore wind industry in the world, and under the guarantees that we gave yesterday it now has the incentive to expand—and will do so, both onshore through the supply chain and offshore in the wind farms.