Gas Storage Levels

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend is right that this Government are moving as fast as possible to build a more resilient system to get the country off the rollercoaster of volatile fossil fuel markets. The Conservatives seem to oppose that, but they have been on something of a journey in all these questions: they used to champion net zero and recognise that climate change was a clear and present danger to the world, but now they are drifting further away from that, looking for more extremist views on Twitter and elsewhere to crowdsource their policy. We are getting on with building the energy system to bring down bills, deliver energy security and, yes, to deliver climate leadership.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

The National Electricity System Operator issued a warning of a 1,700 MW shortfall at the evening peak. It revised that down to barely more than 1,200, and it was running at one point with only 580 MW of margin. How are the Government so complacent about this? It is astonishing. As someone who has followed the energy debate for the past 30 years or so, I warn the Minister that this is almost unprecedented. For him to say that everything is absolutely fine is incredibly irresponsible, when his own Government’s policies are contributing to the tightness of the generating margin. If the lights go out, will he resign?

[Michael Shanks]

That is the kind of extremist scaremongering that we have come to expect from the shadow Secretary of State on Twitter, but we are now hearing it in the House. It is thoroughly irresponsible to use such language. In my answer, I read the very clear view of the National Energy System Operator, which runs the system and is the expert. I repeat it for the benefit of the House:

“At no point were electricity supplies less than anticipated demand and our engineers were able to rebalance the system without the need to consider emergency measures.”

The shadow Minister and Back-Bench MPs can repeat the phrasing around blackouts all they like, but at no point was that a concern. The reality is that while the Conservatives are happy to throw around such phrases without any evidence, we are building the resilient system of the future, and we will get on with doing that.