Oral Answers to Questions

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Tuesday 16th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Solloway]

I want to acknowledge how hard my hon. Friend works for his constituents. Of course those are the things we are most mindful of: making sure we get energy efficiency not only in production, but in the way we use that energy.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

6. What recent discussions she has had with businesses on the Government’s net zero targets.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

16. What recent discussions she has had with businesses on the Government’s net zero targets.

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

I meet regularly with business leaders and chair several groups bringing together Government and industry so that we can drive progress towards net zero. That includes the Net Zero Council, which is meeting next week and includes members from right across the economy. Like me, they are delighted that the UK is leading the world in tackling climate change. We are the first major economy to halve its emissions, ahead of every other major economy, and we have one of the most ambitious decarbonisation targets in the world.

[Bill Esterson]

Contrary to what the Minister has just said, and to what he said about onshore wind, this country has fallen on his party’s watch to seventh in the world for attracting investment in renewables. Well-paid jobs, lower bills and economic growth will all follow, but only if we attract investment, so why are the Government enabling what EY has described as the “diminishing of green policies” and undermining the economic benefits of net zero?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, which has a sort of comic element given Labour’s monumental failure to deliver renewables when it was in power, coupled with the fact that it wants to bring forward GB Energy. That, as his left-wing colleague, the hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) just said, would be public investment. It would drive out private investment and destroy the transformation of the UK energy system that has happened under the Conservatives—it had flatlined under Labour. We have led the world and have now decarbonised more than any other major economy on the planet. Under the policies of this Conservative Government, which major world economy is predicted to decarbonise fastest by 2030? This one.