Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage

Brian Leishman Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that this is a point of agreement between us. These are very important projects, and I thank him for his question. They were always envisaged as being two tracks, and we inherited a significant degree of delay from the last Government. We want these projects to happen as soon as possible and, as I said in my statement, this is something that we will address in the months ahead.

[Brian Leishman (Alloa and Grangemouth) (Lab)]

I was happy to hear the Secretary of State’s words last week when he said that industries should not die, and the Government investment in Merseyside and Teesside is most welcome. Can he commit to the same level of bold and transformative Government action to retain the Grangemouth refinery workers’ jobs, as they face the prospect of redundancies and their industry dying?

[Ed Miliband]

This is something that my hon. Friend and I have talked about. On Grangemouth, we are advancing at speed—in a way that the last Government completely failed to do, because the project had not even started—with Project Willow, which is seeking an industrial future for the Grangemouth site. He has my absolute commitment that we will use every lever at our disposal in Government to try and make this happen. We have a number of levers available to us that the last Government did not have, including the national wealth fund, and we are going to work intensively on that in the coming months.