Energy Policy

Chris Elmore Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is right that it is important to take a long-term and strategic approach. That is exactly what we did with offshore wind, identifying a technology in which the supply chain could be located in the UK and creating jobs right across the country. That has been a great success. The opposite of that, however, would be to spread very thinly very expensive projects that do not, as the analysis demonstrates, have the potential for exports that offshore wind and others enjoy. That would reduce the economic prospects for firms across the country.

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

Part of the role of government is that a Secretary of State will have a vision for delivering and a vision for ideas. The Secretary of State has shown today that he does not have any vision for delivering services and improvements to the economy for the people of south Wales. We have had the scrapping of electrification and we are clearly no further forward with various projects the British Government can fund. Can we have a guarantee from the Secretary of State about when the British Government are going to start investing, so that the people of Wales can have some faith? All he is proving right now is that, with the Welsh Secretary and the British Government, the Tories really are failing Wales.

[Greg Clark]

The Swansea city deal, to name one case in point, will be welcomed by the hon. Gentleman. In terms of planning for the future, making commitments that put on bill payers or taxpayers costs that are three times higher than are justified is no strategy for the long term. To saddle businesses and industries with such costs is a strategy for uncompetitiveness.