Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Green Excerpts

Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

The small business world must feel more love from this Government than it would from Labour, were it to take our place in government.

On the hon. Gentleman’s specific question, I know that the FSB lobbied hard on a number of points, including national insurance, business rates and the quarterly reporting of tax accounts. On the latter two, it was very pleased with what the Chancellor provided. With regard to national insurance, the hon. Gentleman knows that more than 60% of people who are self-employed will actually benefit from the changes mooted by the Chancellor last week.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

8. What steps he is taking to improve the UK’s energy infrastructure.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Jesse Norman)]

Just yesterday I was a few miles away from my hon. Friend’s constituency in Carrington, opening a new combined-cycle gas turbine plant. A few weeks before that, I was in Folkestone to see the new interconnectors being built through the channel tunnel. Both schemes remind us of the Government’s commitment to the UK’s energy infrastructure, underscored by a capacity market and contracts for difference. We are also investing £320 million in new heat infrastructure, which underlines the size of our whole commitment.

[Chris Green]

Base load energy supply is fundamental to delivering our energy needs. Solar and wind power do not provide base load, and there is a pressure not to increase the consumption of hydrocarbons, so does my hon. Friend agree that, in the absence of energy storage capacity, future investment must go to the nuclear industry, especially small modular reactors?

[Jesse Norman]

As my hon. Friend knows, we are spending a great deal of time working with developers, with new investment, alongside the plans that are already being executed at Hinkley. Small modular reactors could be part of that conversation. However, there are many possible storage technologies that might come on stream over the next decade or two; undoubtedly, they will also be an important part of the picture.