Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Debate between Claire Coutinho and Barry Gardiner

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I have enormous respect for the hon. Lady, but I disagree, particularly on nuclear, because every single operational nuclear power plant in this country was started by Conservatives.

I will offer some suggestions for questions that Labour Members might like to ask. They like to say that renewables are cheap, and they are cheap to operate. After all, wind and sunshine are free. However, if we want to know what a type of power will do to our bills, we have to look at the full system costs. If we race ahead with renewables at the same time as making our gas power stations uninvestable, what will be our back-up when the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, and how much does that cost the system? New technologies such as small modular nuclear reactors, carbon capture, and batteries of long duration storage are all welcome, but they will not be ready by 2030. What will be used, and how much will it cost?

Will the largest nuclear expansion in 70 years, which I set out, be sacrificed to pay for GB Energy? I know that Ministers barely refer to it any more, but nuclear will be critical to our energy supply in the years ahead. Have they made an assessment of how much their plans will increase our reliance on the current dominant provider of pylons, cables, batteries and solar panels, which is China? If not, when will they do so? How much private investment into the energy transition will they lose through their plans to tax the North sea into oblivion and ban new oil and gas licences? It is not a coincidence that many integrated energy companies in this country pursue both oil and gas and renewable projects at the same time; it is because they use the same skills, supply chain and workers. Industry says that more than £400 billion is at risk from these plans. GB Energy, at £8 billion, will not touch the sides of replacing that. How much will be lost, and where will the extra money come from? Will it be from central Government through people’s taxes, or will it be through the bills and standing charges of all our constituents?

The Government keep claiming—I think the Minister did so today—that GB Energy will turn a profit. I believe he said that “every single project” will make a return, but the slice of the pie that they want to invest in is the slice that even businesses do not think they can make money from. That is what de-risking means. Members should ask on what basis the Secretary of State thinks that he can turn a profit for the British taxpayer when highly experienced energy companies believe that they cannot.

If I were to give one piece of advice to the Minister it would be to do what I did when I first started the job. He should not listen to just one side of the climate lobby who pretend that there are no costs involved in this transition, but go to speak to industry, and to oil and gas workers, and listen to how much those families value secure, well-paid jobs on their doorstep. He should not follow the Secretary of State’s path of quoting only from the Climate Change Committee, and never from business or industry. The Minister’s job, first and foremost, is to keep bills down and the lights on. He should not forget those last two priorities, or he will find that those on the Benches behind him will turn very quickly.

[Barry Gardiner]

The right hon. Lady said that Members should not quote only from sources that they feel are friendly to them, so I will not quote from the International Energy Association, but perhaps she might accept a quote from the World Economic Forum, which stated:

“Renewables are now significantly undercutting fossil fuels as the world’s cheapest source of energy”,

according to its report.

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but as I said, we have to look at the full system cost. He is very experienced in the energy sector, and he knows as well as I do that the flexible capacity that is used to back up an intermittent system is where the true costs lie. It is fair for Opposition Members to ask for an assessment of what those costs will be, and what they will mean for British bill payers.

The other area where the Government must be honest with the public is about what they are going to build. The Secretary of State’s first week in the job saw him approve 4,000 football pitches’ worth of solar farms on farmland in Rutland, Suffolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire. Those projects were not sat on my desk, as the Secretary of State has claimed. I had made a decision to reject Sunnica on the basis of a scathing examining authority report, and I changed policy to protect our best agricultural land. These are not projects that were likely to be approved; these are bad decisions. Work was being drawn up to be announced, but the decision had been taken in the case of Sunnica. The Secretary of State will know that from civil servants, who are duty bound to brief him honestly in the Department.

In the case of Mallard Pass, the site has been signed off, 40% of which will be built on our best and most versatile agricultural land, taking no notice of legal planning guidance that says that best agricultural land must be avoided. The Secretary of State and his Ministers will have to justify that, and many more decisions, to his new colleagues, many of whom now represent rural communities and whose constituents will be rightly concerned that they are next.

I wish the new Minister well for his time in the Department. The energy sector is one of the most interesting and important policy briefs affecting this country, and it is in all our interests that he does his job well. However, what the Government have done so far —make claims during the election that they cannot stack up now they are in government—will just not do. They have set out a hard target to decarbonise the grid by 2030, and the Secretary of State stakes his entire political reputation on it, without being honest about the costs. These issues are far too important for Government not to take seriously, and they are far too important for Labour Members to follow the Government blindly without asking questions. They did that during the election with promises to save households £300, and they can no longer stack up those promises just three weeks into Government. I humbly suggest that this is their first lesson of the Parliament: they should not give the Secretary of State a blank cheque again.