Local Power Plan

Clive Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 10th February 2026 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. Local Members of Parliament have a massive role to play in, for example, approaching their local community groups and others who have the potential to benefit from the plan. I encourage all Members to do that. One of the most important things about Members of Parliament from all parts of the House is that so many of them have a sense of the groups and areas in their constituency that can benefit from the plan. My hon. Friend the Minister for Energy and I will provide resources for MPs across the House, so that they not only know about the plan, but can draw it to the attention of people and community groups in their constituency, so that they can benefit from it.

[Clive Jones (Wokingham) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. My Liberal Democrat colleagues and I have long campaigned for community energy, but it is not enough to have a plan to deliver local power projects in the future, when there are projects around the country ready to go now, but sadly not supported by the national grid. In Wokingham, the Barkham solar farm is ready to go, but the National Grid is not yet ready to hook it up to the grid. It has delayed doing that for far too long, and it recently came up with a reason for another long delay. What is the Minister doing to fix this failure and get the Barkham solar farm hooked up to the grid for the benefit of our local community?

[Ed Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We have carried out a big overhaul of the grid connections queue, which, as he knows, was sort of like the wild west. There was a chaotic “first come, first served” queuing system. The National Energy System Operator has done a big reordering of the queue, but we still have to put pressure on the transmission operators, to make sure that they deliver. I encourage him to write to my hon. Friend the Minister for Energy about the project, and we will take that up with the National Grid.