Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

10. Whether she plans to issue guidance to people with oil-fired heating on replacement of boilers.

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

The Government have created an online advice service to help consumers in replacing fossil fuel heating systems, including oil boilers, with a heat pump. We are also providing funding through the boiler upgrade scheme.

[Mr Speaker]

This will be helpful.

[Sir Desmond Swayne]

Absolutely, Mr Speaker. There is a panic now in Germany as its premature ban on gas-fired boilers approaches. The Minister will want to avoid a similar panic as we approach our own premature ban on oil-fired boilers, won’t he?

[Graham Stuart]

As ever, I thank my right hon. Friend. We are listening. As the Prime Minister set out, we will reduce our emissions in line with our obligations but do so in a way that recognises the challenges that families face. Off-grid households will be supported through the transition, and we will respond to the consultation in due course.

Offshore Wind Contracts

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 12th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman and his party never fail to trash this country—[Interruption.] He can heckle all he wishes. I will be meeting industry representatives this afternoon and, as I have said, we will be announcing in two months’ time the price ceiling for the next round—[Interruption.] I am getting heckling, not least from His Majesty’s Opposition, who left us in that parlous situation. We are the world leader in so many of these technologies and we are going to continue to be. If the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) were to recognise the need to attract investment to this country and not talk it down, he might find that Scottish jobs would be even stronger in the pipeline than they are already.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

If any, how much of the completed wind capacity still requires connection to the national grid?

[Graham Stuart]

Until wind capacity is constructed, it is not normally connected to the grid. That which has not been connected to the grid will need to be connected to the grid.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Graham Stuart

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

Will the Minister expedite the track 2 process for carbon capture, usage and storage?

[The Minister for Climate (Graham Stuart)]

Yes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Desmond Swayne and Graham Stuart

Thursday 5th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is quite right to highlight the issue of trade’s role in parts of the world where human rights are being breached. Right across the Department, we seek to ensure that all such considerations are taken into account, while recognising the need to engage with regimes that may have less than perfect Governments, for the benefit of the people there. It is a balance that we take very seriously, and I look forward to further discussion with him to get it right.

[Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)]

There are lessons for our strategy arising from Japan’s rather unsatisfactory negotiations with the EU, are there not?

[Graham Stuart]

We could look at Japan, or we could look at Mercosur, which took 20 years of negotiation. Some say that the UK shorn of the heft of the EU will be less able to do deals. There are ways in which that would be true, but fundamentally, with agility, as many countries have shown, we can do more deals more quickly and, most importantly, bring greater prosperity, employment and opportunity to my right hon. Friend’s constituents and mine as a result of the UK having its own independent trade policy for the first time in 40-odd years.