Oral Answers to Questions Debate

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Oral Answers to Questions

Diana Johnson Excerpts
Thursday 11th February 2016

(8 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Amber Rudd Portrait Amber Rudd
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My hon. Friend may be aware that in the recent spending review one area where we did get an increase was in innovation. Specifically, we have allocated half of the new increase for small modular reactors. We are working on delivery in that area with universities and with Innovate UK and we will continue to do so.

Diana Johnson Portrait Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
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T9. The Select Committee has found that scrapping the Government’s support for carbon capture and storage technology puts at risk the UK’s international commitments on tackling climate change and makes it more expensive to do this. We have also lost out on about £250 million-worth of EU investment. Can the Minister just explain to me how this makes sense?

Andrea Leadsom Portrait Andrea Leadsom
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Our view is that CCS has a potentially important role to play in long-term decarbonisation. We continue to invest in the development of CCS; we are investing more than £130 million to develop the technology through innovation support. My Department is looking at what our new policy is to develop this important technology.