Contracts for Difference

Debate between Ed Miliband and Shaun Davies

Tuesday 3rd September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend, who has great expertise on these issues, makes an important point. We welcome the success of Ørsted in today’s allocation round for the Hornsea wind farms. It is great for Danish taxpayers that they will get some benefit from it, and it is great for Britain that we will get the investment, but as the Prime Minister often asks, why not Britain as well? Why should we not invest in clean energy? Why should our taxpayers not benefit from this? Why should we not create jobs in this country as well as accelerating clean power? It seems a simple and logical proposition to me.

[Shaun Davies (Telford) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know from his recent visit to Telford that businesses right across the country, including in my constituency, want to partner with the Government on this agenda. Will this statement and future announcements mean that those private sector businesses, which want to put their skills and money into this agenda, and take risks on behalf of the Government and the country to make us a clean energy superpower, have the Secretary of State’s backing?

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I very much enjoyed my visit to Telford, where I spoke with local business. It is easy to think about these things in very macro terms, of how many gigawatts and so on—the kind of thing I like talking about—but he is right that this is as much, if not more, about all the jobs that we can create in the supply chain. People in this country want hope and change, and this will deliver it.