Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Jamie Stone

Tuesday 27th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. As he will know, I cannot comment on a specific proposal. We need to rewire this country in order to have homegrown energy. That means hosting new infrastructure, with the presumption that it is above ground and done in a way that minimises negative impacts on food security, which I am confident that any proposals that come forward will do. Let us make no mistake: we must rewire this country. We must power the UK more from this country, clean up our energy and reduce our dependence on foreign fossil fuels.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

Every single winter, the village of Altnaharra in Sutherland is the coldest community in the whole of the United Kingdom. Some parts of the United Kingdom are colder than others—that is geography. May I ask that this fact be taken into consideration when the Government look at schemes to help people with the cost of paying their electricity bills?

COP28

Debate between Graham Stuart and Jamie Stone

Thursday 14th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight children, who will inherit the planet we leave behind. In the meantime, they are peculiarly vulnerable to the negative impacts we are already seeing this year, let alone those we will see if we get to 1.5°C or beyond. She is right to highlight that. I cannot comment on the specific question she raises, but I will make sure that it is heard on the Treasury Bench and let her know as and when a decision is made by the Government. She is right to say that, just as we must ensure that the voices of the small Pacific island states and others are heard, because they are so much on the frontline, the voice of youth must be heard. I was pleased to meet youth representatives at COP28. We must ensure that we look to the people who will inherit the policies that we of a slightly greater age make in this Chamber.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I dare say that it might seem slightly implausible to people here in the Chamber when I say that I worked in oil fabrication, but I did, and the yard where I worked built some of the mightiest structures in the North sea today. What the Minister says about transitioning and redeploying skills is music to my ears and those of my electorate. I long to see the day when offshore wind structures are fabricated in the Nigg yard. However, there is a problem, which is that since the auction, some costs have risen by almost 40%. I suspect that the incentives will not be sufficient to get the industry to where we want it to be to make these things happen. Does the Minister recognise that, and does he have any thoughts as to how it might be addressed?

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his question, which, as ever, is well informed and extremely reasonable. He is absolutely right. I visited the port of Nigg. I was interested to see nascent floating offshore wind work, fixed-bed offshore wind work and oil and gas work, and I wandered into a hall where they were making a large and sophisticated piece for Hinkley Point C, extraordinarily. That was all at Nigg.

The hon. Gentleman gets to the point about financing and whether the auction, which has been brilliant at lowering prices, has in fact helped drive too much of the industry out of this country. Behind the day job of transforming our generation, my passion will be to see how, without following some others with WTO-breaching local clauses, we can nudge and support more industry here. That is why we are bringing in sustainable industry rewards—non-price factors, in the jargon. We expect those to come in from allocation round 7 onwards as we work to make sure that we look after consumers first, while not missing any opportunity to utilise, maintain and grow jobs here. On offshore wind alone, our expectation—this is what the industry says—is that we will go from around 30,000 jobs in the industry today to more than 100,000 in the next six years. One of our biggest challenges is finding those people, training them and making sure we are ready to deliver them, as much as it is having more done here.