Oral Answers to Questions

Harriet Cross Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

My hon. Friend is right to point out the huge amount of private sector investment that is coming in with clean energy. This is why, in the industrial strategy, clean energy is one of the growth-driving sectors where we have seen 10% growth in the economy. We are also seeing hundreds of thousands of jobs, which the Conservatives now seem determined to oppose. We will introduce the clean energy of the future, and that is why we are pushing for clean energy by 2030. That will bring down bills, give us energy security and create really good quality jobs.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

12. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of the resilience of the national grid against the potential disruption of offshore energy infrastructure.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

Before I answer the hon. Lady’s substantive question, I want to offer her my huge congratulations on smashing to smithereens on Sunday the previous record held by a female MP in the London marathon.

Great Britain has a highly resilient energy network with diverse sources of supply. The national energy system operator can balance the system in a wide range of scenarios, including potential disruptions to offshore infrastructure.

[Harriet Cross]

The UK currently has about 15 GW of offshore wind capacity, which supplies about 17% of our energy. In order to reach the Government’s 2030 targets, this will have to increase by three times to 40 to 50 GW in just five years, and to achieve that we will have to rely on Chinese wind infrastructure and technology. What specific risk assessment have the Government carried out into the impact of this exposed vulnerability and reliance on China for what will be a significant amount of our energy supplies?

[Michael Shanks]

I will not comment on individual investment cases, but in every single case the Government make an assessment and we look at the national security implications seriously, just as the Conservatives did when they were in government. I would just gently say that the reason the supply chains in this country are as weak as they are is that they were underfunded and under-invested for years by the Conservatives. There could have been a decision, at the point when they took ambitious steps to move towards clean power, to build the supply chains here, but they chose not to do so; they chose to tow things into our waters instead. We are reversing that, but it cannot happen overnight.