Helen Goodman
Main Page: Helen Goodman (Labour - Bishop Auckland)
Mr Davey
I will write to the hon. Gentleman with the exact dates of when a Minister from our Department last visited China. I recently met the relevant Minister from China in London, and in Seoul at the international climate change talks. We are working closely with the Chinese, and they have taken up our 2050 road map calculator for how we can plan to reduce carbon emissions in an ambitious way. Our relationship with China in that area is solid.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
When the Government changed the rules on feed-in tariffs, 100 jobs were lost in my constituency. What calculation has been made of the number of jobs that will be lost if, as in the view of the Minister of State, no more onshore wind turbines are to be built?
Gregory Barker
We have big ambitions for microgeneration and distributed energy, but only if it provides real value for money for consumers who pay the bills and will be buying that technology. We can do that if we provide a long-term stable framework, which is what we are doing. The feed-in tariff was never designed as a job creation scheme in itself; it was designed to drive a mass take-up of distributed energy.