Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Wild and Michael Shanks(2 days, 17 hours ago)
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Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend asks an incredibly important question. First, I would like to thank all the engineers and customer service staff who worked through the recent Storm Amy to ensure that people were reconnected as quickly as possible, including in some incredibly difficult circumstances—they did a fantastic job. We are trying to ensure that the UK’s grid remains as resilient as possible. That requires investment, and those who oppose the building of new infrastructure to improve our grid’s resilience will need to explain to their constituents why they want them to be much more at risk of disconnections in those storms.
Secondly, these storms are becoming more common, because climate change is impacting all our lives. The answer is to move more quickly towards clean power and to recognise that climate change is a problem, not to bury our heads in the sand and fail to deliver the necessary investment.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Proposals for 90 miles of pylons from Grimsby to Walpole in my constituency would have a major detrimental impact on rural areas due to the scale of the infrastructure, the loss of high-quality farmland and the proximity of the infrastructure to homes. Does the Minister understand—I do not think he does—why local people say no to pylons? Will he get National Grid to look properly at undergrounding or offshoring, to reduce the impact on these communities and ensure that if the proposals do go ahead, communities are properly compensated?
Michael Shanks
I could not have organised that better if I had tried: immediately after I said, “If you are against grid infrastructure, you are against economic growth”, up pops the hon. Gentleman to make exactly that point. His party is against building the future of this country, and we are not going to follow that path at all. Decades of under-investment have led to the issues we face today. They hold back economic growth across the country. This infrastructure has to be built somewhere. We are determined that communities benefit from that by introducing what the previous Government failed to do: community benefits for the communities who are hosting the infrastructure.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Wild and Michael Shanks(5 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Michael Shanks
The hon. Lady has raised with me that point and the wider question of energy jobs in her constituency a number of times, and I thank her for that and for the way she has done so. Wylfa is an important site and continues to be one that the Government are considering. We will take forward those decisions in due course. As I have said to her on a number of previous occasions, we are committed to delivering the jobs that go with that and Wylfa remains an important site.
James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between James Wild and Michael Shanks(6 months, 4 weeks ago)
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James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)
Our clean power mission will end our dependence on volatile fossil fuel markets, giving the British people the energy security they deserve and driving jobs and investment into our communities. We are already seeing the impact of the clean energy transition, with thousands of jobs being created across the country in CCUS—carbon capture, usage and storage—hydrogen and offshore wind, and more nationally significant solar power being approved in eight months than the previous Government managed in 14 years.
Michael Shanks
I am glad the hon. Gentleman draws attention to the London power tunnels. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have visited them recently and they are a fantastic example of engineering and of what we can achieve if we set ambitious targets in this area. I gently disagree with the hon. Gentleman on the wider point, however, as we are going to have to build infrastructure across the country to get the benefits of the renewable energy that we are generating, and battery storage is important for that. Of course communities have a voice through the planning system and it would be wrong for me to comment on individual applications, but the hon. Gentleman and his colleagues must remember that we cannot simply block every infrastructure project that needs to be built. We need to build for the economic growth of the country and for our energy security.
James Wild
Once again the Minister has failed to answer the question about the cost estimate, but we do know that the Government’s dogma-driven 2030 target will drive up costs and that we will see pylons and substations imposed in Walpole in my constituency and across the country against the wishes of local people. That will damage our countryside and it relies on Chinese supply chains, which the Energy Secretary visited only over the weekend. When will the Government realise that their approach of ruling out underground options and attempting to buy off local communities on the cheap, rather than listening to them, will only drive opposition to their plans?
Michael Shanks
Once again, we hear from Conservative Members about all these grand plans that they wish they had done in the 14 years that they were in government. They could have moved forward on undergrounding if they were so keen on it, but of course they did not. The reality is that it is for individual companies, not us, to set forward the design of individual projects, and cost estimates for undergrounding are five or 10 times more expensive.
The bottom line on all of this is that the leader of the hon. Member’s party earlier today moved away from the commitments that she had made on net zero. Just a few years ago, she said that
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has made it clear that relying on authoritarian regimes”
can make it
“harder…to heat our homes”.
They recognised then the importance of this net zero transition; now they are running away from how we deliver on it.