Oral Answers to Questions

Jeff Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[David Mundell]

The hon. Lady will expect that I will agree with part of what she said. Of course, as the people of Scotland voted, Scotland must remain in the UK and benefit from the UK internal market, but the people of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the EU, and we are leaving the EU.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

4. What discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on Government funding for the renewable energy sector in Scotland.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

Thanks to the investments that we have all made in the future of renewables and the Government policy framework, Scotland’s renewable energy is thriving. A quarter of the UK’s renewable capacity is based in Scotland because of the climate and the geography. That capacity has more than doubled since the Conservative-led Government came to power in 2010, and we will be going further in bringing forward energy from remote offshore wind projects in the next auction, in 2019.

[Jeff Smith]

That is not what Scottish Renewables says. It says that, with the exception of offshore wind, growth across all other technologies is low to stagnant. How much funding will be available to Scotland under the Government’s clean growth strategy? Has the Minister assessed the impact that it will have in Scotland?

[Claire Perry]

As I was pleased to set out in the clean growth strategy, we will make almost £560 million available up to 2025 to support all forms of renewable energy. As we have now set out, we will enable offshore wind projects, which are so vital to the remote islands, to bid in that next auction. We want to keep it going; Scotland is doing incredibly well. Last year, renewable energy right across the UK contributed a third of our electricity generation. We are on a renewables road.