Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

13. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of mechanisms to encourage private sector investment in renewable energy sources.

[The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Ed Miliband)]

Since the election last year, we have secured over £50 billion of investment into the UK’s clean energy industries. Last year’s renewables auction for allocation round 6 was the most successful in our history, and we will shortly open the AR7 auction. This is the way to deliver energy security, lower bills and good jobs for our communities.

[Jess Brown-Fuller]

Private sector investment via community energy schemes is a popular way of engaging people to get behind renewable energy projects in their area. A great example is Meadow Blue Community Energy in my constituency of Chichester, which puts money back into the community with a grant scheme and is now funding solar panels on local school roofs. Does the Secretary of State agree that community energy projects would attract more private sector investment if grid access costs were reduced and the delivery of local supply was made easier?

[Ed Miliband]

The hon. Lady raises an important issue, which was also raised by the right hon. and learned Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Sir Jeremy Wright). She is right about the virtues of community energy. Great British Energy is going to partner with local communities to deliver community energy up and down the country, because sometimes public capital—it could be loans, it could be grants—can help lever in the private capital that we need. She is also right about some of the barriers, as the Energy Minister mentioned. I want to assure her that we are going through the different barriers in granular, nerdy detail to see how we can break them down.

Onshore Wind and Solar Generation

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point, with which I wholeheartedly agree. The Government have a target of building 1.5 million—sorry, that was downgraded in the spring statement to 1.3 million—new homes. It would be sensible for them to implement some sort of legislation that would mean that those 1.3 million new homes had solar panels on their roofs. I urge the Minister to ask what assessment has been done on how much energy could be generated were we to do that at full scale instead of building solar farms on our best rural heartlands.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member support the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), aptly named the sunshine Bill, which would make solar panels mandatory on the roof of all new homes?

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I will leave my decision until we have a vote on that Bill, but I will look at it in more detail.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect. The situation that we inherited from the last Government meant that we had to consider matters such as security of supply and how we could secure the best deal for bill payers. That is what we did, and that is why we made the statement that we made on Drax. On longer term, however, the right hon. Gentleman is entirely right. We need to move away from unabated biomass and consider all the possibilities to enable us to move towards net zero, and that is what this Government are doing.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in congratulating the six students from Bourne community college who came to Westminster yesterday to present their report on the future of hydrogen storage as a net zero approach to aviation? Does he agree that students engaging with science, technology, engineering and mathematics are excited about the potential of clean power and carbon capture, and that proper funding for STEM in our schools will provide us with the next generation of scientists and engineers who can help us to achieve these goals?

[Ed Miliband]

I join the hon. Lady in warmly congratulating the six students from her constituency whom she mentioned. I am sure that I speak for all Members of the House when I say that when we meet young people who are engaged in the potential of clean energy technology to transform our country and our world, it is an incredibly important reminder, both about its potential for jobs, and about our duties to future generations.

ECO4 and Insulation Schemes

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for advance sight of her statement. I can only imagine the frustration that consumers feel when they go through the quite often complicated process of trying to upgrade their home to bring down their bills for good, only to be met with substandard work and a subsequent lack of enforcement. Liberal Democrat Members recognise that the Government have inherited a fragmented and confusing system, and that the focus today is on consumers and on remedial work affecting the shoddy work they have had installed. I am glad that the Government are committed to ensuring that the onus of that remedial work does not land in the pockets of consumers.

We agree that the system needs a complete overhaul, especially since the last Conservative Government left the Great British insulation scheme falling woefully short of the targets it set for itself and supporting far too few people far too slowly, while some who did receive installations have found them to be well below the required standard. If faults are found with other energy efficiency measures, will the Minister guarantee that consumers do not have to pay a penny for those, as for the ones she has highlighted? How soon can consumers expect their quality checks to be delivered, and will priority be given to households in fuel poverty as well as to the elderly and the vulnerable?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

I thank the hon. Member, and I am again glad to hear that she agrees we need a big overhaul of the system, which is absolutely our focus and our commitment. On other measures under ECO and GBIS, audits are not finding the same scale of systemic problems. We think the problem is focused on solid wall insulation in particular. We are doing stress tests and additional audits of other measures to make sure, but we think there is a specific problem with those measures, so we are focusing on them and moving at pace to get them remediated. Where we are finding major issues, we are setting expectations that that work is prioritised, and installers are coming in and remediating it as soon as possible.

Under the existing publicly available specification framework, remediation after installers have not put the work right has to be done within 12 weeks, and we are setting the expectation so the system moves at pace to respond to consumers. We will absolutely be looking to prioritise households in fuel poverty and vulnerable households. We are doing two things: we are contacting them, but we will also create the ability for people to reach out if they are worried or vulnerable, so that we are doing the necessary triaging and, critically, getting into properties to fix work that has not been done right.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jess Brown-Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. I know he was at Cali. There was some progress on such issues as digital sequence information, but more needs to be done. We are very seized of the need to join up action on the nature and climate crisis. When I head out to COP29 tomorrow, Members will hopefully hear more from us on our efforts to protect forests and on the support we are giving to countries at risk of deforestation. We are also looking at nature-based solutions to climate change. The nature Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry East (Mary Creagh)—will be out there as well, and we will have more to say, but I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) that we cannot deal with one crisis in isolation from the other.

[Jess Brown-Fuller (Chichester) (LD)]

For the UK to be an international leader on climate change we need to bring the business community with us. The Summer Berry Company in my constituency recently invested £8 million in ensuring it is carbon neutral, but it was then quoted a further £3 million to be able to feed its excess energy into the grid. What is the Minister doing to make additional grid connections affordable and accessible for green businesses?