Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Spellar Excerpts

Thursday 18th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. In our community energy strategy and our work with both the solar and the onshore wind industries, we have stressed the importance of community benefits, and that is having a marked effect. We have enabled that through voluntary protocols, community benefit registers and the like. We have accepted and are taking forward the report of the shared ownership stakeholder group, which has also shown that people can be directly involved and have a stake in local renewable energy projects.

[Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)]

T7. Following the story in The Sun today, may I congratulate the Secretary of State on slapping down his jobsworth official by wishing us all a merry Christmas, and may I reciprocate those wishes? May I also take him back to the reply given to me at the last Energy questions by the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who claimed:“There will be no blackouts this winter”?—[Official Report, 6 November 2014; Vol. 587, c. 951.]Does the Secretary of State agree with her?

[Mr Davey]

Merry Christmas.