Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Keir Mather Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 15th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Father of the House; I could not have put it better myself. It is essential that whatever measures, on any matter, are brought forward by any Government—be it the current Government or any future Government—real people’s lives and the cost base be reviewed regularly, so that we are not making people poorer, or stopping people from being able to do what they want, be it go on holiday, travel for business or move goods around.

With that, I come to amendment 8 and the cost impact on passengers. The amendment would require the designated counterparty to report on the impact of the revenue certainty mechanism on passenger air fares. One of the most contentious areas surrounding the Bill, and indeed the Government’s whole approach to net zero, is: what does it actually cost real people? The amendment seeks to clarify that, and it gives the Government the opportunity—in theory, they should cheerfully embrace this—to lock in a claim that they profess to believe, namely that the Bill will have an impact of plus or minus £1.50 on air fares. The previous Minister repeated that statistic time and again on Second Reading and in Committee. The new Minister has the challenge today of either sticking with his predecessor’s assertion, backing the amendment and locking in protections for consumers, or admitting that this may well be more costly to air travellers.

It is worth noting that during the evidence stage of Bill Committee, none of the witnesses was willing to affirm the Government’s figure. In fact, some noted that the estimated price appeared low. For example, Jonathon Counsell from International Airlines Group stated:

“We think there are potentially some elements that have not been included in that calculation, but £1.50 per passenger feels quite low when you think the costs of the SAF itself will be nearer to £10.”––[Official Report, Sustainable Aviation Fuel Public Bill Committee, 15 July 2025; c. 17, Q12.]

Consumers need peace of mind that the Bill will not cost them dear, and will not act as a financial barrier to the family holiday or any other trip, so failure to back the amendment can only mean uncertainty.

I turn to amendment 11, which is focused on transparency. The amendment would require the Secretary of State to set a standardised levy rate, payable by all suppliers of aviation fuel, that must be publicised by suppliers of aviation fuel on invoices to their customers. Valero, for example—one of the world’s largest renewable fuels producers—has contacted the Opposition arguing for the amendment, saying that it would offer a workable solution; it would support the development of new SAF production without significantly impacting the industry as a whole. The amendment would apply the levy equally to all jet fuel suppliers, providing a fair and transparent mechanism for supporting the broader SAF industry.

Just this week, I have been contacted by Virgin Atlantic, which is arguing that transparency safeguards must be in place to keep costs low for consumers. As organisations including the International Air Transport Association have highlighted, since the mandate came into effect in January 2025, fuel suppliers have been adding compliance risk premiums to the cost of mandated SAF, contributing to the price of SAF and doubling it for some carriers. That is to cover the eventuality that they do not meet the 2% mandate target and must pay the buy-out price for any missed volume. Virgin Atlantic has argued that to prevent SAF prices increasing further, the revenue certainty mechanism must have sufficient safeguards in place to ensure transparency over cost pass-through. There must also be a transparent process for refunds in the event of over-collections, and all revenues generated under the RCM should be ringfenced, rather than going into the general taxation pot.

Amendment 9 looks at British technology and intellectual property. It would require the designated counterparty to prioritise UK-based technology when entering contracts. As I said from the Dispatch Box on Second Reading, there is a historical reality that we need to confront, and the amendment would stop history repeating itself. The historical error that I refer to is this: a great many projects supported by grants from the advanced fuels fund use foreign-owned technology. It cannot be right that the British state, while arguing for domestic fuel security, funds overseas technology when we have incredible innovators and manufacturers right here.

Domestic fuel security must mean domestic fuel IP, manufacture and supply. It is important both to develop a UK market for SAF, eSAF and local production, as is provided for by the Bill and the mandate, and to support and encourage the use of home-grown technology for the manufacture of those products. That not only retains revenue in the United Kingdom but leverages a huge amount of revenue for future exports through technology licensing. The amendment tackles that head-on, and a failure to back it would be a failure to back United Kingdom innovators.

Lastly, amendment 10 is on technological choices. It states:

“The terms under subsection (4)(c) must include a requirement for the producer to consider the longevity of supply and relative environmental impact when prioritising between organic and synthetic derived sustainable aviation fuel solutions.”

I feel incredibly strongly about this amendment. It is on a matter that I have championed in this House for many years—in the last Parliament, during my time on the Transport Committee and, since July, from this Dispatch Box. The amendment is in the name of the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), and it is relevant to new clause 7 and amendment 12 in the name of the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley, both of which I have a great deal of sympathy for.

Governments of all political persuasions have professed to be technologically neutral. They seldom are. There is a natural tendency to pick winners and losers. We need to look through that lens, and ask ourselves what the Bill is promoting and using the levers of primary legislation to enable. The disappointing answer to that is the potential to bring alive SAF plants using technologies that have already been superseded—plants that would therefore be temporary at best. Stepping up something with no longevity, and with an estimated build cost of between £600 million and £2 billion, would be no small mistake.

Power-to-liquid solutions, otherwise known as eSAF or synthetic fuel—liquid hydrocarbons literally made out of air and water—are surely the better and sustainable future for aviation fuel. We had debates on Second Reading and in Committee about other solutions. I cannot imagine that anyone is ready to defend growing food to burn it, but equally, waste-derived fuels simply are not sustainable in the long term. Solid waste is not readily available; the primary source is local authorities, the majority of which are on contracts with energy-from-waste facilities and incinerators that have decades to run. Likewise, I am not sure there is enough chip oil in the country to meet our aviation fuel needs.

That leaves power-to-liquid solutions and eSAF. Many say that it is not ready; some say it is too expensive; but those of us on the Public Bill Committee heard loud and clear from Zero Petroleum that it is ready to scale right now. It just needs the green light from the regulators, and with scale will come affordability. Amendment 10 is in many ways a light-touch amendment to bring this debate to the fore. It does not close down other technological routes, but forces the Government to acknowledge the risk, both to the environment and in terms of cost, when choosing contracts under the RCM.

As other speakers have said, the Bill can still be improved. I urge the Minister to accept the amendments, which would improve the Bill, and to ensure a strong and affordable future for sustainable aviation fuel in our great United Kingdom.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Keir Mather)]

Before I turn to the amendments before us, I would like to thank the many hon. Members who have made considered and helpful contributions. This legislation has been long in the making, and few have been more central in bringing it to fruition than my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), who I would like to thank personally for his efforts throughout the Second Reading and Committee stages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Iqbal Mohamed]

The Minister mentioned a reduction of 6.3 megatonnes, but what is that as a proportion of the current emissions?

[Keir Mather]

No piece of legislation can deal with all the emissions that we are facing through challenges in the aviation sector. That is why we have this comprehensive package of measures to make decarbonising aviation while allowing passengers to fly at an affordable rate a reality.

The hon. Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman) spoke with his usual fervent passion in support of his constituents. The National Wealth Fund stands ready to encourage investors to join us in finding a long-term industrial future for Grangemouth, standing ready to invest £200 million once an investable proposition has been identified.

The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) raised the unfortunate closure of Vivergo. The Government have been working with the plant to understand the financial challenges that it has faced over the last decade, but I would like to reassure her that we do not anticipate supply issues in bioethanol provision. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester for his decided and confident support for the measures in the Bill.

The hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) said that the market was too nascent, but I encourage him to look at the detail of the Bill. He will see that that is exactly the problem we are seeking to solve through this legislation, by allowing SAF producers to scale at pace and pursue those innovative technologies. He also spoke about Britain as an aviation leader. The RCM is a first-of-its-kind global initiative to allow SAF producers to produce the fuels we so desperately need. He also encouraged me to sort out decarbonisation challenges in maritime. I draw his attention to the fact that the UK Government announced £448 million of funding to decarbonise the maritime sector only a fortnight ago.

My hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) has Jaguar Land Rover within his constituency and is a passionate advocate for both the automotive and aviation sectors there. He spoke about the urgent need to encourage people to fly—to enable them to access the rest of the world, to see their families and to pursue business opportunities. That is something that we are passionate about championing through the Bill.

The hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) was pleased to see that the Bill was supported across the House. I can only hope that he is correct in his prediction. We shall see. I note that there are no representatives from the Green party here today to focus on these important measures to decarbonise aviation. Hon. Members from across the House can take from that what they will. The hon. Gentleman was right to outline the broader work that is required to decarbonise aviation, including airspace modernisation, but also to talk up our fantastic UK aviation sector and the hard work that it is undertaking to pursue decarbonisation.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Sadik Al-Hassan) pointed to the very important fact that we are endowed with key infrastructure, such as pipelines, pioneered by firms like Exolum, the research facilities in his constituency to which he pointed and the pioneering work of Bristol airport. We need to develop a market to facilitate that infrastructure further. The 70% cut in emissions through SAF is an exciting proposition indeed.

There are a number of Government amendments that I would like hon. Members to consider. Government amendment 6 allows for levy regulations to require the Secretary of State to assist the designated counterparty by collecting information and sharing it with the designated counterparty. It will also allow for the regulations to be used to impose requirements on a person to provide information to the Secretary of State. It is a technical amendment that will ensure that the information required to calculate individual levy contributions is provided at sufficient frequency, while not creating additional administrative burdens for industry.

Government amendment 1 allows the Secretary of State to direct a Government-owned company to provide assistance for the purpose of identifying to whom revenue certainty contracts should be allocated. The allocation process for RCM contracts will be fair and transparent to give confidence to any applicants. In other renewable schemes, contract allocation is often carried out through an auction process. The allocation process for contracts for difference for renewable electricity is carried out through the National Energy System Operator, or NESO, which is an operationally independent, publicly owned body.

That type of approach to allocation may also be suitable for RCM contracts, so the amendment will allow the Secretary of State to direct a body like NESO to support in the allocation process. The final decision on allocation, however, remains with the Secretary of State. Without the amendment, the same allocation process could be pursued, but that would need to be done on a contractual basis through a procurement process, which would add unnecessary cost and complexity to the process. The amendment avoids those unnecessary impacts. I therefore commend it and all other Government amendments to the House.

I would ask that new clauses 1 to 3, which were tabled by the Liberal Democrats, be withdrawn. They were introduced in identical form in Committee, and my remarks will closely reflect the points my predecessor made then. The amendments seek a review of the impact of the revenue certainty mechanism within the next 12 months. I am afraid that that is not reasonable, as the revenue certainty mechanism triggers only once SAF is being produced, and even at pace, that is some years off. It will take time to build SAF plants, initially starting with a contract allocation round with SAF producers. Therefore, we will not see sufficient developments in the next 12 months to warrant a review of the impact of the revenue certainty mechanism. I agree, however, that it is important to have parliamentary scrutiny to measure the impact of the Act and to propose actions if necessary. The SAF mandate already includes a review clause to assess the impact of the statutory instrument, with the first review scheduled within five years. That is in line with comparable schemes.

With regard to new clause 1, I can reassure the House that work is being carried out at pace across Government on the future of our refineries. Commissioning a separate report, as the new clause proposes, risks a delay to future decisions and any subsequent benefits that may be realised. Overall, we expect low-carbon fuel production to support up to 15,000 jobs across the country and to make a contribution to the economy of up to £5 billion by 2050.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the Minister, and wish him well in his new role and in all that he does. The legislation extends to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, so what discussions have been taking place with the Northern Ireland Assembly to ensure that we can see its benefits—to both employment and the wider economy—in Northern Ireland?

[Keir Mather]

The hon. Member raises a very important point. We need to ensure that the benefits of the Act are felt across the length and breadth of our United Kingdom, and that includes engaging with our colleagues in the Northern Ireland Assembly.

I turn to new clause 2. We do not anticipate a substantial impact on SAF production in the event of a decline in UK bioethanol production. The bioethanol market is a global one, and we do not currently foresee any supply issues. Furthermore, the recommendations in new clause 2 are already under way and duplicate measures can already be found in the SAF mandate. In July, a total of £63 million was awarded to 17 projects via the advanced fuels fund. That includes projects that use bioethanol, municipal solid waste and green hydrogen as feedstocks, among other sources. The Chancellor also announced in the spending review 2025 that we will continue to support SAF production throughout the spending review period. The SAF mandate also includes a formal review mechanism embedded in its legislation, with the first review scheduled to take place within five years.

New clause 3 would also duplicate measures that already exist in the SAF mandate. The mandate awards more certificates per litre to SAF with higher greenhouse gas savings, which will encourage SAF developers to continuously improve on their greenhouse gas savings. This will be monitored through the formal review mechanism, with the possibility to update legislation as required.

I hope that this reassures the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage that, in many respects, the concerns he outlines are allayed by existing measures in the Bill. I therefore urge him not to push his new clauses.

New clause 6, tabled by the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), would require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report on the economic impact of the legislation within a year of it being passed. Such a report would not show the full economic impact of these measures. Contracts will need to be negotiated, signed, plants built and SAF produced and sold before economic impacts are released. Transparency on reporting in relation to the Act’s economic impact can be achieved through regular updates to the House. Therefore, I do not see the new clause as being effectual, if he wishes to evaluate the economic impact of the RCM. I therefore ask him not to move his new clause.

New clause 5, tabled by the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello), would require the Secretary of State to introduce a regulation requiring airlines to make an annual report on their use of SAF, both in absolute volumes and as a percentage of overall fuel used. I welcome transparency on carbon emissions to help consumers make informed choices. However, we will be providing data on the supply of SAF under the mandate, including what proportion of the total aviation fuel supply is SAF. Furthermore, many airlines already provide public information on their decarbonisation efforts, and I therefore do not believe this new clause is necessary and ask the hon. Member not to move it.

New clauses 4 and 7, tabled by the hon. Member for West Dorset and the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed) respectively, relate to power-to-liquid obligations. On new clause 4, the Government have already committed to keep mandate targets under review. The existing legislation enables the Secretary of State to amend obligations under the SAF mandate, subject to consultation with those affected and scrutiny by Parliament. Allowing amendments to the obligations without consulting appropriate parties could be detrimental to our shared ambition of increasing the use of SAF. On new clause 7, the legislation that gave effect to the SAF mandate already makes provision for a review no later than 2030. Given that the mandate has been in place for less than 12 months and the PtL obligation does not come into effect until 2028, it would not be helpful to review earlier than planned. I therefore ask the hon. Members not to move their new clauses.

Amendment 8, tabled by the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, would put a requirement on the counterparty to report on the effect of the introduction of the RCM on air travel prices. This was spoken to by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). The Government are committed to delivering value for money in the RCM scheme by controlling the scale and number of contracts entered into, and through the prices negotiated in each contract. The impact on air fares are likely to rise or fall by less than the cost of a cup of coffee. The costs of the scheme and the impact on ticket prices will be kept under continual review. Passengers should also benefit from the lower prices generated from the lower project risk and reduced cost of capital for SAF producers. Therefore, the Bill and the measures in it will not limit people’s ability to fly. Given that, I ask the right hon. Member not to move the amendment.

I turn to amendments 9 and 10, tabled by the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay, and to amendment 12, tabled by the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley. The decisions on the specifics of contract allocation will be made during the contract allocation process. There will be a fair and transparent allocation process that evaluates the key costs, benefits and risks of each project. That will be developed over the coming months and will be subject to consultation with stakeholders. These amendments would reduce the Government leverage in negotiations by setting criteria in advance and would likely reduce value for money in the contracts signed, which I am sure all of us would seek to avoid. I therefore ask that these amendments are not moved.

Finally, I turn to amendment 11, tabled by the right hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay. In May 2025, the Government published the response to the consultation on funding the SAF revenue certainty mechanism. It confirmed that a variable levy on aviation fuel suppliers would be introduced, and this was included in the contents of the Bill. The Government plan to consult imminently on the detailed design of the levy, but this amendment would pre-empt stakeholder responses, which will be considered in any design decisions. I therefore ask the right hon. Member not to press the amendment.

I hope that my responses have provided the explanations and reassurances that colleagues were seeking. The Bill is a crucial step towards establishing a SAF industry in the UK and driving investment, growth and jobs across our great country. Once again, I urge the House to give the Bill its full support.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Mr Glover, is it your pleasure that new clause 1 be withdrawn?

Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Keir Mather Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Keir Mather)]

I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss Lords amendments 2 to 6.

[Keir Mather]

I am pleased that the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill has returned to this House with only a small number of Government amendments. I am grateful to Members of both Houses for their engagement and constructive approach throughout the Bill’s passage. I wish to thank my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), for his skilful steering of this Bill through its initial stages. I also thank Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill for his valuable support, and for leading the Bill so effectively through the other place. The Government brought forward six amendments, which were agreed to, and we are considering them today.

Lords amendments 1 to 3 ensure that the Secretary of State can enter into revenue certainty contracts only when the supported SAF is produced at a facility in the United Kingdom. Throughout the passage of the Bill in the Lords, peers provided thoughtful and collaborative suggestions on this topic, and I am grateful to them. The amendments to clause 1 provide that sustainable aviation fuel is to be regarded as “UK-produced” where any part of the process for converting feedstocks into fuel occurs within the UK. These amendments give the industry a clear and confident signal of support, and align with our intended objective for this Bill: the objective of supporting the UK’s sustainable aviation fuel industry.

Lords amendments 4 to 6 require the Secretary of State to consult the devolved Governments before making regulations under the powers in clauses 1, 3, 10 or 11. This ensures that devolved Governments are fully engaged on matters in their areas of competence.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I very much welcome the leadership that the Government are taking on this important industry. How much sustainable aviation fuel does my hon. Friend anticipate that the UK will be able to provide, and after his amendments have gone through, is it still likely that we will depend on imports of sustainable aviation fuel, alongside the stocks we have in the UK?

[Keir Mather]

To meet the provisions of the SAF mandate, we believe it will be necessary to have a mixture of sustainable aviation fuel produced in the United Kingdom and SAF imported from overseas. However, the Bill creates a revenue certainty mechanism—the first of its kind—to drive this nascent market to increase SAF production. We believe that the mechanism will demonstrably increase the amount of UK-produced SAF in the system, and will have an impact on the production of the good, skilled jobs in our energy industry that we all care about so much. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend that we believe that the Bill is the right process to go through to stimulate this industry, and to give investors the certainty that they need that the UK Government stand four-square behind the creation of sustainable aviation fuel in this country.

Clause 1(8) allows the Secretary of State to make regulations extending the period in which they can direct the counterparty to enter into contracts by up to five years at a time. Clause 3(1) gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations requiring the counterparty to maintain a register of information on revenue certainty contracts, and to publish details about the contracts. Clause 10(1) gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations that require the counterparty to pay a surplus to levy payers, and require levy payers to pass on the benefits of that surplus to their customers. Clause 11(4) gives the Secretary of State the power to make regulations amending financial penalties to reflect inflation, and to specify the basis on which a company’s turnover is to be determined for the purpose of those penalties. The amendments do not affect the delivery of the Bill or its underlying policy intent, and final decisions in relation to the regulation-making powers in the Bill will continue to rest with the Secretary of State for Transport.

The Government’s objective is to implement the revenue certainty mechanism for the SAF industry effectively across the whole of the United Kingdom and to work collaboratively with the devolved Governments to do so. I am grateful for the engagement on the Bill from across the devolved Governments and pleased to confirm that we have obtained legislative consent from all three devolved Governments. I therefore commend all six amendments to the House and urge Members to support them.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister, Greg Smith. I believe it is your birthday. [Hon. Members: “Aw!”] Happy birthday!

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[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

A few of my colleagues have been offering jokes. I was not able to prepare detailed remarks, so I hope they will forgive me if I just wing it. [Laughter.]

Although we have discussed decarbonisation a number of times in this debate, it has not been said yet that the Bill is about addressing the climate crisis. That incredibly important and urgent piece of work demands the utmost urgency and ambition. For that reason, I naturally support it and what it is trying to achieve. Similar mechanisms have been incredibly successful in developing the thriving renewables industry that we now see in the UK, which provides a lot of our energy.

It is worth while recognising that the Bill is part of a much longer journey to decarbonising aviation. I declare an interest early in my remarks: I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hydrogen. In a very long timeframe, we can potentially see aviation using cryogenic hydrogen as a fuel source, so we should keep that in view.

Similarly, SAF has various generations of development, with different feedstocks and mechanisms of production. The fuels also have different characteristics and ways of interacting with gas turbine technology. Therefore, the devil will absolutely be in the detail of the mechanisms that the Government are putting forward to build a market for the various generations of SAF. I hope we will see more detail about that strategic approach as this legislation goes forward.

It is important, as the amendments make clear, that the UK benefits from what we are doing in the Bill. I am passionate about seeing the whole UK low-carbon energy supply chain building and scaling rapidly. That includes electrons—the Government already have very ambitious goals around decarbonising electricity—as well as molecules and hydrogen. We are still awaiting the hydrogen strategy. I recently spoke to the Minister about that, and I understand that it is close. It is incredibly important that we have an ambitious and comprehensive strategy for the development of the hydrogen economy in the UK that does not just serve a small number of industrial clusters but underpins our decarbonisation of electricity, provides dispatchable power and provides an opportunity for industrial renewal as we move forward.

Hydrogen is an important feedstock for producing SAF by any route. We need a hydrogen economy, and for that we need a price. For a price, we need storage and transmission. As we fulfil our desires for SAF to be ambitious, bold and effective in decarbonising, we must also do the work as a Government to build a hydrogen economy to establish that anchoring price, as well as demand and production, so that we can see a thriving, decarbonising aviation sector, the renewal and regeneration of the whole UK industrial sector, and an absolute renaissance underpinned by low-carbon energy—both electrons and molecules.

[Keir Mather]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it would be remiss of me not to start by asking for the leave of the House to speak again, and then wish a very happy birthday to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). I was so keen to wish him a happy birthday, I nearly put a foot wrong when it came to parliamentary protocol. I had the pleasure of celebrating my birthday during consideration of the Railways Bill with the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew). May I say, it was raucous, as I am sure the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) will attest?

I thank the shadow Minister for his support for the Lords amendments and for his strong support for the principle of decarbonisation of aviation. I am starting to receive slightly mixed signals from the shadow Transport team as to how passionately they stand behind this prospect across different modes of transport. Perhaps that is one to be hashed out over a beer at his birthday celebrations. I am glad that the shadow Minister agrees with the Government amendments. He is right to point to the economic value of decarbonisation across the United Kingdom and the need to focus on value for money for taxpayers. We are committed to delivering that in the revenue certainty mechanism by controlling the scale and the number of contracts that are entered into, as well as the prices that are negotiated in each contract. I assure him that the cost of the scheme and the impact on passenger ticket prices will be kept under continual review. I do not just acknowledge his commitment to be vigilant on this issue; I actively welcome it, and I thank him for his contributions.

May I also acknowledge the presence of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane)? I have already thanked him for his work on the Bill, but he was not in the Chamber, so I would like to take the opportunity to restate my thanks to him for getting this crucial legislation to where it needed to be.

I turn to the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) and for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson). They were right to focus on and say that the benefits of SAF production must be felt in my home of Yorkshire as well as in Lincolnshire and across the United Kingdom. The point about Doncaster Sheffield airport is important, because the consumers who use our airports and seek to use aviation travel to connect themselves to the world also care that they can do so in a form of technology that the Government are doing their utmost to try to decarbonise. I am glad that they feel that that level of ambition is reflected both in these amendments and in the Bill as a whole. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) also pointed to that.

The Lib Dem spokesman, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), was right to say that SAF is only one piece of the puzzle in aviation decarbonisation. Hydrogen flight, greenhouse gas removals and airspace modernisation all require focus. Those points were also made by my hon. Friends the Members for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) and for Worcester (Tom Collins).

My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield asked me about the concerns about crop use in SAF. Currently, crop-based SAF will not be eligible for the SAF mandate, but a call for evidence on the subject is open and will close on 16 March. More broadly, he asked me a range of questions that were quite detailed, some of which lie outside the exact scope of the Lords amendments. I would therefore be grateful if he would write to me and set them out so that I can give him the full response that he requires.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for his contribution. He is right to point to the skills benefit that the generation of a thriving UK SAF industry can bring to his constituents and to support the work in Stansted airport. My hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) also raised the important point of ongoing questions surrounding the Grangemouth refinery. I reiterate, as he asked me to, that we are calling on investors to come forward and join us in the major opportunity to secure the long-term industrial future of Grangemouth as a hub for our clean energy future. With Government backing, we believe that now is the time for private sector partners to step forward and help shape the next chapter for Grangemouth. The National Wealth Fund stands ready to invest £200 million to support those new opportunities. I encourage my hon. Friend to keep working with us, and we are ready to engage with investors on that point.