UK Modern Industrial Strategy Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateDepartment: Department for Business and Trade
Liam Byrne
Main Page: Liam Byrne (Labour - Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North)Department Debates - View all Liam Byrne's debates with the Department for Business and Trade
(3 days ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I call the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on the biggest remaking of the relationship between the public and private sectors for a generation. The business community in this country will be stronger and better for the measures that he has announced today. Business will welcome in particular the huge investment in skills, access to research and development, and access to capital, but the game changer is the investment in energy that he has announced. Cutting industrial energy prices is a way to get rid of the albatross around the neck of British business. It is a big promise; can he assure the House that there is both the plan and the pound notes to deliver on it?
Jonathan Reynolds
I warmly welcome those words from the Chair of the Select Committee. I absolutely agree with him. There is so much in the strategy, but we were so uncompetitive on energy that whether action could be taken had become a test of credibility from business. The kinds of changes we are talking about—a reduction of £35 to £40 per megawatt-hour by exempting eligible businesses from payments for the renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the capacity market—will make a real difference. We are talking about going from being the absolute outlier to, today, being cheaper than Italy and the Czech Republic and on a par with Germany. That is a game changer, and it has been welcomed. We will obviously have to consult; we can make the changes to the supercharger more quickly than we can introduce that support. Of course, we will have to set a threshold intensity test and make sure it goes to the sectors in most need of it, but we expect those to include the core foundational sectors as well as aerospace, automotive and all the areas where the competitive pressure is most acute. I am incredibly excited by that.