Malcolm Wicks
Main Page: Malcolm Wicks (Labour - Croydon North)
Chris Huhne
I have enormous respect for engineers. There are an awful lot of them in my constituency, which is a very manufacturing constituency. Therefore, I think and hope that the country will go on providing greater status to engineers than has often been the case in the past. I am afraid that the question of whether the Government should appoint a chief engineer is above my pay grade, but perhaps my hon. Friend would like to raise it at Prime Minister’s questions.
Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)
The UK’s energy import dependency will increase over the next 10 or 20 years, at a time when global demand for energy could increase by 40% over 10 or so years. Given that, what plans are there to reorganise the machinery of government, so that DECC, the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Defence and other agencies can get a better assessment and grip of the geopolitical risks that the UK faces?
Chris Huhne
I am very grateful for that highly intelligent question which, given his interest in this area, is what I would expect from the right hon. Gentleman. The National Security Council is explicitly charged with the co-ordination of energy security. That will go across Government: it will not be confined to my Department, but will include the Foreign Office and other interested Departments.
The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, in that the figures show that, on the worst possible projections, our energy import dependence may well rise from 27% to over half in the space of just 10 years. This is a really key issue, which we need to address.