Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Hancock and James Gray

Thursday 5th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

The hon. Gentleman is normally quite sensible, and I normally agree with him, but subversive elements are certainly not part of the current Government, as we can tell from our record. The proportion of electricity generated from renewables has doubled under this Government. We are committed to ensuring that renewables play a big part of the mix in the most cost-effective way that they can.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating Wiltshire council, which has already achieved its 2020 renewables target through a whole variety of means? Does he agree that that achievement ought to be a substantive consideration when the Planning Inspectorate decides on further applications for solar on greenfield sites?

[Matthew Hancock]

I know my hon. Friend has a concern about solar panels being put in inappropriate places. There are appropriate places for solar to go, especially on roofs and in brownfield sites. That is, of course, a matter for a strong planning system, in which those local decisions are rightly made, but that does not take away from the fact that we have so much more renewable energy than we did just five short years ago.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Hancock and James Gray

Thursday 4th September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

The doubling of investment in renewables under this Government has undoubtedly helped those people, as it has helped many other people to get jobs, which is one of the reasons we are seeing record jobs in this country as part of our long-term economic plan.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The people of north and west Wiltshire strongly support renewable energy, but we are besieged by hundreds of planning applications from London-based commercial operations for solar farms, not on roofs of factories or brownfield sites, but on greenfield sites across the county. Will my right hon. Friend reiterate the strong message that our right hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) previously sent out, which is a strong presumption against the use of agricultural land and a strong presumption in favour of industrial roofs and other places?

[Matthew Hancock]

There are opportunities for solar, where appropriately sited, in many different places on roofs and on land. In fact, land can be combined with agricultural use and solar. One other advantage of solar is that it can effectively be masked from being seen from elsewhere because it is low-rise rather than high-rise. This has to be done sensitively. There is no point in destroying our green and pleasant land in order to save the global environment. We have to tackle security of supply and climate change in a way that also protects the local environment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Matt Hancock and James Gray

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I warmly welcome the Richard report, which stresses the need for rigour in apprenticeships and for apprenticeships to be more employer focused. I am studying it in great detail. The hon. Gentleman says that apprenticeships need to be for a minimum of a year, and in almost all cases that is already happening, thanks to changes introduced by my predecessor, but we want to look at all the recommendations and see which we can implement.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I welcome some of the things the Minister said to the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) about engineering, but is he not concerned that Sir James Dyson—Dyson engineering is based in my constituency—said last week that he needs 200 new designers and engineers in Malmesbury alone but cannot find them and that across the nation we are desperately short of them. What will we do to improve science, engineering and design in our schools and universities?

[Matthew Hancock]

Not only is the number of engineering apprenticeships up, but a higher proportion of young people are now starting STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—degrees at university. That is going up, rather than down, as it was before. This is an area of huge concern to me and I am working extremely hard to try to put it right.