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Matthew Pennycook
Main Page: Matthew Pennycook (Labour - Greenwich and Woolwich)Department Debates - View all Matthew Pennycook's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
Oral Answers to Questions
Matthew Pennycook Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
Perhaps to the surprise of the House, I can confirm that I am always delighted to visit my hon. Friend. I have done so on many occasions and I look forward to doing so whenever he wants and whenever my diary permits.
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
In a speech last month to the Energy UK conference, the Secretary of State made the case for a decisive shift towards clean energy and away from what he termed “volatile fossil fuels”, on which he said
“we are still very dependent, perhaps too dependent”.
Will he therefore explain how a decision by the Government to permit Cambo, an oilfield whose anticipated lifespan would see it still producing oil four years before we are legally bound to reach net zero, would be anything other than fundamentally at odds with that vision?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Gentleman will understand that the licences under which Cambo was permitted were actually granted when his own party was in government. He will also appreciate that I have always said that there will be a transition. He and his Labour associates want to shut down the industry and cause mass unemployment among the 250,000 people in this country who work in the sector.