State of Climate and Nature

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

We have to get our use of imported gas down, and that is why we have to build clean energy infrastructure. This is what the Conservatives just do not seem to understand. If they go around the country opposing our clean energy infrastructure, it keeps us stuck on fossil fuels for longer—and look where that took us: to the worst cost of living crisis in generations.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State will know that my constituents know more than most what it means to host clean energy infrastructure. However, the failure of the cross-party consensus is giving rise to quite a lot of concern in my area, where we face job losses at Prax Lindsey oil refinery. Can the Secretary of State reassure the hundreds of workers who face a very uncertain time that this is the result not of a move towards clean energy, but of mismanagement by the company’s owners?

[Ed Miliband]

My hon. Friend speaks about an important issue, and I am deeply concerned for those workers and their families. There are serious questions to answer about the running of that company, and how it ended up in this state. On the day that the insolvency happened, I wrote to the Insolvency Service to ask it to look into this matter, because those workers have been badly let down by the company.