Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects: Suffolk Coast

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

Thank you, Sir John, for recognising that my role is exactly the same and yet somehow changed in title. I am grateful still to be the Energy Minister, because, as I often say in this place, the debates that we have are always hugely interesting and bring in so many different aspects of how we plan our future energy system. Indeed, you and I, Sir John, have had many conversations about this particular issue.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this debate and for her contribution. She and I have had a number of conversations about this issue. Let me say at the outset that I actually agree with her on the need for better co-ordination—I have said that many times here and to her personally. I think it is a source of deep regret for all of us—I think the previous Government will look back on this as well—that we did not more properly co-ordinate what has been a huge build-out of new, important infrastructure.

As my hon. Friend said, the previous Government vacated the space of leadership in planning the future of our energy system. That was not because it was an impossible task; I can only assume it was because they thought it was too difficult to do. We have grasped that task in the 14 months that we have been in office. I will talk a bit more about that later.

I want to start with a bit of context, which is important. My hon. Friend also mentioned this point. We are committed as a Government to building things in this country again. For far too long, under both Labour and Conservative Governments, we have held back a lot of critical infrastructure. The plan for delivering economic growth across the country does require us to build infrastructure. Energy infrastructure is going to be absolutely key, not least because even if we were not on the journey to clean power, which is critical, we would still be having to upgrade much of the energy infrastructure, particularly the transmission network, which has been so under-invested in over the past 50 or 60 years.

Our mission as a Government is to move towards clean power, making sure that we deliver our energy security; and every wind turbine, solar panel and nuclear power station that we build protects us from future energy shocks and delivers our energy security here at home. So, it is a critical mission.

New energy infrastructure—indeed, new infrastructure of any kind—is always controversial in some circumstances; there are always impacts and there are always differing views about whether it should be built or not. That is why we have a planning system that seeks to balance the pros and cons of applications against a framework that sets out, as a country, that we have to build things somewhere. So, the planning system is there to make sure that the planning process is rigorous and open, but ultimately so that we make decisions and build things.

For obvious reasons, I will not comment on individual planning applications; they will be decided in due course in the usual way. However, I will make a fundamental point about why we are on this journey and why we think that building this infrastructure is so important. The reason is that the only way to reduce our exposure to the volatility of fossil fuels is to build a new clean power system. That means new nuclear, renewables and storage working together to bring down bills and tackle the climate crisis.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is aware of the NSIP regime, but for the purposes of the hordes of people that I am sure are watching this debate at home, let me say a little about it. The “nationally significant” in NSIP—nationally significant infrastructure project—is really important for us to recognise. The reason we have an NSIP process is that some decisions have to be made that local communities might not be able to make in isolation because they are of critical national importance, whether that is in transport, water or energy projects. It is important that we have this process and it is a robust process, involving the Planning Inspectorate, and various statutory bodies such as national environment bodies. Projects are judged on a case-by-case basis, weighed against the local impacts, be they environmental, economic or social. The need for this process is set out for all to see in local and national planning policy, and of course national policy statements are scrutinised by this place before being agreed.

When an applicant submits an application for a development consent order or DCO, the Planning Inspectorate, particularly for energy NSIPs, will appoint an independent inspector to examine the application. A recommendation will be made to the Secretary of State about whether permission should be given and the Secretary of State makes the final decision; that decision might be made by a junior Minister on their behalf, but the law states that the decision is still in the name of the Secretary of State. Such applications are considered against the relevant national policy statements as approved by Parliament, which make the case for infrastructure and all the various considerations that have to be made.

Cumulative impact is an issue that my hon. Friend raised with me today, and that a number of hon. Friends have raised with me previously. I know that it is a particular concern. Projects must consider their cumulative impact as part of their applications. Also, the local authority that hosts the infrastructure and surrounding local authorities—given that often these projects are on the borders with other local authorities—are invited to submit impact reports as part of the process, to ensure that the potential impacts of an individual project are taken into account, based on local knowledge.

Of course, there are also opportunities for local communities to have a say. Members of the public can get involved not just in the planning application itself, but in the pre-consultation process and in the discussions before applications emerge. They can also register through the Planning Inspectorate during the pre-examination phase.

On planning reform, we are mindful as a Government that the planning process can take much longer than we think it should. Let me say at the outset that that is not about trying to get to the decision that one particular group might want; it is about getting to any kind of decision much faster, so that instead of projects and communities being held up for year after year, with people not knowing whether something will proceed or not, decisions are made.

The average time to secure development consent for NSIPs has increased from 2.6 years in 2012 to 3.6 years in 2024. Such delays cost a vast amount of money—£1.5 million a month for some large projects—and that of course impacts taxpayers and bill payers, who foot the bill for these projects.

There is always a balance to be struck, as we have said throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Of course we want communities to have a say and we want the process to be as robust as possible, but we need to get decisions and end the uncertainty as quickly as possible, and the Bill will be key to improving the process. Our reforms are about trying to make sure that the system is flexible, proportionate and responsive to Government priorities. The Government must deliver the change on which we were elected; in the energy space, that means building the clean power system of the future. The planning system should reflect the priorities of the democratically elected Government of the day.

Public engagement is key to this process. We want communities to participate in the planning system, but as I will come back to in a moment when I talk about strategic planning, we also want communities to have a say much earlier in the process. It is not just about individual applications, but about the whole question of infrastructure in communities more generally. We are consulting on further proposals to streamline the NSIP process, including for new guidance on engagement following proposals in the Bill to remove statutory pre-application consultation requirements, and we encourage feedback from communities. We are also keen to hear views on the practical next steps and on how the system will actually work. I understand that the consultation is now open and will close at the end of October.

On the siting of energy projects, I agree with my hon. Friend that we should be much more strategic as a country in considering what the future of our energy system should look like, and in planning holistically what infrastructure should be built and where. She made a powerful point about the sheer amount in her part of the country. Had we been strategically planning a decade or so ago, we might have avoided some of those planning decisions, so it is important that we take this step. I regret the fact that we have not done so for the past few decades, but we are moving forward with a strategic view as quickly as possible.

The problem with being the Minister for Energy Security is that we are not short of acronyms—let me just go through some of them. The strategic spatial energy plan, or SSEP, and the centralised strategic network plan, or CSNP, are two crucial parts of how we will provide a holistic design much more carefully. The strategic spatial energy plan is about looking at the whole of Great Britain and how we map out the future of our energy system, and it will be published by the end of 2026—there is work going on at the moment. The centralised strategic network plan will follow, so that we can work out what infrastructure we need on the grid in order to meet the strategic spatial energy plan, and it will be published by the end of 2027.

This is about taking a much more active planning role in the future of energy right across England, Scotland and Wales, both inland and at sea. My hon. Friend rightly brings both of those things from her constituency into this discussion. It will be about assessing the optimal locations for things and the type of energy infrastructure that we need in the future. We must look beyond a developer’s five or 10-year plan and ensure that we meet future energy demand, knowing that it will significantly increase in the years ahead.

The centralised strategic network plan will build on the SSEP by ensuring that our transmission infrastructure meets the need and, crucially, is co-ordinated. My hon. Friend made that point very powerfully, and I was in Denmark last week to talk about this very question with EU Energy Ministers. The North sea is already congested with a lot of infrastructure, and the only way we will effectively plan the future of the North sea— for a whole range of uses, from fishing and energy to carbon capture and storage—is by working together. We will be part of much more co-ordination on the infrastructure in the North sea.

It all feeds into my hon. Friend’s point: we will only get this right by having a holistic view and enabling the efficient and co-ordinated use of infrastructure. That is better for communities affected by this issue directly, but we can also bring down the cost of building infrastructure if we plan it more coherently. That will benefit every person right across the country.

[James Naish]

The Minister describes something that I am extremely passionate about, as he knows, but it is a very top-down approach. I wonder whether we simultaneously need a bottom-up approach that engages with communities via local authorities in order to look at what land is available and how it could be used. Is that not something that we could do side by side with the vital strategic approach that he describes?

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend foresees what I was going to say. I was just about to come on to his earlier intervention, which was really important. He is right about the need for infrastructure plans to be generated by communities and bottom-up. We need to take a national view of the future of the energy system as well, but I think both can work together.

The third great part of this planning is the regional energy plans. We also see a place, on a very localised level, for the local energy plans that many local authorities and combined mayoral authorities are working on, but the regional plans break up the whole of Great Britain into smaller areas so that we can look in detail at what energy can be sited in different areas, and crucially, at how the two kinds of plan can work together—the Government’s land use framework for the future use of land in the country alongside the capability and interest from communities to host infrastructure as well. I hope that we are doing that, but my hon. Friend should continue to bring that challenge to the Government, because it is something that we are committed to doing. I am confident that he will do so, which is great.

Let me finish on a point around the impact on communities. We do not want to get to a place where the future energy system is something that is done to communities, and we recognise that the failure of strategic planning across the country has meant that that is all too often what it has felt like for communities. We have a role to play in ensuring that, where communities do host important energy infrastructure, they benefit from it. Hosting such infrastructure benefits the whole country—without a resilient energy system, we all lose out, and we will not deliver the economic growth that we need—but the communities that host this infrastructure should feel a benefit from doing so.

That is why, in March, we announced two community benefit initiatives, guidance on community funds for communities that host this key infrastructure, and a bill discount scheme for households that are sited in proximity to new transmission infrastructure. The guidance sets out our expectations for how communities hosting that infrastructure should benefit. We will have more to say as the bill discount scheme is developed through secondary legislation, but that is an important statement: people should directly benefit, through money off their bills, if they are doing the country a favour by hosting that infrastructure. In May we also published a working paper on wider questions around community benefits, to make sure that other types of energy infrastructure also benefit communities.

In conclusion, I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal for securing the debate. I know that we will continue to have these conversations. In this job I sometimes wish, for a number of reasons, that we could turn back the clock and do things slightly differently. I have been told repeatedly that, unfortunately, that is not an option, although I continue to push for it. Strategic planning is one of those regrets. As a country, whatever the political view, we will look back and wish that we had planned our energy system more holistically across the country. We are doing that. That does not change some of the decisions that have been made and some of the decisions that are in the system now, but it will allow us to build a more holistic system in the future.

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

Will the Minister meet me to talk about what more co-ordination can happen now through the projects that are live, in the way that I set out in my speech?

[Michael Shanks]

I am always happy to meet any hon. Member from either side of the House, and I do regularly, but I will certainly meet my hon. Friend to discuss that. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to comment on specific applications in the system, but I am happy to meet her.

Let me finish with a general point that brings us back to our national mission. As a country, we must move quickly to replace a 19th-century fossil fuel-based energy system with a system that is fit for the 21st century. Even if we were not on that mission, the huge increase in demand for electricity necessitates the building of more energy infrastructure across the country. We must make the change that we are making to bring down bills and benefit consumers, to benefit our national energy security in an increasingly uncertain world, and to tackle climate change. Anyone who says that we can get by with not building any infrastructure is quite wrong.

Since time began, there has been opposition to any pieces of infrastructure built in any part of the country, but we must as a country recognise that, for us to deliver on the outcomes we want as a Government and improve people’s lives, we have to build infrastructure across the country. We want to do that in partnership with communities, to ensure that we do so in as well planned and strategic a way as possible, and to ensure that communities that host such infrastructure genuinely benefit from it. There is much more work to do, and I look forward to engaging with hon. Members on these difficult questions so that we can find the right solution for the country and local communities. I thank my hon. Friend once again for securing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Great British Energy: Strategic Priorities

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Written Statements

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

Great British Energy (GBE) is central to this Government’s mission to make the UK a clean energy superpower and will play a pivotal role in accelerating the deployment of clean, secure, home-grown energy as the UK’s publicly owned clean energy company. GBE is putting energy back into the hands of the British public, enabling the benefits of the clean energy transition to flow back into communities, households and businesses, to protect billpayers for good.

At the spending review, the Government confirmed over £8.3 billion in capitalisation for GBE and Great British Energy Nuclear. The statement of strategic priorities—"the statement”— now sets out the Secretary of State’s vision for how Great British Energy should contribute to the mission. It does so by identifying two core objectives for GBE:

Drive clean energy deployment across the whole of the UK, as a strategic developer, investor, and owner of clean energy projects.

Ensure that UK taxpayers, billpayers, communities, and the current energy workforce benefit from the clean energy transition by increasing public ownership and community involvement in the development of clean energy projects, and by supporting jobs and economic growth across the UK.

The statement provides strategic direction by specifying that GBE should focus on three core groups of activities to deliver on GBE’s objectives:

The statement outlines the key principles for intervention. Underpinning these principles for intervention is a requirement for GBE to ensure that its portfolio of activities and investments is additional. The statement also outlines GBE’s long-term goal to become financially self-sustaining, and the importance of setting a clear path towards profitability with a plan for self-financing to be in place by 2030.

Partnerships with the private sector and other public sector organisations will be critical to GBE’s ability to deliver on its core objectives. The statement therefore provides detail on how GBE should work collaboratively with private and public sector organisations. This includes local and devolved governments, the National Wealth Fund, The Crown Estate and Great British Energy-Nuclear.

The statement also sets out the Secretary of State’s expectation that GBE put in place a robust corporate governance framework which adheres to corporate transparency principles.

GBE is foundational to this Government’s mission to bring energy security, protect billpayers, create good jobs and help protect future generations, and will be a key player in establishing the energy system of the future. In doing so, Great British Energy will demonstrate how modern public ownership can deliver a dynamic state which works with industry, workers, unions and local and devolved Governments to accelerate the clean energy transition and deliver benefits for citizens across the UK.

[HCWS925]

Hydrogen Supply Chains

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Tuesday 9th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts—and to still be here as the Energy Minister. It is the only Government job that I wanted to do, which is perhaps just as well given how the reshuffle has landed, so it is genuinely a pleasure.

As I have often said, these debates are a great example not only of how we come together to talk about quite complex topics relating to the energy system, but of how this part of Parliament works. I always come out of these debates having learned something, as the shadow Minister said. Sometimes it is quite a niche fact that I am not quite sure what I will do with. I always learn a huge amount from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Tom Collins), given his detailed knowledge of the industry and its practical application, which is often lost in our debates. I thank him and my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), who also worked in the energy sector, and whose constituency was home to Britain’s last coal power station, the closure of which I attended last year. His understanding of the importance of the transition and the potential of future clean energy technologies is hugely welcome.

It has been an interesting debate not least because, as the shadow Minister said, we have had a degree of consensus. We once had consensus on quite a lot of things in respect of the future of our energy system, but that has somehow changed in the last few months. I will leave it to others to judge why that is, but it is really important that, given the huge opportunities for the future of the country and for thousands of jobs, there is a degree of consensus. As the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said, we get things done when there is a degree of consensus, and that is hugely welcome. The hon. Gentleman referred to Joule’s law on the loss of power, which I think, if my standard grade physics holds up, is P = I²R,. I am sure people will correct me when that is typed up in Hansard.

Let me say a bit about our commitment to hydrogen before I respond to some specific points. We have been clear that hydrogen will play a fundamental role in the future of our energy system. Not only is it a crucial part of how we decarbonise heavy industry and transport, which are among our most energy-intensive and hardest-to-decarbonise sectors, but it is, as many Members have pointed out, part of our work to provide large-scale storage for our baseload of year-round clean power. As the Government have set out in everything we do, our mission to achieve clean power by 2030 and to maintain that relates to tackling the climate crisis, delivering energy security and reducing our dependence on unstable, volatile fossil fuel markets. How we take back control of our energy supply and storage will clearly be a critical part of that. It can also help us to reduce system costs as both electricity demand and renewable generation increase.

There are other great other examples of the use of hydrogen. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) made the really interesting point that the world’s first hydrogen double-decker bus was made in North Antrim, which I had not realised. As the shadow Minister pointed out, there are challenges around how we maintain such innovation and make sure that it continues to work in the future. Last week I was in Denmark to meet European Energy Ministers. It was really interesting to see examples there, as well as at the port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, of where infrastructure is being rolled out, while facing some of the same challenges about how we achieve the scale that makes it competitive. That is part of the work we will have to do.

We are acting now to seize the economic and industrial benefits of the hydrogen sector, which is why we have been not only pushing forward on our policy framework but trying to make clear our ambition. There is much more to be said about that, but there has been industrial and investor interest in our hydrogen allocation round programme. The first HAR1 projects are now putting spades in the ground, with the first wave expected to access more than £2 billion over the next 15 years in revenue support from the hydrogen production business model, and over £90 million in capital from the net zero hydrogen fund. Over £400 million of private capital has been committed up front for 2024 to 2026, with more than 700 direct jobs created in construction and operation. Those are among the first commercial-scale hydrogen projects in the world to take a final investment decision, and we expect them to become operational between this year and April 2028. That will kick-start our green hydrogen production at scale.

Following the success of HAR1, we expect to announce successful projects in the second hydrogen allocation round in early 2026. The current shortlist includes innovative projects that could support ammonia production in Shetland, produce new clean energy at Grangemouth and decarbonise lime kilns—one of the first steps in cement production—in the Humber area. Moving forward, in June this year we published our industrial strategy, which set out plans for the further hydrogen allocation rounds, HAR3 and HAR4, for our first regional hydrogen network, and for the launch of the hydrogen-to-power business model in 2026.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester talked about the crucial role that storage will play in the renewable energy we are building. The question of how we store that for when we need it is crucial. We laid out our plans in the industrial strategy, backed up by the spending review, with £500 million for hydrogen infrastructure, partly to look at how we unlock hydrogen’s potential for clean power and provide home-grown energy and good jobs. We also have an ambition to deploy the first regional hydrogen transport and storage network, to become operational from 2031, which will aim to connect producers with vital end users such as power for the first time. This will unlock hydrogen’s role in clean power and help to realise the potential of large-scale hydrogen storage in maximising renewable energy use to support the transition to a decarbonised energy system. We are also currently designing a hydrogen storage business model, alongside a hydrogen transport business model, with the intention of providing investors with the long-term revenue certainty that many Members have raised in the debate.

There is no doubt that the clean energy transition is the economic opportunity of the 21st century. This is about not just our energy security but, as many hon. Friends have pointed out, how we deliver the good, well-paid, trade-unionised jobs of the future. It is about how we reindustrialise communities that have for too long been left behind. The UK is well placed to be a global leader not only in hydrogen deployment but, crucially, in making sure that we capitalise on the supply chains, which is where we get the jobs, given the shared skills, experiences and qualifications in the existing oil and gas sector, our strengths in advanced manufacturing and innovation, and the policy environment we have set out.

We have taken significant steps to attract inward investment, and the public finance tools set out in the clean energy industries sector plan will play a crucial role. We have also looked at the question of skills, which a number of Members raised earlier. The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young), made the point very well. The hydrogen skills framework, which we published just a few months ago in April, is an open-source framework to try to enable the development of new qualifications and training programmes, in conjunction with industry, to make sure that we are bringing forward the apprenticeships and the skilled workers of the future.

We are also making sure that companies can access international markets and collaborate with global partners. We want to build a domestic success story by exporting hydrogen equipment and services across the world and reinforcing their role in global hydrogen supply chains, with the UK set to benefit from being right at the forefront of that work.

As the sector grows, we want to make sure that it benefits from the comprehensive public finance offers that we have set out. I will cover that briefly, because we have debated many of these things in the past. Part of that includes Great British Energy, with its £1 billion clean energy supply chain fund, which will be aligned with the clean energy industries sector plan to support companies that have the potential to grow in supply chains.

We have empowered the National Wealth Fund with a total of £27.8 billion in capital to enable it to take on higher-risk investments, including equity. It will invest in capital-intensive projects, businesses and assets, with at least £5.8 billion on carbon capture, low-carbon hydrogen, gigafactories, ports and green steel over the lifetime of this Parliament. We have also launched £4 billion in British Business Bank industrial strategy capital to scale up the financing package, and we introduced the clean industry bonus following the success in the round that we have just concluded. We are looking at whether we should expand that to hydrogen, and we will consult on that in due course.

We will continue to do all that we can to put the UK at the forefront of the global hydrogen revolution and thereby unlock billions of investment, create new-generation jobs, build the infrastructure and drive the clean growth that we—there seems to have been consensus today—all want to see. This autumn, we will publish the UK hydrogen strategy, which will be evidence-led, impact-focused and designed on the premise of fast-tracking delivery.

Since the publication of the last hydrogen strategy four years ago, the landscape has evolved significantly. Electrification technologies have moved on rapidly, pointing to a more focused and essential role for hydrogen, complementing the electrification that we will see in so much of our energy system. The new strategy will sharpen our priorities, deepen collaboration with industry, which is key to this, and seek to unlock the full potential of hydrogen over the next decade.

[Jamie Stone]

Does the Minister agree that we should at least check the proposed grid improvements against the possible strategic sites where hydrogen could be made?

[Michael Shanks]

My very next point was on the future of the network. It wasn’t, actually, but I will come to it now, because the hon. Gentleman made a very good point, which I meant to come back to. He is right, of course, that we need to invest in the grid—even if we were not embarking on this clean power mission, the grid is very much in need of upgrading—but we want to take the strategic planning of that much more seriously than it has been taken in the past.

We know that we need to build significant amounts of grid—the hon. Gentleman recognised the importance of that—but we also want to plan the future of the energy system strategically so that the grid follows a logical way to build out the energy system. His point about trying to make use of the abundance of clean energy to transfer it into hydrogen as an off-taker was well made. It will feed into the work on the strategic spatial energy plan. It is about how we best use all the energy system to our advantage. It is also about how we can reduce things like constraint payments and make use of it as efficiently as possible. That is an important point that we will take forward.

To conclude, our vision is clear: a thriving low-carbon hydrogen economy—one that decarbonises those hard-to-electrify sectors, strengthens our energy security and fuels good jobs and growth across the country—is at the heart of the Government’s mission.

[Jim Shannon]

I asked a question about the opportunity for apprentices. I know that the Government are committed to that; I have never had any doubt about that, but I want us to show where the opportunities may be. I know that the Minister is also committed to ensuring that all parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland can take advantage.

[Michael Shanks]

A key part of my conclusion was the useful challenge that there always is from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about ensuring that we represent all parts of the United Kingdom. He was right to point out earlier that it is a beautiful part of the country to visit. I confess I have still never been to Strangford, but there is still time.

The hon. Member is right on two other fronts. First, the skills strategy is all about unlocking the next generation of workers. We need to inspire people in school right now to see that we want them to be at the heart of the energy system of the future, and apprenticeships are crucial for doing that. We will create tens of thousands of jobs in the sector, but as part of that there has to be investment in apprenticeships. On his wider point, he knows that I enjoy the engagement with Ministers in devolved Governments across the country. We work closely with the Northern Ireland Executive. As I always say, the energy system is transferred in Northern Ireland, but there is a huge number of areas where we can learn from each other and work together to ensure that the people in Northern Ireland and Great Britain benefit from what we are trying to achieve, and we will continue to do that.

To conclude my conclusion, unless anyone else wants to intervene, we are firm in our commitment to working with industry. There is a huge opportunity here. This is an exciting moment for us to recognise—as we are doing with small modular reactors and with floating offshore wind—that we have the potential to be at the forefront of the next great thing in our energy system. It requires the strategy that we are putting in place and the long-term confidence for investment, and we will continue to work hand in hand with industry, investors, innovators, workers—

[Sadik Al-Hassan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Michael Shanks]

I will not, because I am just about to conclude. We will work with workers and trade unions to turn this vision into reality and ensure that every part of the UK benefits from the potential of growth and jobs in hydrogen and in securing our energy system for the future. I again thank all Members for this hugely constructive debate. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester for the way he introduced it and for the knowledge and experience that he brings to all these matters.