Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 week, 2 days ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
When the price cap fell last month, the Labour party boasted, “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. The Minister knows that energy bills fell as wholesale gas prices fell, and she knows that her policy is to take the country off gas and keep increasing policy costs on bills. That is why she refuses to repeat the claim. Will she take this opportunity to apologise for her party saying something that she knows is untrue?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
Every time the hon. Member stands up to speak, I hold my head in absolute frustration. He is gambling with fossil fuels, and quite frankly the Conservatives should hang their heads in shame. Energy bills rocketed under their watch and they did nothing about it—they were happy with that. That is not a legacy that we are willing to contend with, which is why we are taking action in the short term to drive down bills through our sprint to clean power. Their legacy is one they should be ashamed of, so they should not be lecturing us.
Draft Warm Home Discount (Amendment) Regulations 2025
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I am pleased to respond to the draft regulations on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. Let me start by saying that if the Minister thinks that progress stalled under the last Government, this Government’s abolishing and then reinstating the winter fuel payment has been a funny way of getting around that.
By expanding the warm home discount scheme, the Government are broadening its reach to 6 million households across the UK, up from the 3.4 million households that currently receive the annual £150 energy bill rebate. We should do everything that we can to tackle fuel poverty, but we must ask ourselves what the best way is to resolve the root causes of the energy bills crisis.
Under the warm home discount scheme, the Government are funding support for people who cannot afford their bills by pushing up green levies on everyone’s bills. The impact assessment for this legislation clearly states that the scheme expansion will increase everyone’s bills by £15. The Minister did not mention that when the expansion was announced, but the Government should be honest with the public that they have deliberately take a decision that will increase everyone’s bills. Higher green levies will pay for an increase in the overall cost of the scheme from £600 million to £1 billion.
It is hard to see how this expansion will achieve the Government’s solemn manifesto pledge to cut energy bills by £300 before the end of this Parliament. We are seeing this approach play out across energy policy: the Government raise the cost of energy with their unrealistic decarbonisation policies; energy-intensive industries then suffer under the highest industrial energy prices in Europe; and the Government step in with subsidies to help them cover the cost that they created to begin with. It is madness, and we are now seeing the same thing done for families.
In public policy, the simplest solution is often the best. In the case of fuel poverty, the Government can help everyone afford their bills by delivering abundant and cheap energy, but they are piling on costs through their Clean Power 2030 plan. That will increase the price of carbon to £147 per tonne, which will, in turn, increase bills for every family in the country. We have already paid £700 million so far just this year to turn off wind farms when there has been too much wind. We now hear that we are going to pay solar farms just the same to turn off in certain circumstances. The National Energy System Operator forecasts that these constraint costs will hit £8 billion in 2030 because of Labour’s plans to build more renewables than ever before.
Instead of rushing ahead to build a system entirely dependent on unreliable and expensive renewables such as wind and solar, we should be going further and faster with nuclear and expanding oil and gas exploration in the North sea. Instead, we are importing fossil fuels from Norway, drilled from the very same seabed that we could exploit, while insisting that we are too good and too green to do that for ourselves. All of this is a choice. The Labour party chooses to increase energy costs, including for people on low incomes, with reckless targets and arbitrary mandates. We will abstain on these regulations, but the unavoidable fact remains that this Government are increasing energy bills for the poorest when we ought to be making energy as cheap as possible for everyone.
Nick Timothy
I will go first, then, and allow my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Lewis Cocking) to ask a superior question.
The Minister is talking about fossil fuel prices and how the Government want to take us away from them. We have had an exchange in the past couple of weeks about when the price cap was lowered because of the fall in wholesale gas prices. When that happened, the Labour party put out literature saying, “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. When I put that to the Minister, she disowned that language and used her own words. I understand why; she is an intelligent and principled person, and that poster from Labour was neither intelligent nor principled. Will she apologise for that and say that it was wrong?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We have had this conversation over and over again. What I would say is that we are very clear that we are on a rollercoaster, with fossil fuel prices driving energy bills up and down. We are absolutely committed to dealing with that. We are also absolutely committed to reducing energy bills, which went up and up under the last Government. We will not allow that to happen: we have made a commitment to reduce energy bills by £300 by the end of this Parliament and we are doing the job of making that happen.
I come back to the fact that we have to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. The proposition from the Conservative side, to the extent that it is a proposition, is completely wanting and unrealistic. Families and businesses across the country would be saddled with high prices that were a function of our being on this rollercoaster. We are not willing to contend with such a reality, so we are taking measures. The shadow Minister says that he wants to see more nuclear, but there was not a single expansion of nuclear under the last Government: 14 years absolutely wasted. We are doing the job of getting to clean power in order to reduce energy bills—
Draft Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) (Amendment) Order 2025
Nick Timothy Excerpts(2 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I am pleased to respond on behalf of the Opposition.
The draft order makes modest technical changes to the administration of the energy company obligation scheme, and we will not press it to a vote today. We agree that it is important for low-income households to get the help they need to save money on their energy bills and escape the hardships of fuel poverty. However, Ministers should reflect on how their policies are making energy more expensive for everyone by increasing dependency on costly and unreliable renewables. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, environmental levies will increase from £9.9 billion last year to £14.8 billion by 2030. That is a result of policy choices made by this Government, and the cost will inevitably fall on the vulnerable and make fuel poverty harder to escape.
Last week, I raised with the Minister Labour’s claim on social media: “£129 off your bills, delivered by Labour”. Will she accept that that was wrong, because that fall in prices was driven by reductions in wholesale gas prices? The Government are trying to take the country off gas, while policy costs imposed by Ministers are actually increasing. She disassociated herself from those social media posts last week, so—
Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)
Is the position of the official Opposition now to oppose the good jobs generated by the net zero industry, in particular in my constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages, where the largest employer is a manufacturer for the offshore wind sector?
The Chair
Order. I would be grateful if hon. Members focused on the statutory instrument, which is relatively narrowly drawn.
Nick Timothy
I will just invite the hon. Lady to look at the bigger picture. Manufacturing jobs are being lost because of high energy prices driven by Government policy, the costs of which are increasing, so I invite the Minister to respond to my question. Instead of allowing policy to run faster than the technology will allow, Ministers should focus on how to make energy cheaper and more reliable. That is the real pathway to fighting fuel poverty.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I thank the shadow Minister for his support for these important technical standards. I will address his question and then reiterate why we believe that the proposed changes are so important.
It is incredibly important to stress that levies on bills are funding critical infrastructure. We inherited a situation of under-investment in our networks and transmission and, critically, in the energy mix that we need in order to diversify our energy supply and ensure energy security. That was the Conservative legacy. We are now fixing it, which requires investment, but we are absolutely clear that every pound of investment has to be combined with a very clear plan to get to clean power. That is important because the last five years have shown us that our dependence on fossil fuel markets has left consumers exposed; people have faced record energy bills because of it. The Conservatives were happy with that when they were in government, but it is not something that we are happy with, which is why we are committed to getting to clean power.
Nick Timothy
If it was clear for such a long time that infrastructure needed to be improved and that the right way to do that was increasing levies on bills, why was that not in the Labour manifesto? Why did the Labour manifesto instead promise that bills would be £300 a year cheaper?
The Chair
Please reply briefly, Minister. We are getting off the subject of the statutory instrument.
Business Energy Supply Billing: Regulation
Nick Timothy Excerpts(3 weeks, 2 days ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I am pleased to respond to the debate on behalf of the Opposition. I congratulate the hon. Member for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards) on securing it. She gave a serious and passionate speech about the injustices experienced by too many businesses, and I commend her campaign and encourage all small businesses to visit her website so that they can tell their stories and give their evidence.
Every Member’s speech confirmed what a significant problem this is. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) reminded us of the effects on our high streets. With his usual journalistic flair for arresting language, my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper) questioned Ofgem’s wide remit, which ranges from regulating careless errors, such as mix-ups between night and day meter readings leading to intimidating demands for bills as high as £18,000, to systemic failures and cynical malpractice. We need the Government to act.
Even apparently innocent mistakes come with a terrible burden for small businesses. We all know the pain and stress of the bureaucracy we have to handle when there is a problem, and sometimes that bureaucracy feels like a deliberate hurdle that has been constructed by the businesses in question. Small firms have to contend not just with high costs, but with lost time, which is a highly precious commodity for them.
We must also consider the systemic problems. The hon. Member for Tamworth mentioned kickbacks for brokers who push more expensive contracts, and she rightly asked about the powers available to deal with errant companies. I thought her comparison with fines for breaches of data laws was apposite. Will the Minister tell us when we can expect the review of Ofgem to conclude? Can we expect increases in the fines levied against companies when they fall short?
As the hon. Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) suggested, high energy costs themselves are a huge problem. It is not just about the conduct of businesses; we must explore the effects of wider Government policy, too, because no country in history has ever made itself richer by making energy more expensive. First fossil fuels and then nuclear powered the industrial and technological revolutions of the 19th and 20th centuries, and yet it is the policy of our Government to increase the price of energy and make its supply less reliable. They are defying common sense by pushing up demand for electricity with their ideological targets for decarbonising the grid and rolling out heat pumps and electric vehicles. Large-scale electrification is pushing the grid to its limits; it is already struggling to supply new homes, factories and data centres. We can clearly see the effect on energy bills for businesses.
The Climate Change Committee—an unelected and unaccountable quango against which Ministers offer little or no resistance—says the cost of electrification must be shifted on to bills for gas and oil. For years the climate lobby insisted that renewables were cheaper than gas, but now that they have to put their money where their mouth is, they want to put the public’s money where their mouth is—now that the world can see the truth, they want to transfer the massive cost of renewables on to gas bills.
The renewables obligation, feed-in tariffs and the capacity market are all direct costs to business. Environmental levies are already projected by the Office for Budget Responsibility to increase from £9.9 billion last year to £14.8 billion by 2030. Those hidden costs support the complex web of public subsidies that prop up wind and solar. Wind and solar generators are given billions of pounds in subsidies paid through green levies. Without those subsidies, most of them would not be commercially viable. The levies are not the only costs created by a dependence on unreliable renewables; customers also bear the balancing costs that are paid to generators to switch their power on and off. As wind and solar expand, those costs will triple to £8 billion by 2030.
Grid decarbonisation will create a carbon price of £147 per tonne of CO2, which is 2.7 times higher than the current level. Ever-rising carbon prices will be locked in under the EU reset deal, which will keep us aligned with the EU emissions trading system. We already have the highest industrial energy prices in Europe. Our energy consumption fell last year by 0.1%—we were the only G7 country where that happened, apart from Japan and Germany. Despite global energy demand getting ever higher, our energy supply fell by an average of 2.1% per year between 2014 and 2024. Output from energy-intensive industries has fallen to its lowest level since the 1990s.
Decarbonisation is undoubtedly fuelling deindustrialisation. Just last week, it was announced that a facility in Teesside, one of the largest chemical plants in the country, will be permanently closed. The Grangemouth oil refinery stopped processing crude oil last April. British Steel has been brought to its knees. Yesterday, we heard the sad news about the Prax Lindsey oil refinery.
The Energy Secretary wants to blame international gas prices for our insane energy prices, when he has been throwing policy costs on to British industry to subsidise expensive and unreliable renewables. Now he says he will subsidise heavy industry to counter the cost of the renewable subsidies he is making it pay. There are countries, such as the United States, that rely much more on fossil fuels and have lower energy costs than we do. Labour is trying to con the public by blaming global prices, when it is the one that is piling on policy costs.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
We will raise the issue of deemed contracts with the regulator and the ombudsman. More broadly, my hon. Friend has raised specific concerns about the ombudsman’s approach. There is a clear complaints procedure, so if constituents feel that they have not had the service that they require, there is a process to escalate their complaint up the hierarchy of the ombudsman and consumers should use it.
My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of the Ofgem review, as did other Members. I could not agree more; we need a regulator with teeth that is on the side of consumers. As part of our manifesto, we promised to strengthen Ofgem, to ensure that it can hold companies to account for wrongdoing and require higher standards of performance, and to make sure that customers receive automatic customer compensation for poor service. To address that, in December, we launched a comprehensive review of Ofgem. We are in the weeds of that review, which will conclude in the autumn. Critically for me, the review will establish Ofgem as a strong consumer regulator. It will ensure that Ofgem is equipped to address unacceptable instances of customer failing and, importantly, we want it to reset consumers’ confidence in a system that, quite frankly, they have lost confidence in.
In response to the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (John Cooper), the review will specifically look at whether Ofgem has the right remit, mandate, tools and powers to do the job that consumers expect. We want to ensure that all the examples are represented, so we have done a big call for evidence. We are doing huge amounts of engagement to make sure that all the evidence informs the final conclusions of the review. Critically, it will also look at redress, because we know that we need to get that right. The point has been made over and over again that it is about setting in place the right regulatory framework, but also about making sure that there are repercussions when compliance does not happen, and that there are clear enforcement mechanisms. We want to ensure that the regulator has all that.
We know that the cost of energy is a massive issue for businesses across the country, particularly small businesses. This issue, and the question of whether we cap energy bills for non-domestic customers, was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Kevin Bonavia) and the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings). We have taken the judgment that the way that we respond to energy bills that are too high is to sprint in order to deliver clean power and break our dependence on fossil fuel markets so that we can drive down costs and bills for consumers. The shadow Minister is wrong: this is not and never was ideological. We have seen the worst energy crisis in a generation and our dependence on fossil fuels was at the root of that. That crisis, not on our shores, meant that businesses and consumers across the country were paying the price. That is why diversifying our energy mix, whether Members believe in net zero or not, and generating home-grown clean energy that we control are the routes out of this bind and out of volatility. That will deliver energy security for families and fundamentally secure family and business finances.
Nick Timothy
The Minister, as Ministers do, made a point about the volatility of gas prices. When wholesale gas prices fell and the price cap was lowered, the Labour party put out posters saying, “Labour have just cut your energy bills.” Will she accept that it was wrong for the Labour party to do that, when that fall was because of the reduction in wholesale prices and nothing to do with policy costs, which were actually increasing?
Miatta Fahnbulleh
My words were very clear. We welcome the reductions in energy prices, but we were very clear that we are on a rollercoaster: prices go up and prices go down. We must get off the rollercoaster so that we deliver energy security. That will deliver price stability and fundamentally secure family finances.
Miatta Fahnbulleh
I will make some progress.
I want to end by addressing the issue of energy brokers, which has been raised. We know that many energy brokers can help businesses to save money on their bills with contracts tailored to their needs. However, we have also seen evidence of opaque charging structures and unfair sales practices. We are hugely conscious of that, and last year the Government launched a consultation on introducing regulation of third party intermediaries such as energy brokers, aimed at enhancing consumer protection, particularly for non-domestic consumers, where we have recognised that there is an issue that must be addressed. The consultation has now closed, and I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth that the Government are working through the huge volume of responses that we received and will respond in due course.
Finally, to the hon. Members—
Draft Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 3) Regulations 2025
Nick Timothy Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this sweltering evening, Mr Swayne.
Nick Timothy
Sir Desmond—I apologise; I will announce my resignation later this evening.
I am pleased to respond to the draft regulations for the Opposition. Under this legislation, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero will be given new powers to view anonymised CfD bids before setting the budget for the next auction of contracts, due to take place later this year. That means that he will know ahead of time exactly how much will be procured if he sets the budget at a certain level, and therefore what the strike price will be. That poses questions about exactly how much the next round of CfD contracts—AR7—will end up costing the taxpayer.
Already, the process has been delayed. The previous allocation round was a record-breaking £1.5 billion, after the Secretary of State turned on the money machine. Everyone in industry—and, I suspect, Ministers too—believes that AR7 will be even more expensive. Ministers have made clear their intention to extend the CfD contracts to 20 years in an attempt to get strike prices down. Whether they succeed or fail in that respect, let us be clear about what it all means in the end: more expensive bills for the public—the very opposite of what the party promised before the election.
I note that the Minister, in her opening speech, talked again about the volatility of gas prices and repeated the soundbite about the rollercoaster of gas prices. I would appreciate it if, in her response to me, she explained why the Labour party has taken credit in its campaign materials for the reduction in bills caused by the fall in wholesale gas prices, when policy costs have actually increased.
Why are Ministers having to pump so much more money into CfD contracts? It is because of the Government’s ideological rush to decarbonise the grid within five years. That requires a massive expansion in wind power over the next two auctions, and the result will be higher prices forced on to households and businesses. We know that not just from experience and an understanding of how renewable technologies work, but because it has come from the horse’s mouth, too. Behind closed doors, a senior RWE executive has admitted that there would be “spikes in prices” and predicted that the “consumer risks losing out”. In other words, bills are going up. It would be nice if we could have such honesty from the Government.
This is the reality of net zero. Last January, a combination of dark skies and low wind—what has now become known as Dunkelflaute—brought Britain to the brink of blackouts. That was avoided only thanks to our remaining gas fleets, which the Government say they want to run down. The Prime Minister has promised categorically that decarbonising the grid by 2030 will not cause any power shortages, blackouts or energy rationing, yet unreliable solar contributed to a lack of inertia in the Iberian grid that could have prevented their power outages. In Britain, customers have paid over half a billion pounds already this year for power generated by wind, with which the grid cannot cope.
The OBR says that the costs of all these subsidies, and the hidden costs of renewables, will rise by 60% over the course of this Parliament. Wind is more expensive and highly unreliable, but the Government want more of it, instead of more reliable energy sources, such as gas and nuclear. I hope the Minister can take this opportunity today to explain in clear terms what this legislation will mean for the future of our energy system. Can she provide a date for when the allocation round 7 administrative strike prices will be published? Can she confirm that the budget will be kept as low as possible to keep strike prices as low as possible?
How will Ministers ensure value for money when they are trying to procure record capacity? Can the Minister tell us now that strike prices for offshore wind will be lower than those in AR6, and can she confirm that strike prices will be lower than the price of gas-powered electricity last year? If she cannot answer those questions, how can she possibly say that this legislation will cut bills? The public deserve the truth about how the Government are using their money to chase the ideological and the unachievable. Pushing policy to run faster than technology will allow, which is exactly what this Government are doing, will only lead us further away from genuine energy abundance, and leave our country not only poorer but less secure.
Kerry McCarthy
We have nuclear production in this country—[Interruption.] We have nuclear power as part of the mix. Obviously, the investment we have just announced does not come into effect for a while, but we have that as part of the mix. We have said that there will be 95% clean power with gas as a back-up if needed. We are not putting all our eggs in one basket by any means whatsoever.
Nick Timothy
One of the questions I asked was, why, given that the Minister and other Ministers keep talking about the rollercoaster of volatile fossil fuel prices, when wholesale costs fell, causing the price cap to fall, did the Labour party put out posters saying, “£129 off your bills delivered by Labour”? Will the Minister confirm that that reduction reflects the reduction in wholesale prices and has nothing to do with what the Government have done with policy?
Kerry McCarthy
I am not aware of that announcement, not least because I am not the Energy Minister—he is in the Chamber, making a statement about the oil refinery. But we are doing all we can to bring down consumer bills, and I think we deserve some credit for our efforts.
To conclude, meeting the Government’s commitment to the clean energy superpower mission, including clean power by 2030, will require a rapid and sustained scale-up of low carbon electricity. That will entail working with the private sector to radically increase the deployment of low carbon electricity, while at the same time protecting consumers. The instrument under discussion—in the loosest possible sense of the word, given how the debate has ranged over a number of other topics—is a step forward in achieving those ambitions; it supports the delivery of a clean power system, which shields families from volatile gas prices.
By amending the contract budget publication process and allowing the Secretary of State access to anonymised bid information, we will ensure that the previous underspend risks seen for fixed-bottom offshore wind are minimised, and the Government having greater certainty of outcome in the auction to procure more fixed-bottom offshore wind will allow us to make an informed decision on balancing capacity with costs to consumers.
The UK is a world leader in offshore wind, with 15.9 GW generating electricity. We have the highest deployment in Europe and are second in the world only to China. This policy intervention is another strong signal of the Government’s commitment to scale up deployment of fixed-bottom offshore wind to the benefit of businesses, bill payers and local communities. The instrument will build on the success of the CFD scheme—I will be polite and not mention how AR5 went under the previous Government compared with AR6 under us—adapting it in line with market and technological developments, and contributing to the UK’s crucial net zero targets and 2030 clean power mission. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Geo-engineering and the Environment
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I am pleased to respond to this brief debate on geo-engineering and the environment, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on starting the debate. I agree that solar radiation management would be a reckless experiment that risks all our futures.
The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) used the opportunity to speak about climate change. Although she and I probably disagree profoundly about the wisdom of the net zero target and the plan to decarbonise the whole grid by 2030, I am sure she opposes, as I do, the giant solar and battery farms that the Government want to impose on both our constituencies and most of the east of England.
My party’s position on SRM is clear. We oppose any attempts to seed the sky, and every effort must be made to be respectful of nature and our planet. Chasing such hare-brained scientific schemes to interfere with the climate and the atmosphere will not give us answers to any live public policy dilemmas. The Met Office has confirmed that we do not have enough evidence to understand how effective geo-engineering like SRM might be, and we do not know what unintended consequences might occur for human and environmental health.
Ministers have said there are no plans to fund experimentation with solar radiation modification, but public concern was prompted by the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency offering £56.8 million of public money to examine climate cooling theory. It is important to say that the research does not, as far as I am aware, include any practical attempts to manipulate the climate, but was a study in relation to the theory of these methods.
Having been very clear about the Conservative position, I invite the Minister to provide a clear statement that the Government will not support SRM. Given the concern expressed by the public through the petition and the members of the public attending today, I am sure she will want to give everybody an unambiguous reassurance that that is indeed the case and that the Government will not come forward with such methods.
Future of the Gas Grid
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I am pleased to respond to this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) on moving his motion just in time, and on his birthday. He gave an excellent speech, once he got his breath back, and I thought his warning about an overloaded electricity grid was very wise.
There was a lot of agreement in the debate. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) joined the hon. Member for Cannock Chase in pointing out the prohibitive cost of heat pumps. The hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) pointed out the particular challenges for rural communities. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) rightly did his duty representing that part of the country by talking about the jobs that depend on oil and gas.
The hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), from the land of my grandmother’s birth, reminded us of the Northern Ireland experience and the importance of geography when we debate energy. That was reinforced by the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins), who rightly said that we will continue to need a national gas grid, because of the nature of the demand for gas. I thought he was right to criticise the Climate Change Committee for proposing no gas for heating homes. I think the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) put it well when he said that Britain runs on gas. He noted the challenge of reconciling the policy to decarbonise with maintaining fairness for families.
We must always be honest about trade-offs when we talk about policy, which is one of the things about which I will try to warn the Minister. The Government may come to regret their failure to do so on several fronts, particularly on net zero. Sadly, that is a lesson, especially on net zero, that my party has drawn from its time in office, including the unhappy end of that time.
Many businesses will continue to use gas and do not have the option to go fully electric. Half a million businesses rely on gas, and not all of them will survive the switch to electricity. As the hon. Member for Peterborough mentioned, big industries continue to rely on gas, such as chemicals, ceramics and—we have similar constituency interests—the sugar industry, among many others. Smaller businesses are just as affected. Chip shops, curry houses and many businesses I do not frequent will also face cost increases from electrification because of higher levies on their energy bills. Unfortunately, Ministers have said little to reassure those businesses that there is a plan to help them and to remember them.
This is also putting a significant cost on ordinary families. Let us look at gas boilers. I challenged the Minister on that during Energy questions last week, but the Energy Secretary and the ministerial team have refused to rule out new taxes, charges or levies on gas bills to fund lower levies on electricity bills, which means a net tax rise for the 80% of households that rely on gas. This was not even mentioned before the general election, although hon. Members will remember the promise to cut everyone’s energy bills by £300 by the end of this Parliament. Instead, energy bills have risen so far by an average of £111. While Labour sought to take the credit for the recent fall in wholesale gas prices, the policy costs for which they are responsible are rising.
Running down gas also denies how important it still is as a reliable source of power. Just this morning, a new National Gas report found an 18% increase in gas for power generation last year compared with the year before. At its peak, 65% of our power came from gas, with a half-hourly peak of 73%. This was caused partly by a major drop in wind power, which meant that we had to import more gas from countries as varied as the US, Norway, Qatar, Peru, Trinidad and other places. NESO might be planning another gas-free 30 minutes for the grid this summer, but the power of gas remains formidable and essential. People do not want to be forced to give up gas. Around 80% of the country relies on gas in some way or another. That is more than 20 million homes put at risk by any policy to force people off gas and on to less reliable and more expensive alternatives.
The Chancellor said during her statement on the spending review that
“energy security is national security.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 979.]
We agree with that, which is why the anti-gas stance of the Energy Secretary is baffling. We continue to rely on gas—in any given year, 40% of the energy used in the UK comes from it. It is a flexible and reliable source of power. It ensures that there is inertia in the grid, preventing blackouts of the kind that we recently saw in Spain and Portugal, where a lack of conventional power generation from sources such as gas contributed to mass power outages. New data centres are connecting to the gas grid to secure on-site power, instead of using wind or solar, and with good reason. But the Government want to reduce gas to below 5% of our electricity supply by 2030, and use it only as a back-up for unreliable renewables.
The Energy Secretary is being very ideological and basing decisions on dodgy claims about global fossil fuel markets. There is no single global gas market in the way that he has described on several occasions. Fossil fuel prices are higher in Europe than America, which is more dependent on fossil fuels than we are. The prices are higher here because of policy choices.
For example, blocking new oil and gas licences in the North sea only makes us more dependent on expensive, dirtier foreign imports, to the benefit of others. We are importing oil and gas from Norway from the very same seabed that we could exploit, while insisting that we are “too good” and “too green” to do that ourselves. British businesses and jobs could be benefiting from this industry, rather than being cut off. The policy does not even work on its own terms, because liquefied natural gas has four times the emissions of North sea oil and gas. As the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East mentioned, 120,000 jobs in the North sea are at risk. It does not make sense to shut down our own gas production when Norwegian oil and gas continues to be drilled from the North sea.
That is why I am glad that the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), announced that our party is committed to stopping the punishment of our domestic energy industry with damaging taxation. It is wrong for the energy profits levy to continue until 2030; we believe that it should be removed altogether, along with the ban on oil and gas exports. This change would actually increase revenue in the long run.
It is not just the North sea that we should worry about. Britain is the largest gas boiler manufacturer in Europe. Our gas grid is world-leading, but 130,000 gas engineers and 150,000 oil and gas sector jobs are now under threat. Deliberately winding down the gas industry is an extraordinary act of economic self-harm.
For all the Government’s talking down of fossil fuels, our gas grid is incredibly stable and resilient. The gas grid depends on over 30 large gas power stations, and the gas comes in through interconnectors, LNG imports, and from Norway and the North sea. Our gas grid is a vital connection point for the European gas supply, especially following the Ukraine invasion.
Major public investment has already gone into the gas grid to help modernise and reduce failures and leaks. This makes up 5,000 miles of steel pipes and more than 60 jet engines to move the gas around the country. Our gas grid can also play an important role in reducing carbon emissions through, for example, expanding the use of hydrogen. In contrast, the cost of decommissioning the gas grid has been estimated at between £46 billion and £70 billion.
The Government’s plans are causing major uncertainty for investors, businesses and workers when they should be standing squarely behind a critical industry that has an important role to play in our economic prosperity and energy security. Ministers are allowing policy to race ahead of the technology, threatening to destabilise the grid and our economy. It is clear that the gas grid has a crucial role to play in our energy mix if we are to protect families and businesses from rising costs. I do not doubt that the Minister will say that he agrees with that, but the test will be in action and policy, not words.
Nuclear Power: Investment
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
The Conservative party is a pro-nuclear party and we welcome any decisions, backed by investment, that increase Britain’s nuclear capacity, because we cannot deliver cheap, reliable and secure energy without it. Although the investment announced today by the Secretary of State is significant, it is a fraction of the £230 billion cost, which will ultimately be borne by consumers, of his plan to decarbonise the grid. Unlike the intermittent technologies backed at such cost by the Secretary of State, nuclear provides reliable baseload power. It generates inertia to stabilise our grid. Nuclear power plants require substantially less new grid infrastructure compared with dispersed generation from wind and solar. It is to the shame of successive Governments over many years that Britain relinquished its status as a world leader in civil nuclear technologies. In 1965, we had more nuclear reactors than the United States, the USSR and the rest of the world put together. Between 1956 and 1966, we built 10 nuclear power stations, but we gave all that up. The contribution of nuclear to our power generation peaked in 1994 and has fallen consistently since then.
Labour came to power in 1997, saying that it saw no economic case for the building of any new nuclear power stations. In 2010, the coalition agreement ruled out public investment in nuclear. It was the last Conservative Government who planned the largest revival of nuclear power in 70 years and it is thanks to that work that the Secretary of State has been able to make many of these announcements today. Can he reiterate, despite the headlines this morning, that the final investment decision has not yet been made? He said in his statement that he will announce it in the summer, but can he give us a more precise date when we will be told the total Government investment and the private capital raised?
This statement is a downgrade on what the previous Government put in motion. Today, the Energy Secretary has announced only one small modular reactor. There is no clear target to increase nuclear power generation and no news on Wylfa. The nuclear industry is expecting news of a third gigawatt scale reactor. The previous Government purchased the land and committed to build, but on this today the Energy Secretary said nothing. Can he commit to the planning inherited for a third gigawatt scale plant at Wylfa and will he recommit to the Conservative policy of 24 GW of nuclear power by 2050?
Although it is good news that Rolls-Royce will build our first small modular reactors, this is a downgrade on what was previously planned. Can the Secretary of State tell us why he has awarded just one technology rather than two as set out previously? Furthermore, will he commit, as other countries have, to going faster?
Canada has approved a plan for four SMRs by 2029. As things stand, Britain will not have SMRs connected to the grid until the 2030s. The contrast between this caution on nuclear and the Government’s rush to decarbonise the entire grid in just five years, while betting the house on unreliable and intermittent renewable technologies and shutting down British oil and gas in the North sea, could not be clearer. We need the Energy Secretary to focus on the positive, not to stake our country’s future and people’s bills on ideology.
Ed Miliband
I feel a bit sorry for the hon. Gentleman; it is hard on a day like this to be an Opposition Member. Nevertheless, I will try to answer his questions, such as they are. On the question about the final investment decision, he will be aware that we are currently doing the private sector capital raise. When that is complete, we will proceed to the final investment decision, which will take place this summer. That is obviously important.
On his fundamental question, I do slightly scratch my head, because he says that this is a downgrade—we have announced the largest nuclear building programme in 50 years! What he says might have looked good in the mirror this morning, but it does not bear much resemblance to reality. The question, which goes to the point I made at the end of my statement, is this: why did the Conservatives make all these promises on nuclear but fail to deliver them? There is a simple answer. It was not because of a lack of diligence from his colleague the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie). The simple reason is that they did not put up the money. They did not make the investment. The one thing that has bedevilled the nuclear programme is a failure to invest public money.
In this spending review we are putting in £14 billion for Sizewell, £2.5 billion for SMRs, and £2.5 billion for fusion. Those are significant sums of long-term capital investment. The Conservatives made all these promises, but they did not put in the money. I was the guy who identified Sizewell, and I am back here delivering Sizewell. This Government are willing to make the investment. We welcome the support from the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), such as it is, but he needs to learn some lessons. Public investment, not decline, is the answer for Britain.
Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)
We welcome the Government’s renewed focus on energy security through nuclear power as part of the energy mix. It is long overdue, after years of dither and delay from successive Conservative Governments. It has been 16 years since Sizewell C was first announced in 2009, and now, seven Prime Ministers later, we are finally seeing real movement. That is not a success story but a warning. Short-term thinking, poor delivery and exorbitant costs—
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. The Energy Secretary has said that there is a “principled case” for removing green taxes from electricity bills, and the cost being met by increases in green taxes on gas bills. That would be a net tax rise for every household—80% of the country—that uses gas. This was not an argument that he made before the election, so can the Minister take this opportunity to rule out any increase in taxes, charges or levies on gas bills?
Michael Shanks
On the Government Benches, we are trying to cut people’s bills as quickly as possible. The hon. Gentleman was a core part of a Government who failed to do that for many years. I am surprised that he did not rise to congratulate Great British Energy on its investment in solar panels on schools and hospitals, because his constituents are benefiting from one on a hospital and one on a school. He should welcome that.
Nick Timothy
If the hon. Member wants to talk about my constituency, he can talk about the betrayal of the Sunnica application, which is being imposed on my constituency by the Energy Secretary. The public will see that the answer was not a “no” from the Minister. Families across the country should be worried; this is becoming a pattern. For weeks, I asked Ministers about their plan to align with the European carbon price. For weeks, they denied that it would happen, and then, once the local elections were done, they did it, increasing electricity bills by stealth for every family and business in the country. Now it is the same for gas bills. When will the Minister be straight with people and admit that the Government are adding to the bills of families and businesses, not cutting them?
Michael Shanks
The House will have heard the shadow Minister’s failure to welcome solar panels on a hospital and a school in his constituency, but he can deal with his own constituents. On the question of the emissions trading system, on one side, we have National Grid, Energy UK, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, Make UK and the Confederation of British Industry welcoming it. On the other side, we have the shadow Minister and the deputy leader of the Reform party, the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice). I think I know who I would take my advice from.
Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations
Nick Timothy Excerpts(1 month, 2 weeks ago)
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Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, and I hope to give a voice to your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, given the interest in this important subject in Romsey and Southampton North. I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing the debate and making such a comprehensive speech. He was even wise enough to quote the fire experts from the county that matters most—by which I obviously mean Suffolk.
The fact that there were such clear themes from Members across the House and across the divides of the House—right and left, net zero enthusiasts and sceptics—shows that we are dealing with an undeniable problem that the Government have not yet gripped. There was a clear consensus across the House, from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), that there is a total absence of regulation with this risky technology. There was also agreement, from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas), about the effects of the policy on the countryside, such as on the availability of good farmland and on rural roads, as well as the challenges of fire service response times in the country. The hon. Members for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) made the point that BESS fires can have serious effects on our precious rivers.
I also want to single out the speech by the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), who drew attention to the dodgy finances of a lot of the firms behind a lot of these applications. That is something we need to investigate further. There was broad agreement on the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) that these battery sites should not be allowed to go ahead until a proper system of regulation is introduced.
I am afraid that I am going to breach the cross-party love-in by picking up on what my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) said about ideology. The Government are betting on battery energy storage systems thanks to their ideological aim to decarbonise the entire grid within five years, therefore choosing to depend on unreliable, intermittent and expensive renewables. That is the root cause of the dependence on the technologies we are debating. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) can intervene if he wishes.
It is the consequence of the zeal of the Energy Secretary that we are debating these subjects. Thanks to net zero policy costs, which are relevant more than wholesale gas prices, Britain already has the highest energy costs in Europe. Pushing policy to run faster than technology will allow risks a crisis in the grid and in our economy.
James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)
As someone who worked in the energy industry for five years before coming to this place, I would appreciate some honesty in recognising that the applications the hon. Gentleman has just referenced have been in the pipeline for a lot longer than the Labour Government have been in power.
Nick Timothy
The hon. Member will note the enthusiasm and ideological zeal of the Energy Secretary, which began, I think, in his very first week when he came to this House and announced that he was imposing masses of solar farms on parts of the country and, in the case of the solar farm in my constituency, completely disregarding the independent expert examining authority. That is a clear difference between the two Governments we are discussing.
Mass solar is inefficient and produces less power even than wind, which has a higher load factor—between 10% and 11% for solar, between 22% and 28% for onshore wind, and between 30% and 38% for offshore wind. And that is wind, which is unreliable in itself. The comparison worsens next to nuclear, as it would take 8.5 million solar panels, taking up at least 10,000 acres of often top-quality farmland, to produce enough power to match an average reactor. To the surprise of no one, the World Bank says we are one of the countries with the “least generous conditions” for PV. Indeed, we rank higher only than Ireland.
Batteries and solar panels also expose us to dependence on China, which produces more than 80% of the world’s solar panels. Many are made with slave labour, and perhaps all contain kill switches controlled by Beijing. While an amendment to the GB Energy Bill was passed to ban the Government’s new quango from using slave-made imports, it does not apply to private sector purchases. So much for ending our dependence on foreign dictatorships and human rights abusers. So much for our energy security.
Giant solar fails even on its own terms, because it is four times more carbon-intensive than wind and nuclear. Apart from biomass, solar is the most polluting of all renewables.
As this debate has shown, there are very real safety concerns about the battery sites that we must address. These battery sites pose a public safety risk that the Government are simply ignoring. With 150 BESS sites already in operation, and with well over 1,000 planning applications in the pipeline, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) noted, this needs to be confronted as a matter of urgency. Building these sites and trying to deal with the safety questions later is reckless, expensive and dangerous.
When a fire starts at a BESS site, highly toxic emissions are released into the air. They include chemicals such as hydrogen fluoride, heavy metals and carcinogens, forcing people to stay indoors. These fires do not need oxygen to keep burning, so they can last for weeks. They can be reignited easily, and the health effects of exposure to these gases are a major concern.
Just look at the fire in Liverpool four years ago, which several Members cited. It took 59 hours to put out. In answer to my written questions, the Government have confirmed that no environmental impact assessment has been made of that incident, so no lessons are being learned. And this year we have seen fires at battery sites near Rothienorman in Aberdeenshire, and in East Tilbury in Essex.
I have repeatedly raised fire safety directly with Ministers, but no satisfactory answers have been given. The Government have made no assessment of the adequacy of fire services near battery sites. There is minimal oversight from the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency.
The National Fire Chiefs Council recommends a minimum distance of 25 metres between grid-scale batteries and occupied buildings, but it is only guidance and there is no statutory requirement to maintain this distance. As the Liverpool fire proves, a major blaze can affect people over a much wider area anyway.
We need clear involvement from the fire and rescue services in the planning application process for battery sites, looking at concerns around construction, fire safety and retrofitting. Henry Griffin from Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service has described battery sites as an “emerging risk”, saying:
“There can be complications with vapour clouds and fires will last a long time.”
Fire services have no legal power to enforce safety measures on battery sites. We need legislation and residents need a say.
Sunnica is one of the biggest solar and battery farms in the country, as mentioned by my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), and it has been imposed on our constituents by the Energy Secretary. Three days after entering office, the Energy Secretary approved the application, overruling the advice of examining authorities and, quite clearly from his answer to my question, he had not read the evidence—breaching his quasi-judicial responsibility.
Sunnica will cover over 2,500 acres of prime agricultural land across West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire. Three battery sites will be built, and the whole project will actually increase carbon emissions. Sunnica has treated residents with contempt and used consultants who specialise in questionable assessments of the quality of farmland. Sunnica is also located very close to the RAF bases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath, which host the US air force, and many service personnel live in the area. We believe Russia has already targeted those bases with drones recently, and the director general of MI5 says that arson and sabotage are part of the Russian modus operandi in European countries. To approve Sunnica without assessing this very serious danger is grossly negligent.
Rushing towards mass solar and battery farms like this is an act of ideological irresponsibility. It is bad energy policy, reducing our energy security while increasing the cost of energy for families and businesses.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
Order. The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) might like to read the handbook on how Parliamentary Private Secretaries should behave. It is not their job to be heard. If he wishes to contribute to a debate on a policy area, perhaps he should resign his position and return to the Back Benches.
Nick Timothy
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Member for Ipswich were more confident in his arguments, he might want to stand up and take part.
As I was saying, it is bad energy policy, reducing our energy security while increasing the cost of energy for families and businesses. It is bad farming policy because it puts some of our best agricultural land beyond use, and as this debate has shown, it is bad for public safety, because the Government, in their haste and zeal, want to ignore the very serious dangers these batteries bring.