Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The Government’s rush to decarbonise the grid means more hidden costs, more curtailment payments, more balancing payments, more subsidies and a higher carbon price. Will the Minister guarantee that our carbon price will remain lower than the European price for the remainder of this Parliament?

[Michael Shanks]

I think the hon. Gentleman knows more than anyone about the work that the previous Prime Minister Theresa May did in this area—work that his party is now moving away from rapidly. The Conservatives were right then: the only way for us to bring down bills, deliver economic growth and tackle the economic opportunities is for us to be on this journey together. Conservative Members used to strongly believe in that. We will continue on that path because it is the right thing for the country to do.

[Nick Timothy]

That was a long-winded answer, but the Minister did not actually address the question, and I think he just gave away that it is Labour’s secret plan to increase the price of carbon—a massive rise in the carbon price—adding hundreds of pounds to families’ bills and decimating British industry. Given Labour’s election promise to cut bills, will he take this moment—he can look up into the camera if he likes—to promise the country that by the next election bills will be lower, as Labour promised? Yes or no?

[Michael Shanks]

Never mind long-winded answers—that was a very long-winded question. I have not revealed any secret plans, but the Conservatives have revealed their not so secret plan, and I can tell the county that it is just as disappointing as the one the country rejected seven months ago. We have been very clear that it is our commitment to bring down bills, and we are determined to deliver on that. Unlike the Conservative party, which left consumers across the country exposed to volatile fossil fuel markets—the hon. Gentleman is right to point out that bills went up and up and up when his party was in government—we will bring them down. His party wants to take us back to the fossil fuel casino but we will not do that.

Renewables Obligation Certificate Scheme

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2025 Westminster Hall

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

Thank you, Dr Murrison—I shan’t promote you any further than that just yet.

I am pleased to respond to this important debate on the renewables obligation certificate scheme. Although the scheme was closed in 2017, its costs remain with us and are a reminder of how difficult it can be to unwind long Government contracts. I congratulate my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Terry Jermy), on securing this debate, which I believe is his first in Westminster Hall. I am sure he will get to debate more glamorous issues than chicken litter in the future.

Like South West Norfolk, my constituency of West Suffolk has chicken farmers grappling with many of the issues raised by Members, including avian flu, which the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned. I echo what the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) said about the cost of energy in rural areas, which is very often overlooked.

I will not join the commentary from the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) about the predecessor of the hon. Member for South West Norfolk. I did plenty of that in The Daily Telegraph before I was a Member of Parliament. It is pleasing that Suffolk and East Anglia are so well represented today.

We must always be very careful when considering how public money is spent, especially when it comes to subsidies. There are lots of reasons why the Government might sometimes provide public support towards outcomes that are not necessarily the most narrowly efficient, but promote a wider social or local economic good, but they must always guarantee value for money for the families who ultimately foot the bill. Renewals obligation subsidies have fallen short of that standard. Originally introduced in 2002 by the last Labour Government, and closed to new entrants in 2017 by the last Conservative Government, the renewals obligation remains a significant drain on the public finances, providing a fixed rate of financial support through 20-year-long contracts.

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

By the time that the new renewables obligation closed, the cost of large-scale offshore wind had come down by half, allowing contracts for difference to be introduced, which have seen it grow at scale. It has enabled a brand-new industry to start and progress in this country, has it not?

[Nick Timothy]

I will turn to contracts for difference in a moment. We may discuss them in this debate, or perhaps in other fora, but it is important that we are honest with ourselves about the full costs of some of the renewable technologies upon which we have come to depend. With the hidden costs that apply to wind farms, I do not think that we have been quite so honest. That is not a party political point but something that has been true across the party divide. In 2023-24 the scheme cost £7.6 billion, and it will remain high, at £6.9 billion in 2028-29, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. That proves how dangerous it can be to lock in subsidy schemes under lengthy contracts, with the cost passed on to people’s energy bills.

That is not the only zombie renewables subsidy scheme. Introduced in April 2010, feed-in tariffs were made available for schemes with capacity for 5 MW or less as an alternative for smaller projects, such as rooftop solar panels. Closed to new entrants in 2019, the scheme still sustains 20-year-long contracts, and £1.84 billion of feed-in tariff payments were made last year. Far from saving money, renewables subsidies have come with significant long-term costs.

The phasing out of the renewables obligation and feed-in tariffs is being used by the Government in their efforts to hoodwink the public on the true costs of their net zero policies. The National Energy System Operator’s 2030 report made several highly questionable assumptions about how the Government’s goal of decarbonising the grid will cut energy bills. One of the points made by NESO was that energy bills would fall due to the expiration of the renewables obligation and feed-in tariff contracts, but those contracts will expire regardless of the speed of decarbonisation, so it is misleading to include that as a benefit of the Government’s deeply flawed clean energy plan. We will see costs increase significantly elsewhere, thanks to Government policies.

The renewables obligation and feed-in tariff schemes should be a warning. The Government are consulting on substantial changes to the next round of contracts for difference, which replace the previous subsidy schemes. They include easing eligibility criteria for fixed-bottom offshore wind, as well as extending the lifetime of contracts subsidising renewables from 15 years to 20 years. We are at risk of wasting billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in a race to meet the unrealistic clean power target.

[Melanie Onn]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous. What he says is very interesting, but I am not entirely clear where he is headed. Is this a shift in Conservative policy on green industry and the renewables industry, which they have previously championed, or is this just an attack on Labour’s plans because he does not like them?

[Nick Timothy]

I would never suggest that the hon. Lady has tracked everything that I have written through my career, but I have been making these arguments for a number of years. The Leader of the Opposition has made the point that one of the things our party did not get right in government was setting ambitious goals on things such as energy policy without having a clear enough plan to deliver them. My concern, and the concern of the Conservative Front Benchers, is that this Government are making not only a similar mistake but a graver mistake because of the speed and unilateralism of their energy policies. [Interruption.] I can see the hon. Lady smiling, and I hope that is in approval of what I said.

[Leigh Ingham]

To clarify, is the Opposition’s position on the energy transition and energy security that the Government are moving too quickly for our country? Would they rather see a different approach? I am interested in what the suggested approach is, given that we face an imperative in the international context, as others rightly pointed out.

[Nick Timothy]

It is absolutely our position that the Energy Secretary is trying to move too quickly. The plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 is deemed by many experts to be unrealistic. It is predicated on a report produced by NESO, which itself says that the plan will lead to higher bills, and on calculations based on the carbon price increasing to £147 per tonne. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether the Government’s policy is to ensure that Britain’s carbon price should remain lower than the European carbon price for the duration of this Parliament, because the Secretary of State has so far refused to say that.

On the question of security, the Government are in such a rush with offshore wind farms that they are sourcing the turbines from China, and there are big questions about whether the technology in the turbines will continue to be controlled by the Chinese. We are having a debate right now about security and the threats presented by Russia; we could equally be talking about the same kinds of threats from China, and how our dependence on technologies produced by China and energy that is generated using those technologies leaves us exposed to Chinese influence.

By NESO’s own admission,

“Unprecedented volumes of clean energy infrastructure projects are needed to meet the Government’s energy ambitions.”

As long as policy races ahead of technology, costs will inevitably increase for taxpayers and consumers, and that is before we even consider the consequences of the Climate Change Committee’s seventh carbon budget. The committee has recommended a limit on the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions of 535 million tonnes of carbon dioxide, which represents an 87% reduction by 2040 compared with 1990 levels. That is an ambitious goal, but it is one that the committee’s own data shows will come at a net cost of £319 billion over the next 15 years. If we are to debate this, the Government should be honest and open about that fact.

No Government have ever rejected a carbon budget, and the Energy Secretary has so far refused to come to the House to make a statement on the publication of that budget, so perhaps the Minister can tell us whether the Government intend to accept the carbon budget in full. The Climate Change Committee believes that we will need a sixfold increase in offshore wind power, a doubling of onshore wind power and a fivefold increase in solar panels by 2040. To accelerate the growth of renewables at such a pace would require a huge increase in public subsidy.

How do the Government intend to address these climate and energy goals? Can the Government rule out increasing public subsidy under contracts for difference of any kind to reach these goals? By how much will public spending have to rise as a result? By how much will bills have to rise? Will the Minister guarantee that Britain will continue to have a lower carbon price than Europe, and can she still guarantee that energy bills will be £300 lower by the end of this Parliament, as her party promised in opposition?

There are so many questions left unanswered, and so far only silence from the Energy Secretary. That is not because the Government do not understand the scale of the challenge they have set themselves. The Energy Secretary understands it all too well, but he will not admit publicly what his ideological attachment to net zero and his net zero policies mean for us all: nothing less than a revolution in how we live our lives, and the massive expansion of public spending for a system of energy that is less reliable and more expensive in generating power. We need complete clarity, so that the mistakes of the renewables obligation are not repeated. Failure to do so will leave us poorer and exposed to risk and instability in the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I wonder whether the Opposition spokesperson has spoken to businesses on this matter because, in all my conversations with businesses, both in opposition and now in government, it is clear that they want certainty. They need a stable investment environment if they are to make long-term decisions. They cannot invest in renewable energy, in industrial decarbonisation or in the economic growth this country needs without certainty. We know that one reason why we are in the economic situation we are is the lack of stability and the economic chaos at times under the previous Administration, particularly under the predecessor of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk. Therefore, certainty is what we need to have. Business is crying out for that.

In places such as Grimsby, it is particularly important to have a place-based solution to the current situation, showing what the energy transition would look like in such places. I urge the hon. Member for West Suffolk to take a bit of a tour, to talk to businesses and people who are trying to get much-needed investment into places such as Grimsby, and to see—I am not quite sure what his proposals are—what he can say to them on how to get long-term investment.

[Nick Timothy]

Of course we talk to business all the time. I talk to businesses in my constituency and we have been talking to businesses and organisations representing the more energy-intensive manufacturing businesses in this country. They are clear that energy costs have been too high, partly because of issues such as high carbon prices. They are very concerned about the prospect of the carbon price rising under this Government. The hon. Lady talked about global fossil fuel markets—I have heard the Energy Secretary say that a lot when he has referred to global gas markets. There is no single global gas market in the way he describes. Prices for fossil fuels are so much higher in Europe than America, which is much more dependent on fossil fuels than we are, because of policy choices. Therefore, can she guarantee that we will have a lower carbon price than the rest of Europe by the end of this Parliament?

[Kerry McCarthy]

I understand that the hon. Member asked the Secretary of State that question at the last DESNZ orals and I think he also raised it when we were opposite each other in a statutory instrument Committee. I refer him to the answers that were given then. I think we should get on—I am going to try to talk about the renewables obligation for a while and not be distracted.

The scheme played a fundamental role, as already noted, in getting the UK to where we are now on renewable energy generation. Combined, the UK-wide RO schemes support nearly 32% of the UK’s electricity supply, providing millions of UK households and businesses with a secure supply of clean energy. The scheme is now closed to new capacity, for reasons I will come on to.

Thetford power station, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk, has been accredited since the first day of the RO, back in April 2002, so it has so far received Government support for nearly 23 years. Over that time, it has generated more than 5.8 TWh of low-carbon baseload generation. That has been a valuable contribution to our transition to net zero. It has also increased our security of supply by generating home-grown energy. As he said, the station has provided 100 jobs in his constituency and co-benefits in handling poultry litter.

The station has another two years of support before its time under the RO ends, in March 2027. We are aware of the concerns about the future of the station once that support ends and my hon. Friend has done an excellent job in outlining those concerns today. My officials have repeatedly engaged both with the owners of the Thetford plant, Melton Renewable Energy, and with DEFRA officials to discuss those concerns.

To explain the overall context, as I have said, the RO has done sterling service in bringing forward the successful large-scale renewable energy sector that we see in the UK today. That has paved the way, as my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) said, for the cost reductions that we have seen over the last few years under the contracts for difference scheme, but its time has passed. The energy landscape has evolved since the scheme was launched in 2002 and it no longer provides the market incentives or the value for money that the transition to clean power requires.

The RO was designed to support renewable energy-generating stations during the early stages of development and generation, and to allow the recovery of high capital costs. For that reason, RO support is often significantly higher than that provided under successor policies such as contracts for difference. We must always bear in mind that consumers pay for the scheme through their electricity bills, and delivering value for money for them is essential. For that reason, we do not plan to extend RO support.

As I said, support under the RO for the early adopters, such as Thetford power station, lasts for 25 years. Stations accredited later in the RO’s life receive support for up to 20 years. All support will end in March 2027, when the last assets fall off the scheme and the RO finally closes, so Thetford—as I am very aware—has two years to run. The limits on the length of support were imposed to balance the need to provide investors with important long-term certainty—for 25 and then for 20 years—with the impact on consumers.

Although we do not consider extending the RO to be a viable option, I assure my hon. Friends that I understand their concerns. In some cases, generating stations may be able to continue generating electricity on merchant terms once their RO support ends, and continue until the end of their operational life. However, some generators have told us that their stations will not be economically viable without Government support.

We are conducting further analysis and assessment to better understand the issue, including the implications for consumer bills and the clean power mission. My officials are working with DEFRA to consider whether there is a case for intervention for biomass-fuelled stations, taking into account the electricity system and the supplementary environmental benefits that some stations provide. That work is in addition to the robust value for money assessments that we undertake to ensure any possible support is in the interests of bill payers.

I appreciate that Melton Renewable Energy and my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk are looking for early answers, but I must stress that no decisions have yet been made and we are happy to continue the conversation with him.

Fuel Poverty: England

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Efford, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) on securing this important debate.

I hesitate to compete with a Yorkshireman, but it has also been very cold in Suffolk recently, and the stories that the hon. Member told of his constituents will be familiar to all of us in the Chamber today. From the hon. Member for Liverpool Riverside (Kim Johnson)—who is no longer in the Chamber—to the hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke), we were reminded that fuel poverty affects urban and rural constituencies alike. The hon. Member for North Herefordshire (Ellie Chowns) rightly talked about the reliance on heating oil in rural constituencies, and the hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) was certainly right to say that pension credit take-up is far too low.

As the hon. Member for Poole (Neil Duncan-Jordan) said, we cannot ignore the hardship caused by the Government’s decision to cut the winter fuel payment so aggressively for millions of pensioners. Of course there is a case for means-testing that payment, but the Chancellor is cutting it for not just the richest pensioners, but those on very modest incomes. If the winter fuel payment is to be means-tested, surely the proceeds should go to low-income pensioners and the cost of social care, but they do not, because we know that Labour’s spending priorities are to throw the money it is taking from pensioners to the public sector and railway unions that funded it.

Let us remember that during the election campaign, Labour repeatedly promised us that it would protect the winter fuel payment, but we know that the Chancellor planned the cut all along, because she had said that she wanted to do it as far back as 2014. Let us be clear: as my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) said, this policy is a political choice, not an economic necessity as Ministers claim. The Office for Budget Responsibility has blown up the Government’s claim that they inherited a fiscal hole. Of the report used by Ministers to justify that claim, Richard Hughes, the OBR chairman, said that

“nothing in our review was a legitimisation”

of that claim. Indeed, the Minister who is with us today must answer this simple question: if the cuts for pensioners and the tax rises were made necessary by fiscal prudence, why did Labour promise in its manifesto to increase spending by £9.5 billion a year by 2028-29, only to actually increase it by £76 billion in its Budget? This was a choice.

The challenge of fuel poverty affects people of all ages throughout the country. Rather than just creating new benefits and schemes to address the high cost of fuel, we need to resolve the root causes of energy costs more generally. Here, the Government are taking the country in a very worrying direction. The Energy Secretary promises to decarbonise the grid by 2030, and the Business Secretary wants to ban petrol and diesel cars by the same year. Tough standards on aviation fuel are being enforced; heat pumps are expected to replace gas boilers; expensive and intermittent renewable technologies funded by huge and hidden subsidies are favoured; and oil and gas fields in the North sea are abandoned, left for the Norwegians to profit from what we choose to ignore.

The Energy Secretary has made much of the National Energy System Operator’s report on decarbonising the grid. He says that report shows that he can do so by 2030 without increasing bills, but in fact the report does not say that—and even then, its calculations rest on a carbon price that will rise to £147 per tonne of carbon dioxide. It is no wonder that, in reply to a question I asked him last week, the Energy Secretary would not rule out having a higher carbon price in Britain than in Europe. That will be terrible for families struggling with the cost of heating their home, but it will hurt them—and indeed all of us—in other ways. As long as policy runs faster than technology and other countries do not follow our lead on climate change, decarbonisation will inevitably mean deindustrialisation. That will mean a weaker economy with lower growth, fewer jobs, and less spending power to help those who we have been discussing today—those who need support the most.

Of course, it is not just the NESO report that shows us the future consequences of the Government’s policies. The OBR says that environmental levies will reach up to £15 billion by the end of this Parliament to pay for net zero policies. As those levies will fall heavily on consumption, they will have a particularly regressive effect, as analysis from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Cornwall Insight has confirmed. It is therefore no wonder that Labour’s election promise to cut bills by £300 by the end of the Parliament has vanished without trace, so I challenge the Minister today to do what she has not done since polling day—repeat that promise very clearly. I suspect she will not because, unlike the Secretary of State, she knows the reality of his policies. The Government are adding complexity and contradiction to our energy system and loading extra costs on to families across the country. There is still time for Ministers to think again and put the interests of decent, hard-working people ahead of the Energy Secretary’s ideological dogma.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

Let me reassure the hon. Member that we are talking to all devolved Administrations. There are common challenges that we all face and common solutions. We are working in collaboration; we have an interministerial working group, and I am having direct conversations with all devolved Administrations as we take forward our plans.

We are also trying to work with everyone. The challenge we face to turn around the trajectory on fuel poverty is huge and the inheritance is tough, so we want to draw on the expertise of consumer groups, industry and academia as we develop our plan on fuel poverty.

[Nick Timothy]

The Minister talks about the tough job the Chancellor faces. Does she acknowledge that the job is tough because of the Chancellor’s own choices? The Minister talks about the inheritance but, as I said in my speech, the Labour manifesto said that Labour would increase spending by £9.5 billion a year, while the Budget increased it by £76 billion a year. That is why the Chancellor faces tough decisions—they originate with her own political choices. Does the Minister acknowledge that?

[Miatta Fahnbulleh]

That is pretty audacious of the hon. Member, given the record of the previous Government, their financial position and the wrecking ball they took to the economy. We have to clean up the mess of the previous Government, so yes, we have had to make tough choices before that. Candidly, if I were in the hon. Member’s position, I would be hanging my head in shame, rather than lecturing this Government on how we clean up the mess they created. What I will say is that, whether on the economy or fuel poverty, we understand that we have been given an atrocious inheritance. We are not complacent about that. Things that the Conservatives were willing to accept, we are not willing to accept.

Draft Energy Bill Relief Scheme and Energy Bills Discount Scheme (Amendment) Regulations 2024

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th February 2025 General Committees

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you bright and early this morning, Mr Stringer. I am pleased to respond to the draft regulations on behalf of the Opposition. Committee Members will be relieved to hear that I shall not detain them long.

It was right for the previous Conservative Government to step in during the cost of living crisis to protect families and businesses from rocketing energy bills. The supply shock from the pandemic and a major land war in Europe created a unique set of circumstances. Thanks to the previous Government, we came through the storm.

Now that the crisis has passed, it is reasonable to finish the work of winding down the energy bill relief scheme and the energy bills discount scheme. They were always intended to be temporary measures during a time of national emergency. Now we are presented with the challenge of finding our way back to recovery and a long-term path to lower energy prices.

As the current Government continue down the ideological decarbonisation route, led by the Secretary of State, we will watch carefully in order to protect the families and businesses who bear the cost of unrealistic clean energy targets. Indeed, experts expect the energy price cap to rise next month. The Manchester-based— not Aberdeen-based—head of GB Energy, Juergen Maier, says it will be

“a very long-term project”

to reduce bills by £300, which was a promise that Ministers stopped making as soon as their election campaign ended. I note that the Minister is wiser than her boss in not repeating that promise.

We support the regulations. We recognise their role in winding down the old schemes, but we remain vigilant about new policies that will surely make lives harder and more expensive because of the unattainable and self-harming decarbonisation goals that the Government are pursuing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I discussed this issue in detail in advance of the preparation of the Great British Energy Bill, and it is also relevant to the national wealth fund. We want our institutions to serve all countries in our United Kingdom, and I encourage him and industries in his constituency to make applications to the national wealth fund, which is there to support people and industries across the UK.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

The Government policy to decarbonise the grid by 2030 rests on the National Energy System Operator’s assumption of a £147 per tonne carbon price, but manufacturers are lining up to tell the Energy Secretary that it would destroy British industry. Will he guarantee today that for the remainder of this Parliament, we will have a lower carbon price than Europe?

[Ed Miliband]

NESO made that assumption, but it does not reflect our assumption that the carbon price will be significantly lower. I will not start predicting market prices. What I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that the difference between him and us is that he believes that we should double down on fossil fuels as the answer to the problems facing the country, whereas we know that clean energy is the way forward.

Draft Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) Order 2025

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2025 General Committees

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship this evening, Mrs. Harris, and a pleasure to speak to the draft order on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition.

We welcome the clarity provided by the draft order and will continue to scrutinise the details of the emissions trading scheme implementation under this Government. It will be important to observe how aligned we are with Europe on carbon pricing. Regardless of the many policy decisions we face in the years ahead, as a matter of principle we should always make sure that we are competitive and not naive in our carbon pricing, because the cost of energy affects our economy and people’s standard of living in fundamental ways. Without secure and affordable energy, industry cannot compete, jobs are lost, and living standards fall.

We have experienced unacceptable deindustrialisation in the years since 2008, and the trajectory of policy under this Government means that we will suffer a further loss of competitiveness in the years ahead, making the imbalances in our economy—sectoral and geographical—as well as a huge trade deficit and all the consequences of that, far worse. That is why I want to take this opportunity to ask the Minister about the assumption in the National Energy System Operator report that the carbon price will rise to £147 per tonne of carbon dioxide by 2030 to meet the Government’s clean power target. That is an incredible number, but the feasibility of the Government’s whole plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 is entirely based on that number.

When asked about the £147 carbon price by my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove during a recent Select Committee hearing, the Secretary of State said:

“I will not endorse these assumptions”.

Yet he also said:

“We work hand in glove with NESO, not just on modelling but on all of these questions”.

He insisted that the NESO report proves that his Department’s clean power plan can be delivered. The Government cannot have it both ways. Either Ministers must be honest and admit that the carbon price will increase to £147 per tonne of CO₂ because of Government policy, or confess that the 2030 target for clean power will never be reached and that the many claims they have made while citing the NESO report are utter nonsense.

Earlier today, representatives of Britain’s energy-intensive industries including steel, glass, ceramics, chemicals, paper and mineral products wrote a public letter to the Minister responsible for industry to express their frustration with being held back by

“high electricity costs, policy uncertainty and risk of carbon leakage”.

Energy-intensive industries know what that means for their survival, saying that they

“will not be able to bear these carbon costs”.

We should be clear about what the £147 figure would mean: the destruction of industry in this country and the death while such opportunities are in their infancy of British artificial intelligence. How many Members of the Committee have consulted the NESO report and its technical annexes? If they have not done so already, I strongly urge them to ask themselves whether they accept this projected carbon price figure and how business might respond to such a drastic increase. How many jobs will this cost? How much higher will bills go?

Let us be clear. Increasing the cost of carbon will be destructive for the economic wellbeing of the country. Ministers and supporters of the Government should be up front with the British people and with British industry about this fact. I implore members of the Committee, because they will be asked to keep voting for this mindless Milibandism, to read up and listen to industry and the technical experts—I do not mean Dale Vince—before lending their support and credibility to this destruction. If they go along with it, history will be most unkind to them.

We should remember that the Government were elected on a solemn manifesto promise that their policies would cut household energy bills by £300 per year by 2030. The Secretary of State and Ministers in the Department have studiously avoided repeating this promise time and again since July. The Government know that this promise was nonsense, and whatever his outward zeal, so does the Secretary of State, but he is too afraid to admit it.

Following the Government’s Budget spending spree, the Office for Budget Responsibility made it clear that environmental levies will have to increase to as much as almost £15 billion, thanks to the Secretary of State’s policies. That means households will each pay £120 more in environmental levies, and that is on top of all the hidden costs in the system—the subsidies, balancing costs, new interconnectors and massive upgrades to the grid and distribution networks that Ministers pretend do not exist while they tell the public that renewables are cheap.

The news gets worse for British business. The UK was once a net exporter of energy, with internationally competitive energy prices. This is no longer the case. We have been a net importer of energy since 2004, and our import dependency has increased from 13% in 2005 to 41% in 2023. Industrial energy prices have increased from 4.56p per kWh in 2005 to 25.46p per kWh in 2023. Industrial energy prices in the UK are now on average 50% higher than prices in in other advanced economies. Our industrial energy prices are four times higher than those in China and three times higher than those in America and Canada. They are also higher than prices in France, which has significant nuclear energy capacity. We are artificially driving up costs with a misguided drive to decarbonise before the technology is ready.

To be clear, I know that my party played a part in this, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has acknowledged, but we are looking at the evidence and being honest about the mistakes we made. The Government are denying the evidence and driving us faster and faster towards the abyss—

[The Chair]

Order. May I ask the hon. Member to keep to the subject at hand?

[Nick Timothy]

I certainly will, Mrs Harris, but this is relevant to the ETS, because there is nothing more important for the future of energy policy. Getting policy right means being straight about the trade-offs. The energy trilemma has not been resolved. We must choose how best to prioritise. We must do what other countries are doing and put cost and security ahead of decarbonisation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

Ofgem has announced today decisions on a number of interconnectors. Those are decisions for Ofgem and not for the Government. We have recently announced the launch of a strategic spatial energy plan, to ensure that we plan such projects holistically, across the whole of the United Kingdom, and take into account a number of schemes when planning future energy, such as those my hon. Friend mentions in her constituency. I will continue to have discussions about that with Members from across the country.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

China’s largest offshore floating wind turbine company, Ming Yang Smart Energy, plans to build its first manufacturing plant outside China in Scotland. Ming Yang benefits from huge subsidies in China, but there are serious questions about energy security and national security. The Secretary of State says he wants to end reliance on foreign autocrats, but when he was asked about this on the radio this morning, he had no answer. Will the Minister rule out allowing any turbines that might be controlled by hostile states?

[Michael Shanks]

We are encouraging investment in the UK to build the infrastructure that we need in the future. Just today, we have announced the clean industry bonus that will give as much support as possible to companies to build their supply chains here in this country. We will continue to look at supply chains and, of course, we take seriously the companies, across the range of business projects, that are investing in this country. There is a series of processes already under way across Government. Whenever anybody wants to invest in this country, those processes will be followed in the usual manner.

Great British Energy Bill

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 29th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Luke Murphy]

We have set out our industrial strategy, along with this Bill on GB Energy, and a few weeks ago, with the investment summit, the investment that will be coming in. I am confident that the best way of creating jobs is through the industrial strategy and the creation of GB Energy. Yes, we made those commitments and I am confident that by 2030 we will have met our clean power target, reduced bills and created jobs and revived the industry across the country.

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

If the hon. Gentleman is so confident in the policies of his Front Bench, will he take this moment to use the words that were used before the election by the Energy Secretary? He can repeat after me if it makes it easier: “We will cut bills by £300.”

[Luke Murphy]

I will take absolutely no lectures from Conservative Members about the need to reduce energy bills after they soared under the previous Government. Great British Energy’s core focus will be to drive clean energy deployments to create jobs, boost energy independence and ensure British taxpayers, bill payers and communities reap the benefits of clean, secure, home-grown energy. I am also surprised by the Conservatives’ opposition to a publicly owned clean energy company, not least because 50% of our offshore wind capacity is already publicly owned but by foreign states. I am surprised that Conservative Members are so happy with that scenario.

On amendment 5, I welcome the Liberal Democrats’ support for community energy, but as my hon. Friend the Member for East Thanet commented, it is in the founding statement. Labour Members are absolutely committed to community energy. It does not need to be on the face of the Bill, but it is important that it is part of the founding statement of GB Energy. Opposition Members can be reassured that we will champion community energy. In Basingstoke, we have Basingstoke Energy Services Co-op, which is a wonderful champion for this issue. I look forward to seeing what GB Energy will deliver for such community organisations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call Nick Timothy.

[Nick Timothy]

I shall speak briefly about amendment 6 tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho).

In this debate, we have heard much from Government Members about cleaner and cheaper energy, not much of which has been connected to reality. This has been exposed by Labour’s campaigning before the election, promising £300 off bills, only to drop that commitment as soon as the party entered government. That disconnect, as I have said, has been present throughout the debate.

Blind faith in renewable technology without the acceptance of the intermittency challenges and costs of wind and solar will lead to less security of supply and higher costs for industry and households. We cannot allow policy to run faster than technology without risking a crisis in the grid and, therefore, in our economy. We need baseload power, which means nuclear—where the Secretary of State is going slow—and oil and gas, where the Secretary of State is refusing new licences. To pursue the ideological objectives of the Secretary of State, we see giant solar farms forced on communities like mine, against expert advice by examining authorities, contrary to the quasi-judicial responsibilities of the Secretary of State and dependent on solar panels made by slaves in Xinjiang. I say enough of the nonsense about fossil fuels and the dependence on dictators.

Tomorrow the Chancellor of the Exchequer will announce her intention to borrow to invest. We know that the borrowing will not just be for investment, but what investment there is will be dominated by energy schemes that will cost more to do less. We do have an underinvested economy, but net zero zealotry will make the problem worse, not better.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I call the Minister.

Clean Energy Superpower Mission

Nick Timothy Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

There were 1,360 submissions from interested parties against the Sunnica application in West Suffolk, and the technical report recommending against the application is 339 pages long. Has the Secretary of State visited the Sunnica site? How many hours did it take him to read all the submissions and evidence to make his own detailed technical and legal judgment to overrule them.

[Edward Miliband]

Anyone who knows me knows that I am a super-nerd. I take all of my responsibilities, particularly my quasi-judicial responsibilities, incredibly seriously, and I did in all the judgments I made.