Energy

Perran Moon Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the reliability of electricity, which is what we need. We need electricity that will work in the winter when the sun is not shining, or when the wind is not blowing.

The question I would ask is this: why is the Labour party signing up to those high prices and locking all our constituents in for 20 years? It is because the Secretary of State is in the pocket of the wind developers. These are the highest prices for wind power that we have seen in a decade. [Interruption.] Ministers might shake their heads, but that is just a fact. It is much higher than the price of electricity right now, so why would they be buying more than ever before at the highest prices in a generation and fixing those prices for 20 years? I say this to Labour Members: if their constituents are saying to them—which I am sure they are—that their bills are too high now, what will they say to them in January, when it will be the Labour party that locks them all into even higher prices for longer?

[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

Can the right hon. Member remind the House which party was in power when we reached cripplingly high energy prices that led to the cost of living crisis that we have today?

[Claire Coutinho]

I remind the hon. Gentleman that when I was Energy Secretary, bills came down by £500. Under this Secretary of State, they have gone up by £200. What he needs to explain to his constituents is why signing up to higher prices on inflation-linked contracts for 20 years will fulfil the promise he made to those constituents to cut their bills by £300. I wish he could explain that.

It is worth Labour Members listening to this. From the Tony Blair Institute to the most respected energy economist, Sir Dieter Helm, everybody has pointed out this risk to them. It has not come to them without warning, the fact that they are signing up to prices much more expensive than gas for decades. They are on the wrong side of this debate and they are on the wrong side of consumers. Come January, when the results are published, everybody will be able to see that. And they will ask them: were you warned? Did you do your job in Parliament and speak up for me and my bills? Here is the problem. Their whole position is not driven by what is best for consumers; it is driven by ideology. Nowhere is that clearer than in their war on the North sea. When Scottish Renewables says that Labour’s policy on oil and gas is damaging the transition, surely even Labour Members must realise that they are on the wrong path.

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[Martin McCluskey]

We have committed and remain committed to the reduction in energy bills laid out by the Secretary of State. The Scottish National party can oppose GB Energy as much as it wants, but the company will deliver good, high-quality jobs in Scotland. On what the hon. Gentleman said about the Secretary of State, I should say that jobs are being and will be created by GB Energy right across the supply chain.

[Perran Moon]

Robert Gordon University estimates that 90% of the UK’s oil and gas workforce have skills with medium or high transferability to the offshore renewables sector, making them well positioned for the transition. If the SNP does not want those jobs in Scotland, can the Minister please send them to Cornwall?

[Martin McCluskey]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I will carry on arguing for jobs across the UK, but particularly in Scotland and not all in Cornwall.

I will make some progress on my speech. Even in the face of rapid progress across the country, some, including many on the Opposition Benches, still cling to the status quo of stagnation and decline. Those who suggest that we should simply generate more electricity and generate more electricity with gas, leaving billpayers across Britain—

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[Stuart Anderson (South Shropshire) (Con)]

I am delighted to speak in this debate, because this is such an important topic for many of my constituents across South Shropshire. Both individuals and businesses need energy prices to come down—the cost is not sustainable, and it is on the wrong trajectory—and we need to be honest with the British people about the route for achieving that.

The Leader of the Opposition has clearly said that the net zero target is not achievable. We are being honest in this discussion. I believe that over the coming few years, all Members in this House will see that the target is not achievable, and it will be reversed. We are trying to bluff the British people—I think that is the word I would use—and make them believe that if we offset our carbon emissions and bring them down that way, it is okay to import all our energy. We have many more reserves that we can use before we need to bring in any energy from overseas; we can pull the reserves out of our ground and use them. There is a lot more that we can do on that.

Members may say, “We need to look at solar.” Let us look at rare earth metals, which I have spoken about several times in the Chamber. There are 17 rare earth metals, 90% of which are processed in or through China, which literally uses a scorched earth policy to pull them out of the ground.

[Perran Moon]

The hon. and gallant Member has mentioned rare earth metals. The Government will hopefully come out with their critical minerals strategy before the end of the year. We have vast resources of critical minerals in the United Kingdom; why did the previous Government not invest, so that we are not reliant on China?

[Stuart Anderson]

The hon. Member raises a very interesting point. China looked at this issue 30 years ago; when I went over to Australia about five years ago, the Australians were looking at it, and the US was looking at it, too. Every country outside of China has left this way too late. Putting in place a critical minerals strategy now is way too late, but we still need one in place. We need to look at this issue. All the magnets that we use in this country, including for MRI scans, require rare earth metals. That strategy should be in place today. We got that wrong—I am happy to admit that we did not get our rare earth metals strategy right—and it is costing us. Everybody is waking up to the need for that strategy, but we cannot say, “Let’s just pull those metals in from China; we are very happy for them to offset our carbon emissions over there.”

I also want to look at energy from a defence perspective. We need energy to ensure that we have strong defence. Recently, the Government committed to the NATO standard, which is to spend 3.5% of GDP on defence and 1.5% of GDP on defence-related areas. We should focus on article 3 of NATO—internal defence—and that 1.5% of defence-related spending should be focused on a couple of things, namely energy security and food security. I am a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, and discussions are ongoing about how that money should be used. If our tanks do not have any fuel to get where they need to go, they cannot fight; that is before we even look at ammunition and things like that. Rather than saying, “We have to go faster on renewables,” we should be having the bigger discussion about national resilience and energy security. The world is the most unstable it has been since the second world war. We need something in place now, and we need to move to what is sustainable. Defence is key to that.

I have mentioned food security. Outside of Much Wenlock in my constituency, which has just been voted the happiest place to live in Shropshire—it is a lovely place to live—there are 600 acres of prime agricultural land that can grow food, and a beautiful view that is one of the best in the country. There is an application to replace it with 600 acres of solar panels. I have not found one person in the constituency who wants to turn that land into a site for solar energy; it is only the landowner who wants to. If we put solar panels all over it, as part of the roll-out of solar at speed—the Minister has mentioned that the Government are going quicker—we will be doing so with no regard for local people and what they want for their communities. This is really detrimental; the discussion about net zero is getting killed because local communities are being overridden.

I have talked about the speed of solar, and about defence and food security, but we also need to look at homes that are off the grid. In South Shropshire, only 42% of homes are on gas mains; many are off the grid. I think the average across the country is about 73%. Some of the Government’s plans that the Minister has set out are not working for a lot of off-grid communities. There are a lot of old homes in South Shropshire, many of them built pre-1945, that are too expensive to retrofit.

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[Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)]

It is time for some home truths. The Conservative Government oversaw such a disastrous energy policy that it led to the worst cost of living crisis in generations. It started so well, and they just bottled it: they blocked wind power projects, failed to invest in nuclear, failed to invest in the grid, and were clueless when it came to solar, tidal and geothermal. Once again, it falls to this Government to clear up the mess left by the Conservative party, and we will not take any lectures from them on how to build a just transition to deliver long-term, sustainable, domestically produced energy to reduce bills.

Cornwall became a post-industrial land way before virtually any other part of the country, and anyone who visits Cornwall cannot miss the mines and wheelhouses that evocatively blend into our beautiful landscape. The Cornish Celtic tiger was tamed, but it is set to roar once again thanks to this Government’s commitment to critical minerals and the renewable transition. The hon. and gallant Member for South Shropshire (Stuart Anderson) mentioned critical minerals, and our resources of tin, which is used in virtually every electrical device, lithium, which is used in EV batteries, and tungsten will provide domestically sourced resources to accelerate our transition to renewables while creating thousands of jobs and, as he said, reducing our reliance on Chinese imports.

It is beyond me why that took so long, but it has now taken 15 months of a Labour Government to see the benefits in Cornwall. Why the previous Government did not invest in Cornwall I have no idea, but driving down the A30, we can see that our landscape has new beautiful features, with wind turbines creating sustainable energy for local people. We have vast opportunities in wind, solar, geothermal and tidal, and Cornwall’s opportunities play a strategically prominent role in transitioning away from fossil fuels.

[Saqib Bhatti]

The hon. Member is making the argument for exploiting our home resources so we do not have to import such resources from elsewhere, but that is exactly the argument when it comes to North sea oil, is it not?

[Perran Moon]

No, absolutely not. I am talking about why the Conservative Government did not make the investment in critical minerals that this Labour Government identified straightaway. It was there, and has been there for decades—for centuries, in fact—and it has been ignored, so we are now reliant on Chinese imports.

[Bill Esterson]

One of the challenges in bringing down energy costs is the up-front cost of the equipment people need to take advantage of cheaper electricity. My hon. Friend knows a lot about electric vehicles because he used to work in the sector, and he knows that the salary sacrifice scheme was the biggest single way of getting electric vehicles on to the road. Does he agree with me that the Government should look at a similar scheme for solar, battery, insulation and potentially heat pumps as a great way of enabling consumers to benefit from cheaper electricity?

[Perran Moon]

I declare an interest, as the UK’s largest ground source heat pump company is based in my own constituency. I am a big advocate of ground source heat pumps, and I am hopeful that the Government will come forward with plans, particularly for social housing, to support that sector. My hon. Friend makes very valid points.

The opportunities in Cornwall would be scuppered without the likes of the round 7 allocation, and thousands of green job opportunities would be quashed. Opposition parties need to wake up. This Government are committed to transitioning away from fossil fuels, because to do so means that we will break free from the shackles of the wholesale gas price. We can control supply, and in doing so we will reduce domestic and business energy bills, rather than continually being exposed to the whims of the likes of Mr Putin. I know that some Members—maybe they are not here at the moment—quite admire Mr Putin, but this Labour Government, and, I suspect, those who are paying through the nose for Putin’s whims and the previous Government’s failure to invest, do not.

Talking of ideology, I must ask this question: what is it about the oil and gas-backed, climate change denying opposition parties that make them feel so threatened by the green energy transition?

[Harriet Cross]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Perran Moon]

I will not give way because of time, and I know that other Members are still to speak.

Opposition Members’ constituents will not thank them for blocking access to sustainable, low-cost energy, and Ministers know that we on this side of the House fully understand and support the transition, with interventions such as the warm home discount, which I do applaud. I urge Ministers to continue to ignore the siren calls and to pursue the path to long-term, cheap renewable energy, lowering bills and regenerating areas such as Cornwall that were long abandoned by the Conservatives. The previous Government lost the plot on energy, but this Government are taking back control of our energy industry.

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[Graham Leadbitter (Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey) (SNP)]

It is vital that we challenge the bankrupt energy record of the UK Government—a record of failure that continues to punish Scottish workers, strip our national wealth and plunge families into fuel poverty.

The current policy being prosecuted from Westminster is not a sustainable plan. It is quite simply ripping jobs from the north-east of Scotland with nothing to replace them. Scotland is an energy-rich nation, abundant in both oil and gas, with world-leading renewable potential.

[Perran Moon]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that 90% of the jobs in the oil and gas sector are easily transferable to the renewables sector?

[Graham Leadbitter]

Yes, the jobs are transferable, but the work they can be transferred to needs to exist. It does not exist at the current time. The downturn in the North sea from a crippling fiscal regime is absolutely destroying those jobs and the skills that we need to get to that clean energy potential.

The SNP is clear in its support for a just transition for Scotland’s oil and gas sector, recognising the maturity of the North sea basin and aligning with our climate change commitments. However, we must be absolutely clear that a just transition does not mean simply stopping all future oil and gas activity overnight, as that approach threatens energy security and destroys the very skills we need to transfer to net zero.

We have repeatedly called on the UK Government to approach decisions for North sea oil and gas projects on a rigorously evidence-led, case-by-case basis, with climate compatibility and energy security as key considerations. Instead, we have seen a fiscal and licensing regime that is actively destroying the highly skilled jobs required to deliver clean energy security.

The energy profits levy is a crippling tax on Scotland’s energy and we must see its end in the upcoming Budget. We have seen the consequences laid bare: Harbour Energy confirms a cumulative headcount reduction of approximately 600 roles since the EPL was introduced in 2022, blaming the “punitive domestic fiscal regime”. Meanwhile, a landmark report found that one in four north-east firms has slashed jobs due to the tax. The decline in North sea oil and gas jobs currently outstrips the number of jobs created by the scale-up of the clean energy industry.

The loss of highly skilled offshore workers with transferable skills without the jobs to transfer to makes a mockery of the just transition. The Chancellor has the opportunity to fix this in two weeks. The question is: will she?

Furthermore, where is the support for the alternative? Labour promised that its flagship GB Energy project would bring down bills and create 1,000 new jobs in the north-east of Scotland, yet only 13 out of 69 employees at GB Energy are based in Aberdeen, while 31 are employed in London. Now we have heard the astonishing admission that creating 1,000 jobs was never the intention.

Let us turn to the soaring cost of living and the broken promises made to Scottish households. The Labour party promised to cut energy bills by £300 before the election, but the reality is that since the Government took office, bills have soared. Independent analysis shows that average energy bills could rise by £287 on their watch. To meet their original pledge, the Labour Government would need to cut bills by nearly £600. The situation facing Scots is completely absurd: we are an energy-rich country where bills are going up while energy jobs are going down. We produce enormous amounts of electricity, yet Scots pay among the highest energy bills anywhere in Europe.

Finally, we must address the UK Government’s ideological obsession with nuclear energy, which threatens Scotland’s transition to renewables. Scotland already has an abundance of clean, renewable energy—enough to power our country several times over. We do not need expensive nuclear power, yet Scots are being forced to pay for a nuclear power station they do not want and will not benefit from—and at great risk to our economy. I am speaking, of course, about the nuclear tax being imposed on Scottish households to fund the construction of Sizewell C in Suffolk. The plant is not expected to generate electricity until the mid-2030s at the earliest.

Furthermore, the long-term legacy of nuclear power is routinely ignored by Ministers. The true cost of the geological disposal facility for nuclear waste is now estimated to be up to £69 billion at current prices. The body responsible for the GDF project has described it as “unachievable”. This is an eye-wateringly large amount of money.

Whether it is the reckless fiscal regime destroying jobs in the North sea, the broken promises leaving families facing sky-high bills, or the imposition of a toxic nuclear tax to fund white elephants in England, Westminster’s energy policy—dictated to us by both Labour and the Tories—has been a complete failure. It is no wonder that more and more Scots are concluding that the only way to escape this repeated mismanagement and the only route to cheaper bills is through a fresh start with independence. It is time to put Scotland’s energy in Scotland’s hands.