Oral Answers to Questions

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Jones]

Obviously the last Government did nothing about nuclear in 14 years, apart from coming up with a plan. We will ensure that nuclear is an important part of our country’s future, and we will be working to provide the right skills and jobs in the right places to deliver that.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

11. What steps he is taking to increase grid capacity

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

We are halving the development time for new transmission infrastructure through reforms of planning, supply chains and other areas, delivering the grid capacity that is needed to achieve clean power by 2030 and meet a doubling of electricity demand by 2050.

[Tessa Munt]

Communities are doing their very best, and lots of people are trying to help each community to power itself. My own village has its community solar project, which was fully funded by local residents. There are non-profit organisations which have dealt with local schemes by putting solar panels on schools with an element of community ownership, and there are individuals who try but are faced with extortionate costs for connection to the grid. The grid was really designed for big old power stations rather than smaller power creators trying to plonk power into the system. What can the Minister do to encourage National Grid to pivot, and help communities and individuals to create their energy nearer to their homes?

[Michael Shanks]

The hon. Lady is right to draw attention to the importance of community energy projects throughout the country. We want to see many more of them, but we have inherited a grid that needs significant upgrading, and we are now working apace to ensure that that happens. Part of the work that I have been doing with National Grid and others involves trying to identify the next steps that are needed to shorten the connections queue, and also to make it more affordable for smaller community projects to connect. There is an important role for partnership as well, with some of the bigger renewables projects giving part of their connections queues to smaller ones, and that is already happening in some parts of the country. There is no doubt that there is much more to do, but we are, as I have said, working apace to try to move this forward after 14 years of inaction.

Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

It is a delight to welcome you to your new position, Madam Deputy Speaker, which I am sure you will fill with great aplomb, as you have done other positions that I have seen you in over the past few years in this House.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lowestoft (Jess Asato) on her maiden speech. It was very interesting to hear about her background in the charity sector. Her tribute to former Members who were inspirations to her and who have passed away was very moving. I know in what high regard Tessa Jowell was held, particularly by those on the Labour Benches. It was also very nice to hear her tribute to Peter Aldous. He is a calm and quiet man in some ways, but he is also a very kind man who really did stand up for his constituents on many of the important issues that she mentioned. He will be missed by those on the Conservative Benches.

One of the first things that I did when I was a new Member was try to speak to constituency neighbours from other parties. Those conversations can be incredibly helpful and revealing, and can ensure that you work together on local issues that should really transcend party lines. I spoke just yesterday with the hon. Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst), who has taken an area of my former constituency. I hope the hon. Lady does that, and takes advantage of the all-party parliamentary groups. One of my best baptisms was with the hon. Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who was superb on the APPG for gambling-related harm. We worked together cross-party with MPs from Northern Ireland, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP, so I urge the hon. Member for Lowestoft to delve into the APPGs. She gave a fantastic maiden speech.

Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker. I want to touch on a couple of points that have been raised already, and then touch on a few local issues for my constituents, as well as making slight mention of a couple of national issues. The previous Government’s record is clear. We started with 7% of our electricity coming from renewable sources and ended with 50%. That was a good move for the long-term interests of the country. However, as the Committee on Climate Change says, and as I mentioned in an intervention, there will still be a need for oil and gas in the long term in our country. There is a manufacturing base for delivering that, which often works symbiotically with our manufacturing base for new offshore wind. I really hope that the Government think about and recognise that. When it comes to our energy security, I do not want our country at the mercy of foreign powers. I urge them to really think about the impact that not pressing ahead with new oil and gas in the North sea is having on constituencies, particularly in the energy heart of our country, around Aberdeenshire in Scotland. We will require it, so I think that is a mistake. I sort of understand politically why they might have gone for that, but I really urge them to think again in the national interest.

Since 2010, there has been over £300 billion of investment in our energy sector from the private sector. Whatever we do, it will be private sector-led. The relatively small investment figures that the Government have been talking about has been reflected on. I just urge them to ensure that whatever happens is private sector-led, and delivers the really good long-term jobs and growth for the country that we have been talking about and have secured over the last few years.

I want to pick up on a few things that the Government have said. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) mentioned the £300 a year, but the Minister did not cover that. Could he provide clarity on that issue? It is something that constituents up and down the country will think about.

The Minister talked about community-owned energy companies similar to Great British Energy. There have been experiences of that; there was Robin Hood Energy in Nottingham, which ended up costing taxpayers a huge amount of money in the long term. I am interested to know whether the Government are investing in the bits that the private sector will not invest in. How can they guarantee the returns that the Minister is talking about, and how can they guarantee that the policy will not cost taxpayers more in the future? As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, I do not want to see, when I look into this in a few years’ time, that taxpayers were left on the hook when the private sector would not step in.

On the overall costs of the net zero plans, in the run-up to the general election, the Labour party dropped its commitment to spending £28 billion a year on moving towards the 2030 target. I really could do with clarity from the Government on the figures that they are looking at, given that in the months preceding the general election, shadow Ministers talked about it potentially costing hundreds of billions of pounds to get to that target.

As I mentioned in an intervention on the Liberal Democrat Front Bencher, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), on energy infrastructure, the impact would be on communities such as Billericay, Bearsted, and Laindon in my constituency, where there would be 160-foot pylons right down the centre of an area of unspoilt countryside. I really would ask the Government to reflect on that, particularly as Germany is moving to an underground-first approach. If the Germans can do it, I do not see why we cannot. It was in the Conservative manifesto.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that in July 2009, Steve Holliday, the then chief executive of National Grid, said on the record that going underground was a “no-brainer”? It was reported widely in various newspapers, as was his saying that when National Grid is required to go underground, such as when going through an area of outstanding natural beauty, it just does it. This requires Government to be muscular with private organisations, and to insist that they use the technology that they can.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that interventions should be brief.