Tom Greatrex
Main Page: Tom Greatrex (Labour (Co-op) - Rutherglen and Hamilton West)(10 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Davey
The Chancellor introduced the carbon price floor at the beginning of this Parliament and confirmed the rates in the Budget this year. The purpose is to send a clear incentive message to people investing in low carbon, which I believe the hon. Gentleman supports. I also hope that he supports the compensation package this Government have put together to help energy-intensive industries, to support them and to help them defray those costs.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
One element of the levies applied to consumer bills funds the renewables obligation certificate payments, as the Secretary of State knows. He will also be aware that a third of those payments go to generators in Scotland, but, with 8.4% of the consumer base, they are funded by bill payers across Britain. When Infinis, a Scottish-based renewables generator, published its flotation prospectus a couple of weeks ago, it cited the outcome of separation as one of its key risks. On Monday, the nationalists in Edinburgh published their plan for Scotland to separate from the rest of the UK, asserting that
“shared support for renewables and capital costs of transmission among consumers in Scotland and the rest of the UK”
would continue. Can the Secretary of State guarantee that that will definitively be the case?