Speeches by Miliband.

“I wish the hon. Lady a happy new year, but I find that question a bit churlish. We have produced a world-leading plan for the North sea, which combines the just transition—the just and prosperous transition—with environmental leadership, while keeping to our manifesto commitment not to issue new licences to explore new…”

“I congratulate Hackney council—Labour-led Hackney council—on the brilliant job it is doing on green energy. Unlike some who just talk about it, the council is actually delivering, and I congratulate it. I see Hackney as being at the forefront of our local power plan, which will be coming out in the coming months.”

“I can absolutely rule out that we are going to introduce new levies to the energy system in the warm homes plan. Those reports are complete nonsense. I can tell the shadow Secretary of State that the warm homes plan is going to turn the page on a decade of the Conservatives’ failure, because we are going to invest wher…”

“My hon. Friend is right. The figures that came out from NESO over Christmas show that we had extra renewable power in 2025 equivalent to powering 2 million homes; that is 2 million homes that will not be powered by imported gas. That gives us the price stability that we never had under the previous Government. The fund…”

“I can tell the hon. Gentleman that bills are going to be lower. [Interruption.] If he just listens, I will tell him. If we compare 2025 to 2024, energy bills are lower in real terms than they were in 2024, and the price cap is also lower. Because bills are still too high, we will make that situation better by taking £1…”

“The affordability crisis is the No. 1 issue facing families across our country. That is why we have acted to take £150 of costs off bills for all families, with an additional £150 through the warm home discount for 6 million households this winter. Thanks to our decisions, last year was a record year for wind and solar…”

“The Government inherited a legacy of huge under-investment in the grid, which piled up constraint costs and created a chaotic system for grid connection, which left crucial projects facing decade-long delays. We are tackling this with a programme of investment and reform, include sweeping changes to the grid connection…”

“My hon. Friend makes a crucial point. There was this terrible backlog, where the queue had something like five times as much capacity as was required and the wrong priorities. We also had massive problems for demand connection. Our significant reform to overhaul the queue, which had not been done for years and years, w…”

“For 20 years.”

“I cannot resist just briefly addressing your first point, but I will come on to your second point.”

“That is a really important question, and it is worth explaining the background. I said that the TFFF is a different approach because it is an investment approach where you get a return. We think probably only a modest percentage of any investment would be ODA-eligible. This is not a grant; it is like an investment. We …”

“Yes, briefly. On your first point, Sammy, with the greatest respect, I think it would be a total dereliction of duty if we walked away from this engagement, because we would be betraying future generations. If we say, “We’ll just let climate change take its course,” that will be an absolute disaster. It is true that th…”

“Let me just finish—”

“I do not see it that way, because of what happened. It is important to understand the context of this, which is that Russia invaded Ukraine. Fossil fuel prices went through the roof, and that is what businesses are paying for. And the last Government left us exposed. We came in 17 months ago and we could have said, “Le…”

“First of all, let me say we are proud of the work that we did on the TFFF with the Brazilian presidency. It is a very innovative idea for funding. It is about an investment approach to how we protect our forests. We did a lot of work in the background over a couple of years with the Brazilian presidency. That is the fi…”

“Is this about forest risk commodities?”

“I am glad that you are asking this question, because this is really important and we recognise the urgency of taking action on these issues. I think it is right to explain some of the background to the Committee. I was grateful to you for saying that you wanted to raise this issue. There is an interaction here—it conce…”

“We need to align our actions so that—”

“As you will have heard me say to your Committee on previous occasions, I totally recognise that the way the levies and so on have been set up offsets quite a lot of the greater efficiency of electricity. I have always said that if we can find distributionally fair ways to do this, we want to do more to close that gap. …”

“What you see from the carbon budget and growth delivery plan, which Ryan oversaw, is a cross-Government process where, whether it is DFT, DEFRA or others, they are absolutely engaged in this. Whether it was Steve Reed or, now, Emma Reynolds at DEFRA, or Heidi Alexander at Transport, there is absolute engagement and rec…”