Speeches by Miliband.

“We want to do everything that we can to get bills down. There is a truth here, which is that lots of what is happening is to do with the gas market, but we are determined to bring bills down.”

“We have got the capacity market in place for gas plants. I do not think we are about to go into public ownership of the gas plants—that is not on my agenda; I have seen the report you talked about—but obviously we continue to look at how we can get best value for money from the capacity market. It is interesting that i…”

“Here’s the interesting thing, Luke—I want to expand a little bit on my thinking here. We have got the top-down commitment of up to £300 by 2030, but we do not need to wait until 2030 to start delivering benefits to people. Let me give you some examples. The warm home discount is giving 3 million extra families—or 2.7 m…”

“We said that we would cut people’s bills by up to £300, and that remains a commitment. It was based on independent modelling. The key thing is that we need to move to a system that can cut bills for good. The way to do that is with the lower wholesale prices that renewable energy will bring.”

“On the standing charge, Ofgem is thinking about how to do it. Let me deal with it in two different ways, because I think there are two different ideas in the question. One is about whether there are reforms we can make to things like the standing charge, and Ofgem is looking at that. We do want to bear down on the cost…”

“I think in a way, Mike, you have partly answered your own question. If I can put it this way, we are dealing with the dilemma of doing things at pace, but in a collaborative way. If you think about the partial list of the things we have done over the last year that I gave at the beginning, it has involved acting at spe…”

“The thing I would say to you is that REMA was an incredibly complicated process and an incredibly complicated piece of work, and it was really important we got it right. We said at the end of last year that we would announce a REMA decision in time for the opening of the AR7 auction, which is at the beginning of August…”

“Happy to be tougher. I think what Richard Tice is doing is deeply irresponsible, and I think, frankly, it is playing politics with people’s jobs and people’s bills. For all of the workers who rely on working in clean energy, to the nuclear workers at Hinkley Point and the future nuclear workers at Sizewell, for those w…”

“I really do, Mike. You only need to look at some of the instability we have seen in our world, in relation to Iran, for example, in recent months, and to see the extent to which oil and gas prices responded to that, to see how vulnerable we are as a country through our reliance on fossil fuels. Whether that is the Nort…”

“I am very happy to look at how we do this. We are obviously careful about making sure we do written ministerial statements in Parliament—and, indeed, oral statements. I am happy to take this offline with the Committee. The Chair, the Clerk and I had a conversation last week about how we can furnish the Committee as wel…”

“Okay, so one nerd level down, if you like. I consider that to be a compliment, by the way. That is absolutely fine. If the Committee’s request is that when we do written ministerial statements, we provide extra detail to you, I am sure we can meet that.”

“That sounds too softball a question—there must be a “but” coming. I see the Committee as very valuable, and I am not saying that to butter you up. As I say, my enjoyable Sunday reading was the testimony that you had had, which was very useful.”

“Yeah, I knew it was coming.”

“Can I just cut in? The modellers have been hard at work—we love the modellers, particularly in our Department—so I have some useful figures for the Committee. In 2024, gas power plants set the price of electricity two thirds of the time. Our modelling suggests that, in 2030, they will set the price only one third of th…”

“Well, it is through an auction. We set an administrative strike price, but that is a ceiling, and then it is through an auction process. One of the things that I take incredibly seriously—I took it seriously with AR6, but I inherited it mid-flight, if you like, and I am taking it very seriously for AR7—is how we both m…”

“The fundamental problem we have here is our exposure to fossil fuels. I think it came through in your cost of energy inquiry, particularly on the industrial side. I think it came through, in what I said, from the Energy Intensive Users Group. The whole point of Clean Power 2030 is to get us off reliance on gas. We have…”

“Let me come to the specific and the general. On the specific, let us be absolutely clear about what has happened at that refinery: the workers have been deeply let down by the people who ran the refinery. I am deeply disturbed by some of what I have seen and heard, and by some of my experiences in dealing with the peop…”

“It is quite the opposite, if you think of the building of network infrastructure, which is creating tens of thousands of jobs, and the signal we are sending to investors. I meet investors all the time from all around the world. I am not trying to blow our own trumpet here, but so many of them say to me, “You are a Gove…”

“It is interesting that you should ask that question, Polly, because the industrial energy prices thing is a very serious situation. I read with interest some of the testimony your Committee had as part of your cost of energy inquiry. It is important to understand why this happened. I have a chart here: when the crisis …”

“It was, if I am allowed to use this phrase, a clown car operation, I think it is fair to say. Richard Tice wrote a letter saying he was going to rip up the contracts, and then went on the “PM” programme that afternoon to rebut his own letter—to say that he had been highly misinterpreted and that he was not going to tea…”