Speeches by Miliband.

“Exactly.”

“This is definitely something we want to work on, as I think I said to Polly. It is important to realise the potential here. If you think about the potential around solar, batteries and heat pumps, with half-hourly settlements, I think we are underestimating the extent that this can make a massive difference to consumer…”

“There will not be a ban because Rishi Sunak never legislated for the ban and then he said he would not do it. The answer is that we said in our manifesto that we will not force anyone to rip out their gas boiler. Again, I want to be frank with you, Chair: I am very cautious on these questions because we can say to peop…”

“The future homes standard is a matter for MHCLG and they will be coming forward with proposals. There are massive advantages to us in ensuring from the outset that homes are built to a low-carbon spec. There is enthusiasm for this among the house builders and others. To give you the vision here, because it is important…”

“I am pleased we have gone into injury time or extra time or whatever it is called these days; I am giving you my age here. You raise a wider point—I will come to your specific question—about the role of trade unions in this transition. We have a different view from the last Government on the role of trade unions in thi…”

“I definitely will. What I would say at a general level is that we want GB Energy to be a model of what a good employer looks like, working with the trade unions. I know this is important to Juergen Maier, who is the start-up chair of GB Energy, and I am happy to write to you in more detail about that.”

“I think it goes to this wider question that is in all of this, and this is the next stage of what mission control, led by Chris Stark, will do. Workforce planning is incredibly important, because there is huge potential for jobs in some of the areas you have talked about, including in home heating. Where will we get th…”

“Explain the question again please, Chair.”

“This is the work we are engaged on across Government, working with Skills England, and my Department is engaging. You are right that it is a challenge. I do not want to have rose-tinted spectacles here, but there is a massive opportunity. I want to assure you that part of our job, for the first six months, is to get th…”

“You are right to raise this as a challenge, and it goes to the more general challenge. There is lively disagreement about the scale of where heat pumps can work and where they cannot, but I think there is consensus that we are going to need many more heat pumps installed across the country. I think this is doable. One …”

“In the interests of time, Chair, since we are in overtime, I am going to be relatively brief. There is an important role for hydrogen in our economy. We touched on it a little bit earlier in relation to industry. The issue of hydrogen in home heating is something we are examining. We have said in our response to the Cl…”

“I feel privileged.”

“Always wise at this time of year.”

“I often say this to colleagues: lots of people have lots of demands on me—support this project, support that project and so on—and I think it would be wrong of me, going back to my exchange with Sir Christopher, not to say that we are operating in a very tricky and tight fiscal situation. There are obviously significan…”

“This is where, as a fan, you get annoyed at the referee for going beyond the time.”

“This is when we get to the exciting part where we can talk about mission boards. It is the bit that all the viewers have been waiting for. Look, I do think this is important. It is not just that the Prime Minister has this as one of the five missions, but we have a mechanism: a mission board that meets regularly, chair…”

“I have to say to the hon. Lady that I do not see it that way. The reality is that the country is totally vulnerable to the rollercoaster of the fossil fuel markets. We do not need to look into a crystal ball; we just need to look at the record: we saw the worst cost of living crisis in generations. So long as we are ex…”

“I find the hon. Gentleman quite extraordinary, and not in a good way. The last Government left not only a generalised absolute mess in the public finances, but lots of the programmes that he is talking about were not even funded. The difference with this Government and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is that she pu…”

“The hon. Gentleman’s story about Wylfa says it all. He says his Government had this great plan for Wylfa, but they had no money behind it.”

“These are more fantasy numbers from the right hon. Lady. The truth is that the North sea has lost a third of its employment in the past decade. The only future for the North sea is in what this Government are doing: investing in carbon capture and storage, in offshore wind and in hydrogen. That is the future.”