Speeches by Downie.

“I thank everyone from across the House for taking part in the debate. Having listened to the debate, I am reminded of a comment made by a colleague shortly after the general election in a similar debate in Westminster Hall, when he reflected on what it must be like for someone to walk into the room during a debate invo…”

“Last week, I was pleased to take part in a cross-party delegation to Washington to discuss matters of defence, security and development. At every one of those meetings, which were with both Republicans and Democrats and from across the political spectrum, the importance of the UK-US relationship was emphasised, particu…”

“I beg to move, That this House has considered St Andrew’s Day and Scottish affairs. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for the opportunity to mark St Andrew’s day and to discuss Scottish affairs. As a Fife MP, I begin by noting that the town of St Andrews is at the opposite end of the kingdom from my constituency…”

“I thank the hon. Member for her intervention and, indeed, for sponsoring my application to the Backbench Business Committee. She has anticipated one of the points that I will make later, and I should say that my speech does not mention either of those key figures in Scottish history she mentions, but it does mention ma…”

“I could not agree more. St Andrews University, which I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks, is the heart of education in Scotland, along with institutions in Edinburgh, Glasgow and elsewhere across the country. [Interruption.] I see that university arguments are breaking out already among Opposition Members—or is …”

“Very briefly, we have heard in both sessions lots of mentions of short term, long term and medium term. What does that mean in your world? When we are talking about an inquiry into the cost of energy and how we get bills down, what is a realistic way to do that in the short term and what do you mean by short term? We h…”

“As someone who lived in Scotland when they were doing Beauly-Denny, I remember the utter water torture that was for absolutely everyone involved frankly. Lastly, because I am conscious of my time, moving on to offshore wind and probably to you as well, Tom. You have seen a bit of a contrast between, again Scotland and …”

“Yes. Tom, I am quite interested in your perspective—obviously you worked on this for a number of years—who should be responsible for resolving those curtailment costs we have seen, and any other reflections more generally as well?”

“How do we make sure that does not happen with the decisions being made now that we effectively actually join those things together and we avoid that decoupling?”

“I get the pleasure of being the last person to question, which means I get a slight chance to reflect on what has happened so far. I have some questions specifically around zonal pricing but, reflecting on the points made so far, to my mind an efficient market is one that is transparent, least complex as possible and o…”

“Does anyone else want to come in?”

“I will move on to questions around zonal pricing. We obviously had the decision over the summer of the Government on zonal pricing, which was after some delay. What effect do you think that delay had on different parts of the system? How effective do you think the package of measures that the Government have put forwar…”

“You mentioned some of the signals that you could give on location price signals. What might some of them be?”

“For the other two panel members: do you think the seven years that the Government argued they would take to deliver zonal pricing was correct or do you think that was maybe a little bit of being scared?”

“You think it was too small. What do you think would have been a more realistic number and do you think that was one of the major reasons they would have decided against it?”

“It feels a bit like we have built a system that we do not like, we do not think works, it is not effective, but we do not know how to change it, and we are not entirely sure if we should.”

“Yes, you see grid connections, so 10-plus years, grid connections and decisions made in good faith that then you have a lovely planning permission that actually is utterly worthless, and those figures are then counted.”

“I want to ask some questions around renewables and network infrastructure siting and whether or not that will impact on consumer costs. As someone who has spent 10 plus years working in planning and communications in Scotland, largely on renewables projects, I have seen some good and some bad in terms of siting. We hav…”

“That is really helpful. Thank you.”

“Short term is 2030, medium term is 2030 to 2035, and long term is post-2035?”