Speeches by Murphy.

“In 2023, the shadow Minister said: “The narrative that the public has now firmly adopted—that over 13 years things have got worse—is one we just have to acknowledge and admit.” Does he still acknowledge and admit that things got worse under his Government?”

“I will not get ahead of our Chancellor when it comes to the announcements about taxation that will be made later in the year, but I am confident that those on the Front Bench know that they have our full support in delivering the final recommendations of the child poverty taskforce, also later in the year. This Governm…”

“I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, not least because I called for such a measure before I was elected to this House, under the previous Conservative Government. This is a really important thing to do, not least because it underscores the Government’s approach to clean energy, and to wider climate action to t…”

“Welcome to the witnesses. This is a question following up what the Chair asked. There are those who argue that the sprint or the push for clean energy and renewables over the last 10 or 15 years is the driver of the problem, and that we should be fracking and exploiting more of our oil and gas. Would you agree that tha…”

“Paul, would you be able to write with more detail on the west midlands scheme that you mentioned?”

“What do you make of previous interventions such as the energy bill relief scheme? How effective were they?”

“What do you think could be done to make it a freer market in that sense?”

“You have touched on this a bit already, but what financial support should be available to small to medium-sized companies to mitigate their energy costs?”

“As a final question from me, it is clear from what you are saying that you would like to see the Government go further in reducing electricity costs. I just had a question about the fiscal cost of that. There does not seem to me to be a world in which costs can be substantially reduced, either for domestic consumers or…”

“I think you have covered this earlier, Beth, because you talked about the need to look at the system as a whole. Why should certain energy-intensive industries have their usage subsidised by government schemes, such as the British industry supercharger, while smaller businesses and consumers face high standing charges?”

“Returning to the issue of policy network charges—I think we have covered them, but I want to make sure that we have done so fully —Electrify Industry and Make UK have suggested that policy costs can make up around 30% of non-domestic energy bills. How much are policy network charges responsible? What proportion are the…”

“Welcome to the witnesses. This is a question following up what the Chair asked. There are those who argue that the sprint or the push for clean energy and renewables over the last 10 or 15 years is the driver of the problem, and that we should be fracking and exploiting more of our oil and gas. Would you agree that tha…”

“There are proposals out there on that marginal price-setting issue around gas supply for much greater Government intervention, regulation or indeed public ownership of that gas supply. I wondered what you thought of that. At the moment Government is to a degree—certainly, increasingly in the future—held hostage by a sm…”

“Paul, would you be able to write with more detail on the west midlands scheme that you mentioned?”

“What do you make of previous interventions such as the energy bill relief scheme? How effective were they?”

“What do you think could be done to make it a freer market in that sense?”

“You have touched on this a bit already, but what financial support should be available to small to medium-sized companies to mitigate their energy costs?”

“As a final question from me, it is clear from what you are saying that you would like to see the Government go further in reducing electricity costs. I just had a question about the fiscal cost of that. There does not seem to me to be a world in which costs can be substantially reduced, either for domestic consumers or…”

“Returning to the issue of policy network charges—I think we have covered them, but I want to make sure that we have done so fully —Electrify Industry and Make UK have suggested that policy costs can make up around 30% of non-domestic energy bills. How much are policy network charges responsible? What proportion are the…”

“There are proposals out there on that marginal price-setting issue around gas supply for much greater Government intervention, regulation or indeed public ownership of that gas supply. I wondered what you thought of that. At the moment Government is to a degree—certainly, increasingly in the future—held hostage by a sm…”