Speeches by Shanks.

“It is a hugely important point. Since we have been uncovering the practice—the delivery that has not been up to standard—we have obviously found more and more examples of it. It was a scheme that was not run well; the Government have accepted that and we want to make sure that the next scheme learns the lessons of that…”

“We take these things on a case-by-case basis, but there is no doubt that the warm homes plan—the £15 billion investment funded from general taxation—was seen as the fairest way, with taxation being a distributive way of raising revenue, to fund a really important upgrade of Britain’s homes. That was a decision that was…”

“I will look into the very specific forecourts that the hon. Member mentions. However, I restate what I said at the beginning, which is based on the live data that we have from forecourts around the UK: there is no shortage of fuel in the UK. That is really important to say and is backed up by the evidence that we have …”

“I think a balance is important here, but we have also invested in those renewables significantly over a period of time, so for many of those who have feed-in tariffs, they have had that revenue source for a long time. I understand that that was partly why they made those investment decisions in the first place, which i…”

“It is very likely. I think the scheme design across the board is based on the CPI—not just in the energy world—so it is very likely that that will be the future.”

“Because we committed to two things in our manifesto—and people often remember the first part, but not the second. The first was no new licences to explore new fields and the second was that we would manage existing fields for their lifespan. Tiebacks are a way to make those existing fields economically viable for as lo…”

“The North sea is a hugely important asset for the United Kingdom. It is working right now to provide gas into pipes around the country. It will continue to be a very important asset for the country, but it is also a super-mature basin that has been in decline for two decades. It is playing less and less of a role in de…”

“I think it is coming to a fair position where very few people use the existing measure of inflation. It is coming to a fair balance. We consulted on a range of measures, and we think this is the fairest way to take it forward. We recognise that it will be a change for people who have those arrangements, but equally, we…”

“I think it is a really fair challenge. People often forget what an early stage the development was in when the renewables obligation scheme was set up and just how little deployment we had of those technologies. We have matured a lot in terms of the technology readiness, but also in terms of the financial instruments t…”

“I think the order of the day is to go further on a whole range of things—nothing is off the table. I am not going to hint at individual things that we are looking at, but nothing is off limits at the moment. We have said very clearly that we are in the corner of consumers, and we have to demonstrate what that means. Ta…”

“We already have a mechanism in place. The electricity generator levy is essentially a windfall tax. At points where the wholesale costs increase beyond the threshold that it sets, the money flows back to consumers. We are looking at that in the light of the current situation, and whether that still works, but we think …”

“We are obviously going to keep this under review. The Chancellor made a decision to take it off bills for three years. The RO scheme completely comes to an end in 2037, but between 2027 and 2037 a number will come off every year, so we will see a tailing off of that cost. The Chancellor made the decision in a spending …”

“To be clear, groups were set up from day one of this Government. It has been our absolute driving mission. The Prime Minister has said repeatedly—he has directed every single Minister to this cause—that our absolute No. 1 priority as a Government is to tackle the affordability crisis, and everybody has different levers…”

“We keep an open mind about the best way in which to fund the system that we need. I am acutely aware that I am not the Chancellor, so I am not going to be drawn on decisions around public spending. Clearly, we want to look in the round about the best way to deliver this. You are right to say that we have a different ap…”

“For obvious reasons, it may well be that the announcements that get the most headline-grabbing attention are around the clean power mission. That does not mean there is not a huge amount of work with dogged determination in the background. Martin has set up a number of groups to really look at individual bits of the Bi…”

“You tempt me to say that Martin McCluskey is going to have a big sexy mission on reducing bills, but it does not sound quite as impressive.”

“It is an avenue that we have to look at very carefully, because we have said that every penny in a bill should be scrutinised very carefully to understand the role that it plays in the bill and whether there is an alternative way of delivering that same policy. For example, the Chancellor took the conscious decision to…”

“People are very welcome to introduce private Member’s Bills and a whole range of things. Often they are on topics the Government are already going to do things on—particularly from Liberal Democrats. We nevertheless welcome the enthusiasm. We do want to be ambitious in this space, but I want to be honest: we need to ma…”

“We have been having regular conversations with MHCLG. I am not going to prejudge an announcement on the future homes standard that has not been made, but we do want to see much more use of technology like this. We have already been clear about solar panels playing a really important part. We think batteries are importa…”

“Yes, we want to look at much more. The plug-in solar was an important part of us saying that consumers should have a win in this as well. It has not been regulated in the UK before, but it now will be, so that people can have that offer. A part of the warm homes plan looks at a range of different investments and techno…”