Speeches by Shanks.

“They are right. We have not solved the problem entirely, but we have made huge progress. There are two aspects to this that are really important. The first is that the queue itself had become an absurd thing. We had more than 750 GW in a queue that was never going to be realised and was not being dealt with. There were…”

“First of all, you should not compare different periods of the price cap.”

“First of all, on the 1,000 projects, I would emphasise that it says “at least 1,000 projects”. I say that genuinely because that is not a ceiling on our ambition. What we want to see within that is a real mix of projects. We know that there are some really good local energy projects. We have tried to fund, for example,…”

“I do not think that that is unqualified, though, Chair. Yes, we want to see a supply chain in the UK. We want to see factories built and we have investment from countries around the world in building that supply chain here in the UK. That is good, but our national security comes first. That trumps any other considerati…”

“It is a really fair question. There is a tension there. The clean power action plan did not designate individual projects or scale of projects. It designated the targets we want for each type of technology. It is then left to the individual projects that come forward, because Government do not direct the projects. It i…”

“I have not seen any proposals for individual projects, but we have been very clear that, post 2030, this country should have decarbonised its power system, and we are doing everything to make that happen.”

“There are many options that we consulted on, and we will give a response to that consultation in due course, but the ambition has been very clear from us that shared ownership is a really good opportunity to get big-scale involvement of communities in the ownership of energy.”

“No, we are not prescribing and not setting a target, but I have been very clear that that does not mean that we do the projects that might be more straightforward to get over the line at the cost of others. There has to be a balance, and the local power plan really outlines the fact that there has to be both of those e…”

“I cannot say what is specifically in the local power plan, but it definitely will be a balance of local and community energy. We have been clear on that. We will set out the fact that this is a Government commitment, but it is a shared enterprise between Great British Energy, Government and communities.”

“We have not given a view, because there have not been any proposals brought forward. By 2030, we are trying to phase out the role of unabated gas in our power system.”

“Let me just say right now, knowing that it is on the record, that I am accountable for this. Ed Miliband, as the Secretary of State, has taken it incredibly seriously. We, as Ministers, are responsible.”

“That is the vision we really have. Solar panels on the rooftop of the school are great. I have visited a number of them. They reduce the bills of the school. The money goes straight back into schools and they spend it on all the things we want schools spending money on, but you can see a school as a real hub for commun…”

“We will say more on the plan, but we are not fixing a scheme.”

“Inevitably, it is largely from our European neighbours, which have been doing this for a very long time. I had a fantastic visit to Denmark to visit, I think, one of the first community-owned offshore wind farms, Middelgrunden, which was excellent. We learned from that that ambition should not be micro-scale generation…”

“I have slightly more than three things working in tandem at the moment, but I will leave that there.”

“Emma might want to come in on some of those points, but let me take it head on. I am accountable for this to Parliament. On the question of who is responsible for it, we have set up Great British Energy as a publicly owned energy company to be our energy champion and for the public to own a share in it. It will drive f…”

“I do not have the figures to hand. We can write to you on the questions.”

“The way that we have sought to deliver the clean power mission is partly how my Department is driving everything, which is to say that, in the past, Government have set out an objective, then gone away and let others just deliver it in the background, and hoped that the outcome would be achieved at some point. The clea…”

“It was a wonderful trip.”

“In terms of the ingredients, if you like, for what is going to make this plan work, without revealing anything that is in the plan, because these things are all what came out of the consultation and what you will have heard in evidence from everyone, it is a combination. First, the regulatory system needs to make it mu…”