Speeches by Shanks.

“It is an aspiration and a goal.”

“The balance is that we have to weigh the role that it might play in our supply chain against any national security risks, and national security always comes first. That assessment is critical and then we assess the role that it might play in the supply chain.”

“This is absolutely fundamental, Chair, to what we need to do going forward. The local power plan will be published soon, in weeks rather than months. At the heart of it, it makes that argument, which is that, as a Government, we care about the question of ownership for much more than just the megawatts going on the sys…”

“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.”

“Respectfully, I disagree. I think £250 off a bill will have a massive impact on communities. The point of it is to give a recognition that, if you are hosting infrastructure, you should benefit from it directly. That is our commitment on transmission infrastructure. We will say more about the wider community benefits, …”

“Our clean power action plan is to decarbonise the power system, so it is not going to be our position that, post 2030, we should see unabated gas. That is very clear from us, but there is a need for us to provide capacity for the data centres that we want to bring to this country, for hugely important economic growth r…”

“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…”

“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.”

“In terms of decisions, I would imagine that the overwhelming majority will not come to Government at all. They will be decided through the Town and Country Planning Act by local councils. In terms of policy frameworks, it is a shared role. DESNZ feeds into the national policy statements, but they are held by MHCLG.”

“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…”

“I partly want to be slightly careful. I am not an expert in planning and my Department is not shaping this policy in that space through the local power plans. I want to be slightly careful about that. The balance that I tried to get across earlier is that projects should be judged on their merits based on the impact th…”

“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…”

“We consulted on how we would use that power. It is a very helpful power that the previous Government legislated for. I am not quite sure that they knew what they were doing when they did that. It is a really important power, but it has not been used, and so we have consulted on how we would enact that power. At the hea…”

“I am responsible and the Secretary of State is responsible, but it is a shared endeavour between Government, Great British Energy and communities. I want to emphasise that. When we publish the local power plan, yes, it details what Government will do and the offer from Great British Energy, but it is designed and frame…”

“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.”

“We committed to that target and it was in the clean power action plan. It is an ambition that we have. The local power plan will not break down exactly that 8 GW target, because we do not want to focus purely on gigawatts. We want to focus on the individual projects. Our ambition is that we will meet that through a com…”

“I will answer it in a second. Emma was just going to come in on the last question, if that is okay.”

“I do not want to parse my words in terms of what the project might look like, but if a local council was to support a community to deliver a project, but it was owned by the community, I would call that a community-owned project. If we are talking about a local council putting solar panels on leisure centres and connec…”

“We said in our manifesto when we were elected as a Government that we wanted to significantly change the ownership of energy in this country. That remains absolutely our ambition. It has not changed. This plan is around how we take the initial steps to get to these projects going from, at the moment, a very low startin…”

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