Speeches by Shanks.

“I understand that, but, if you take an average of the past two years, energy bills are lower in real terms than they were the year before. There is more to do. That is why £150 is coming off the cost of bills in April to make a real commitment to people. The job is not done. The cost of living is our absolute north sta…”

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

“We recognise that the cost of living is affecting people across the country. The £150 in April is a serious commitment from this Government that people will feel in their bills. It will make a meaningful difference to people, but that is not the end of our ambition. Everything else that we are doing is, first of all, a…”

“I am not close enough to the individual offers. NESO is running that side of the process. The timeline has taken longer than any of us would have liked. Partly that is to do with the complexity of the individual offers. NESO has now completed its steps and it is with the transmission owners and, in turn, the DNOs to ma…”

“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…”

“Let me say first that smaller-scale projects have been taken out of the queue altogether. I should say that this is not in Scotland. For different reasons in Scotland and the islands it is much lower. In the rest of the UK, raising it to 5 MW takes out a large number of those community energy projects from that queue a…”

“I would challenge that. I see my job as a Minister not to just sit behind a desk and say yes or no to things, but to drive forward the outcomes of what we have said. Before I was an MP and before I was a teacher, I worked in an organisation that was all about outcomes, not about activity. It was about saying, “You can …”

“It is for the NWF to speak about individual projects. Until those investment decisions are made, I am not going to put a figure on jobs, but they are in the tens of thousands. We have said that, for the amount of money—£100 billion—that the NWF is seeking to bring in through the private capital allied to the public cap…”

“I am the Minister for Energy, which covers most of the energy system, so from transmission and network to renewables, to oil and gas in our transition in the North sea, to Great British Energy, as well as looking at the cross-cutting issues of energy security and resilience.”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) on securing the debate. Although I disagree with some of what he said, the tone of his remarks is welcome. I will respond to some of his points, but given the time I will not be able to respond to them all. On a general point, I appreciate that many…”

“I will come to that point in just a moment. Part of the wider work we are seeking to do across Government is to plan where infrastructure is built holistically and strategically. For example, the land-use work that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is doing is about looking at the whole United King…”

“Happy new year to you, Mr Speaker, and to colleagues across the House. I have temporarily lost hearing in one of my ears so if I am shouting or do not hear every detail of the questions, I apologise in advance. This Government are determined to strengthen our energy security by moving away from volatile fossil fuels an…”

“It is a hugely important question. In an increasingly uncertain world, our energy security becomes more and more important, and that is why we are determined not only that we build a clean power system to tackle the most existential crisis that the planet faces—the climate crisis—but that we have home-grown power here …”

“Typically, my hon. Friend is right on these points, and yes, it is one of my new year’s resolutions—and I suspect one of my ministerial colleagues’ resolutions as well—for us to redouble our efforts to make the case for this. Just this morning I was reading about yet another study that shows that we underestimate the l…”

“Well, I say a happy new year to the hon. Gentleman, as we see his sunny disposition back in this House again! First, we committed in the Budget to looking at the CBAM inclusion and are working to make that happen. Secondly, of course I have been working with all the refineries to make sure that they are as sustainable …”

“First, on a positive note in the new year, I believe the hon. Gentleman had some good news over Christmas—I congratulate him on it. He is quite wrong, though, on his question. I should set out, as I did in my oral statement on the Lindsey oil refinery, that this was an insolvency process and it was therefore for the of…”

“My hon. Friend raises a hugely important point. The future of the grid is going to be absolutely critical not only to how we get clean power to homes and businesses across the country to bring down bills, but to how we deliver the economic growth the country needs. That is why we have taken two key actions, the first o…”

“That is an important question on two fronts. My hon. Friend rightly mentioned that the transition away from fossil fuels is hugely important for our energy security and for future generations. We in this place have a huge responsibility to safeguard the future of our planet for the generations still to come. His second…”

“We have been really clear that the energy profits levy comes to an end in 2030. We have also put in place what the future of that scheme looks like to provide certainty for the long-term future. Of course, the energy profits levy was introduced by the hon. Lady’s party in government. We have been really clear that the …”

“There are a number of points that I would challenge in the hon. Lady’s question. First, the floor was set by the Conservative party in government and we have not changed it. Secondly, she talks about thousands of jobs lost every month. That is from an important study that was done by a university; it is not a reflectio…”