Speeches by Shanks.

“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…”

“It certainly is not. We want to phase out the use of gas. Gas will continue to play a strategic role in the capacity market, where we absolutely need it, but it will be less than 5% of our need.”

“They have had some direction. They will get more direction on the principles, and the local power plan will outline more of what we want to do. I say genuinely that Ofgem has a very difficult balancing act. Although I and other Ministers will challenge it on many things, of all the regulators, it is aware of the fact t…”

“There are two separate things to that. You and I will both have constituents who come to our surgeries every week who talk about their pay packet not reaching to the end of the month. When people feel a little less pressure on that and do not fear a letter coming through the door because it might be a bill that they ca…”

“Yes, and not just the Department. Right across Government, the absolute priority from the Prime Minister to everyone is what we are doing to address the cost of living and particularly electricity prices. That is important for individual consumers, but it is also important for business and industry that we tackle that.…”

“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 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 an aspiration and a goal.”

“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…”

“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.”

“I do not think there will be. They are serving different purposes. For the definition that we will put in legislation, it will be for the regulator to assess and to make decisions on the basis of what we have legislated for. That will flow into decisions that it will make around the market and other things. It serves a…”

“There is a lot of truth in that. We will look at the methodologies behind how we get those numbers so we can make that case. The flexibility roadmap is all about how consumers can benefit, but it is critical for the system. We cannot operate without flexibility. We need to have a system that can work with that. That de…”

“Yes.”

“That is great, whoever said that in Parliament. It is brilliant.”

“There is quite a lot in that question that is really important. First of all, on the technology point, we consulted on broadening that away from just being onshore wind to other technologies. That does not mean that we would take the same view for every technology. If you look at nuclear, for example, it is not part of…”

“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…”

“The local power plan will not cover this, but we have a separate consultation that we will respond to soon on the question of mandatory community benefits. We will set out in that what our response is both to the levels and to whether it should be mandatory or voluntary. We think there should be more ambition in this s…”

“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, …”

“I am not sure I fully understood the issue. I suspect it is partly that there is capacity on one part of a substation, which has allowed a project to connect.”

“That is a fair question. I will follow up on the individual example. We did a widespread piece of consultation, indeed called Barriers to Community Energy Projects. We had a significant number of contributions to that and we also did workshops across the country to really get into detail on some of those issues. It is …”