Speeches by Shanks.

“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 …”

“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 …”

“I did not see all of the previous panel, but if I understand the point, it comes down to defining community energy, which is something that we will do. That is not quite the same, and so we do need to come up with a definition of community energy. Many people think, “Why is that complex?” The reason it is complex is th…”

“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…”

“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 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.”

“What I said previously is that we are not going to fix a number on it, but there has to be a mix. The reason that I am saying that is that I want to avoid putting a number on it and that then being seen as a ceiling on our ambition on either local or on community. I do not make any judgment about one being better than …”

“We will put a definition on a statutory footing, so that it is very clear to everyone what the Government define community energy as. That is a very good definition, but community-owned energy will be slightly narrower than some of those points. It picks up on the key elements that it is about the ownership structure, …”

“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.”

“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…”

“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.”

“It is really important.”

“You are absolutely right. That is the way forward. The consensus on climate action—I will say that rather than “net zero”—is fractured but not broken. It is exaggerated by Westminster politics. In the country there is a lot more consensus on this issue than you would believe by listening to some of the debates that we …”

“Yes.”

“That is a really good question. I do not directly have as much to do with the international climate work, but I know that a lot of the conversations are shifting from the macro questions about our energy mix to the questions about how the transition affects communities. I was at the G20 in South Africa, and one of the …”

“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…”

“There is a lot that we can learn from all of that. Sometimes by necessity countries have skipped to a much more flexible, localised approach. We are seeing a lot of development of solar around the world, for example, in communities that have not had electricity on that scale at all and are building up from that. There …”

“Seasons make a difference in the price cap. If you take—”

“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…”