Speeches by Shanks.

“I do not know the specifics of the case that the hon. Lady raises—if she wants to send any details to me, I will certainly look at them. We clearly want to see and expect in every single case a partnership between developers delivering projects that we think are important, the planning system responsible for putting th…”

“That is not the position of the Government, because report after report and the evidence points to the fact that undergrounding cables is significantly more expensive than putting them above ground. Individual applications will clearly look at the individual circumstances and make a decision on that. We have said as a …”

“The hon. Gentleman is assiduous in raising these sorts of questions with me. I am very happy to look at the possibilities. He is right to outline the potential of sites such as that, and we will look at it.”

“My hon. Friend always raises the huge potential of Cornwall in this House and in the energy space. He is right to talk about the potential for geothermal; we are hugely excited about the opportunities that it presents. I am very happy to meet him and others to discuss further how we can take it forward.”

“My hon. Friend makes a point that others have raised. We are looking in granular detail at how the system works to ensure that the regulatory landscape allows such opportunities to be taken. I am very happy to meet him to discuss this further. We are taking a detailed look at every single aspect of the system, so that …”

“The hon. Lady is right that we have an enormous amount of innovation in this space and real potential to meet our future needs, not just as a result of the pathway that we have outlined, but through innovative solutions like the one she mentioned, which provide specific support to targeted industries. I am happy to loo…”

“Our clean power 2030 action plan sets out our pathway to delivering clean power. To support that plan, we recently launched the solar road map, which confirms plans to increase domestic solar installations through the future homes standard and warm homes plan.”

“I will not detain the Committee for long, but I should put on record that the shadow Minister was on the judging panel for the aforesaid awards. I am not quite sure what that says for either of us, frankly, but I thank him for whatever role he played in trying to prevent me from getting the award. It clearly did not wo…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Electricity Capacity (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2025. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. These regulations were laid before the House on 3 June 2025, and they make technical improvements and changes to the capacity market scheme—th…”

“I suspect that if we go through all the words that have ever been spoken inside and outside this place, we might find two words that go side by side quite often. In answer to the hon. Lady, no, I do not think that that is the case at all. She makes a persuasive argument, but in my view it is not the argument that appli…”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, for my first petitions debate, which are a great innovation in parliamentary procedure. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier), I thank everyone who signed the petition. I do not think that I have been in a Westminster Hall de…”

“It goes back to what I said earlier. I take the hon. Lady’s point, and I take seriously the number of people who engaged with the petition. I also reflect on the number of organisations and activities across the country that rely on sponsorship. I do not think that we should discount that so easily, because we have inc…”

“My view is the same for any business: companies should offer the best possible terms and conditions they can, especially at a moment of redundancy. Where you have workers who have worked hard in a business, delivering economic benefit on behalf of the company, they should have the best possible terms and conditions at …”

“There is a challenge in any event where we draw a line. I understand the concerns, and they have been raised with me directly as well. There has been an impact on the contractors who worked at the Grangemouth site but were not employed by Petroineos. There will, of course, be wider cascading impacts of the Grangemouth …”

“I would reiterate the message that I have said throughout, which is that this is hugely disappointing. I do not for a second underestimate the impact that redundancy has on workers and families, or the stress that goes with that. What we have tried to do is put in place—as quickly as possible, and as large as possible—…”

“I would be willing to look at how we can encourage that. I do not think it is something we could insist on. The main aim that we have in the coming months is to get the viable projects that have come forward over the line, and to do the due diligence that is absolutely necessary to see what funding is required. Some of…”

“Yes, we have two taskforces within Government at the moment. One is looking at exactly that point around regulatory or policy changes that are necessary. We have taken forward all the points raised in the Project Willow report, and we are looking at what is possible. We are specifically looking at what might be necessa…”

“I can come back to you on what we can make public. None of it is a secret, but we can certainly see what we could share. The taskforce, jointly with the Scottish Government, is a bit ad hoc. I think we met four times in one week and not for a couple of weeks after that. This is not a five-year project; it is about what…”

“I can to a certain extent, but I want to be careful to say that we are at quite an early stage in some of those discussions. The likelihood, on the basis of current proposals, is that there will end up being quite a mix of projects rather than one significant project. I think it adds some strength to the future of the …”

“I am not sure, to be honest. I suspect it may be a factor, but on behalf of the public, who fund the National Wealth Fund, it is probably looking more at investability of the proposition, but it will take a wide look at that. It is important to say that the National Wealth Fund is not a high street bank; it is there to…”