Speeches by Shanks.

“Because we want to steward the future of the basin and have a strategic plan that industry can get behind. Very few of the licences that have been issued in the past few years have come to production, so they are not the route to that, but the process had so far not had clarity from the Government. That is why we said …”

“My hon. Friend is right on that point, and I will come to it in a moment because it is the main thrust of my speech. I will start with what my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) said and also welcome Donald MacKinnon into his place. I know he will be a strong advocate for the western isl…”

“House adjourned.”

“My hon. Friend makes a very important point. The National Wealth Fund is independent in the decisions it makes. It has clearly made decisions based on the Government’s ambitions on carbon capture, but on this particular project it made investment independent of my Department, which has not made any funding commitments …”

“I will take interventions in a moment—I have clearly started something. The major thrust of the hon. Lady’s speech was about how the voices of communities are heard in the consultation process.”

“I congratulate the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth) on securing the debate and on her work gathering her constituents’ views. I genuinely welcome the tone that she has taken. As a personal reflection, I miss the fact that a great many subjects that we used to debate in this place used to be…”

“I agree with my hon. Friend, and I will come on to that point. I appreciate the importance of consultation, but I thought the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury put it very well. Consultation is not a briefing exercise; it is a listening exercise, and a reshaping of things on the basis of what we hear back. I …”

“Committee rose.”

“I welcome the comments of both hon. Gentlemen, in particular those of the hon. Member for West Dorset, who spoke to the actual draft regulations. I thank him for his support. I also thank the official Opposition for their support for all that we do in energy policy, or so it seemed from the speech of the shadow Ministe…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Contracts for Difference (Allocation) (Amendment) Regulations 2026. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 20 April. They make several minor and technical amendments to improve the operational efficiency of the contracts for difference scheme durin…”

“The very simple answer is that we are continuing to use the North sea—no one is switching off what we are producing in the North sea—but the amount that we are able to extract from the North sea has been in long-term decline. The right hon. Lady knows that because she was the Secretary of State who talked a lot about t…”

“The hon. Member is right to highlight the enormous potential. For a very long time, the UK has not been good at growing the good innovation and spin-outs coming out of our university and innovation space. We need to nurture them, but also build on them and invest in them in the future. That is why we are investing in t…”

“Co-operation with our EU counterparts is vitally important when it comes to energy security. I recently travelled to the WindEurope conference in Madrid, where I joined other European Ministers to discuss how recent global events have shown that we have to work together to deliver on our energy security. We have held c…”

“I agree with the hon. Member. We have this bizarre situation where we have chuntering from the Opposition Front Benchers about the fact that we have interconnections with Europe. We have had them for decades, and they are important to our energy security. That was the case under both Governments, and theirs is an absur…”

“The provisions under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 drive industry action via due diligence and transparency to tackle forced labour in supply chains for solar panels. All procurement conducted under Government and GBE contracts is required to meet those standards.”

“As I said during the passage of the Great British Energy Bill, I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of tackling modern slavery as a country across supply chains and across the economy. It is right that we take action. We are tackling forced labour where we find it in global supply chains, and we want to go…”

“I thank my hon. Friend for all the work he has done to support the workers from Grangemouth. I wrote to him earlier this week on the case of his two constituents. The training fund was set up to provide that support. We will continue to look at it, and I am happy to meet him to discuss it further.”

“The hon. Member is right about the ambition, and that is why we commissioned the independent review by my noble Friend Lord Whitehead. We will respond to that review in due course, and we are ambitious about the role that GGRs can play.”

“The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. This is a crucial aspect of the local power plan. We need to support communities in developing the project, and then creating a market in which they can sell electricity locally. We are working with Ofgem and partners to ensure that can happen, and we will say more in due c…”

“The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight this issue. We have provided funding to support the development of carbon capture projects in Northern Ireland, such as Catagen’s biohydrogen reactor in Belfast. We welcome engagement on further carbon capture, usage and storage projects. It is a really important part of decarbo…”