Speeches by Shanks.

“Good evening. It is good to be with you again, Chair, on this really important subject. On refineries, I brought all of them together for the first time in 13 years to have conversations about what the future of the refining sector would look like. We are working on a future of fuel strategy. A consultation has gone ou…”

“I am not sure what you mean by “emergency”.”

“I am sure you have a suggestion for me, Torcuil, of where that might be, and you and I certainly stood on a very windy hilltop a few weeks ago in Stornoway. As for the way we are doing this, it will be a pilot. The Government will put £20 million into that pilot to look at the final levies that people pay on the megawa…”

“The tax income we have received for 60 years from North sea oil has funded public services for a long time. I am not going to suggest that the revenue is not hugely important. It is. The question that we have been answering about what the future of the North sea looks like is: how do we manage what is a super-mature ba…”

“There is slightly more to it than that. There have been officials appointed to look at this question, and they are working through that work. It is not that the decision has been taken not to do anything. Work is going on. It will just take slightly longer than I would like. It is worth saying that the inclusion of CBA…”

“I have been working with the Treasury and with the Exchequer Secretary, who joined me for the last roundtable I had with industry a few weeks ago. We are aware of the need to move quickly. I would recognise the point that, at this moment in particular, we should underscore how important the four remaining refineries th…”

“We are not putting a timeline on it, but the information has been received from the developers, the process has been followed by the regulator, and decisions will be made.”

“I am not going to get drawn on the national security advice, which we have seen and considered. It has been carefully considered across Government. I am not going to get into the specifics, but we took very careful consideration before we reached the decision.”

“I am not sure what you mean by “emergency”.”

“We carefully considered this. This was a proposal that was put forward without consultation with Government from Ming Yang. We welcome investment from China, as we have announced in the past few months, when it is in the national interest. When the Prime Minister was in Beijing, we have seen a lot of inward investment …”

“I am not going to get drawn on the national security advice, which we have seen and considered. It has been carefully considered across Government. I am not going to get into the specifics, but we took very careful consideration before we reached the decision.”

“I am sure you have a suggestion for me, Torcuil, of where that might be, and you and I certainly stood on a very windy hilltop a few weeks ago in Stornoway. As for the way we are doing this, it will be a pilot. The Government will put £20 million into that pilot to look at the final levies that people pay on the megawa…”

“It is a really important framing of the question. The Prime Minister was really clear with all of his Ministers before this crisis, in fact, that the sense of fear and dread that many people have that the next letter coming through the letterbox is a bill that they cannot afford should be uppermost in every single one …”

“The Chancellor is leading this work across Government, so there are a number of areas that she will be focusing on that are not in my brief. Specifically on things that we are looking at as the Energy Department, the price cap is really important, so we are doing everything we can to monitor what is happening at the mo…”

“The energy profits levy comes to an end in 2030, but the Chancellor confirmed to industry a few weeks ago that she would work with it to bring that to an end sooner, and for there to be a permanent mechanism put in place. Clearly, that work moves at a different pace at a moment, so that we do not have periods in which …”

“The work is nearing completion. What we asked them to do was look at whether there were potential sites in Scotland, recognising that the Scottish Government and the SNP have an objection to all nuclear. It will be a look at potential sites without being a full siting assessment, because there is no prospect of them be…”

“It is worth saying that marginal pricing is a natural market. Our view is that gas should not be setting the price, so we need to do everything possible to de-link those two. We are looking at a range of options in this space, but it is worth saying that the clean power mission will de-link naturally as we build more. …”

“We absolutely should be moving as fast as possible on everything, but there is a particular case to be made for bringing more flex on faster. We announced this week that we would start a trial of being able to utilise so-called “wasted” wind—the wind that we currently pay to turn off in areas of high constraints—so tha…”

“We learn from those situations. Ofgem has a role in making sure the market is as resilient as possible, and looking at individual companies as part of that. Ofgem has introduced higher capital requirements on companies to demonstrate that they are more resilient than they might otherwise have been. There is a lot more …”

“I think it has. It will have been felt on bills, but not as often as it should be.”