Michael Shanks
MP for Rutherglen · Labour · United Kingdom
“In the past two years, during which I have had the privilege of doing this job, my hon. Friend has frequently shared her experiences as an electrical engineer, and she is right. I, too, am in awe of the grid and of the work that its operators do day in, day out as part of the extremely complex job of balancing supply and demand 24/7.”
“First, on the point about this somehow being a Government project, it is absolutely not. That is why my answers to the right hon. Member for Tatton reflected the fact that, right now, private developers across the country in a whole range of sectors are developing private propositions for all sorts of things.”
“As I have said to the shadow Secretary of State before, though, she is conflating two things, I think wilfully. There are questions to be asked about things that have been raised with her by whistleblowers, which we will now investigate.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that was the point I was going to come on to. Community engagement is absolutely critical. It is an absolutely firm expectation from Ministers that any of these large-scale infrastructure projects should have meaningful engagement with communities.”
“There was a lot there, but I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not happy to see me at the Dispatch Box. I am very happy to see him in his place, and to be here to answer this important urgent question. On security of supply, let me say that, yes, renewables are not going to be the entirety of our mix at all times.”
“I am aware of that. Councils can take a view on a whole range of things; I do not think there is anything controversial about a council making its views known on a particular project. It is very welcome to do that, and that is why we have democratically elected councillors in this country. On a final point by the right hon.”
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“The hon. Member is right to champion her local community. I have met with those involved in the Dorset super cluster before, and I am happy to do so again, because we do see huge potential for the clean energy transition right across the country. As she rightly says, it is also about how we create good, well-paid jobs in every community, so I am very happy to meet her to discuss it further.”
“Well, it is a basic fact that the very short-term disruption at both Glasgow and Edinburgh airport was caused by driver disruption. That has now been resolved, and flights are carrying on as normal. There is not an issue with jet fuel in the UK at all; that is just a fact, and I am happy to put that on the record. My hon. Friend is right to say that the failure of both the previous Conservative Government and the SNP Government to plan for what was well known—the closure of Grangemouth—has meant that we lost the opportunity to build on the industries that were there. However, we have committed £200 million, so that there is an industrial future at Grangemouth. We have announced the first projects from that, and there are many more to come.”
“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 the need for a transition in the North sea—she recognised then that the North sea has been in decline. We have been a net importer for more than 20 years, so this is not a short-term position. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), gave the game away a few minutes ago: the answer to this is how we build the industries that come in the future, alongside retaining oil and gas for many decades to come.”
“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 that early stage development, and it is also why Great British Energy is interested in what the next set of innovations are, how we can back them and, crucially, how we can keep the intellectual property here in the UK and also build the supply chains and the industry that goes along with it. It is a huge opportunity for us, and today’s report from the CBI outlines just how crucial it is to the overall British economy that we continue to grow and nurture the exact industries that he talks about.”
“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 constructive discussions with the EU on the internal electricity market and those continue.”
“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 absurd position. He is absolutely right to say that in a moment of geopolitical uncertainty, closer links with Europe are important. Our interconnectors import and export every single day to the benefit of consumers in Britain. We want to see much more efficient energy trading, and that is why we are working on those formal negotiations about the EU internal electricity market, which is important for Britain.”
“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 further. GBE will be a leader in how we tackle modern slavery, and it has set up a function to look at sustainable supply chains and to ensure that they are free from modern slavery.”
“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 course.”
“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 decarbonisation, and I am happy to engage on it further.”
“I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but because it is a live planning application under independent examination, it is not possible for me to comment further. I obviously encourage him and his constituents to register with the Planning Inspectorate, if they have not done so already, so that they can share their views.”
“As I have said before from the Dispatch Box, it would not be appropriate for me to comment on live applications for obvious reasons. We look at every single application on its merits; even though we have ambitions for where we want to get to, individual planning applications are considered on the individual merits on which they are presented.”
“We see carbon capture as a hugely important part of how we decarbonise, and we have supported clusters already. We are looking at what a future model could look like; equally, we need to see other projects coming forward on commercial terms to ensure that they are viable. I continue to meet with all the clusters, and I chair the CCUS taskforce to ensure that we are doing as much as we can.”
“Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin), who essentially said that nobody really likes any of us and it is all the fault of first past the post. That was a great contribution! I want to single out the contribution of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who gave an excellent speech. He emphasised absolutely rightly that Britain is not broken but that we must be better. That was a really important charge for us all. This debate has shown that the whole House agrees on the need to strengthen our energy security as we respond to the second fossil fuel shock in less than five years.”
“We need some balance in how we approach the future of skills development in the country, so that we have the skilled workforce we need to do all that we want to do. The hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson), who I think is no longer in his place, made a bizarre argument in which he said the last Government did a fantastic job and did everything right, but that we should now do none of the things that they did into the future. That was slightly odd. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), stole my thunder with his remarks on the speech by the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord). I particularly enjoyed the intervention from the hon.”
“I also put on record my congratulations to Donald on his fantastic election as the Member of the Scottish Parliament for the Western Isles. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth West gave a fantastic sales pitch for her community and the role it is playing in the clean power transition. She also mentioned the Dorset clean energy super cluster, which I would be delighted to visit. Contributions from hon. Members on all sides of the House were interesting. I particularly welcome the consensus on nuclear, which is hugely important. The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) gave a wide-ranging lecture—an important contribution—on the economy. I completely agree with his points on skills.”
“Friend the Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody) spoke quite rightly about her pride in Blyth and the workers there. I was really pleased to be there a few months ago to celebrate the 25th birthday of offshore wind, which of course was started in Blyth. My hon. Friends the Members for Luton South and South Bedfordshire (Rachel Hopkins), for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume), for Bournemouth West (Jessica Toale), for East Thanet (Ms Billington) and for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) all made important contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton), who I had the great pleasure of joining in Stornoway recently, rightly congratulated Donald MacKinnon MSP.”
“It is a privilege to close this debate on the Gracious Speech. It has been a pleasure to sit here all afternoon and listen to all the contributions in what turned out to be a far more wide-ranging debate than one just on energy policy, and I thank all Members for that. I will respond to a few specific points raised in the debate in due course, although I will single out a few contributions from Members on the Labour Benches at the outset. My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) was absolutely right in a number of areas of his speech, particularly in saying that we should be very cautious about taking any advice from the shadow Secretary of State lest she change her mind, as she has done so often in this policy area. My hon.”
“They have studied the evidence and weighed up the options, and their conclusion—their amendment to the Humble Address—is that the answer to a fossil fuel crisis lies in more fossil fuels. I like to give credit where I can, so I will give them this: it takes a particular kind of courage to stand up in this House at this time and make that argument with a straight face.”
“I will make a bit of progress. Where the House diverges is on how we respond to that shock. For Members on the Labour Benches, the overriding lesson from both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the present crisis in the middle east is that every day we spend exposed to fossil fuels, which we can never control, is another day of insecurity. It is another day of being buffeted by conflicts that we had no part in starting, and of working people opening their energy bills and finding the cost of someone else’s war. It is another day of Britain’s future being held back by a global market in which we are and will always be price takers. The Opposition say that they too have learned a lesson from the second fossil fuel price shock.”
“That is the road to national security. Along the way, we seize the economic opportunity of the 21st century, with 400,000 extra good energy jobs and billions of pounds in investment by 2030 alone.”
“I say that the Scottish National party’s plan for independence for energy was the flimsiest of flimsy documents. It had no plan for how independence would bring down bills, because the truth of the matter is that independence would tear apart any argument on energy security and drive up bills for people right across Scotland. That is why people rejected it in the referendum 10 years ago. The Tories and their former friends and colleagues now sitting on the Reform Benches want to solve a dependence problem by becoming even more dependent. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State outlined earlier, we will not be taking that course. This is the moment to end our reliance on fossil fuels, to electrify the wider economy and to speed up our transition to clean, secure, home-grown energy, which does give us energy sovereignty.”
“We also have the £15 billion warm homes plan—the largest upgrade programme in British history—and, as a result of actions that my right hon. Friend the Chancellor took in the Budget, the price cap fell by £117 in April.”
“With a nuclear regulation Bill, which is genuinely pro-nuclear and pro-nature, we will cut costs and timeframes without cutting corners on safety. That is regulation reform that the Tories now claim they would have loved to have done, but just never found the time for during 14 years in government. Well, we are going to get it done. We have to be honest about what we inherited. The environmental impact assessment for Sizewell C ran to 44,000 pages and it still left nobody happy. That is not caution; it is paralysis dressed up as paperwork. This Government will end it, so that we can get Britain building again and deliver the energy independence that people have waited for. As we build for the future, we also have to protect people right now. Six million families are receiving the expanded warm home discount.”
“That is power that, since the middle east crisis began, is saving the country millions of pounds every single day in gas that we no longer have to buy. But good is not enough; we are determined to go further and faster. That is why we are bringing forward the next auction round to July, and why the energy independence Bill will accelerate the build-out of grid infrastructure by reforming planning and getting clean power built at the speed that the moment demands. We have the biggest nuclear building programme in half a century, not vague promises that never materialised for 14 years—or the endless rounds of consultation that the shadow Minister loves to tell us about so much—but actual nuclear being built.”
“We are consulting on the future of gas storage. I have made it my policy to meet every MP who wants to meet me, and I have always had— [ Interruption. ] The shadow Minister says, “Even him?” I have always had very good conversations with the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart). He is in the wrong party—they all hate him. [ Laughter. ] Now is not the time to look away from the biggest long-term threat we face: climate change. It is a threat that we can no longer ignore, so we will build the energy system of the future. Since we came into power, we have had two record-breaking renewables auctions after the catastrophic failure of AR5 under the last Government. Despite the shadow Secretary of State’s advice to cancel AR7, we have secured clean, home-grown power for the equivalent of 23 million homes.”
“We will introduce transitional energy certificates, as industry has called for, to enable tiebacks and manage existing fields for their lifespan; for the first time, we will give the North Sea Transition Authority a statutory responsibility to consider workers, communities and supply chains; and we will launch a new North sea jobs service to support people through every stage of the transition. This energy transition only works if we bring people with us on what we are building next, and that is already taking shape.”
“It is about people right now doing skilled, dangerous and vital work—work that this country has depended on for decades, and which does not get taken for granted— [ Interruption. ] We are not taking it for granted, actually; that is just nonsense. The question in front of us is how we secure those people’s long-term future. The answer is not, as some on the Opposition Benches have suggested, to pretend that the North sea is not a maturing basin in natural decline. It is not about nostalgia for some new age of discovery. We are neither a “turn off the taps” nor a “drill every last drop” party. Neither is a credible plan.”
“In one of the world’s largest economies, a third of children go to school to get warm. We must bring this to an end with new minimum energy efficiency standards for renters, a new warm homes agency to ensure that high home grades are not, as they have been for too long, the preserve of just the well off, and a strengthened Ofgem with the powers of a genuine consumer champion, not just a regulator in name. That is what fighting the corner of working people looks like. Let me say something about the people who power this country. I speak at industry conferences regularly and I always talk about my pride in the North sea, not as a Minister reading from a brief, but as someone who has friends and family who work offshore and as a Scottish MP who knows more than many about what the sector means.”
“I will come to jobs in the North sea in just a moment—a section of my speech is about that, given its importance. I have to say that I am absolutely incredulous: I can almost understand it from the Tories—thinking that a moment of windfall profits was the moment to cut taxes on oil and gas companies—but now we have a partnership of the SNP and the Tories who believe that now is the moment not to help people with their energy bills but to cut taxes for the biggest companies. That is an interesting lesson that we have learned. The energy independence Bill is about how we go further. A number of hon. Members have raised fuel poverty. Fuel poverty in this country is not a misfortune; it is a scandal. More than a third of school pupils have told their teachers that they are cold at home.”
“The energy Bills contained in the King’s Speech are the path to a stronger future for Britain: energy security that no blockade can threaten; warm homes for families who have gone cold for far too long; good jobs in communities that have faced deindustrialisation for decades because of Governments who just did not care about industrial strategy; and a climate that we can hand to our children without shame. I commend the King’s Speech to the House. Question put, That the amendment be made.”
“What we have heard today is that Opposition parties have not only chosen to ignore what is going on all around us, but they actively want us to go even further, to risk even more and to gamble with the futures of every single one of our constituents. The warning signs were there in 1973, in 1979 and in 2022, and they were ignored. The warning signs are back now, and it is right that we learn the right lessons. Just a few weeks ago, 98% of our electricity came from clean sources. It was for a small period of time—I recognise that—but 98% of our electricity came from low-carbon sources. This country, when it commits to something, is capable of achieving extraordinary things. This is not ideology; it is the most basic duty of Government to protect the people of this country from dangers that we can see coming.”
“I do not have time; I am sorry. That system is already taking shape, whether through nuclear engineers in Ynys Môn following in their parents’ footsteps, apprentices learning to weld in the Aberdeen energy transition zone or wind turbine blades being forged in Hull—tens of thousands of jobs, record investment, real communities, real wages and a real future. The North sea made Britain an energy nation; the Bill ensures that it will remain one. Sometimes, in the noise of this place, we lose sight of what is actually at stake. Half of Britain’s recessions since the 1970s were caused by fossil fuel shocks—not bad luck, not acts of God, but the predictable, repeated consequence of building our future on an energy source that we can never have control over.”
“That should not be breaking news to anyone, but when we hear Conservative Members stand up and confirm that science is in fact science, it is none the less a relief to me. I was delighted to hear that. However, the challenge—and I will come back to this point—is that, as much as there is a recognition that climate change is a threat, there is also a distancing from any of the actions that would help us to tackle it, and that is simply not a sustainable position for anyone to hold. If we think about food security, water security and national security, all of them would be put at huge risk by not tackling the climate crisis. This is a very real challenge for us to deal with at the moment. That more dangerous and insecure world is exactly why we are embarking on the clean power mission.”
“It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) on securing it, particularly because I unfortunately missed his Adjournment debate, which I heard was one of the most enthusiastic Adjournment debates we have ever had on this topic. I was delighted to hear him repeat much of that same speech, because I did of course read it in Hansard . The map joke was there in the Adjournment debate, and it was there again today. We appreciated it all the same, and it was great to hear it in person. I thank him for securing the debate, and I genuinely thank him for the enthusiasm he has shown for floating solar. I will come back to that in a moment. I was also pleased to hear the hon. and gallant Member say that he believes in climate change.”
“There was a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Energy Minister who spoke about the dramatic rise in global energy prices following the invasion of Ukraine, the urgency of building a renewables-based system, and how critical it is for us to meet our 70 GW target for solar in the UK by 2025— the previous Government’s target was a fivefold increase. The now shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), pretends that that was not the Conservatives policy for 14 years, and we now hear a litany of ideas—roadside solar, rail solar, floating solar—but none of them was driven forward in the 14 years that they were in government. Forgive me if I think that it is a little bit rich for them to be oppositionist, not having driven any of it forward when they were in government.”
“I was going to come to the trading of statistics later in my speech, but let me do it now, because there is a fundamental point around the disingenuous trading of statistics on land use. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Tom Hayes) made a valiant effort at trying to correct that, but let me give Members some sense of this. At the end of 2024, ground-mounted solar panels covered an estimated 0.1% of the total land area of the UK. Even if we achieve the ambitious targets that we have set out in the clean power action plan, they will be expected to cover 0.4% of the total land area and 0.6% of agricultural land. That is if we achieve our hugely ambitious targets. The arguments that I will make in this speech are exactly those that the previous Government made when they spoke from the Dispatch Box.”
“That is why we have ended up with a haphazard approach to strategic planning, and why we are now building the grid to connect the renewables that were built all over the country without that spatial plan. It is important that we strategically plan that, and it was not done previously, so we are moving forward to do it.”
“I will not be drawn on golf course membership, because I do not know how many of my constituents are members of golf courses; I can imagine how many Conservative Members are. I come back to the point about land use, because we absolutely recognise the importance of having a framework for how we use land across the country. That is why the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs published the first-ever land use framework in March— I recommend a read of it. It is a vision for all of England’s land use, using the latest data on how much we need for housing, energy and all sorts of things to ensure that we are making the best use of land. Both that and the strategic spatial approach to planning the energy system could have been done in those 14 years, but they were not.”
“I will not be able to go into the detail of everyone’s points, but the hon. Member is wrong about the land use framework. Perhaps he should read it again, because it details quite clearly the different land uses across the country. There is always tension about land use—of course there is. That has been true throughout history, and that is why we are strategically planning it. We are clear that the planning system recognises best use. Every application is considered on its merits; I am not going to be drawn on individual applications, but we have clearly said that ground-mounted solar should be used, wherever possible, not on the best-used land.”
“I support that; it is the right thing to do for our energy security. If it was right under that Government, it is also right that we build the infrastructure that we need now, bringing communities with us but also being clear that it is the right path for the country and our energy security.”
“We also need to make the argument to everyone in our constituencies that the reason they have been exposed time and again to sky-high energy bills is because of our exposure to a fossil fuel market that we cannot control. There is no shortcut to building a system that protects us from that and there is no option to simply build another system somewhere else. At some point, infrastructure has to be built somewhere, and it is simply not a reasonable argument to say, “I’m in favour of this, but please don’t build it anywhere near me.” We will not embark on that. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire kindly referenced the size of my constituency—I do not think I have ever heard the exact number of hectares. The previous Government built one of the biggest onshore wind farms right next to my constituency.”
“It is important that we recognise the scale of the challenge. The scale of our electricity demand means that we need to see more ground-mounted solar as well; it is not either/or. Rooftop solar is important in our mission, and floating solar will be important, but the deployment of ground-mounted solar will also be important in communities across the country. We want those communities to get a genuine a benefit from it, so the points around locally owned power are critical. In closing, I recognise that at this moment in particular, the lessons we have to take from the crisis in the middle east is that we need to move further and faster away from reliance on fossil fuels, but we have to take communities with us on that journey as well. That is why I want to see communities owning more of this infrastructure and benefiting from it.”
“and gallant Member thinks that floating solar was not given a prominent enough position in the solar road map, but I assure him it has a prominent enough position on my to-do list. We are driving those key actions forward because there is no reason why we should not be doing that more quickly. There are projects in the pipeline that we will try to support wherever we can. On the argument that there is a trade-off between that and covering rooftops, reservoirs, motorways or any other space that people can come up with, I am open to all of those ideas. I agree that we should be doing much more on rooftops. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire made the point about some of the complexities with landlords and tenants. It is complex, but it is not impossible and we need to work our way through dealing with that.”
“I am not going to give way to the hon. Lady again because I want to come to floating solar, which the hon. and gallant Member for Spelthorne eloquently made the case for. I completely agree that it is a hugely exciting technology that we should be expanding, and I also agree that there are none of the trade-offs that there often are in other deployments and that there are huge benefits. He and I have both visited the project at the Queen Elizabeth II reservoir near his constituency. It is a fantastic example of floating solar, which has the benefits of generating clean electricity and retaining water in the reservoir. We want to see how we can also utilise that power to reduce the local demand so that there are some real benefits for local communities. We are taking forward a number of actions. I am sorry if the hon.”
“This is a matter for the Treasury, although we remain closely engaged. The UN framework convention is focused on improving effective and inclusive international tax co-operation, not on creating specific global taxes on oil and gas companies.”
“As I said, this is a matter for the Treasury, but we look closely at where we can co-operate around the world. This country’s windfall tax has raised £12 billion, funding public services and supporting the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and many others with the cost of living. We will continue to invest in bringing down bills, but we will also invest in the infrastructure that gets us off fossil fuels.”
“We are delivering the biggest upgrade to the grid since the 1960s, using strategic plans to identify where new capacity is needed and accelerating infrastructure build. In west London, network operators have used innovative measures to help new developments to connect, despite exceptionally high growth in electricity demand.”