Michael Shanks

My very next point was on the future of the network. It wasn’t, actually, but I will come to it now, because the hon. Gentleman made a very good point, which I meant to come back to. He is right, of course, that we need to invest in the grid—even if we were not embarking on this clean power mission, the grid is very much in need of upgrading—but we want to take the strategic planning of that much more seriously than it has been taken in the past. We know that we need to build significant amounts of grid—the hon. Gentleman recognised the importance of that—but we also want to plan the future of the energy system strategically so that the grid follows a logical way to build out the energy system. His point about trying to make use of the abundance of clean energy to transfer it into hydrogen as an off-taker was well made. It will feed into the work on the strategic spatial energy plan. It is about how we best use all the energy system to our advantage. It is also about how we can reduce things like constraint payments and make use of it as efficiently as possible. That is an important point that we will take forward. To conclude, our vision is clear: a thriving low-carbon hydrogen economy—one that decarbonises those hard-to-electrify sectors, strengthens our energy security and fuels good jobs and growth across the country—is at the heart of the Government’s mission.