Susan Murray

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, which I absolutely agree with. As I have just said, this is something that needs to be looked at, and there is an opportunity to make sure that communities all across the UK benefit from the power generation that they have to live with locally every day. Will Ministers commit to introducing a consistent community benefit and community energy framework for major low-carbon infrastructure, so that host communities—especially in rural and off-gas-grid areas—share in any long-term benefits? Beyond the initial generation of power, we forget about the grid. None of our ambitions on net zero or energy security will be met if we cannot move the power that we generate around the UK. We must fix the grid; we must stop paying to waste clean energy. We have built the infrastructure to generate power faster than we have built the network to connect and transport it. The result is that bill payers are burdened with the cost of electricity that they cannot use and that cannot be brought to them. The National Energy System Operator’s annual balancing costs report sets out the scale of the problem. It reports that grid constraint costs increased by 64% in 2024-25, totalling £1.7 billion. The total energy lost to that failure was 13.5 TWh, which is nearly as much as Scotland sent to England. This is not a theoretical cost; it is money that households and businesses pay because the network cannot always carry the clean power that is available. Will Ministers pledge to accelerate grid development and to drive connections reform at pace and with clear milestones, so that we stop paying for unused electricity and improve resilience, particularly for rural and remote communities? The grid is not just an infrastructure issue; it is an opportunity to redevelop our industrial heartlands. If Scotland is powering the transition, Scotland should also help to build it. Scotland has a proven history in heavy engineering and industrial delivery, with ports, fabrication, and a supply chain shaped by decades of offshore work. The transition should not become a story of “import the kit, export the jobs”.