Kerry McCarthy

I should have known the hon. Gentleman would be on top of things and would be aware of the Minister for Energy’s visit, but it is important that we have that continual dialogue and that the hon. Gentleman comes along to these debates to ensure that the Northern Ireland voice is heard. I do not want to go too far off piste from the subject of the debate, but to respond to what the Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), had to say, I am an MP from Bristol, so the Severn estuary, the Severn barrage, the Severn tidal lagoons or whatever are very much on my radar. I went up to the Orkneys last summer to look at what they are doing on harnessing wave energy there, and it was very interesting. On grid capacity, we know that grid capacity is a real issue, in terms of both our ambition for clean power by 2030 and our wider industrial decarbonisation. The Secretary of State likes to talk about the “four horsemen” standing in the way of us getting there, and grid is very much one of those. We have brought in Chris Stark, the former chief executive of the Climate Change Committee, to head up mission control on that issue, and he is working daily on how we can unblock and accelerate projects within the grid. To the hon. Member’s point on farmers, I agree with giving farmers support to diversify, and energy from waste or anaerobic digestion and so on is part of that. I met two of the DEFRA Ministers earlier this week—although it might have been last week; it all becomes a bit of a blur—and I am in constant conversation with them about how we can work together on that and on our local power plan, which will be part of GB Energy. Hopefully there will be pots of money available for some of those community projects in rural areas, possibly on farms that he has talked about. I understand that the company that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham) mentioned, GE Vernova, is doing innovative things on grid solutions. That is the sort of high-tech new approach that we need if we are to solve the problems that we have talked about, and I congratulate her on speaking up on behalf of a company in her constituency. Turning to the actual debate, the experience of recent years has reinforced what we already knew: we cannot rely on fossil fuels. We need clean power to reduce vulnerability to volatile global fossil fuel markets, to give us energy security and reduce the cost of energy, and to tackle the climate crisis. That is why one of the Prime Minister’s five missions is to make Britain a clean energy superpower by delivering clean power by 2030 and accelerating to net zero. Electricity generated by renewables and nuclear power will be the backbone of a clean electricity system by 2030. I have told the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) how disappointed I am with the Opposition’s U-turn on this issue. I understand the position they are coming from and that there has been a change from the stance that they adopted in Government, but I have not heard from him what the answer is for our future energy security. What is the answer to dealing with the global fossil fuel markets? What is the answer to tackling the climate crisis? What is the answer to bringing down bills in the long term?