Perran Moon

The Conservatives are generally adamant that there very are few Labour Members with any business experience, so having spent more than 30 years in business—latterly in electric vehicle charging infrastructure—I was reassured to learn while listening to the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Dr Mullan) that there is at least one Conservative who is not a renewable-energy Luddite, and I am glad to see him back in his place. I wish that the right hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) would spend a bit of time understanding a little more about geothermal energy, which does not require the wind to blow or the sun to shine. I was honoured to be part of the Committee considering the Great British Energy Bill, a core plank of this Government’s policy programme whose benefits will be felt in every corner of the UK, including my own constituency of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), for their diligent work on and defence of this transformational Bill. Let me also put on record my thanks not just to my right hon. and hon. Friends who sat on the Committee, but to other Members on both sides of the House who contributed to it. I will refer to the amendments. In Committee we heard from experts and stakeholders, and we extensively debated the issues, from oversight to community benefit. Opposition Members who were on the Committee know that, because they were there. As I said when I made my maiden speech on Second Reading, my focus will be on using the opportunities of this Bill to unleash the Cornish Celtic tiger. Renewable energy—onshore wind, offshore wind, geothermal, tidal and solar—and critical minerals such as tin, lithium, tungsten and manganese are fundamental for our transition away from fossil fuels. There is no silver bullet; we need a mix of renewable energy, which will form part of our policy going forward. That is what GB Energy will give us the opportunity to do. There are few areas of the UK where there is a greater distillation of renewable energy and critical mineral opportunities than in Cornwall. I refer to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) about human rights and the opportunity to produce domestically an awful lot of the energy and the critical minerals that we currently import from places such as China, Indonesia, Australia and South America. As a result, there are extremely high expectations in Cornwall for local jobs in industries that support community initiatives and domestic supply chains in one of the most deprived areas of northern Europe. Given the distillation of raw materials and natural resources in Cornwall, the fact that the new Centre for Critical Minerals, which will accelerate the move towards a green economy, opened very recently in Cornwall, and the fact that Exeter University, which has a campus in Penryn, has the largest number of top-100 climate scientists in the world, it will not come as a surprise to the Minister that I ask him to consider opening a satellite office for Great British Energy in Cornwall. They may not want it in Aberdeen, but we want it in Cornwall. I support the Bill as it is. We discussed the amendments in Committee, and I look forward to the opportunities that this Bill will bring to the people of Camborne, Redruth and Hayle.