Michael Shanks

The hon. Gentleman talks about needing to have set up wealth funds a long time ago. I probably would not disagree with him on much of that, but I would just point out that the Scottish Government have the ScotWind fund, which they are currently drawing down to meet the deficit in their own spending. That is not building a legacy for the future; it is using it to paper over the cracks in the fiscal competence of the SNP Government. The hon. Gentleman might welcome this decision, but I am genuinely still not sure what the SNP’s position is more generally. Nevertheless, I welcome his support for it. The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the Acorn project. He and I have had useful conversations about it, and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), who is next to me on the Front Bench, is the Minister responsible for carbon capture, usage and storage now. As the hon. Gentleman is aware, a sales process is now going through, and we continue to be very supportive of that process. We have set aside funding to support the project. The hon. Gentleman is also right to flag the question of approvals for projects. Some of that sits with us, but most of it at the moment is involved in a bottleneck on consenting decisions, which are the responsibility of the Scottish Government. I know I have done a bit of point scoring here, but in line with the problem solving driver for this Government, I would just say that I have a really good relationship with Stephen Gethins, the Scottish Government Energy Minister. We are working together on a lot of these things, but we need to get the consenting decisions made much more quickly so that projects can get out and get built.