Angus MacDonald MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  I did forget to disclose that I may have a potential conflict of interest, the details of which are on the parliamentary website. I apologise for not saying so before, but I do not think anyone would find it a major such conflict. You did mention—

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  Somebody whose opinion I respect greatly told me that undergrounding cables was no more expensive. I was very surprised at that, because I had understood from the transmission line companies in Scotland that it was a great deal more expensive to underground them. I will definitely look into that, because I know that it is a requirement to underground them in Norway. We should explore that issue further. So we have boom time in renewables, generating trillions of pounds over many decades, and we have a rural population that really needs financial help and investment.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  Sorry. The Minister mentioned community benefits, but in rather a weak way. The Members in this room—I think there have been 60-plus of us here—represent the majority of the land mass of Britain. I think the message we are sending loud and clear to the Minister is that we all feel very strongly about the community benefits, and we very much hope they will be significant. Thank you very much for allowing me to host this debate. Question put and agreed to . Resolved , That this House has considered community benefits from renewable energy projects.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  Micro-renewables are the way ahead, and the more micro the better. Whether that is a solar thing on a roof or hydro for a farm, I could not support it more. In 2023, as part of research in a written submission to Parliament, Octopus Energy showed that 87% of people would support a turbine in their community if it decreased their bills. Now, I do not blame the landowner; these projects can allow farmers to retain the land in their family for generations to come. In some way, it is like discovering oil or gold on their land, and it is great that our bountiful wind and rain can be such an asset for us, especially in an era when coal is inaccessible and unacceptable, nuclear is being phased out, and gas is often imported from countries with an unacceptable moral standing, while also badly hitting our balance of payments and being environmentally unfriendly to transport to Britain. Renewables are absolutely the future. The 68 million people in the UK are enormous beneficiaries of our renewables sectors, but the cost is borne by a fraction of that number—by those living in the remotest areas. Those of us in the Chamber represent populations who pay a 50% premium on electricity connection fees compared with those living in cities. The same people are not connected to mains gas, and therefore pay a great deal to have tankers deliver heating oil to their houses.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  The absolute sweet spot of this entire discussion would be communities’ ownership of their own renewables, which they could control and distribute as they wanted. Indeed, that is happening in some places. Of course access to funding is the big issue, but that is the perfect solution. Surely, one of our great injustices is that our poorer people, who provide half the energy to the UK, have the highest level of fuel poverty and the highest electricity bills, and suffer the industrialisation of their nearby countryside. Now is the time to resolve that injustice.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  There is a recent change to planning in Scotland—I am unsure whether it extends to England—called national planning framework 4, which makes the economic benefit to the community part of the criteria for getting a plan in, so we are moving towards what my hon. Friend describes. The areas I mentioned are among our poorest. They suffer from the highest level of fuel poverty, an older population, lack of affordable housing, poor transport infrastructure, struggling market towns, lower wages, and often worse education and health services than cities. Rural people have higher costs and lower incomes.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  I think my hon. Friend will be thrilled with the next part of my speech, which will answer that question. We have a huge financial need, and we have the renewables revenue, which we will talk about in a second. Money and need—bingo, we have a match. Is that not exactly what we are here in Parliament to facilitate? I am pleased to hear that the Great British Energy Bill is largely here, as it holds the prosperity of much of rural Britain in its hands. It can insist that communities have a stake in local renewables projects and that we legislate to require all renewables projects to pay a significant sum to impacted areas. Amazingly, it made no mention of community ownership of renewables projects or of community benefits.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  It is fair to say that building a visitor centre was not one of my list of key things to do with the money, but I shall add it to my list at around No. 97 —there is a space there. We will talk about this more in a minute, but fuel poverty, affordable housing and so on are probably the key uses for that money at the beginning. The Lib Dem energy spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings), has submitted an amendment to the Great British Energy Bill that would allow it to consider community benefits, and I very much hope that her amendment is taken forward. I had a motion on community benefits passed in the Highland council. I have consulted the electricity generators and Ofgem. I have met Government Ministers here and in Scotland, discussed the issue with most knowledgeable people in all political parties and generally bored everyone I can find with it. There is consensus that it would be fair to require that the impacted rural people of the highlands and islands, of Scotland and of the UK as a whole benefit from bearing the costs of hosting our energy infrastructure. The Highland council has done the work. It has a social value charter, which it would be pleased to share. The council and I agree on almost all aspects, except that the amount paid to communities should be a percentage of gross income from the projects, rather than £12,500 per megawatt. A percentage would allow communities to benefit from a soaring electricity price, as happened after Russia invaded Ukraine, and protect the project owners and utilities if the electricity price slumped. Here is my financial proposal: 5% of revenue from all newly consented renewable energy, generated both onshore and offshore, should be paid to community energy funds. For onshore projects, two thirds of that should be paid to the affected council board, with one third paid to a council strategic fund. For offshore projects, all of that 5% of gross revenue should go to a council strategic fund. An existing renewables project should also pay money; I will explain that in a second.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  I was a Highland councillor for quite a few years and sat on the planning committee. We heard application after application promising a large number of jobs and a large amount of local buying, yet we did not see that, but I do think we need to tighten up a great deal what is being offered in all the different aspects of renewables. I have been looking at the situation overseas. In Denmark, new renewables projects must offer at least 20% ownership of their overall venture to local residents. In Germany, there is a local tax on renewables. In Heligoland, an archipelago in the North sea, three offshore wind farms were built in the mid-2010s, and the tax revenue taken in by the municipality was €22 million in 2016 alone. In Ireland, the contribution to community benefit fund is to be set at €2 per megawatt-hour of generation.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  I wholeheartedly agree. It should be the same for the transmission lines and the interceptors, for pumped storage and battery—really, the whole infra- structure of producing renewables. So where is the 5% going to come from? It is really important that investors do not suffer from swings in British policy, and that they continue to invest in UK energy infrastructure. It is key that this increase is passed on to all consumers in the UK as part of a green tariff. My informed opinion is that paying that 5% to impacted communities would translate to about a 1.25% increase in electricity prices in Britain. What should a council that receives that substantial amount of money use it for? Here are three examples of what has been happening already. One community fund near me gives £1,000 to each of the properties in the community. If 1,000 properties were given £1,000 each, that would be £1 million. Perhaps the locals managing the fund would allocate it to households that earn less than the UK median household income of £34,500. In any case, at a time of winter fuel allowance cuts, that would be most welcome. A second option is for the community to use the money to build affordable housing, and I know of a third community that injects money into its local care sector, for care homes. Let me plagiarise the Highland council report in order to provide some context. In 2023, in the highlands, local communities received approximately £9 million. That is below the expected commitment based on Crown Estate Scotland’s guidelines, which suggest that developers should contribute £5,000 per megawatt, equating to £13.9 million. The total income from wind generation in the highlands for 2023 was estimated to be around £590 million. That calculation is based on a potential production of 11.8 GW. If all renewables—including hydro, offshore wind and pumped storage—were included, the benefit increased to 5%, and the amount of renewable energy doubled by 2030 to 22 GW, which is likely, then the community benefit would rise well above £50 million per year. That is a heck of a lot of money to highland rural communities. What would that be across the UK? £500 million a year? £1 billion? £5 billion over 10 years? This is a proper levelling-up fund for rural communities. It was recently announced that two cancer wards on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides will share £4.5 million from a single offshore wind farm. That shows what can be achieved.

• 15 Oct 2024 · Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits · Hansard source

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  I absolutely love that—I am going to make the right hon. Lady a dame in my first honours list. It is an absolute disgrace that people in rural Britain pay a premium to get renewables, even though it is us generating the electricity. The standing charge should be the subject of our next discussion. Those of us in the highlands, and indeed in many other parts of Britain, have long, dark, windy and cold winters. When many people open the curtains in the morning, they look out on to a wind farm selling cheap, green energy to the big cities. The remote highlands and islands, the Scottish Borders, Wales, Cumbria and the west country are among our poorest areas.

• 11 Sept 2024 · Rural Depopulation · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) very much indeed for securing a debate on such an important subject. He consistently hits the nail on the head by bringing forward subjects that really matter to us. We have talked about accommodation, and the Highland council, on which I was a councillor, has £1.2 billion of borrowing, yet 40% of our housing budget is spent on interest payments. That is a catastrophe. Basically, we cannot borrow any more money to build more housing. The utility companies that are building renewable energy projects across the whole of the highlands need to build properties that will remain there for generations rather than modular housing for the extent of the jobs or projects, and the same should go for the owners of fish farms. It would make a big difference if the private and public sectors worked together, because I fear that public sector housing will not be able to fill the gap. Scotland has a £3.4 billion transport budget, but it is not coming to the highlands. The A82 up Loch Lomond must be one of the worst roads in the world; trucks cannot get past there. Mowi, the fish farm company, and BSW Timber just cannot operate safely, and it is extremely bad for the area. The railway from Glasgow to Mallaig has an average speed of just over 40 mph. This HS2 thing is a joke, and the ferries make Scotland a laughing stock. The Scottish Government have done no favours to the highlands and Scotland on connectivity over the last 17 years, and the same can be said for schools in the highlands. Schools such as Mallaig high school and Gairloch high school are less than 50% full—there is a complete collapse. As the numbers drop, we are losing the breadth of subjects taught by the teachers, so we are desperate for computing, mathematics and engineering teachers—they are the jobs of the future. The attainment gap in Scotland is a great shame for our country. Again, the Scottish Government’s management of our educational system has been catastrophic. Broadband coverage in Scotland is 96.8%, but in the highlands it is 86.6%. That is a disparity of almost 15%. Of course, we cannot have the jobs of the future if we do not have the connectivity. Places lose their population if the public sector pulls out, and that is what we are seeing. Eight care homes closed in the highlands in the two years that I was a highland councillor. People are getting shipped from the west coast of Skye up to Thurso or Inverness. There is a collapse in the care home sector. Care workers are being paid £12 an hour, which is less than they would get in the hospitality sector, and that is an increase on what it was before April. No wonder we have an absolute catastrophe in our care sector. Of course, we all know that the availability of dentists in the highlands is also a disaster. We have heard about the importance of allowing immigrants to come to Scotland. We are losing more than 50% of our young. They choose not to work in the highlands; they want to leave home. We need to keep these guys. We need to offer them well-paid jobs and good accommodation, and cherish them, otherwise they will leave. At the moment, they cannot get accommodation and they are not being taught for the jobs of the future. We are not helped by the Scottish Government, and we all have a big job to do together.

• 5 Sept 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. That was a very heartfelt speech from the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Noah Law). Cornwall and the highlands of Scotland share our westerly reaches and Celtic background. I am very proud to have been elected to serve the people of the west highlands and Inverness in this Parliament. Following the Electoral Commission’s mistaken decision to cut the number of highland constituencies from three to two, I have, to a large extent, replaced two former MPs in Ian Blackford and Drew Hendry, who represented to the best of their ability Ross, Skye and Lochaber, and Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey respectively. To say that my constituency is geographically challenging would be an understatement. It takes four hours to drive from east to west and from north to south. The highlands of Scotland are bountiful in their beauty—from the miles of sandy beaches in Gairloch and Lochaber, the mountains of Ben Nevis, and the Skye Cuillins and Torridon, to the castles of Urquhart on Loch Ness and Eilean Donan in Wester Ross. Our oaks and Scots pine trees are bent over as a result of the prevailing westerly wind. We have beautiful lochs and large, powerful rivers around every bend in the road. Astonishing though the beauty is, it is the people of the highlands that I—like my amazing predecessor Charles Kennedy—love and am delighted to represent. Although the highlands are beautiful and the people wonderful, the region struggles financially. The Highland council is burdened with debts of £1.2 billion. Inverness’s population has increased rapidly, but the three-and-a-half hour drive from our highland capital to Scotland’s capital is not dualled and is not safe. The rural west faces severe fuel poverty, long journeys for NHS treatment, public service cuts, and a lack of essential services, with many young people leaving for cities. Would it not be wonderful if a fairy godmother came along and bestowed a wonderful asset on the highlands—something that generated serious money for the area over generations, and a long-term provider of great employment? There is such an asset. The west highlands is the wettest area in Europe, and the wind is virtually unceasing. We have the most fantastic land to benefit from the move to renewables. That opportunity has not gone unnoticed: utilities and infrastructure firms from all over the world are queueing up to install 200-metre-high wind turbines on our hills; our hydro schemes are getting upgraded; and there are £5 billion pump storage sites at various stages of development in my constituency. Major construction projects abound across the highlands. Thousands of workers are brought in and accommodated in temporary modular housing. Peak electricity use in Scotland is 3 GW, while our peak production is 10 to 14 GW. Scotland may add as much as another 10 GW of production capacity by 2030. We will be producing seven times more electricity than we use. Like for prospectors to a gold rush, the rich opportunities are accompanied by challenges. There are two important issues to which we need to pay attention. First, there is a cost to that for the highlands: the industrialisation of our countryside. What was a beautiful view of the mountains is now rows of 200-metre-high whirling turbines, and large new pylons marching across the country to the cities, where the demand is. Secondly, what is in it for the locals? The turbines and generators are manufactured overseas, the developer and utilities firms are from outwith the UK, and the workers are shipped in. Last year, our total community benefit from that multibillion-pound industry was an estimated £9.1 million in the highlands, and £26.4 million across Scotland as a whole. It should be a multiple of those figures. We in the highlands pay 50% more for electricity connection than people in the south of England, yet increasingly, the highlands is where that electricity is generated. The Government are releasing the restrictions on onshore wind farms in England, so what is an issue for Scotland now will become an issue for many rural areas across Great Britain. What can be done about this? I propose that 5% of revenue from all newly consented renewable energy generated both onshore and offshore should be paid to community benefit funds. For onshore projects, two thirds of that should be paid to the affected council ward, with one third paid to a council infrastructure fund; for offshore projects, all of that 5% of gross revenue should go to council infrastructure funds. Existing renewable projects over 1 MW should pay 2%, as per the split already outlined. For transmission lines and substations, the Irish have an excellent community benefit plan that we can learn from—I would like the energy Minister to listen to this, rather than do his emails. The Norwegians handled the revenue from the North sea oil boom well, and their sovereign wealth fund is now valued at $1.7 trillion. Britain saved nothing, and we are in real danger of repeating that mistake with the renewables bonanza. I close by saying there is considerable disadvantage to the people of rural Britain in taking on the downsides of hosting our move from a carbon-based economy to a renewable electric alternative. It is only fair that we make it beneficial to the people affected. It is great that the Great British Energy Bill will be further strengthened to include enabling community energy—that is really important. Finally, Inverness is the centre of onshore and offshore wind, the existing hydropower industry, and massive pump storage projects. I am glad that GB Energy is going to be headquartered in Scotland, and I believe Inverness would be the right place for it. Irrespective of that, one of its first jobs should be to look at my proposals and to ensure that the benefits of Scotland’s renewables can be properly shared, because this is an opportunity that we cannot afford to miss.