Ed Miliband MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 15 Jul 2025 · Renewable Energy: Private Sector Investment · Hansard source

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  Since the election last year, we have secured over £50 billion of investment into the UK’s clean energy industries. Last year’s renewables auction for allocation round 6 was the most successful in our history, and we will shortly open the AR7 auction. This is the way to deliver energy security, lower bills and good jobs for our communities.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  Since coming to office, the Government have shown how clean power can create jobs across our country, with thousands of jobs in nuclear, through our investments in Sizewell C and small modular reactors; in carbon capture and storage; in offshore wind; and in home heating through our warm homes plan. This is what it means to deliver reindustrialisation through our clean energy sprint.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  The answer is that we are not. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the reality is that the North sea has been a basin in decline and that 70,000 jobs were lost under the previous Government. The question is: do we create the jobs of the future as well as maintaining existing fields for their lifetime? This Government are committed to doing so. If he wants to see those jobs, he should support our plans.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  I love Harlow, Mr Speaker, and I love Harlow college. The visits I have made to the college have been incredibly inspiring; I have seen with my own eyes the enthusiastic young people there and spoken to them about green skills and the jobs of the future. When I think about what this Government intend to deliver, it is absolutely about my hon. Friend’s constituents in Harlow.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  Let me first say how much I love Cornwall. I love Cornwall for many reasons, but one reason I love it is the opportunity it offers to drive the jobs of the future. I know from my visit that, whether it is through critical minerals, geothermal or offshore wind, there are huge opportunities in Cornwall. That is what the industrial strategy is designed to superpower. That is what the huge investments my right hon. Friend the Chancellor made in the spending review will provide. As part of our clean energy workforce strategy later on this year, Cornwall will be at the heart of it.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  This is an important issue that we need to take seriously. At the moment, it comes under the health and safety regime, but we are consulting on the best arrangements to ensure that we have the highest standards of safety. There are high safety standards in place, but as we see the growth of batteries, we will endeavour to ensure that those standards are maintained.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  I love Cumbernauld, Mr Speaker. My hon. Friend raises the important opportunities in heat pump technology. The growth in heat pumps that we are seeing is not just about a better deal for consumers, but about the manufacturing that we can see. My hon. Friend has given a great example of that.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  I warmly congratulate Steve Willis Training on its 25 years in operation and on the work it is doing. The hon. Lady makes an important point: we can help to create jobs in the private sector, but the question then is whether people will have the skills to fill them. Organisations and companies like Steve Willis Training are fundamental to that. Sometimes it requires lots of training; sometimes it requires shorter amounts of training to retrain people in new technologies like heat pumps. It is vital that that training happens.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  I see the north-east as an absolute powerhouse for the clean energy jobs we want to create. Early on in this Government, we did something which again had been talked about for years by the Conservative party in delivering the east coast carbon capture, usage and storage cluster, which is projected to create thousands of jobs, including benefits for my hon. Friend’s constituency. It is not just the direct jobs that will be created, but jobs in the supply chain. We have an opportunity—the north-east will be at the heart of this—to lead in the clean energy jobs of the future.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Clean Power: Jobs · Hansard source

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  GB Energy will create thousands of jobs across the country, including in Aberdeen. Here is why GB Energy really matters: we have chosen to put its headquarters in Aberdeen, as we recognise that Aberdeen is the clean energy capital of our country—not just for oil and gas, which is important, but for the future. SNP Members are chuntering on the Front Bench, but they never did anything to create that future for people in Aberdeen.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend puts it very well. As I have experienced over the last 20 years, we have not had a culture war on climate, because the Conservative party and the Labour party chose to say that this really matters. The Conservative party has apparently abandoned its belief in climate action at precisely the time, as the CCC has shown—in carbon budget 7, for example—that this is the way to reduce costs for people. I would make another point. I notice there are young people watching in the Public Gallery and elsewhere. What message do we send to them by saying, “Look, we just can’t act on this”? It is such a betrayal of future generations, who have genuine anxiety about what world they are going to inherit from us.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is very kind. To be frank with him, when I met a group of young people earlier today, I felt a sense of responsibility, because no country is yet doing enough on these issues and we need to do more. They are fearful about the world that they will inherit and look to the Government to show leadership. The issue that he mentions is important, and we will ensure that we make it part of our agenda at COP30.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising what sounds like an incredibly exciting project. On all sides of the House—well, on a number of sides of the House—we can hear fantastic examples of what local people are doing. In a sense, that should be our inspiration. Government is trying to do its bit, but local people in communities across Britain are doing theirs as well.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  I wish my hon. Friend luck with the event on Sunday, which sounds important. He is absolutely right: for millions of people the whole warm homes plans is about cutting their energy bills, creating warmer homes and cutting emissions—and they go together.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman and I have been arguing about these issues for about 20 years, so I think that I am unlikely to persuade him. We usually have good-natured discussions about this, but on the idea that this is scaremongering, we can see with our own eyes what is happening, as the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) said earlier. What the right hon. Gentleman is advocating would be a total betrayal not just of future generations but of today’s generations.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is a great champion for Hexham and it is with great pleasure that I recognise the role of those groups. He and I have talked on a number of occasions about the importance of climate action to so many of his constituents, and I look forward to working with him on these issues in the months ahead.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member asked a complex question, so I might volunteer my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to write to him on that, so that we get it right. I know—because he was whispering the answer to me—that he takes this seriously.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend speaks about an important issue, and I am deeply concerned for those workers and their families. There are serious questions to answer about the running of that company, and how it ended up in this state. On the day that the insolvency happened, I wrote to the Insolvency Service to ask it to look into this matter, because those workers have been badly let down by the company.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right, and if we think about the recent hot weather, access to green spaces is a massive issue. It is also a massive issue of inequality, because in certain parts of the country people have such access, and in certain parts they do not, so the project that my hon. Friend talks about sounds incredibly important.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend speaks with great expertise and passion on these issues, and she is absolutely right. This is about what we do to engage with other countries. We had an environment dialogue with the Chinese Minister a couple of weeks ago in London. I engage with China, India and Brazil, all of which are absolutely key; Brazil is obviously the host of COP30. She is right to say that COP30 will be a crucial moment when we will show that we are continuing to take action, and that is what we are determined to do.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right, and the emphasis that he places on national security is important. Our exposure to fossil fuel markets, controlled by petrostates and dictators, leaves us exposed, and that is what the previous Government did. This is an energy security issue and a national security issue, and that is why we need clean, home-grown power.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  We are just advocating common sense. Why not use our natural resources to have warmer homes and cut emissions? I think that Reform Members are the extremists, frankly.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend puts it incredibly well. This is an obligation that we owe to young people. We hold the planet in trust for future generations. The young people of today speak for themselves, but they also speak for future generations. Frankly, we owe it to them to act when the evidence is before our eyes.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  We definitely look forward to discussing those ideas, and my hon. Friend is right about the interlocking nature of the climate and nature crisis, and climate and nature solutions. Those things go together. There are big economic opportunities, and my hon. Friend is a great champion of them.

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises an important issue about the role of the City of London. There is also its potentially positive role. We are consulting on a mandatory transition plan for large companies and financial institutions, including in the City of London, precisely so that we can make sure that investment goes to the right places.