Julian Lewis MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Jun 2025 · Nuclear Power: Investment · Hansard source

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  Assuming that the large nuclear power station at Sizewell C and the small modular reactors both prove to be successful, as we trust they will be, what is the Government’s thinking about the respective roles of each of those two very different types? Which does the Secretary of State think will be the better bet in the long term for the future of the country? Can he assure us that China will have no part in any of this?

• 3 Jun 2025 · Thames Water · Hansard source

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  Does the Secretary of State think that the situation might improve if Thames Water executives were obliged to sign up to performance-related pay?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Energy Grid Resilience · Hansard source

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  I commend what the Minister said at the outset on the need to insure against high-impact, low-probability events. In a non-dogmatic spirit, may I appeal to him to reconsider the way in which the Government are dealing with the question of the two shale gas wells, which they have decided, under normal circumstances, they do not wish to see exploited? Surely those wells should not be sealed so permanently that if we were in a wartime conflict situation they could not be reactivated?

• 29 Apr 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  As we need some oil and gas while on the road to a clean energy economy, does it not make sense to produce our own, rather than importing it from other countries and thus increasing the global carbon footprint?

• 22 Apr 2025 · Birmingham: Waste Collection · Hansard source

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  Given that the Minister no doubt sincerely believes that the offer on the table is a good one, why does he think the unions are not accepting it?

• 7 Apr 2025 · Scunthorpe Steelworks · Hansard source

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  The Minister should not waste the opportunity of a lifetime in the parties of the right urging a party of the left to nationalise a British industry. One organisation that has been utterly consistent in all this is the GMB union: it wrote to the previous Government’s Defence Secretary saying that a business Minister had failed to answer clearly whether virgin steel was essential for defence. Today’s Minister seems to suggest that it might not be, but we must have a quantity of virgin steel, even if we add other things to it, to embark on the process of making essential defence products. Seize the opportunity: keep the blast furnaces, and if necessary, nationalise them for good.

• 26 Mar 2025 · Shale Gas Wells · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but that answer had nothing to do with my question, which was to ask why the Government are ordering the permanent sealing of Britain’s only two shale gas wells. The Government are perfectly entitled on environmental grounds not to exploit such wells in normal conditions, but does the Prime Minister not recognise that taking a decision now to concrete these things over so that a future Government cannot use them in a desperate situation, such as an international conflict where other sources of power were cut off from us, is an extremely irresponsible and reckless thing to do?

• 26 Mar 2025 · Shale Gas Wells · Hansard source

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  Q3. For what reason the Government has ordered that the UK’s two shale gas wells be permanently sealed.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Business of the House · Hansard source

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  As a believer in parliamentary democracy, I fully support the Government’s right not to exploit shale gas deposits in the UK on environmental grounds. However, may we have an urgent statement from the appropriate net zero Minister on the Government’s decision from next week to start filling in and putting permanently beyond use the two existing shale gas facilities in this country, rather than keeping them in reserve for an emergency should a future Government ever need to exploit them?

• 12 Mar 2025 · Sustainable Farming Incentive · Hansard source

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  I understand the Minister’s point that it has been known all along that at some point the fixed budget would be exhausted. A simple question for him: on which day were Ministers first informed that that budget had been exhausted?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Warm Home Discount · Hansard source

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  I entirely agree with the Government that, as the Minister said in her statement, we should not be “paying the price of our country being exposed to fossil fuel markets controlled by petrostates and dictators.” Given that we cannot move completely to clean energy tomorrow, why do the Government insist on closing down and, indeed, concreting over our potential fossil fuel gas reserves until such time as we can move completely to clean energy? Why should we import it from other states while piously saying that we will not extract it from beneath our own country?

• 10 Feb 2025 · Biomass Generation · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s emphasis on energy security. Can he give us some idea of the timetable for when the first small modular nuclear reactors—preferably ones built by Rolls-Royce, which has expertise in this area thanks to its excellent work for the Royal Navy—will be commissioned?

• 28 Jan 2025 · Airport Expansion · Hansard source

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  I have been enjoying the Minister’s lively presentation, but then I do not live under a potential new flightpath. Are the Government consulting their Back Benchers about the possibility of aviation and airport expansion versus net zero? If so, will they be advising them to clean up what they have said on this subject on the internet before it is hoovered up by the Opposition in preparation for the next general election?

• 13 Jan 2025 · Gas Storage Levels · Hansard source

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  Can I encourage the Minister to come out of combat mode for a second and consider a constructive proposal? If we are not to become re-dependent on gas when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, and we do not want to be dependent on foreign countries indefinitely, can he see a future role for modular nuclear reactors?

• 4 Dec 2024 · Farming and Inheritance Tax · Hansard source

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  The Minister seems to be trying to suggest that not much farmland will have to be sold off as a result of this policy. However, on 4 November, following an urgent question, when I asked his colleague the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), how food security would be preserved if farms had to be broken up and sold off possibly for development, he replied: “Of course there are trade-offs. There are a range of pressures on our land, in respect of housing, food, energy and so many other things. That seems to constitute an acceptance that we will lose farming land, and people will be building on it instead.

• 11 Nov 2024 · Rural Affairs · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend is very kind, and she is making a masterly exposition of how to deconstruct this case. Did she notice, exactly a week ago, when we had an urgent question on the subject, the Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs was asked how food security could be valued if the result of the Budget measures would be that farmland would be split up and sold off, probably for development. His answer said, in part: “Of course there are trade-offs. There are a range of pressures on our land, in respect of housing, food, energy and so many other things.” —[ Official Report , 4 November 2024; Vol. 756, c. 37.] So he seemed to be accepting that land will be sold off and it will be built upon.

• 4 Nov 2024 · Budget: Implications for Farming Communities · Hansard source

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  How does the Minister reconcile his sensible acceptance of the fact that food security is vital to national security with farmland being split up and sold off, probably for development, as a result of the Budget changes?

• 17 Oct 2024 · Criminal Justice System: Capacity · Hansard source

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  May I reach out across the party divide to say that I warmly welcome what the Justice Secretary said about punishment and rehabilitation? By coincidence, I have just written to her—she will not have seen the letter yet—about the work of my constituent, the publisher Andrew Duncan, in co-ordination with a panel of experts that includes a psychology professor, a former governor of Pentonville, a Probation Service specialist in reducing reoffending and a central London magistrate, on a new concept of community detention. My request is that either she or the Minister she thinks most appropriate will agree to have a meeting with my constituent, a few members of his team and me. As a right-of-centre politician, I am sometimes sceptical of alternatives to prison. This one sounds really interesting, and I think it would not be a waste of her time.

• 15 Oct 2024 · House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the Minister and his colleague, the Minister without Portfolio, for having made themselves available to Members of the Opposition—as well as to those in the Government party, no doubt—to discuss these things privately in a less dramatic environment than this one. One incidental by-product has been pointed out to me by that very important group of peers led by Lord Norton of Louth, whom I know the Minister is going to see, who are in favour of sensible and credible reform. They say that, by removing the hereditaries, he will be removing the only group of peers who are not appointed in a process that is subject to prime ministerial influence. That is not an argument for not doing it, but it might be an argument for putting the House of Lords Appointments Commission on a statutory basis. What does he think about that?

• 7 Oct 2024 · Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State will know that until a few days ago, the Fawley refinery and chemicals complex run by ExxonMobil in New Forest East was planning a major carbon capture project that involved controversial pipelines either over sensitive areas of the New Forest or across the Isle of Wight. ExxonMobil has temporarily pulled the plug on that, but one reason it seems to think it cannot use a sea route, perhaps to feed this in to the North sea outlet for carbon capture and storage, is the absence of purpose-built ships for the safe transportation of liquefied CO 2 . Will the Secretary of State look into where we are with the development of safe methods of transporting the gas in liquid form by sea?

• 3 Sept 2024 · Contracts for Difference · Hansard source

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  I warmly congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment; he is the perfect example of a political renewable. As politicians, we all have a great deal to contribute to onshore wind. More seriously, does the Secretary of State share my concern that The Guardian last year and The Daily Telegraph this year both drew attention to the Chinese exploitation of Uyghur slave labour in the manufacture of so many solar panels? Other countries have been banning their import. How does he propose to deal with the matter, because I am sure that he shares my concern that we should not profit on the back of that sort of disgraceful exploitation?