Luke Taylor MP: speeches

Speeches

• 16 Sept 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  T4. One of my constituents has been told that their Crown court case will not be heard until 2028, six years after the alleged offence occurred. The delay was due to court closures and a lack of capacity locally. The Government should not need a report to tell them that they need to make more courts available at more times and they need to fund our courts properly. We have had questions about this from around the Chamber already, so I will take a slightly different angle: what does the Minister have to say to my constituent, who has another three years to wait for their case to be resolved—three years of being unable to work and three years of uncertainty hanging over her head?

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Allin-Khan. When it comes to the welfare of our children, the details should never be drip-fed to parents and carers. They do not deserve worrying speculation about potential changes to their children’s futures. Teachers should not be kept out of the loop about the way they will need to run their classrooms. For months now, the Government have kept the potential reform of SEND services secret and under review. Families up and down the country have spent the entire summer on tenterhooks after the Government’s vague pledge for reform during the spending review in June. That is a whole school holiday of uncertainty. Confusion around reform has only been made worse against the backdrop of changes to council funding, which will see councils across London lose vital funding as demand for EHCPs increases, as it has in my constituency of Sutton and Cheam by more than 8% in the last year. Councils cannot cope with that rise in demand alone. Across Britain, they are in need of real financial backing. I have worked hard to secure confirmation from the Government of extra SEND places in my constituency, and I am delighted that work should begin soon on the Angel Hill school in Sutton. If we are going to fix the crisis in SEND, however, the funding must be properly ringfenced for local authorities so that children can receive the best possible education. If reform is to be serious, it must be rooted in the genuine improvement of children’s lives, not just the improvement of balance sheets. Without the right funds, and without addressing the looming cliff edge for council finances when SEND deficits are shifted on to the main balance sheet, we risk a collapse of services. I am sure that the Government are keen to avoid that, so I invite them to reassure us by ending this uncertainty, agreeing to make any changes transparently, and putting any child on an EHCP at the heart of the discussion. Reforms must ensure that those thousands of children with SEND have the right to support, not just because it is a legal requirement, but because we owe it to them and their families.

• 10 Sept 2025 · Draft Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 and the Terrorism Act 2000 (Port Examination Codes of Practice) Regulations 2025 · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. This statutory instrument is a technical change to the existing legislation. It makes changes to the safeguarding around counter-terrorism practices and follows advice by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation. Providing police and our security services with the appropriate powers to guard against terrorism is essential; however, civil liberties concerns remain. The powers under the counter-terrorism legislation allow people to be stopped, questioned and detained without reasonable suspicion, raising concerns about potential overreach, disproportionate use and risks of profiling. In addition, although the revised code says that schedule 7 cannot be used for public order policing, it still permits stops where protest activity may meet the definition of terrorism, which could have a chilling effect on legitimate protests. There are clear parallels to the overreaction to Palestine Action and the civil disobedience we are seeing in response. I ask the Minister and the Government to proceed with caution and restraint and with appropriate protections of civil liberties.

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  I am not rising to defend the Opposition in any way, but can we just remember why we are here? We are talking about a Government who are planning to move the goalposts for people who are halfway through an application for ILR. We can point at who is at fault around the room, but let us not forget that the Government are considering moving the goalposts, so that people will now face uncertainty for further months. Let us focus on who is being challenged here. Can we remember that, Minister?

• 8 Sept 2025 · Indefinite Leave to Remain · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I thank the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) for his excellent speech in opening the debate, and hon. Members around the Chamber for their contributions. We have all made very clear our similar feelings on this, and I hope the Government Minister is ready to jump up and answer all our queries positively. I rise to speak on behalf of more than 265,000 people who have collectively signed these two petitions. Many of the signatures will be from the very people who would be impacted by the change being considered by the Government—people who pay their taxes, keep our hospitals running, manage local businesses and serve our communities. Families who came to Britain in good faith now face extreme uncertainty about their livelihoods. The Government’s immigration White Paper, published in May, proposes to double the wait for permanent British settlement status from five years to 10, except for those who qualify under earned settlement, among other key changes. This sudden decision has left hundreds of BNO passport holders and skilled immigrant workers in my constituency, and across the country, understandably anxious about their futures. I am in no doubt that, after years of Conservative mismanagement, the immigration system needs to change. It is completely right that the Home Office takes the necessary steps to fix a framework left in tatters. However, for months, potentially abrupt changes to qualifying for indefinite leave to remain have been shrouded in mystery for BNO and skilled worker visas. At the very least, those visa holders deserve clarity, yet since the publication of the White Paper, clarity is exactly what they have been denied. The Government cannot keep people in the dark; we need answers today. I am proud that my constituency of Sutton and Cheam is home to such a vibrant and inspiring Hong Kong diaspora—some of the more than 160,000 Hongkongers who have come to the UK under the scheme implemented by the last Conservative Government. Where I live, I see at first hand the contributions they make to my community every day. They serve as business owners, teachers, doctors and community leaders—and since May, one is my colleague, serving on Sutton council. Many fled repression by the CCP and put their trust in a life in Sutton. That trust was not abstract; for many, it was rooted in a promise that the BNO visa scheme would provide a safe pathway to rebuild their lives here, with settlement after five years and citizenship after six. The scheme was not an act of charity but a solemn commitment, born of Britain’s obligations under the Sino-British joint declaration and made when Beijing began to tear away Hongkongers’ freedoms in 2019. It was a recognition of more than 150 years of British control of Hong Kong, and of how our histories and futures are inextricably linked. In a world of transnational repression orchestrated by the CCP, permanent settlement in Britain is a vital safeguard for Hongkongers on this visa route. For those who have grasped the BNO lifeline, the prospect of doubling the wait for indefinite leave to remain could be devastating. So many families I have spoken to have built their futures around the promise of a five-year route. They have made the ultimate sacrifice in uprooting their lives in Hong Kong and moving to this country, because they believed Britain would stand by its word. To extend the pathway for BNO passport holders to 10 years for ILR would have brutal consequences for my constituents. Without ILR or a UK passport, many BNO holders are left with the Hong Kong special administrative region passport. Once that expires, they face major barriers to international mobility. For some, travel would become impossible without risking interaction with PRC authorities. Families would be cut off from loved ones, and careers requiring international travel would be closed off. Even children born here to BNO parents could be left waiting until they are 11 years old before gaining a passport. The consequences for education are equally stark. BNO students must secure settled status before qualifying for home fee status at UK universities. Under the new proposals, a 10-year wait would result in most BNO students facing international fees that their families simply cannot afford. When the decision was made to take up the BNO route and travel to and settle in the UK, this timing would have been considered and understood—an important consideration for families fleeing persecution, yet not wanting to compromise their children’s future and their access to affordable further education. That timing and opportunity now risk being torn up by the Government. This change would see the shutting down of futures and the door closed on an entire generation of young Hongkongers who want nothing more than to study, work and contribute to this country. Hongkongers came to places like Sutton to escape censorship, surveillance and persecution. Do we really want to answer their courage with confusion? Recent correspondence from the Home Office to a Labour MP, which I am sure many of us have seen, suggested that the existing pathway would remain unchanged for those already holding BNO visas, and that the proposed changes to the language requirements would apply to new applicants only from April 2026 onwards. However, that was contradicted by later correspondence, released in a number of letters issued to Members—including, I am sure, some around this room—so I would like assurances. I urge the Minister to reflect carefully before making any changes to ILR for BNO visa holders. Hongkongers’ lives are already clouded in so much uncertainty. They need clear guidance on how any changes to immigration policy will affect them. The impact of the White Paper on Hongkongers would be immense. Assurances must be provided when so much is at stake for so many of my constituents. And what of skilled worker visas, the UK’s primary visa route for individuals seeking to work here? It includes the health and care worker sub-category—the very nurses, doctors and carers who keep hospitals such as St Helier in our borough running every day and who look after our constituents in their homes. Britain cannot hope to attract the best and brightest talent while leaving thousands of those on skilled worker visas in limbo. The immigration White Paper was published four months ago, but those on this immigration visa still have no clarity about what lies ahead for them here in Britain. These are people who keep institutions like our NHS afloat, who fill critical shortages across our economy and who contribute to Britain from day one of their arrival. They deserved certainty about what changes to immigration policy meant for them from the very beginning. The Government cannot claim to fix our immigration system by pulling the rug out from under those who put their faith in it. Hongkongers and skilled workers deserve fairness and stability. I urge the Minister to stop changing the rules mid-game and play fair. As Members around this room have all made clear, the Minister should stand by his word and the word of the previous Conservative Government, who, in all fairness, brought the scheme in with foresight and compassion for the people of Hong Kong. Let us give people the certainty to build their lives as fully as they can in this country by retaining the five-plus-one time limits for BNO and skilled workers. I hope the Minister will give us that reassurance when he winds up.

• 2 Sept 2025 · Defibrillators · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. We have heard the terrifying statistics on the number of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests that occur each year, and about the terrifying survival rates. The outcomes for cardiac arrests remain stubbornly poor in London—which should be one of the easiest places in the country to provide good access to defibrillators—primarily because the equipment is still out of reach. That is why the work of charities such as the Paul Alan Project is so important. The charity was founded by Sutton resident Clare Parish in memory of her late father, Paul Alan Parish. She was standing beside her father when, in January 2022, he died of a cardiac arrest without warning while they cheered on Fulham at Craven Cottage. I have heard Clare talk movingly about her father, and her resolve that CPR and defibrillator training should be widely accessible to everyone. She told me that losing her father in a crowd full of people, none of whom had had proper CPR training, was a tragedy that inspired her into action. The Paul Alan Project provides that training—which I have taken myself—free of charge, raises awareness of accessible emergency equipment, and fundraises for and installs bleed kits and defibs across the community. Clare is tireless in making sure that barriers to accessing not just training, but the defibs themselves, becomes a thing of the past. She partners with local businesses to get defibs—

• 17 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Clause , by leave, withdrawn. New Clause 3 Review of the supply of bioethanol for use in sustainable aviation fuel production “(1) The Secretary of State must, within six months of the passing of this Act, publish and lay before Parliament a report reviewing measures to encourage the supply of materials for Sustainable Aviation Fuel. (2) The report under subsection (1) must include— (a) an assessment of the impact of the closure of bioethanol plants on the ability to encourage overall increases in sustainable aviation fuel production; (b) options for mitigating any adverse impacts on the availability of supply of sustainable aviation fuel by the closure of bioethanol plants; (c) recommendations for any necessary Government action to promote a stable supply of bioethanol for Sustainable Aviation Fuel.”— (Mr Kohler.) This new clause would require the Secretary of State to lay before Parliament a report outlining measures to encourage the supply of materials for SAFs, including considering the impact of bioethanol plant closures on encouragement to increase supply. Brought up, and read the First time.

• 17 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise very briefly to speak in favour of new clause 2, which I have tabled. Generally, the intent was to provide a check-in and reporting mechanism for the success of the Bill. We are all in favour of its objectives; I think that it is the care, and the attention to understanding how it is progressing, that is needed. I therefore ask the Minister what measures will be taken by the Government to achieve the aims of the new clause. Will that be through the jet zero taskforce, or will there be another mechanism for us to understand and monitor the progress and success of these measures? I would be interested to hear his response on how that might be done.

• 17 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister has spoken about the tonnage from SAF, but the real question is whether statistics and information will be available on the sources of each of those SAF types, so that we can examine how each of the various streams of SAF production are contributing and also understand the net carbon benefit. He has talked about the carbon production from the burning, but we need to see the detail of the SAF streams to understand the benefits and the progress towards decarbonisation in more detail. Is that something the Government might consider?

• 17 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time. I move the new clause simply to discuss some of the interesting issues that it raises. In the evidence session on Tuesday, we heard about the opportunities for the diversion of residual municipal waste into the production of second-generation SAF. We have heard from many in Committee this morning about the challenges to do with the incineration of waste and the impact of that on our communities, but a lot of us maintain, or agree, that that is the least worst option. The opportunity here is that there is a slightly less worse option for the disposal of that remaining municipal waste. New clause 1 aims to give the Minister a bit of a nudge towards examining the opportunities and how the waste hierarchy could reflect how that waste is potentially reused. There are also broader questions not only about the residual waste but about plastics recycling, such as whether there is an opportunity to incorporate changes in the way that plastics recycling is prioritised, and whether it is a suitable feedstuff for SAF. New clause 1 is an opportunity to raise some of those questions, and for the Minister to give some assurances and responses on them.

• 17 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Third sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise briefly to press this question to the Minister: if the Government oppose the new clauses, how are they are going to incorporate their intent? I think they probably agree with the intent but are probably just resistant to their being outlined as they are. I ask the Minister to go into as much detail as he can on whether that will happen through the jet zero taskforce or something else.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q You have given a really helpful view of the long-term solution. I do not think many would argue with PtL being the solution for the industry. This question is similar to one I have asked other panel members: how do other parts of Government, other levers and other enablers need to be brought in place to enable you to do what you need to do? What conditions does the Bill need to set? What do you see as the main challenges for the Government to act? You have spoken about skills. What else needs to be done in the Bill to enable you to be successful and for the Bill to achieve what it needs to achieve? Doug McKiernan: Coming back to the IP, there needs to be some sort of support for e-fuels core technology development. That is very important. If you want e-fuels to be part of the future, we need to make sure that that research is supported in the UK and that when it is supported in the UK there is proper IP regulation of that. That needs to be mandated as part of the support from the Government. What is happening in the aviation area is clearer cut, because you cannot get the energy density into an aircraft with hydrogen or electric, so it is kind of obvious, but I think it is a solution for a lot of the fossil-based fuels, including gasoline and diesel. I think what we will end up doing is that, if we can develop that core technology, it is then transferable to other sectors, and with that we will be able to deal with the real problem, which is the end-to-end solution of getting renewable energy to the consumer. That is the real challenge. At the moment, we are talking about sustainable aviation fuel, but actually there is a lot of energy in the North sea that is not getting used because of the challenge of the cost of getting it from there to the consumer. This is where e-fuels come in. The Bill would help to move us in the right direction to start to tackle that problem, because you would have these companies with the new tech working out how to make that viable. There is a very good, well researched paper by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the US and the Department of Energy. It was done back in 2021. I had a conversation with our CEO and the board one day and realised, “We’re not actually a fuels company, although we’re called Zero Petroleum and we’re making jet fuel and gasoline. We’re actually an energy transmission company, because all the problems we have with renewable energy are solved by liquid hydrocarbons”. If you look at the paper I referred to, done back in 2021, the cost of getting energy from the North sea in a cable to the consumer is probably forty to fiftyfold what it is if you wanted to do it with a liquid hydrocarbon. That is the fundamental problem that we are going to struggle with going forward. We are slowly going to morph as technology and engineering rather than policy dictate what the solution is.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you, Mr Pritchard. Minister, your first answer was very helpful. My second question is on a theme that I have brought up a couple of times, and which echoes the evidence around ETS funding from a couple of the witnesses. I am going to be a bit pointed, but if you had had the choice and the permission from the Treasury to get the funding from the ETS, rather than passing it on to firms and then passengers, would you have seen that as an optimal solution, in these constrained times? Mike Kane: As the departmental Minister, I want to avoid the pitfall of commenting on Treasury policy, but I did hear some earlier evidence that £500 million came in from the ETS. What did they get back for it? Well, £2.3 billion of investment in the ATI, which is looking at engine capacity, hydrogen and reduced noise technologies. We are investing more than we ever have in that area. We are also now aligning, or are in negotiations to align, our ETS with the European Union. That would give us a bigger market, and therefore help aviation in this space. In addition to the £2.3 billion, the Chancellor recently announced £63 million for the advanced fuels fund. The Government are putting their money where their mouth is. As part of the work that I have done this year to restart our confidence in aviation, I set up the jet zero taskforce, which is jointly chaired by me and the Minister for Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), at DBT. There is an awful lot of joined-up thinking in this area.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  I admire your faith that that narrative might fall away, but I agree with the rest of the answer.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I have one straightforward question, and one that is a little more spiky. First, we have heard a lot about the need to work across Government to ensure that we get the most effective outcome from the Bill. From all the evidence we have heard, it seems to be the right thing and structured well, but how do we ensure that municipal waste streams match up with incentives for heat networks, waste hierarchies and that sort of stuff? We hear a lot about mission-based Government—is that what will give the advantage to being able to co-ordinate across Departments? Will you give us an account of what you are doing so far to pull those Departments and different groups together to make sure it works? Mike Kane: To get any Bill this far, as any Member will know, it has to have consent right around Government. The Government know exactly what we are doing in a joined-up way. To answer your mission question, we have said that we want to be a clean energy superpower, and this Bill helps us to do exactly that. It gives us sovereign capability here on UK shores to do that; not only is that the right thing to do, but, in the increasingly uncertain geopolitical situation we face, it is becoming almost essential. The other mission that we have is growth. Today, I heard some very big figures on what that could mean. Our Department figures show at least £5 billion GVA added if we do this, and about 15,000 jobs— [ Interruption. ]

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q I want to be very careful with this question. We have had questions about investors and appetites to put money into these technologies—into refineries, production and particular projects. There was previously a fairly strong consensus on the need to address climate change, and this is one of the projects that we are doing to mitigate those impacts. There is a fair amount of rhetoric at the moment about stopping investment in net zero projects in particular regions, some of which have a heavy dependency on or a high frequency of these sorts of projects—north Lincolnshire, Humberside and such areas. Is there a risk that that sort of rhetoric damages investor confidence and that, with that sort of language and those sorts of pronouncements being made, we see challenges in delivering the jobs and the plants and seeing the capacity that we need come online? Josh Garton: Yes, absolutely there is. It feeds into the overall narrative in the UK on the direction of SAF. It is more than just at the regional level; there are murmurings around the strength of the mandate itself and its being upheld. All those murmurings impact the narrative and the appetite for investors. The more we can do to support those first-generation plants to get through to a final investment decision and through to production, the better we prove out the sector as a viable one in the second and third-generation fuels. That narrative then falls away, because we have proof that it is a commercially viable product.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q The SAF mandate is 10% by 2030. The EU target is much lower: 6%, I think. Our target goes up to 22% by 2040, but elsewhere the target increases more dramatically. As Heathrow is such a large user—17% is a massive component—will the mandate be achievable alongside the goals and targets set out in the Bill? You have said that other things need to be done and that this is part of a suite, but I guess the question is whether this is enough. Do you need to see more aggression and more ambition, with investment in firms through skills and through the measures we have drawn out from previous witnesses around the protection of IP? Do you see this as enough? Matt Gorman: I think this is a very strong start from the UK. I was smiling when the Shell representative said that the EU had been inspired by the measures that the UK is taking. Joking aside, I have talked to fuel suppliers and investors to get a sense of how they are seeing the market. They say that this package, with the mandate and the revenue certainty mechanism, is a really strong policy package from the UK. To answer your question, Heathrow has been invited by the Government to submit updated proposals for our expansion plans by the end of this month. Within them, we will be setting out our views on our future trajectory to net zero. We think that the mandate and the revenue certainty mechanism are vital. The Government have already said that they want to keep the mandate levels under review; you are right that although we are more ambitious to begin with and the EU is less ambitious, the EU takes over. Our view is that heading more in the direction of the EU’s ambition over time will be important for Heathrow and for aviation generally, but we will keep that under review. It is really important to get started and make a strong start in this decade, to show that as well as producing SAF globally for use in the UK, as we are already doing, we can produce it in the UK.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q May I start by heartily endorsing your encouragement of engineering as a career or an education? As an aeronautical engineer before I came to this place, I am available for motivational speeches whenever necessary. From my discussions with industry on the Bill up until now, I am not quite sure that I am convinced about being agnostic to SAF production, source and mechanism. My worry is that it does not give enough ability to shape the environmental benefit of that SAF stream and to incentivise the most beneficial SAF production, such as PTL compared with the earlier gen SAFs, even 2g SAFs. Does the Bill as presented give enough of the right mechanisms to incentivise the right sort of SAFs that will be most beneficial and provide us with the greatest environmental benefit? Professor Maslin : The Bill provides financial security for industries producing SAFs, which I think is essential. I do not think it has real tweaks to favour particular SAFs—whether you want to do that or not is another matter. The problem is that some SAFs have a better environmental signature, and they are better, but we are going to run out of those. Ultimately, the real SAFs that we are going to be looking at globally are massive algal productions and artificial kerosene, whereby you produce huge amounts of energy, and you use water and CO 2 from the atmosphere to actually create kerosene. That is extortionately expensive at this moment in time. However, as I said, if there are 14,000 planes, going up 4% per year, by 2050 you will have a very large number of planes in the air at any one moment in time. There will not be enough waste, cropland or algal stuff to produce the SAFs we need. Generations 4 or 5 will be the ones that ultimately look after the aviation industry. I would still say to be agnostic; I cannot believe I am saying this, but let the economics work its way through at the moment to see who comes out on top in the UK, and then take through the next generation.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q As a good Liberal Democrat, I want to talk about bins again. Incineration and energy recovery facilities are broadly seen as the least worst options. If there is now an alternative, lots of us will be very interested in the opportunities for local authorities and for making conditions better for our residents. If that means cheaper bin collection, we will all be in favour. I have questions about the big picture. It has the potential to disincentivise recycling. Does the increasing value of SAF feedstock undermine the efforts to recycle? Another, more technical question is: could plastics recycling be better diverted into this process to solve a lot of the problems we have with exporting plastics for recycling and the energy used to do that? Many of our energy from waste facilities are now linked to heat networks. Is that bigger picture being considered—not just producing electrons, as you say, but using waste heat for district heating networks? There is a bit of additional complexity. That leads into the bigger question of the holistic view across different Departments and the incentives that the Bill creates, which I am sure are all positive. It promotes better, more sustainable options in different Departments. Is enough work being done elsewhere for this to work within the bigger system? You have 15 minutes. Philip New: My roots are as a fuels and energy guy, so I will not be able to respond with much expertise to the more specific questions about the waste sector. However, I will do my best by starting with the general statement that I think you are quite right that the second that waste becomes more valuable than an alternative use of that waste, you have to start questioning whether it is really waste. Funnily enough, that is more of an issue in some of the first-generation products that we are using, where the waste is becoming more valuable than virgin vegetable oils. That is a different issue, but it is very important. In this case, as long as people either do not get anything for waste or have to pay to get rid of it, the risk of it distorting other parts of the hierarchy is manageable, particularly with a sensible degree of oversight and monitoring. I would not lose too much sleep about that. You will have to help me with the other part of the question.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q It is the broader question of how this sits within the system. The implications of this Bill are really broad in the way the incentives will come into a whole different set of markets, including agriculture, waste and local government. Philip New: First, I challenge the suggestion that this is an incentive. I think of it more as an insurance policy. If you are a recipient of the insurance policy, if it turns out that the market price is higher than you contracted for—your strike price—you will end up paying. The counterparty will be in receipt of money from the participants in the scheme. It is not a one-way incentive. One of the charms of the RCM is that it is nicely balanced. If you are worried that the market will go long and there will be lots and lots of lower-priced product that undermines your economics, the RCM is a great way of giving you insurance that your investors will stay whole and happy. On the other hand, by taking it on, you are sacrificing your exposure to the upside. That is the premium you are paying. I think the balance that has been designed into the RCM is a really attractive way of keeping everyone honest while still enabling investment to flow into the sector. I do not think it should distort the underlying drivers or mechanisms. That having been said, I worry about the range of sectors that a successful SAF industry will touch. It has the potential to touch them in a very positive way, but it is also exposed to some inadvertent—I would not call it negligent—inattention in somewhere that does not feel a very strong ownership of the space, which could really mess things up. A degree of conscious, whole-system understanding of what it takes to enable a brand-new sector to emerge, and providing some co-ordination of that, would be welcome. Whether that looks a little like mission control in the electricity transition or something else, I do not know, but something to provide more comfort would be important. It touches many parts of the economy and many Departments.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q My question is relatively straightforward: does the Bill go far enough to allow us to proceed with aviation expansion and be consistent with our climate change goals? Matt Gorman: This Bill is part of a package of measures from the Government, and I think it is absolutely vital. I see the Bill and the SAF mandate as equally important, with the SAF mandate driving a requirement for 10% SAF and with the Bill encouraging investment in domestic production. Those are vital tools, and the Government are taking a range of other steps. I am not here as a spokesperson for the Government, but the jet zero strategy outlines a range of measures to support the ongoing development of more efficient aircraft, which is a key tool in our toolkit, along with modernising airspace with the new UK airspace design service, which is vital for more efficient airspace, and support for new hydrogen technology and greenhouse gas removal. This is a vital part of that package.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Just for clarity—forgive my technical inexperience—what you are suggesting is production of the hydrocarbon at the source, at the base of a wind turbine, which is then collected in tanks rather than transmission over cables? Doug McKiernan: Correct. Within that report, there were also comparisons to hydrogen—that was a sixfold increase over a two-foot oil pipeline—and to ethanol, methanol and ammonia. It looked at how you get energy from A to B in the cheapest operational expenditure and capital expenditure form. That is a fundamental. The cost of getting the renewable energy is what all the engineering will come back to. I believe the renewable energy will be in remote locations, a bit like oil today. Ultimately, we are going to put renewable energy in those places. Hopefully we do not cover all the fertile soil with solar panels and we can generate it elsewhere, and then use the power-to-liquids to get it from A to B.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Mr Downie stole my question, so I will develop it a bit further. The RCM sets the levy on to the fuel producers who will likely pass it on to passengers. You operate internationally and see mechanisms being implemented elsewhere in the world. We mentioned the alternative of using the ETS to fund the RCM. How do you see the advantages of one system or the other, and where have you seen alternatives implemented elsewhere that have worked well? Ruben van Grinsven : That is a good question. First and foremost, the UK is ahead of pretty much everybody else when it comes to developing those mechanisms. I know the EU is basically inspired by the RCM and trying to come up with a similar framework, which it will be announcing in September in the sustainable transport investment plan. I think the initial thoughts are indeed to fund that through ETS. I do not have a strong preference between ETS-funded or levy-funded. The most important thing is that it is clear, transparent, consistent and predictable. Once we know the details and find out how the whole mechanism will work, we can perfectly live with the levy mechanism—as long as it works practically. So we do not have a strong preference between ETS or levy funding.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you all for joining us. The evidence that you have given so far has been very helpful. There was a question earlier about waste hierarchy and the availability of waste feedstocks as one source of raw fuel or raw material for some of the second-generation SAF. Is enough being done across Government, in a holistic way, to ensure that the goals of the SAF mandate, the RCM and this Bill are achieved? Is enough being done to ensure that the things that are needed—waste feedstocks, the reforms to planning and energy production for eSAFs—are in place? What is going to hold back what we are trying to achieve in this Bill, and what needs to be done elsewhere? Jonathon Counsell: That is a really strong point. There is a key question about the waste hierarchy, which Gaynor spoke to. Currently, waste going to SAF is treated the same way as incineration or energy from waste, but the analysis is clear that we can get twice as much energy capture from producing SAF than from producing energy from waste. We feel that you are getting a lot more bang for your buck from using waste to produce SAF than from other things, which we think should be reflected in aviation being prioritised in the waste hierarchy. On renewable energy, last year the Sustainable Aviation road map made it quite clear that 3G SAF—where you basically electrolyse water to get hydrogen and you capture CO 2 from the atmosphere—is going to take a lot of renewable electricity. We are going to need a lot more of that within the UK if we are going to support a domestic power-to-liquid market. Luke Ervine: In addition to that, we need to think about other areas of SAF, when we talk about SAF having a nominal value associated with its ability to reduce greenhouse gases. We are working alongside the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Department for Business and Trade to understand how carbon can form part of the solution, and decarbonising the SAF that we are producing is also key. We are also working side by side with the Treasury to understand what the revenues from the ETS look like. That has been quite successful in the last few years, especially since the advent of the jet zero taskforce, which was a really key turning point. I think we are going to continue in that vein to work cross-departmentally and across industry to work through some of these finer details. I think it has been very useful to be part of the Jet Zero Council; we are actually a co-chair, alongside Mike Kane, of the jet zero taskforce. Carrying on in that vein is very important and useful. Lahiru Ranasinghe: This also enables us to reduce our dependence on used cooking oil imported from elsewhere in the world as a feedstock for first generation SAF. A strategic move towards 2G and 3G also gives more flexibility and capability for the market to scale up in the long-term, and allows it to use waste products from the UK, as opposed to having to ship it in from China or south-east Asia.

• 15 Jul 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting) · Hansard source

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  Q Thank you both. A lot of the criticism and cynicism over the value of SAF and its environmental benefits are around the fuel source or feedstuff—you have alluded to it. The Bill concentrates on second and third generation SAF. Do you see that as enabling a lot of the potential greenwashing of SAF that may have been behind all that cynicism? Does it address some of those challenges? As a follow-up question, similar to one that I asked the previous panel, what do you see as some of the challenges across Government that will hold back your ability to produce more SAF? You referred to the ability to use some of the feedstuff to produce second generation SAF mixing, but I think planning and energy will be among the responses as well. Sophia Haywood: On sustainability and fraud, I have been working on sustainability certification over a number of different fuel types. We have ISCC, which is like an auditing process that we generally have to go through—there are other providers out there—to be able to prove the sustainability of our fuel. This is a very complicated and rigorous process, and I have gone through it many times on different types of fuels. On the sustainability piece, the guidance that has been put out already in the SAF mandate is very high, and we have to go through a lot of that auditing process. To your point about the risk of fraud and other challenges around greenwashing that potentially could have happened in the past, I think the UK has done a good thing there with how it has approached this, so I support the approach that we are taking. That is not necessarily in this Bill; I would say that that has more already been laid out in the mandate rules. On what else we would like to see, potentially, through this, as I said before, there is a piece around the SAF allowances—this is a scheme currently in Europe that is funded through ETS revenues. Obviously, you are always taking from somewhere with funding, but you are trying to take at least from a funding source that is coming directly from industry, and using that to then fund the industry back with SAF. I think that has good bones and good structure, and I would love to see that being fleshed out. On a more practical level, for sure, there is planning. We have just had a recent example that some of my engineers have told me about: waiting two months for an answer on a very small question. It is not because of the quality of the planning teams; they are fantastic. It is the fact that they are quite constrained and there are not enough of them. I suppose there is a potential short-to-medium-term fix there, but also a longer-term fix in terms of thinking of the skills that we need moving forward. We automatically think of more engineering and STEM roles, but we also need the rest of the value chain to be adequate in terms of workforce and other things. I alluded earlier to the details of the mandate being really good on the sustainability piece, but there are some very complex rules that we are still consistently trying to navigate six months on. There are different interpretations to different questions—for example, in the nitty gritty of how hydrogen is treated or the rules around electricity and displacement. They are more in the detail, but we end up spending quite a lot of time on them as a company trying to break through into this market. Equally, it is a learning experience for my colleagues doing these projects all across the world. We have other projects going on in India and Australia. As a Brit, I want the UK to be our flagship and our first, and I am working hard to make sure that it is, but as I always say to people, I am competing with my colleagues in Australia and all over because lots of people want SAF. It is about how we can make it as efficient and easy as possible, keeping in mind all the good sustainability criteria, to get steel in the ground here in the UK. Noaman Al Adhami: From our perspective, the route we are using—the Fischer-Tropsch synthetic paraffinic kerosene route—is an American Society for Testing and Materials route that is approved already. On sustainability, the feedstock criteria are well defined in the SAF mandate. All the types of feedstock that are eligible to produce SAF are well defined. We are complying with that. The greenhouse gas and carbon intensity are other factors for measuring sustainability. For our project, without carbon capture, we are at minus 80% or minus 85% from the fossil equivalent. With carbon capture, we will go negative—we will go to even more than minus 200%. That is key for us. On what could be done better, planning is always an area where we need improvement in terms of time. There is also connection to the grid, for example—grid connections take a very long time. We decided to produce our own power on site using a biomass boiler rather than waiting for a grid connection because the answer we got was that we will get it by the end of the 2030s—2039—and we cannot wait until then. Another requirement, which is very specific to us, is to get connected as early as possible to the carbon network once we start producing SAF by the end of 2029, especially when there is a unique benefit for the UK. By the way, that is very unique to the UK. No other country has a SAF mandate that is about carbon scaling and at the same time has the capability to capture CO 2 . That is also unique in Europe because the UK and Norway together have 75% of the carbon capture capacity in Europe. It is really very unique to the UK. Our ask is to get connected to reduce carbon intensity, provide a better price per certificate, and also pay, because we do not need subsidy for carbon capture. We are ready to pay the transport and storage costs to the Government for carbon capture. Those are the three main points.