Michael Shanks MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 14 Oct 2025 · Onshore Wind Turbines · Hansard source

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  The Government have published an onshore wind strategy to remove barriers to help companies build more onshore wind, with actions across several areas including planning, aviation, workforce and routes to market.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right: allocation round 6 delivered a record number of renewables projects, and the jobs and investments that go with them will deliver jobs in constituencies throughout the country, including hers. We have reformed the scheme to ensure that allocation round 7 is a success, at a good price for consumers, and also that it delivers not only value for money but the clarity and investment for renewables projects that are essential to our energy security and to future investment.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am happy to have further conversations with the hon. Gentleman. I know that the refinery is in his constituency and that he cares deeply about it. A process is under way—led by the official receiver, because it is an insolvency process. It is considering a number of bids to make sure they are viable, and will conclude in the coming weeks so that there is certainty for the workforce. We have said throughout that we want to support as much investment in that site as possible.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Grid Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  First, I will take no lessons from the party that brought Chinese investors right into building our nuclear power station. This Government are delivering a nuclear power station with British Government funding, not Chinese funding, so I will take no lessons from the Conservatives on that. Many companies want to come and invest in the UK, and we absolutely welcome investment into this country, but every single decision and investment obviously has to pass stringent national security tests. I will not engage right now in what those tests will be, but we will say very clearly that no decision we make will ever compromise our national security.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Grid Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  We are building a resilient grid for the future after decades of under-investment. We are halving the development time for new transmission infrastructure, including through reforms to planning regulation and supply chains, and delivering the grid capacity needed to deliver clean power by 2030 and the economic growth that this country needs.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Grid Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend asks an incredibly important question. First, I would like to thank all the engineers and customer service staff who worked through the recent Storm Amy to ensure that people were reconnected as quickly as possible, including in some incredibly difficult circumstances—they did a fantastic job. We are trying to ensure that the UK’s grid remains as resilient as possible. That requires investment, and those who oppose the building of new infrastructure to improve our grid’s resilience will need to explain to their constituents why they want them to be much more at risk of disconnections in those storms. Secondly, these storms are becoming more common, because climate change is impacting all our lives. The answer is to move more quickly towards clean power and to recognise that climate change is a problem, not to bury our heads in the sand and fail to deliver the necessary investment.

• 14 Oct 2025 · Grid Infrastructure · Hansard source

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  I could not have organised that better if I had tried: immediately after I said, “If you are against grid infrastructure, you are against economic growth”, up pops the hon. Gentleman to make exactly that point. His party is against building the future of this country, and we are not going to follow that path at all. Decades of under-investment have led to the issues we face today. They hold back economic growth across the country. This infrastructure has to be built somewhere. We are determined that communities benefit from that by introducing what the previous Government failed to do: community benefits for the communities who are hosting the infrastructure.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects: Suffolk Coast · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Sir John, for recognising that my role is exactly the same and yet somehow changed in title. I am grateful still to be the Energy Minister, because, as I often say in this place, the debates that we have are always hugely interesting and bring in so many different aspects of how we plan our future energy system. Indeed, you and I, Sir John, have had many conversations about this particular issue. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing this debate and for her contribution. She and I have had a number of conversations about this issue. Let me say at the outset that I actually agree with her on the need for better co-ordination—I have said that many times here and to her personally. I think it is a source of deep regret for all of us—I think the previous Government will look back on this as well—that we did not more properly co-ordinate what has been a huge build-out of new, important infrastructure. As my hon. Friend said, the previous Government vacated the space of leadership in planning the future of our energy system. That was not because it was an impossible task; I can only assume it was because they thought it was too difficult to do. We have grasped that task in the 14 months that we have been in office. I will talk a bit more about that later. I want to start with a bit of context, which is important. My hon. Friend also mentioned this point. We are committed as a Government to building things in this country again. For far too long, under both Labour and Conservative Governments, we have held back a lot of critical infrastructure. The plan for delivering economic growth across the country does require us to build infrastructure. Energy infrastructure is going to be absolutely key, not least because even if we were not on the journey to clean power, which is critical, we would still be having to upgrade much of the energy infrastructure, particularly the transmission network, which has been so under-invested in over the past 50 or 60 years. Our mission as a Government is to move towards clean power, making sure that we deliver our energy security; and every wind turbine, solar panel and nuclear power station that we build protects us from future energy shocks and delivers our energy security here at home. So, it is a critical mission. New energy infrastructure—indeed, new infrastructure of any kind—is always controversial in some circumstances; there are always impacts and there are always differing views about whether it should be built or not. That is why we have a planning system that seeks to balance the pros and cons of applications against a framework that sets out, as a country, that we have to build things somewhere. So, the planning system is there to make sure that the planning process is rigorous and open, but ultimately so that we make decisions and build things. For obvious reasons, I will not comment on individual planning applications; they will be decided in due course in the usual way. However, I will make a fundamental point about why we are on this journey and why we think that building this infrastructure is so important. The reason is that the only way to reduce our exposure to the volatility of fossil fuels is to build a new clean power system. That means new nuclear, renewables and storage working together to bring down bills and tackle the climate crisis. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal is aware of the NSIP regime, but for the purposes of the hordes of people that I am sure are watching this debate at home, let me say a little about it. The “nationally significant” in NSIP—nationally significant infrastructure project—is really important for us to recognise. The reason we have an NSIP process is that some decisions have to be made that local communities might not be able to make in isolation because they are of critical national importance, whether that is in transport, water or energy projects. It is important that we have this process and it is a robust process, involving the Planning Inspectorate, and various statutory bodies such as national environment bodies. Projects are judged on a case-by-case basis, weighed against the local impacts, be they environmental, economic or social. The need for this process is set out for all to see in local and national planning policy, and of course national policy statements are scrutinised by this place before being agreed. When an applicant submits an application for a development consent order or DCO, the Planning Inspectorate, particularly for energy NSIPs, will appoint an independent inspector to examine the application. A recommendation will be made to the Secretary of State about whether permission should be given and the Secretary of State makes the final decision; that decision might be made by a junior Minister on their behalf, but the law states that the decision is still in the name of the Secretary of State. Such applications are considered against the relevant national policy statements as approved by Parliament, which make the case for infrastructure and all the various considerations that have to be made. Cumulative impact is an issue that my hon. Friend raised with me today, and that a number of hon. Friends have raised with me previously. I know that it is a particular concern. Projects must consider their cumulative impact as part of their applications. Also, the local authority that hosts the infrastructure and surrounding local authorities—given that often these projects are on the borders with other local authorities—are invited to submit impact reports as part of the process, to ensure that the potential impacts of an individual project are taken into account, based on local knowledge. Of course, there are also opportunities for local communities to have a say. Members of the public can get involved not just in the planning application itself, but in the pre-consultation process and in the discussions before applications emerge. They can also register through the Planning Inspectorate during the pre-examination phase. On planning reform, we are mindful as a Government that the planning process can take much longer than we think it should. Let me say at the outset that that is not about trying to get to the decision that one particular group might want; it is about getting to any kind of decision much faster, so that instead of projects and communities being held up for year after year, with people not knowing whether something will proceed or not, decisions are made. The average time to secure development consent for NSIPs has increased from 2.6 years in 2012 to 3.6 years in 2024. Such delays cost a vast amount of money—£1.5 million a month for some large projects—and that of course impacts taxpayers and bill payers, who foot the bill for these projects. There is always a balance to be struck, as we have said throughout the passage of the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Of course we want communities to have a say and we want the process to be as robust as possible, but we need to get decisions and end the uncertainty as quickly as possible, and the Bill will be key to improving the process. Our reforms are about trying to make sure that the system is flexible, proportionate and responsive to Government priorities. The Government must deliver the change on which we were elected; in the energy space, that means building the clean power system of the future. The planning system should reflect the priorities of the democratically elected Government of the day. Public engagement is key to this process. We want communities to participate in the planning system, but as I will come back to in a moment when I talk about strategic planning, we also want communities to have a say much earlier in the process. It is not just about individual applications, but about the whole question of infrastructure in communities more generally. We are consulting on further proposals to streamline the NSIP process, including for new guidance on engagement following proposals in the Bill to remove statutory pre-application consultation requirements, and we encourage feedback from communities. We are also keen to hear views on the practical next steps and on how the system will actually work. I understand that the consultation is now open and will close at the end of October. On the siting of energy projects, I agree with my hon. Friend that we should be much more strategic as a country in considering what the future of our energy system should look like, and in planning holistically what infrastructure should be built and where. She made a powerful point about the sheer amount in her part of the country. Had we been strategically planning a decade or so ago, we might have avoided some of those planning decisions, so it is important that we take this step. I regret the fact that we have not done so for the past few decades, but we are moving forward with a strategic view as quickly as possible. The problem with being the Minister for Energy Security is that we are not short of acronyms—let me just go through some of them. The strategic spatial energy plan, or SSEP, and the centralised strategic network plan, or CSNP, are two crucial parts of how we will provide a holistic design much more carefully. The strategic spatial energy plan is about looking at the whole of Great Britain and how we map out the future of our energy system, and it will be published by the end of 2026—there is work going on at the moment. The centralised strategic network plan will follow, so that we can work out what infrastructure we need on the grid in order to meet the strategic spatial energy plan, and it will be published by the end of 2027. This is about taking a much more active planning role in the future of energy right across England, Scotland and Wales, both inland and at sea. My hon. Friend rightly brings both of those things from her constituency into this discussion. It will be about assessing the optimal locations for things and the type of energy infrastructure that we need in the future. We must look beyond a developer’s five or 10-year plan and ensure that we meet future energy demand, knowing that it will significantly increase in the years ahead. The centralised strategic network plan will build on the SSEP by ensuring that our transmission infrastructure meets the need and, crucially, is co-ordinated. My hon. Friend made that point very powerfully, and I was in Denmark last week to talk about this very question with EU Energy Ministers. The North sea is already congested with a lot of infrastructure, and the only way we will effectively plan the future of the North sea— for a whole range of uses, from fishing and energy to carbon capture and storage—is by working together. We will be part of much more co-ordination on the infrastructure in the North sea. It all feeds into my hon. Friend’s point: we will only get this right by having a holistic view and enabling the efficient and co-ordinated use of infrastructure. That is better for communities affected by this issue directly, but we can also bring down the cost of building infrastructure if we plan it more coherently. That will benefit every person right across the country.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects: Suffolk Coast · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend foresees what I was going to say. I was just about to come on to his earlier intervention, which was really important. He is right about the need for infrastructure plans to be generated by communities and bottom-up. We need to take a national view of the future of the energy system as well, but I think both can work together. The third great part of this planning is the regional energy plans. We also see a place, on a very localised level, for the local energy plans that many local authorities and combined mayoral authorities are working on, but the regional plans break up the whole of Great Britain into smaller areas so that we can look in detail at what energy can be sited in different areas, and crucially, at how the two kinds of plan can work together—the Government’s land use framework for the future use of land in the country alongside the capability and interest from communities to host infrastructure as well. I hope that we are doing that, but my hon. Friend should continue to bring that challenge to the Government, because it is something that we are committed to doing. I am confident that he will do so, which is great. Let me finish on a point around the impact on communities. We do not want to get to a place where the future energy system is something that is done to communities, and we recognise that the failure of strategic planning across the country has meant that that is all too often what it has felt like for communities. We have a role to play in ensuring that, where communities do host important energy infrastructure, they benefit from it. Hosting such infrastructure benefits the whole country—without a resilient energy system, we all lose out, and we will not deliver the economic growth that we need—but the communities that host this infrastructure should feel a benefit from doing so. That is why, in March, we announced two community benefit initiatives, guidance on community funds for communities that host this key infrastructure, and a bill discount scheme for households that are sited in proximity to new transmission infrastructure. The guidance sets out our expectations for how communities hosting that infrastructure should benefit. We will have more to say as the bill discount scheme is developed through secondary legislation, but that is an important statement: people should directly benefit, through money off their bills, if they are doing the country a favour by hosting that infrastructure. In May we also published a working paper on wider questions around community benefits, to make sure that other types of energy infrastructure also benefit communities. In conclusion, I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal for securing the debate. I know that we will continue to have these conversations. In this job I sometimes wish, for a number of reasons, that we could turn back the clock and do things slightly differently. I have been told repeatedly that, unfortunately, that is not an option, although I continue to push for it. Strategic planning is one of those regrets. As a country, whatever the political view, we will look back and wish that we had planned our energy system more holistically across the country. We are doing that. That does not change some of the decisions that have been made and some of the decisions that are in the system now, but it will allow us to build a more holistic system in the future.

• 16 Sept 2025 · Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects: Suffolk Coast · Hansard source

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  I am always happy to meet any hon. Member from either side of the House, and I do regularly, but I will certainly meet my hon. Friend to discuss that. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to comment on specific applications in the system, but I am happy to meet her. Let me finish with a general point that brings us back to our national mission. As a country, we must move quickly to replace a 19th-century fossil fuel-based energy system with a system that is fit for the 21st century. Even if we were not on that mission, the huge increase in demand for electricity necessitates the building of more energy infrastructure across the country. We must make the change that we are making to bring down bills and benefit consumers, to benefit our national energy security in an increasingly uncertain world, and to tackle climate change. Anyone who says that we can get by with not building any infrastructure is quite wrong. Since time began, there has been opposition to any pieces of infrastructure built in any part of the country, but we must as a country recognise that, for us to deliver on the outcomes we want as a Government and improve people’s lives, we have to build infrastructure across the country. We want to do that in partnership with communities, to ensure that we do so in as well planned and strategic a way as possible, and to ensure that communities that host such infrastructure genuinely benefit from it. There is much more work to do, and I look forward to engaging with hon. Members on these difficult questions so that we can find the right solution for the country and local communities. I thank my hon. Friend once again for securing the debate. Question put and agreed to.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Hydrogen Supply Chains · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Betts—and to still be here as the Energy Minister. It is the only Government job that I wanted to do, which is perhaps just as well given how the reshuffle has landed, so it is genuinely a pleasure. As I have often said, these debates are a great example not only of how we come together to talk about quite complex topics relating to the energy system, but of how this part of Parliament works. I always come out of these debates having learned something, as the shadow Minister said. Sometimes it is quite a niche fact that I am not quite sure what I will do with. I always learn a huge amount from my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Tom Collins), given his detailed knowledge of the industry and its practical application, which is often lost in our debates. I thank him and my hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish), who also worked in the energy sector, and whose constituency was home to Britain’s last coal power station, the closure of which I attended last year. His understanding of the importance of the transition and the potential of future clean energy technologies is hugely welcome. It has been an interesting debate not least because, as the shadow Minister said, we have had a degree of consensus. We once had consensus on quite a lot of things in respect of the future of our energy system, but that has somehow changed in the last few months. I will leave it to others to judge why that is, but it is really important that, given the huge opportunities for the future of the country and for thousands of jobs, there is a degree of consensus. As the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said, we get things done when there is a degree of consensus, and that is hugely welcome. The hon. Gentleman referred to Joule’s law on the loss of power, which I think, if my standard grade physics holds up, is P = I 2 R,. I am sure people will correct me when that is typed up in Hansard . Let me say a bit about our commitment to hydrogen before I respond to some specific points. We have been clear that hydrogen will play a fundamental role in the future of our energy system. Not only is it a crucial part of how we decarbonise heavy industry and transport, which are among our most energy-intensive and hardest-to-decarbonise sectors, but it is, as many Members have pointed out, part of our work to provide large-scale storage for our baseload of year-round clean power. As the Government have set out in everything we do, our mission to achieve clean power by 2030 and to maintain that relates to tackling the climate crisis, delivering energy security and reducing our dependence on unstable, volatile fossil fuel markets. How we take back control of our energy supply and storage will clearly be a critical part of that. It can also help us to reduce system costs as both electricity demand and renewable generation increase. There are other great other examples of the use of hydrogen. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) made the really interesting point that the world’s first hydrogen double-decker bus was made in North Antrim, which I had not realised. As the shadow Minister pointed out, there are challenges around how we maintain such innovation and make sure that it continues to work in the future. Last week I was in Denmark to meet European Energy Ministers. It was really interesting to see examples there, as well as at the port of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, of where infrastructure is being rolled out, while facing some of the same challenges about how we achieve the scale that makes it competitive. That is part of the work we will have to do. We are acting now to seize the economic and industrial benefits of the hydrogen sector, which is why we have been not only pushing forward on our policy framework but trying to make clear our ambition. There is much more to be said about that, but there has been industrial and investor interest in our hydrogen allocation round programme. The first HAR1 projects are now putting spades in the ground, with the first wave expected to access more than £2 billion over the next 15 years in revenue support from the hydrogen production business model, and over £90 million in capital from the net zero hydrogen fund. Over £400 million of private capital has been committed up front for 2024 to 2026, with more than 700 direct jobs created in construction and operation. Those are among the first commercial-scale hydrogen projects in the world to take a final investment decision, and we expect them to become operational between this year and April 2028. That will kick-start our green hydrogen production at scale. Following the success of HAR1, we expect to announce successful projects in the second hydrogen allocation round in early 2026. The current shortlist includes innovative projects that could support ammonia production in Shetland, produce new clean energy at Grangemouth and decarbonise lime kilns—one of the first steps in cement production—in the Humber area. Moving forward, in June this year we published our industrial strategy, which set out plans for the further hydrogen allocation rounds, HAR3 and HAR4, for our first regional hydrogen network, and for the launch of the hydrogen-to-power business model in 2026. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester talked about the crucial role that storage will play in the renewable energy we are building. The question of how we store that for when we need it is crucial. We laid out our plans in the industrial strategy, backed up by the spending review, with £500 million for hydrogen infrastructure, partly to look at how we unlock hydrogen’s potential for clean power and provide home-grown energy and good jobs. We also have an ambition to deploy the first regional hydrogen transport and storage network, to become operational from 2031, which will aim to connect producers with vital end users such as power for the first time. This will unlock hydrogen’s role in clean power and help to realise the potential of large-scale hydrogen storage in maximising renewable energy use to support the transition to a decarbonised energy system. We are also currently designing a hydrogen storage business model, alongside a hydrogen transport business model, with the intention of providing investors with the long-term revenue certainty that many Members have raised in the debate. There is no doubt that the clean energy transition is the economic opportunity of the 21st century. This is about not just our energy security but, as many hon. Friends have pointed out, how we deliver the good, well-paid, trade-unionised jobs of the future. It is about how we reindustrialise communities that have for too long been left behind. The UK is well placed to be a global leader not only in hydrogen deployment but, crucially, in making sure that we capitalise on the supply chains, which is where we get the jobs, given the shared skills, experiences and qualifications in the existing oil and gas sector, our strengths in advanced manufacturing and innovation, and the policy environment we have set out. We have taken significant steps to attract inward investment, and the public finance tools set out in the clean energy industries sector plan will play a crucial role. We have also looked at the question of skills, which a number of Members raised earlier. The Lib Dem spokesperson, the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young), made the point very well. The hydrogen skills framework, which we published just a few months ago in April, is an open-source framework to try to enable the development of new qualifications and training programmes, in conjunction with industry, to make sure that we are bringing forward the apprenticeships and the skilled workers of the future. We are also making sure that companies can access international markets and collaborate with global partners. We want to build a domestic success story by exporting hydrogen equipment and services across the world and reinforcing their role in global hydrogen supply chains, with the UK set to benefit from being right at the forefront of that work. As the sector grows, we want to make sure that it benefits from the comprehensive public finance offers that we have set out. I will cover that briefly, because we have debated many of these things in the past. Part of that includes Great British Energy, with its £1 billion clean energy supply chain fund, which will be aligned with the clean energy industries sector plan to support companies that have the potential to grow in supply chains. We have empowered the National Wealth Fund with a total of £27.8 billion in capital to enable it to take on higher-risk investments, including equity. It will invest in capital-intensive projects, businesses and assets, with at least £5.8 billion on carbon capture, low-carbon hydrogen, gigafactories, ports and green steel over the lifetime of this Parliament. We have also launched £4 billion in British Business Bank industrial strategy capital to scale up the financing package, and we introduced the clean industry bonus following the success in the round that we have just concluded. We are looking at whether we should expand that to hydrogen, and we will consult on that in due course. We will continue to do all that we can to put the UK at the forefront of the global hydrogen revolution and thereby unlock billions of investment, create new-generation jobs, build the infrastructure and drive the clean growth that we—there seems to have been consensus today—all want to see. This autumn, we will publish the UK hydrogen strategy, which will be evidence-led, impact-focused and designed on the premise of fast-tracking delivery. Since the publication of the last hydrogen strategy four years ago, the landscape has evolved significantly. Electrification technologies have moved on rapidly, pointing to a more focused and essential role for hydrogen, complementing the electrification that we will see in so much of our energy system. The new strategy will sharpen our priorities, deepen collaboration with industry, which is key to this, and seek to unlock the full potential of hydrogen over the next decade.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Hydrogen Supply Chains · Hansard source

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  A key part of my conclusion was the useful challenge that there always is from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) about ensuring that we represent all parts of the United Kingdom. He was right to point out earlier that it is a beautiful part of the country to visit. I confess I have still never been to Strangford, but there is still time. The hon. Member is right on two other fronts. First, the skills strategy is all about unlocking the next generation of workers. We need to inspire people in school right now to see that we want them to be at the heart of the energy system of the future, and apprenticeships are crucial for doing that. We will create tens of thousands of jobs in the sector, but as part of that there has to be investment in apprenticeships. On his wider point, he knows that I enjoy the engagement with Ministers in devolved Governments across the country. We work closely with the Northern Ireland Executive. As I always say, the energy system is transferred in Northern Ireland, but there is a huge number of areas where we can learn from each other and work together to ensure that the people in Northern Ireland and Great Britain benefit from what we are trying to achieve, and we will continue to do that. To conclude my conclusion, unless anyone else wants to intervene, we are firm in our commitment to working with industry. There is a huge opportunity here. This is an exciting moment for us to recognise—as we are doing with small modular reactors and with floating offshore wind—that we have the potential to be at the forefront of the next great thing in our energy system. It requires the strategy that we are putting in place and the long-term confidence for investment, and we will continue to work hand in hand with industry, investors, innovators, workers—

• 9 Sept 2025 · Hydrogen Supply Chains · Hansard source

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  My very next point was on the future of the network. It wasn’t, actually, but I will come to it now, because the hon. Gentleman made a very good point, which I meant to come back to. He is right, of course, that we need to invest in the grid—even if we were not embarking on this clean power mission, the grid is very much in need of upgrading—but we want to take the strategic planning of that much more seriously than it has been taken in the past. We know that we need to build significant amounts of grid—the hon. Gentleman recognised the importance of that—but we also want to plan the future of the energy system strategically so that the grid follows a logical way to build out the energy system. His point about trying to make use of the abundance of clean energy to transfer it into hydrogen as an off-taker was well made. It will feed into the work on the strategic spatial energy plan. It is about how we best use all the energy system to our advantage. It is also about how we can reduce things like constraint payments and make use of it as efficiently as possible. That is an important point that we will take forward. To conclude, our vision is clear: a thriving low-carbon hydrogen economy—one that decarbonises those hard-to-electrify sectors, strengthens our energy security and fuels good jobs and growth across the country—is at the heart of the Government’s mission.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Hydrogen Supply Chains · Hansard source

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  I will not, because I am just about to conclude. We will work with workers and trade unions to turn this vision into reality and ensure that every part of the UK benefits from the potential of growth and jobs in hydrogen and in securing our energy system for the future. I again thank all Members for this hugely constructive debate. In particular, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester for the way he introduced it and for the knowledge and experience that he brings to all these matters.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about the importance of recognising that the most important thing to get right is the transition of workers. I have said that in other answers. That requires us to recognise that a transition is under way, and to put in place a plan, which has not happened in the past decade, during which we lost more than 70,000 workers in this industry. It is really important that we grapple with those issues, and it will not be easy. The starting point is to bring together everyone with an interest in this, as I have done—everyone from the trade unions and industry to those making the green investment that is driving this forward—to make sure that we deliver on jobs, and to make sure that training and support are in place, so that workers can transition. He raises an important point. On the hon. Gentleman’s point about Grangemouth, it was not breaking news that Grangemouth was in a precarious position, and the previous Government could have done more to ensure a just transition there. I met the investment taskforce yesterday, along with my colleague Gillian Martin, the Energy Minister in the Scottish Government, to look at the prospects for the sites. There are some interesting propositions coming forward; there are 84 bids in total for £200 million from the National Wealth Fund, and I hope that we will have good news on jobs and investment in Grangemouth soon.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  The Government have pushed, over the past four weeks we have been aware of this issue, to try to find a route whereby the refinery can continue as a going concern. That was obviously our No. 1 objective. The official receiver assessed the bids that were made and found that none were viable to deliver that. The Government are not going to nationalise this refinery—we are not in the business of nationalising loss-making businesses—so, unfortunately, that is not a route we will take. But we have done everything we can, and what we now want to do is assess the bids for the future of the site to see what the maximalist approach is that, crucially, will keep as many jobs on the site as possible, but also will deliver on the industrial opportunities of that site for the wider community. We will continue to have those conversations.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  I am happy to follow up on anything specific with the hon. Gentleman, but I can tell him that I get daily updates on assessments on exactly that point. Clearly, the first week of the insolvency saw some disruption to supplies leaving, but our evidence pointed to the fact that those commercial contracts were able to be renegotiated and to adjust to that. We are continuing to monitor to ensure there is no disruption, and there is no assessment at the moment that would suggest any impact at all on fuel security. Clearly, we will continue to do that, and if I can follow up on specifics, I will do so.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  I will avoid the wider political points in a week when workers are finding out about job losses, because that is obviously devastating for them. I will just say that the Government have published their industrial strategy, and this is the first time the country has had an industrial strategy in a very long time. [ Interruption. ] Well, let us say a credible industrial strategy, if the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) thinks he had one before. Again, I ask him to present it to me. We are investing in the industries of the future, and delivering thousands of jobs on the Humber and right across the country. We are making sure that investment comes forward in jobs for the future. [ Interruption. ] The problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s point is that his party opposes that investment. It opposes the very thing that will deliver the jobs of the future, and I am afraid that is simply an untenable position. Either he is for or against investment in jobs; he has to say which it is. The industrial strategy is the way to deliver that.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  I also declare that I am a member of the GMB trade union; that is recorded in my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have engaged with both the Unite trade union reps who are on the site, and with day shift workers who are not represented by a trade union, to make sure that I hear from them. I met them earlier this month and last week at the refinery, and I will meet them in about an hour’s time to talk through this more. We want to continue that engagement with them.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  First, I think the hon. Gentleman is misjudging the mood of this question, which is about workers affected by redundancy. I hear nothing from him on those workers who are hearing the news this week. On his point, we assessed a number of bids for the business as a going concern. None of those bids were credible, which is why the official receivers made the decision to cease refining. Some bids are interested in parts of the site for a range of different things, but I am not party to those bids. They are commercially sensitive bids that will be assessed on the basis of how many jobs can be retained and the industrial opportunities on that site, which is what we are driving forward. I would just say to him that spreading nonsense and rumours, either in this House or on social media, does absolutely nothing to support the workers on that site.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  A key objective of this Government is to deliver good, well-paid trade-unionised jobs, and we have been driving that forward. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been pushing on trade union recognition, partly to ensure that terms and conditions in the clean energy industry are as good as those in, for example, the oil and gas industry. We will continue to push on that, and we have already had some successes. I gently say that the investment going into clean energy that is delivering thousands of jobs and will deliver tens of thousands of new jobs across the country comes against a backdrop of opposition from the Conservatives on Great British Energy in the north-east of Scotland delivering those jobs. We are also announcing today the final investment decision on Sizewell C—10,000 jobs are being created in nuclear after years of dither and delay by the hon. Member’s party. We are getting on with doing this, and we will do everything we can to ensure those jobs are comparable on terms and conditions and pay. I say to her that if she wants these jobs to be created, she should support some of the policies that will deliver them in the first place.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  I wrote down the hon. Gentleman’s points, and then he came on to specific questions, but I will respond to the points. He rightly says that this has been devastating news for the workers. He also said something that I want to echo, and which I said to the workers when I met them last week: this decision, and what has happened to the company, is no reflection at all on the incredible, very skilled work that they are doing. I want to reiterate that. So often in these cases, the workers bear the brunt of decisions taken by the company, and that is a great shame. He is right, and we will support the workers. My Department is funding the training guarantee to make sure that all those workers are given an assessment of their training needs and future employment desires, so they can be given tailored support. We will make sure that is rolled out in the coming months. On the hon. Gentleman’s wider point about the transition, he is right to say that we need a proper plan. That is why we consulted on the future of energy in the North sea, both through a series of questions, and through a much broader question about what the future of our energy sector looks like. It will have oil and gas for many decades to come, but already thousands of jobs are being created in other offshore industries, and we want to support that. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that investor confidence is critical. It is shameful that people would seek to damage investor confidence in this country in the name of net zero rhetoric. The truth is that there has been more than £40 billion of investment in clean energies in this country. That means jobs and opportunities in all our communities across the country, and those who would talk that down should be ashamed.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  On redundancy, because of how the company went into insolvency, the workers will be entitled to statutory redundancy. That is not acceptable, given the role that they played in delivering for the company for many years. That is why I have publicly asked the owners of the company to put their hands in their pocket and improve the redundancy package. It is not possible for the Government to improve the package directly, but I am still hopeful that the company owners will do the right thing. We are providing a training guarantee to the workers, from Government funds, to make sure that they have that enhanced support. I am happy to take away the point about heating oil. We have been assessing the situation over the past few weeks, including a number of weeks during which fuel has not left the refinery at its normal pace, to see what the impact is on supplies across the region. That impact has been minimal. That is partly because a significant amount of fuel and products come from the refinery next door. However, we will continue to monitor that, and if there is an impact on prices, I am happy to look into that.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. Separate from all the wider issues facing the refinery sector and the oil and gas sector generally, it is right we recognise that this week there are workers hearing some devastating news. Detailed work will be going on into how much of the site we can utilise in the future, and assessments are under way about how credible some of the bids are. We will do more work on that, and I am sure that his inquiry will be useful. On energy costs more generally, one of the conversations I had when I met the refinery sector was about how we could do more to bring down its costs. We are looking at how we could support refineries more through including them in the energy intensive industries compensation scheme, which would obviously cut costs and help UK refineries with their competitiveness. That is not straightforward, but we are determined to look at that. On my hon. Friend’s final point, he is right that the overall context of what we are doing as a Government is driving forward the transition to clean power, because it gives us back our energy security and takes away the volatility in prices that has been so devastating to households and businesses over the past few years. It is also the economic opportunity that helps drive forward refineries into what could be profitable businesses in that transition. They will continue to play a part in that, and we will support them to do so.

• 22 Jul 2025 · Prax Lindsey Oil Refinery · Hansard source

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  I agree with the shadow Minister, who was right to point out the impact that news like this will have on the workforce, who are hearing it this week, as well as the wider impact it has on their families and the community. That is why it is so important that we provide that support. On the investigation, there is not much that I can update the House on at the moment. The Insolvency Service is carrying out that investigation, and it would be wrong for Ministers to interfere in that, but we have obviously given the direction that we expect it to be completed as quickly as possible. Given the mess we found the company in, I would not be surprised if it takes a bit of time for the investigation to get to grips with what was going on there, but that is for the Insolvency Service to resolve. On resilience and fuel supplies, we have been really clear throughout that we have done everything we can to try to find a buyer to keep the site operating as a going concern, which is important for the workforce as well as for local resilience, but Prax Lindsey oil refinery comprises about 10% of our remaining refinery capacity; Phillips 66—a much larger refinery—is immediately next door. In the past few weeks, we have already seen fuel supplies adjusted and commercial contracts renegotiated. Although we clearly wanted the refinery to stay open, our assessment suggests that there is not an immediate risk to fuel supplies locally or in the wider area, but we will continue to monitor that. On the shadow Minister’s wider points, I will first repeat what I have said on a number of occasions: we do support the oil and gas industry. I have spent a lot of time with the industry understanding some of its challenges, which are long standing, particularly around jobs lost over the past decade, and we consulted widely on what the future of energy in the north-east should look like to give confidence to the industry. We inherited the fiscal regime from the previous Government. We have consulted quickly on what the future of the energy profits levy should look like to ensure certainty about the fiscal landscape. The Treasury will respond to that consultation in due course. We want to give certainty, but we also want to recognise that this is an industry in transition, and burying our heads in the sand and pretending that that is not the case does nothing to protect the workforce in the long term. We will therefore continue to invest in the new industries of the future and in that wider strategy. Refineries are important to our economy and will continue to be important. That is why I brought all of industry together in a roundtable to discuss the challenges facing the refinery sector. I was shocked to discover that that was the first time there had been such an invitation from the Government in 13 years. I ask the shadow Minister to reflect on who was in power for 14 years.