Nick Timothy MP: speeches

Speeches

• 24 Jun 2025 · China Audit · Hansard source

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  I want to remind the Foreign Secretary that the Government that invited Huawei into our telecommunications network was actually the last Labour Government between 2003 and 2006. [ Interruption. ] Well, he has tried to be partisan about it. The ebb and flow of these issues and the mistakes go back quite a long time, and he should acknowledge that. What assessment has the Foreign Secretary made of China’s dominance of the world market for cellular internet modules, which are subsidised and sold internationally below the cost of manufacture? What assessment in particular has he made of the insertion of kill switches in Chinese-made wind turbines and PV cells, and will he rule out any Chinese involvement in our energy infrastructure?

• 24 Jun 2025 · National Security Strategy · Hansard source

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  I note what the Minister said about social resilience. There is little point in strategising to defend our security and power in the world if we surrender our freedoms and culture without a whimper at home. Therefore, what will the Government do, for example, to stop the misuse of sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, not to mention the decisions of the likes of Bristol university and the Government with their proposed Islamophobia definition, to create a de facto Islamic blasphemy law in Britain?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  What does it say to Britain’s allies, and to our enemies, when neither the Foreign Secretary nor the Prime Minister can bring themselves to say that the strikes again Iran were right and legal?

• 24 Jun 2025 · Points of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your advice about the exchange that I have just had with the Foreign Secretary. After he had been incredibly partisan about the history of Huawei’s involvement in our telecommunications infrastructure, I pointed out that that involvement began under the previous Labour Government when he was a Minister, but he tried to accuse Members on the Conservative Front Bench of something similar. I asked a serious question about the Chinese dominance of the world market for cellular internet modules, which is a very serious issue. We have all grown used to the fact that we do not get answers in this House, so perhaps you will advise us, Madam Deputy Speaker, on whether Ministers will do so. The Foreign Secretary then decided to abuse and insult me personally about advice that he claims that I gave, in a previous role, to a former Prime Minister. He has no idea what advice I gave in that job. If he cares so much about my personal history, he will read all the things I have ever written about the role of Chinese companies in our energy infrastructure. I would like him to take the opportunity to withdraw the accusation.

• 23 Jun 2025 · Geo-engineering and the Environment · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to respond to this brief debate on geo-engineering and the environment, Ms Furniss. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage) on starting the debate. I agree that solar radiation management would be a reckless experiment that risks all our futures. The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) used the opportunity to speak about climate change. Although she and I probably disagree profoundly about the wisdom of the net zero target and the plan to decarbonise the whole grid by 2030, I am sure she opposes, as I do, the giant solar and battery farms that the Government want to impose on both our constituencies and most of the east of England. My party’s position on SRM is clear. We oppose any attempts to seed the sky, and every effort must be made to be respectful of nature and our planet. Chasing such hare-brained scientific schemes to interfere with the climate and the atmosphere will not give us answers to any live public policy dilemmas. The Met Office has confirmed that we do not have enough evidence to understand how effective geo-engineering like SRM might be, and we do not know what unintended consequences might occur for human and environmental health. Ministers have said there are no plans to fund experimentation with solar radiation modification, but public concern was prompted by the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency offering £56.8 million of public money to examine climate cooling theory. It is important to say that the research does not, as far as I am aware, include any practical attempts to manipulate the climate, but was a study in relation to the theory of these methods. Having been very clear about the Conservative position, I invite the Minister to provide a clear statement that the Government will not support SRM. Given the concern expressed by the public through the petition and the members of the public attending today, I am sure she will want to give everybody an unambiguous reassurance that that is indeed the case and that the Government will not come forward with such methods.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Future of the Gas Grid · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to respond to this debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) on moving his motion just in time, and on his birthday. He gave an excellent speech, once he got his breath back, and I thought his warning about an overloaded electricity grid was very wise. There was a lot of agreement in the debate. The hon. Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) joined the hon. Member for Cannock Chase in pointing out the prohibitive cost of heat pumps. The hon. Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) pointed out the particular challenges for rural communities. The hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East (Seamus Logan) rightly did his duty representing that part of the country by talking about the jobs that depend on oil and gas. The hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for East Londonderry (Mr Campbell), from the land of my grandmother’s birth, reminded us of the Northern Ireland experience and the importance of geography when we debate energy. That was reinforced by the hon. Member for Worcester (Tom Collins), who rightly said that we will continue to need a national gas grid, because of the nature of the demand for gas. I thought he was right to criticise the Climate Change Committee for proposing no gas for heating homes. I think the hon. Member for Peterborough (Andrew Pakes) put it well when he said that Britain runs on gas. He noted the challenge of reconciling the policy to decarbonise with maintaining fairness for families. We must always be honest about trade-offs when we talk about policy, which is one of the things about which I will try to warn the Minister. The Government may come to regret their failure to do so on several fronts, particularly on net zero. Sadly, that is a lesson, especially on net zero, that my party has drawn from its time in office, including the unhappy end of that time. Many businesses will continue to use gas and do not have the option to go fully electric. Half a million businesses rely on gas, and not all of them will survive the switch to electricity. As the hon. Member for Peterborough mentioned, big industries continue to rely on gas, such as chemicals, ceramics and—we have similar constituency interests—the sugar industry, among many others. Smaller businesses are just as affected. Chip shops, curry houses and many businesses I do not frequent will also face cost increases from electrification because of higher levies on their energy bills. Unfortunately, Ministers have said little to reassure those businesses that there is a plan to help them and to remember them. This is also putting a significant cost on ordinary families. Let us look at gas boilers. I challenged the Minister on that during Energy questions last week, but the Energy Secretary and the ministerial team have refused to rule out new taxes, charges or levies on gas bills to fund lower levies on electricity bills, which means a net tax rise for the 80% of households that rely on gas. This was not even mentioned before the general election, although hon. Members will remember the promise to cut everyone’s energy bills by £300 by the end of this Parliament. Instead, energy bills have risen so far by an average of £111. While Labour sought to take the credit for the recent fall in wholesale gas prices, the policy costs for which they are responsible are rising. Running down gas also denies how important it still is as a reliable source of power. Just this morning, a new National Gas report found an 18% increase in gas for power generation last year compared with the year before. At its peak, 65% of our power came from gas, with a half-hourly peak of 73%. This was caused partly by a major drop in wind power, which meant that we had to import more gas from countries as varied as the US, Norway, Qatar, Peru, Trinidad and other places. NESO might be planning another gas-free 30 minutes for the grid this summer, but the power of gas remains formidable and essential. People do not want to be forced to give up gas. Around 80% of the country relies on gas in some way or another. That is more than 20 million homes put at risk by any policy to force people off gas and on to less reliable and more expensive alternatives. The Chancellor said during her statement on the spending review that “energy security is national security.” —[ Official Report , 11 June 2025; Vol. 768, c. 979.] We agree with that, which is why the anti-gas stance of the Energy Secretary is baffling. We continue to rely on gas—in any given year, 40% of the energy used in the UK comes from it. It is a flexible and reliable source of power. It ensures that there is inertia in the grid, preventing blackouts of the kind that we recently saw in Spain and Portugal, where a lack of conventional power generation from sources such as gas contributed to mass power outages. New data centres are connecting to the gas grid to secure on-site power, instead of using wind or solar, and with good reason. But the Government want to reduce gas to below 5% of our electricity supply by 2030, and use it only as a back-up for unreliable renewables. The Energy Secretary is being very ideological and basing decisions on dodgy claims about global fossil fuel markets. There is no single global gas market in the way that he has described on several occasions. Fossil fuel prices are higher in Europe than America, which is more dependent on fossil fuels than we are. The prices are higher here because of policy choices. For example, blocking new oil and gas licences in the North sea only makes us more dependent on expensive, dirtier foreign imports, to the benefit of others. We are importing oil and gas from Norway from the very same seabed that we could exploit, while insisting that we are “too good” and “too green” to do that ourselves. British businesses and jobs could be benefiting from this industry, rather than being cut off. The policy does not even work on its own terms, because liquefied natural gas has four times the emissions of North sea oil and gas. As the hon. Member for Aberdeenshire North and Moray East mentioned, 120,000 jobs in the North sea are at risk. It does not make sense to shut down our own gas production when Norwegian oil and gas continues to be drilled from the North sea. That is why I am glad that the Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), announced that our party is committed to stopping the punishment of our domestic energy industry with damaging taxation. It is wrong for the energy profits levy to continue until 2030; we believe that it should be removed altogether, along with the ban on oil and gas exports. This change would actually increase revenue in the long run. It is not just the North sea that we should worry about. Britain is the largest gas boiler manufacturer in Europe. Our gas grid is world-leading, but 130,000 gas engineers and 150,000 oil and gas sector jobs are now under threat. Deliberately winding down the gas industry is an extraordinary act of economic self-harm. For all the Government’s talking down of fossil fuels, our gas grid is incredibly stable and resilient. The gas grid depends on over 30 large gas power stations, and the gas comes in through interconnectors, LNG imports, and from Norway and the North sea. Our gas grid is a vital connection point for the European gas supply, especially following the Ukraine invasion. Major public investment has already gone into the gas grid to help modernise and reduce failures and leaks. This makes up 5,000 miles of steel pipes and more than 60 jet engines to move the gas around the country. Our gas grid can also play an important role in reducing carbon emissions through, for example, expanding the use of hydrogen. In contrast, the cost of decommissioning the gas grid has been estimated at between £46 billion and £70 billion. The Government’s plans are causing major uncertainty for investors, businesses and workers when they should be standing squarely behind a critical industry that has an important role to play in our economic prosperity and energy security. Ministers are allowing policy to race ahead of the technology, threatening to destabilise the grid and our economy. It is clear that the gas grid has a crucial role to play in our energy mix if we are to protect families and businesses from rising costs. I do not doubt that the Minister will say that he agrees with that, but the test will be in action and policy, not words.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  That was obviously an appalling crime —I remember it very well—but I do not think it has anything to do with what I am saying in this debate. In a free and pluralistic society, we have to be free to criticise ideas. There are laws to protect people, but we cannot have laws that protect ideas from scrutiny or criticism. However, the Government are pressing on with their work on Islamophobia. Only this week, on the very day that Baroness Casey said that the rape gangs were often not prosecuted because of the ethnicity of the perpetrators, Ministers launched a consultation on the new Islamophobia definition. That consultation is open only to carefully selected, invited organisations; it will last for only four weeks; and it allows contributors to remain anonymous. In other words, as lots of people have put it to me, it is rigged, and that is completely unacceptable. Parliament repealed blasphemy laws years ago, and trials for blasphemy had stopped many decades back in any case, but they are with us once more. Parliament must act to restore our freedom of expression.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  No, I think the Minister has misunderstood my point. Actually, I was about to move on to a related issue, which is that hating people and discriminating against them on the basis that they are Muslims, or indeed members of different religious groups, is already a crime. If someone were harassing Jewish people in the way that the Minister has just described, that would be a criminal offence, even if my amendment passed. However, as I was saying, Islamophobia is a made-up and nonsensical concept that elides the protection of individuals from hatred with the protection of ideas and beliefs, and—in my view—is therefore completely unacceptable in principle.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  On that point, will the Minister give way?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I was inviting the hon. Lady to withdraw what she and her colleague said about my hon. Friend, because it was incorrect.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I do not know whether the Minister is allowed to intervene, but she would be welcome to do so. [ Interruption. ] She has been here longer than I have.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution, but the point is that the courts are interpreting the law as they see it. If we in this place believe that interpretation to be wrong, it is our job to correct it through legislation, and I think the appropriate way to do so would be to extend section 29J of the Act in the way I have described.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Crime and Policing Bill · Hansard source

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  Before I turn to my new clause, I welcome in particular new clause 7, on non-crime hate incidents, and new clause 150, proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden), which would ban sexual relationships between first cousins. This Bill presents an opportunity for the Government to support my new clause 108 to protect freedom of expression. That is urgently needed, because existing legislation has been manipulated to create a blasphemy law for the protection of Islam from criticism and protest. As I said in my speech last week, I am not a Muslim, and I reject any attempt to tell me that I cannot say what I think about any religion. No ideas or beliefs should be above criticism or scrutiny.

• 18 Jun 2025 · Engagements · Hansard source

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  Q6. The Home Secretary says that we should judge her success in smashing the gangs by whether the number of channel crossings falls, but under this Government the numbers are up by more than 30%. By which date should we judge the Home Secretary, and if she fails, will she be fired?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Iran-Israel Conflict · Hansard source

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  The Foreign Secretary has said, and just repeated, that no military threat can prevent the Iranians from acquiring nuclear weapons, but surely that is not correct. Given the danger to us all from Iran, which the Foreign Secretary acknowledged in his statement, and its continued attempts to increase its ability to enrich uranium, will he very clearly agree with me that Israel was right to strike the nuclear sites?

• 16 Jun 2025 · Child Sexual Exploitation: Casey Report · Hansard source

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  The official document published online by the Government says that the national inquiry will only “co-ordinate a series of targeted local investigations.” How many local investigations will the inquiry co-ordinate? Will it cover the whole of England and Wales—yes or no?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Decoupling Electricity and Gas Prices · Hansard source

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  If the hon. Member wants to talk about my constituency, he can talk about the betrayal of the Sunnica application, which is being imposed on my constituency by the Energy Secretary. The public will see that the answer was not a “no” from the Minister. Families across the country should be worried; this is becoming a pattern. For weeks, I asked Ministers about their plan to align with the European carbon price. For weeks, they denied that it would happen, and then, once the local elections were done, they did it, increasing electricity bills by stealth for every family and business in the country. Now it is the same for gas bills. When will the Minister be straight with people and admit that the Government are adding to the bills of families and businesses, not cutting them?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Decoupling Electricity and Gas Prices · Hansard source

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  Happy birthday, Mr Speaker. The Energy Secretary has said that there is a “principled case” for removing green taxes from electricity bills, and the cost being met by increases in green taxes on gas bills. That would be a net tax rise for every household—80% of the country—that uses gas. This was not an argument that he made before the election, so can the Minister take this opportunity to rule out any increase in taxes, charges or levies on gas bills?

• 10 Jun 2025 · Freedom of Expression (Religion or Belief System) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about freedom of expression in relation to religion or belief systems; and for connected purposes. I do not believe that Mohammed was a Prophet sent by God. I do not accept the instructions he said he received from the Archangel Gabriel. I do not accept that the Sunna, or body of Islamic laws, has any relevance to me. I respect the religious beliefs of others, but I do not mind if Mohammed is satirised, criticised or mocked. I am not a Muslim, and I choose not to live by the moral codes set out by Islam. I am a Christian, and I should make it clear that I do not think anybody should be prosecuted for satirising, criticising or mocking Jesus either. England and Wales abolished blasphemy laws in 2008, and Scotland abolished them in 2021, but even then, those laws had not been used for decades. The last blasphemy trial took place in 1977, and the state has not brought a public prosecution for blasphemy in more than a century, but now, blasphemy laws are back. I have been advised not to refer to two high-profile cases of people being arrested, charged and prosecuted for causing harassment, alarm or distress to Muslims or even, nonsensically, to Islam itself. While I will keep my speech to the conceptual, I invite the House to recall that there are real examples of what I raise in the criminal justice system right now. The issue is the way that sections 4 and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 are being used—far beyond the intent of Parliament—to police what we can and cannot say about Islam. I will come to the details of sections 4 and 5, but first I want to say something about the intent of the Public Order Act. The long title of the Act makes it clear that its purpose was to abolish some common law and statutory offences to make way for new offences relating to public order. Nowhere in the Second Reading debate from 1986 did anybody raise the need to protect religions or followers of religions from offence. The context of the Act was football hooliganism and the riots in Brixton and Broadwater Farm. It is true that part III of the Act created new offences relating to racial hatred, and this was amended to include religious hatred by the Racial and Religious Hatred Act 2006. However, section 29J of the Public Order Act, to which we will return, says: “Nothing in this Part shall be read or given effect in a way which prohibits or restricts discussion, criticism or expressions of antipathy, dislike, ridicule, insult or abuse of particular religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents”. We can therefore be confident that the Public Order Act, even as amended, was never intended to become a blasphemy law. That obvious conclusion is reinforced by the fact that the controversies regarding blasphemy and Islam in this country began two years after its introduction, in 1988, with the publication of “The Satanic Verses”. Since that year, and the protests and fatwa against Sir Salman Rushdie, our public conversation about Islam has been limited through a mixture of self-censorship and more official restrictions, such as the definition of Islamophobia accepted by many public bodies. These restrictions are motivated not by a desire to avoid offence—consider the criticism and mockery made of other religions—but by fear of a violent response by those who are offended. Some say public order offences are not the same as a blasphemy law, and that it can be legitimate to prosecute somebody for saying something that might cause wider disorder. Perhaps in some circumstances that may be so, but we should interrogate this line of thinking. First, the Crown Prosecution Service gave the game away by charging one man with causing “distress” to the “religious institution of Islam”, which is pretty much the dictionary definition of blasphemy. Secondly, twisting the law to make a protestor responsible for the violent reaction of those who will not tolerate the opinions of others is wrong; it destroys our freedom of speech. Some argue that although this may be regrettable, it is now an unavoidable consequence of the multicultural society in which we live today. By this logic, the state must police the boundaries between different ethnic and religious groups to avoid disorder, but we should be clear that that means state intrusion and a loss of liberty on some occasions, and mob rule on others. This is the very essence of the two-tier policing row we have seen recently: rough justice for those belonging to identity groups that play by the rules, and freedom from justice for those belonging to groups willing to take to the streets and threaten violence. This is the logic of using the Public Order Act to prohibit us from saying what we like about a religion. A person may be found guilty because of the violent reaction of those offended by their actions. From Sir Salman Rushdie to the Batley teacher still in hiding with his family, the threat of violence is what lies behind these new blasphemy laws. Perhaps we should not be surprised. There are at least 14 Muslim-majority countries where the penalty for blasphemy or apostacy is death, and we have significant diaspora populations from many of them. With the number of people here who came from those countries growing and the increasing assertiveness of organised political Islam in Britain, this is a problem that seems likely only to get more severe. But the answer is not to surrender to the mob; it is to hold the line, and that is why today I bring forward this Bill. I said earlier that section 29J of the Public Order Act protects “criticism”, “insult” and even “abuse” of “religions or the beliefs or practices of their adherents”. However, that applies only to part III of the legislation, because part III introduced offences relating to racial hatred, later amended to include religious hatred. Nobody thought sections 4 and 5, which in part I of the Act make it an offence to cause “harassment, alarm or distress” by using “threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour” would be used to criminalise the expression of opinions about religious belief. This Bill would therefore extend the scope of section 29J to the whole Public Order Act—thus preventing the use of sections 4 and 5 as a de facto blasphemy law—and would apply section 29J also to section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988. In so doing, this Bill would restore free speech as it applies to religion in England and Wales. It would stop the police, prosecutors and judges from creating a blasphemy law from legislation that was never passed for that purpose. It would send the strongest powerful message from this place, where political power legitimately and democratically resides, that this country will not tolerate intimidation, violence or censorship, that there will be no special treatment here for Islam, and that there will be no surrender to the thugs who want to impose their beliefs and culture on the rest of us. Question put and agreed to. Ordered, That Nick Timothy, John Cooper, Dr Luke Evans, Mr Richard Holden, Robert Jenrick, Rupert Lowe, Rebecca Paul, Jack Rankin, Sir Alec Shelbrooke, Bradley Thomas, Tom Tugendhat and Sir Gavin Williamson present the Bill. Nick Timothy accordingly presented the Bill. Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 11 July, and to be printed (Bill 257).

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

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  Are you quoting Nick Clegg?

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

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  I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. The Conservative party is a pro-nuclear party and we welcome any decisions, backed by investment, that increase Britain’s nuclear capacity, because we cannot deliver cheap, reliable and secure energy without it. Although the investment announced today by the Secretary of State is significant, it is a fraction of the £230 billion cost, which will ultimately be borne by consumers, of his plan to decarbonise the grid. Unlike the intermittent technologies backed at such cost by the Secretary of State, nuclear provides reliable baseload power. It generates inertia to stabilise our grid. Nuclear power plants require substantially less new grid infrastructure compared with dispersed generation from wind and solar. It is to the shame of successive Governments over many years that Britain relinquished its status as a world leader in civil nuclear technologies. In 1965, we had more nuclear reactors than the United States, the USSR and the rest of the world put together. Between 1956 and 1966, we built 10 nuclear power stations, but we gave all that up. The contribution of nuclear to our power generation peaked in 1994 and has fallen consistently since then. Labour came to power in 1997, saying that it saw no economic case for the building of any new nuclear power stations. In 2010, the coalition agreement ruled out public investment in nuclear. It was the last Conservative Government who planned the largest revival of nuclear power in 70 years and it is thanks to that work that the Secretary of State has been able to make many of these announcements today. Can he reiterate, despite the headlines this morning, that the final investment decision has not yet been made? He said in his statement that he will announce it in the summer, but can he give us a more precise date when we will be told the total Government investment and the private capital raised? This statement is a downgrade on what the previous Government put in motion. Today, the Energy Secretary has announced only one small modular reactor. There is no clear target to increase nuclear power generation and no news on Wylfa. The nuclear industry is expecting news of a third gigawatt scale reactor. The previous Government purchased the land and committed to build, but on this today the Energy Secretary said nothing. Can he commit to the planning inherited for a third gigawatt scale plant at Wylfa and will he recommit to the Conservative policy of 24 GW of nuclear power by 2050? Although it is good news that Rolls-Royce will build our first small modular reactors, this is a downgrade on what was previously planned. Can the Secretary of State tell us why he has awarded just one technology rather than two as set out previously? Furthermore, will he commit, as other countries have, to going faster? Canada has approved a plan for four SMRs by 2029. As things stand, Britain will not have SMRs connected to the grid until the 2030s. The contrast between this caution on nuclear and the Government’s rush to decarbonise the entire grid in just five years, while betting the house on unreliable and intermittent renewable technologies and shutting down British oil and gas in the North sea, could not be clearer. We need the Energy Secretary to focus on the positive, not to stake our country’s future and people’s bills on ideology.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. If the hon. Member for Ipswich were more confident in his arguments, he might want to stand up and take part. As I was saying, it is bad energy policy, reducing our energy security while increasing the cost of energy for families and businesses. It is bad farming policy because it puts some of our best agricultural land beyond use, and as this debate has shown, it is bad for public safety, because the Government, in their haste and zeal, want to ignore the very serious dangers these batteries bring.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  I am pleased to close the debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition, and I hope to give a voice to your constituents, Madam Deputy Speaker, given the interest in this important subject in Romsey and Southampton North. I congratulate the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) on securing the debate and making such a comprehensive speech. He was even wise enough to quote the fire experts from the county that matters most—by which I obviously mean Suffolk. The fact that there were such clear themes from Members across the House and across the divides of the House—right and left, net zero enthusiasts and sceptics—shows that we are dealing with an undeniable problem that the Government have not yet gripped. There was a clear consensus across the House, from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) to the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), that there is a total absence of regulation with this risky technology. There was also agreement, from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett) to my hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas), about the effects of the policy on the countryside, such as on the availability of good farmland and on rural roads, as well as the challenges of fire service response times in the country. The hon. Members for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) made the point that BESS fires can have serious effects on our precious rivers. I also want to single out the speech by the hon. Member for South Cotswolds (Dr Savage), who drew attention to the dodgy finances of a lot of the firms behind a lot of these applications. That is something we need to investigate further. There was broad agreement on the suggestion made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wetherby and Easingwold (Sir Alec Shelbrooke) that these battery sites should not be allowed to go ahead until a proper system of regulation is introduced. I am afraid that I am going to breach the cross-party love-in by picking up on what my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) said about ideology. The Government are betting on battery energy storage systems thanks to their ideological aim to decarbonise the entire grid within five years, therefore choosing to depend on unreliable, intermittent and expensive renewables. That is the root cause of the dependence on the technologies we are debating. [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Ipswich (Jack Abbott) can intervene if he wishes. It is the consequence of the zeal of the Energy Secretary that we are debating these subjects. Thanks to net zero policy costs, which are relevant more than wholesale gas prices, Britain already has the highest energy costs in Europe. Pushing policy to run faster than technology will allow risks a crisis in the grid and in our economy.

• 5 Jun 2025 · Battery Energy Storage Sites: Safety Regulations · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member will note the enthusiasm and ideological zeal of the Energy Secretary, which began, I think, in his very first week when he came to this House and announced that he was imposing masses of solar farms on parts of the country and, in the case of the solar farm in my constituency, completely disregarding the independent expert examining authority. That is a clear difference between the two Governments we are discussing. Mass solar is inefficient and produces less power even than wind, which has a higher load factor—between 10% and 11% for solar, between 22% and 28% for onshore wind, and between 30% and 38% for offshore wind. And that is wind, which is unreliable in itself. The comparison worsens next to nuclear, as it would take 8.5 million solar panels, taking up at least 10,000 acres of often top-quality farmland, to produce enough power to match an average reactor. To the surprise of no one, the World Bank says we are one of the countries with the “least generous conditions” for PV. Indeed, we rank higher only than Ireland. Batteries and solar panels also expose us to dependence on China, which produces more than 80% of the world’s solar panels. Many are made with slave labour, and perhaps all contain kill switches controlled by Beijing. While an amendment to the GB Energy Bill was passed to ban the Government’s new quango from using slave-made imports, it does not apply to private sector purchases. So much for ending our dependence on foreign dictatorships and human rights abusers. So much for our energy security. Giant solar fails even on its own terms, because it is four times more carbon-intensive than wind and nuclear. Apart from biomass, solar is the most polluting of all renewables. As this debate has shown, there are very real safety concerns about the battery sites that we must address. These battery sites pose a public safety risk that the Government are simply ignoring. With 150 BESS sites already in operation, and with well over 1,000 planning applications in the pipeline, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswinford and South Staffordshire (Mike Wood) noted, this needs to be confronted as a matter of urgency. Building these sites and trying to deal with the safety questions later is reckless, expensive and dangerous. When a fire starts at a BESS site, highly toxic emissions are released into the air. They include chemicals such as hydrogen fluoride, heavy metals and carcinogens, forcing people to stay indoors. These fires do not need oxygen to keep burning, so they can last for weeks. They can be reignited easily, and the health effects of exposure to these gases are a major concern. Just look at the fire in Liverpool four years ago, which several Members cited. It took 59 hours to put out. In answer to my written questions, the Government have confirmed that no environmental impact assessment has been made of that incident, so no lessons are being learned. And this year we have seen fires at battery sites near Rothienorman in Aberdeenshire, and in East Tilbury in Essex. I have repeatedly raised fire safety directly with Ministers, but no satisfactory answers have been given. The Government have made no assessment of the adequacy of fire services near battery sites. There is minimal oversight from the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency. The National Fire Chiefs Council recommends a minimum distance of 25 metres between grid-scale batteries and occupied buildings, but it is only guidance and there is no statutory requirement to maintain this distance. As the Liverpool fire proves, a major blaze can affect people over a much wider area anyway. We need clear involvement from the fire and rescue services in the planning application process for battery sites, looking at concerns around construction, fire safety and retrofitting. Henry Griffin from Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service has described battery sites as an “emerging risk”, saying: “There can be complications with vapour clouds and fires will last a long time.” Fire services have no legal power to enforce safety measures on battery sites. We need legislation and residents need a say. Sunnica is one of the biggest solar and battery farms in the country, as mentioned by my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), and it has been imposed on our constituents by the Energy Secretary. Three days after entering office, the Energy Secretary approved the application, overruling the advice of examining authorities and, quite clearly from his answer to my question, he had not read the evidence—breaching his quasi-judicial responsibility. Sunnica will cover over 2,500 acres of prime agricultural land across West Suffolk and East Cambridgeshire. Three battery sites will be built, and the whole project will actually increase carbon emissions. Sunnica has treated residents with contempt and used consultants who specialise in questionable assessments of the quality of farmland. Sunnica is also located very close to the RAF bases at Mildenhall and Lakenheath, which host the US air force, and many service personnel live in the area. We believe Russia has already targeted those bases with drones recently, and the director general of MI5 says that arson and sabotage are part of the Russian modus operandi in European countries. To approve Sunnica without assessing this very serious danger is grossly negligent. Rushing towards mass solar and battery farms like this is an act of ideological irresponsibility. It is bad energy policy, reducing our energy security while increasing the cost of energy for families and businesses.

• 3 Jun 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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