12:17 Dr Liam Fox (North Somerset) (Con)

One issue is perhaps not as completely settled as I would like. The Bill relates to new transmission, but I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that it will also cover distribution. That is a slightly lesser issue for our constituents at present, but if we replace the distribution network as part of the Government’s drive towards net zero and decarbonisation, there could be considerable disruption for our constituents as a consequence. The question that will arise is: at what point does updating and upgrading become new, and therefore within the scope of the Bill?

My hon. Friend shows yet again that timing is everything in politics. He says that his constituents may not be affected by this Bill; I would correct that, if I may, to say that they are not affected by the changes yet. These changes are coming, to the whole country, sooner or later. We in North Somerset may be at the beginning of that process and may therefore have been the most affected up to this point, but as we move towards decarbonisation and net zero there will need to be, as my hon. Friend the Member for Buckingham (Greg Smith) said, an upgrade of our entire system of transmission and distribution. As we use more electricity, as my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) says, there will be all the more need for that system to be robust.

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12:29 Rob Butler (Aylesbury) (Con)

In the pursuit of greater energy security and meeting the goal of net zero, the UK faces the daunting task of significantly expanding and upgrading its electrical infrastructure across the country. As my right hon. Friend said, as we seek to decarbonise our energy by doing things such as using heat pumps in place of existing gas or oil-powered heating or having electric cars, the demand for electricity will inevitably be far greater in future decades than at present in each and every constituency of this country.

Furthermore, today’s one-year anniversary of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine and its consequential energy crisis brings into sharp focus the importance of ensuring our energy security here in the UK. It is essential that upgrading the power grid is conducted effectively, efficiently and economically for the British people, given how heavily we depend upon it. Regardless of how many innovative forms of energy production we introduce, the grid’s expansion and transformation are critical factors in pursuing the targets of decarbonisation and greater energy security.

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12:45 Seema Malhotra (Labour)

We are in a race against time to improve our energy stability and security for the sake of our businesses and the planet. That is why the Opposition have been setting out our plans, and right hon. and hon. Members will have heard the Leader of the Opposition make a speech yesterday. We believe that we need to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030. That is relevant to the subject of this Bill, because we should be in no doubt that achieving the urgent mission to have clean power requires us to have a revolution in green energy technologies, to establish storage capacity, to manage peaks in energy demand, to develop new ways of balancing the grid, and to deliver comprehensive improvements to our energy infrastructure in order to expand the grid to new sources of energy.

As a result, we are not fully convinced that this legislation is necessary, or that, if implemented in a particular way, it would not hinder the Government’s own express mission to expand the electricity infrastructure to enable greater use of low-carbon technologies. I would be grateful if the Minister commented on that. At a time of crisis in our energy supply and in tackling climate change, I am sure that balancing all these considerations will be at the top of his mind as well.

In conclusion, while the Bill clearly has positive intentions, I must question whether it is necessary to bring it forward in the way that is currently intended. None the less, the work of the taskforce will be important. It does not need me to say this, but the Government have failed on a multitude of fronts to get to grips with energy security and in tackling the climate crisis. I do hope that there will be ways that we can move forward in the interests of our nation to look at the speed of how we decarbonise our economy, and of how we ensure that we realise the opportunities and ambitions of the nation in going green. I finish by urging the Minister to follow Labour’s lead and to match our ambitions to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030 and secure our energy security once and for all.

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12:57 Graham Stuart (Conservative)

Once again, may I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) for introducing this important legislation? I am afraid that I am not the historian of legislation that I ought to be, so I have no idea whether any Member in history has ever managed to get two private Members’ Bills in a row put into law, but my right hon. Friend is a remarkable man, and he has shown that once again by successfully steering this Bill through. The machine, as ever, always responds by trying to kill it, but such is his dexterity, insight and flexibility that no attempt to kill it is successful, and he finds a way through to deliver something that will be good for everyone. I am pleased that all the amendments were accepted in Committee on 25 January, and I am delighted to offer my support for the Bill as the Minister of State in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

Although the name of my Department may have changed, the position of the Government has not, and I can confirm that the Government are fully supportive of the Bill. One key priority of the new Department is ensuring that the UK is on track to meet its legally binding net zero commitment and support economic growth by significantly speeding up delivery of electricity network infrastructure and domestic electricity generation.

The nation will have been grateful for the speech made by the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), but it seemed clear from its tone that the Labour party prefers appropriation to the reasonable treatment of people in delivering this. Of course, failing to engage properly with communities will slow down the transformation we need. People thinking they can ride roughshod over communities because they scream, “Climate emergency and urgency” is not the way to do it; we have to go with the grain of communities. We have to explain the narrative. What is our narrative? As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has set out, we have a vision of delivering the most competitive, lowest-cost clean energy in Europe by 2035. That will have a transformative effect, not only in terms of our leading the world in reducing emissions, as we have done to date under this Government, but in enabling the re-industrialisation of the north, Scotland and Wales, with all the economic benefits that come with that. It is this Government, not the Labour party, who have delivered. When Labour left power in 2010 only 7% of our electricity came from renewables, but now it is nearly half. We are going further and faster, but making sure we do it in a way that works with the grain of communities, because if we ride roughshod over them, they will come back and will slow us down. To answer the hon. Lady’s point, this Bill will not slow down what we are doing; it will enable us to move at the speed required and make sure that we do so in a way that retains community support.

The Bill is about the building of network infrastructure, and the planning and consenting process. I thought it would be helpful to set out the Government’s commitments in this area and the work that is already under way. It currently takes about 12 to 14 years to build or reinforce new onshore electricity transmission network infrastructure, from the initial planning to the final completion and commissioning. The development of new transmission infrastructure is often on the critical path for the connection of new generation. The wonderful and extraordinary new generation that we have helped bring about, and are going to bring about in the future, is of no use if we do not have the infrastructure to get the electrons to where they need to go. The current position offers an unacceptable timeline when the electricity network is a critical enabler of our domestic energy production targets and our decarbonisation targets. We committed in the British energy security strategy to significantly reduce the timelines by about three years for delivering onshore transmission network infrastructure. We aspire to halve this end-to-end process by the mid-2020s. So we are working with developers and supply chains to increase pipeline visibility and certainty, to help accelerate the procurement.

The Government announced a review of the energy national policy statements to ensure that they reflect the policies set out in the energy White Paper net zero strategy and the British energy security strategy, and that we continue to have a planning policy framework that can deliver the investment required to build the infrastructure needed to ensure an independent, secure energy supply as we transition to net zero. The draft energy national policy statements were subject to parliamentary scrutiny, including by the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which published its report and recommendations on 25 February. When analysing the responses to that consultation, we will take account of those and of any other resolutions as we go forward.

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