16:45 Melanie Onn (Labour)

The Prime Minister sent an awful signal to the energy industry when in one of her very first acts she scrapped the Department for Energy and Climate Change. She now has to show the industry that she is serious about giving it the attention that such an important sector of our economy requires. The day after my application for this debate was granted, my office received a call from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It wanted to know whether it or the Department for Education needed to send a Minister to respond today. That suggests that there has been absolutely no communication between the two Departments on this subject for four months, and that is incredibly disappointing. I say to the Minister here today that when he goes back to his office, he should pick up the phone to his colleagues in the BEIS and get to work on delivering what was promised.

RenewableUK, the trade body for renewable energy, has highlighted some of the challenges specific to offshore work in training employees. Personnel need to receive training in real working environments, and it has to be done safely; such conditions are difficult to replicate. That accounts for the need for advanced skills training in the construction and operation of turbines offshore. It takes four years of training to become a wind turbine technician.

The report argues that not only are apprenticeships and further education courses needed to provide opportunities for young people to access the renewable energy industry, but we need institutions such as the national college in order to give workers in the oil and gas industries the skills to transfer over, as high-polluting industries are gradually replaced by those in the green economy. I do not think that the issues that made the college necessary two years ago have altered that much in the past two years. I would argue that the only major changes we have seen since 2014 make it more important that the college is developed.

I have said it before, but it is true: offshore wind has brought a renewal of hope to Grimsby. It is playing an important role in redefining what my town offers not just to our own people, but to the rest of the country. We are already the renewable energy capital of England and being home to the national college for wind energy would be vital for the same reason. It would also give more local people the opportunity for a proper career, with high-skilled work—something that until recently young people felt they would have to go to the big cities to find.

[Source]

17:05 Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)

Education is devolved in Scotland, so that side of the debate has no implications for Scotland. However, the industrial side of things, including the ability to provide the marketplace with enough skilled folk, very much resonates with Scotland. Energy policy, which is a reserved matter, also has an impact on the general attractiveness of the whole United Kingdom as a destination for investment in renewable energy. In the past few weeks, we have slipped further down the Ernst and Young rankings for countries with renewable energy attractiveness—from 13th to 14th—after not being out of the top 10 for a decade or so. That is regrettable.

I will not talk about the educational merits. National colleges are not a model that we have used in Scotland; our investment is through existing educational providers. However, I will talk about the message sent to the investment community, young people and the whole industry by announcing something like the college and then not funding it once it has gone ahead. This is another of the substantial number of announcements that the Government have made in the realms of renewable energy that have been unhelpful and that have probably added to the UK’s diminished investment attractiveness.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby mentioned that it was unfortunate—I do not think that that was her exact word, as it is probably worse than that—that the Department for Energy and Climate Change has been abolished. I share that frustration. The justification for abolishing the Department was to put industrial strategy back into the political lexicon. Well, taking climate change out of the political lexicon was particularly short-sighted. The biggest challenge facing us as a species perhaps deserves a bit of recognition by the Government.

I am interested by the TUC’s argument, which the hon. Member for Great Grimsby mentioned, on adding the skills shortage as a fourth pillar of the trilemma. I have not previously heard that argument, but I think it is key. We have teased out that there are skills shortages in this area. Can the Minister provide us with more up-to-date figures on the skills shortage in the renewable energy industry, particularly in offshore wind? The problem is not going to get any easier with the expected restrictions to free movement of labour as a result of the Brexit process. As well as failing to attract folks from Germany or Denmark, whom the hon. Member for Cleethorpes mentioned, we are already losing skilled personnel from the industry. Skilled people are losing their jobs in the onshore wind sector—there are clearly significant synergies between onshore wind and offshore wind—because of the Government’s lack of investment.

[Source]

17:12 Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)

When we have such changes, such necessary disruption, it only becomes more important that things that have been sitting in the filing tray, virtual or actual, should be looked at with greater urgency by the incoming Department. That is not too much to ask when we know that offshore wind presents a great opportunity for expanding our low-carbon generation profile and can play an important role in helping us to decarbonise the power sector and meet our climate change targets.

My hon. Friend has said that the Humber area is an ideal location for the college. Grimsby is the renewable energy capital of England, not least because of the involvement and investment of Siemens in the region since 2014. Siemens has announced its decision to invest £160 million in wind turbine production and installation facilities across two locations, and its port partner, Associated British Ports—ABP—is investing a further £150 million in the Green Port Hull development.

In Blackpool, our own energy college, Blackpool and the Fylde College, is going to look at renewables. When I look out from Blackpool towards Liverpool bay, I have a particular interest in seeing those new renewable energies offshore continuing to flourish. The national college for wind energy in Grimsby that my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby has promoted so valiantly today would be an important part of that strategy. We hope the Minister will be able to say some positive things today to get it moving on its course.

[Source]