(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero if he will make a statement on allegations from whistleblowers within the National Energy System Operator regarding summer blackout risk.

On 7 July, the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), wrote to the Government alleging practices of poor information handling in NESO and interference in operational decision-making in the control room. The Government take this issue incredibly seriously. Since the allegations came to light, we have been engaging with NESO and Ofgem to establish the facts. Both my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I have spoken to the chief executive of NESO. NESO has now appointed an external legal firm to conduct a full investigation into the claims, and a report is to be delivered to the board’s head of risk and controls and to Ofgem in the coming weeks. The legal firm will interview members of the control room, without any other NESO employees present. NESO has already responded publicly that all operational decisions are taken solely by authorised operational control room personnel, and that NESO does not instruct employees to avoid retaining records. We will work closely with Ofgem to monitor both the progress and the outcome of the investigation. However, it would be wrong to pre-empt that outcome, and the investigation must be allowed to run its course. I want to make it clear that during this period of unprecedented extreme heat, the Great British grid remains stable. No customers were impacted by tight electricity margins, and NESO had a number of tools available to ensure our energy security. Great Britain has one of the most resilient energy systems in the world, and the Government work closely with NESO and the wider sector to ensure that this resilience is constantly maintained. Market notices, such as those issued by NESO during the heatwaves, are standard operational tools that can be used to support energy security, and these were used successfully to maintain grid stability. However, it is important to acknowledge that extreme heat events, such as those experienced this summer, are likely to occur more frequently as our climate continues to change. My Department will continue to work with NESO and Ofgem to identify any lessons from these events, and to work to ensure that our electricity system remains resilient. Ofgem, as the independent regulator, is also working with NESO to initiate a formal review of events during the June heatwave. I welcome this important transparency, and look forward to working with NESO and Ofgem on taking forward the lessons learned.

Control room operators at the National Energy System Operator have the life-or-death job of balancing our electricity supply and demand. If they do not get it right, we will have blackouts, and in blackouts, people die; it is that serious. That makes what I am about to say all the more extraordinary. I have been approached by multiple whistleblowers within our grid operator. Their allegations are: first, that on 23 June, the operator failed to meet the grid security standards put in place to prevent blackouts; secondly, that the corporate affairs team interfered with operational decisions—that is not something that the Minister denied—putting the reputation of the operator above security of supply; and thirdly, that operational decisions are being recorded in live documents, with no audit trail. Again, the Minister did not deny that. I first raised questions on 2 June. Since then, we have had three public electricity margin notices—warnings to the market that we may be short on supply. I cannot stress enough that this is completely unprecedented. Multiple whistleblowers have now come forward. This, too, is unprecedented. I have raised this matter twice in the House. Despite the seriousness of the allegations, the Government shockingly dismissed me on both occasions as “scaremongering”. Considering the consequences of blackouts to people’s lives, that is nothing short of a disgrace. NESO has now agreed to hold an external independent investigation. That is positive. However, while the Government wash their hands of this situation, the investigation that has been set up is a complete sham. It will not look into whether the grid is being run securely, or whether there was a breach of security standards on 23 June. It does not grant anonymity to any control room operator who wants to come forward. Those who are not selected by NESO management will have to ask those managers if they can participate, if they have concerns. Remarkably, on an all-staff call on Monday, the chief executive of NESO prejudged the outcome of the investigation by calling the allegations false, while senior management said that the whistleblowers had let them down. Let me be clear: the whistleblowers who have put the national interest over their own careers should be celebrated for their courage and integrity, not denigrated. Will the Government finally get a grip on this? Can the Minister guarantee that every single control room operator who wants to share their concerns will be given the opportunity to do so anonymously?

Order. Can I just remind those on the Front Bench—it is nothing personal; far from it—that you have only two minutes? Please, can we can try to stick to the rules? It makes things hard when we do not.

First, I reiterate what I said at the beginning of the statement. The shadow Secretary of State raised these concerns about whistleblowers who had been in touch with her for the first time at Department for Energy Security and Net Zero oral questions. I said to her, in that session, that if she had details, she should share them with the Department. She did that, and subsequently we have taken this matter incredibly seriously. A process has been put in place; an independent review will be conducted, taking into account the information that she has shared. If she has more information from subsequent whistleblowers, I am sure that she will share that with us. We take this matter seriously. Nobody is washing their hands of this matter at all. As I have said to the shadow Secretary of State before, though, she is conflating two things, I think wilfully. There are questions to be asked about things that have been raised with her by whistleblowers, which we will now investigate. However, she suggests that the electricity grid was in a state in which blackouts were imminent, which is simply not the case. I gently say to her that it is irresponsible to suggest, in this place and on social media, that our energy system was at risk in recent periods. Electricity margin notices are a standard tool. I do not have time to read all the dates on which electricity margin notices were issued under the previous Government, but I can tell the House that they are a standard tool that has been deployed a number of times. We all have a duty to be careful about our words in this House. Ramping up the rhetoric does not get to the facts that we both share an interest in understanding. I make that point first. Secondly, can I just endorse the comments she made at the beginning about the critical role that operators in the NESO control room play every day? I was privileged to visit the control room in my role, and to see the job that they do. They have an enormous amount of responsibility on their shoulders; we should recognise how seriously they take their role. This investigation, which is independent from NESO, is so important for uncovering the facts. The terms of reference have been published, and are available on Ofgem’s website. They state clearly that power system managers and other control room personnel who worked on shift during the period in question will be interviewed. However, it is right and proper that, as I think everyone in the House would expect, we wait for the outcome of an inquiry that will take a matter of weeks to establish the full facts, so that we can use any additional learning from it, but also so that we can continue to ensure that the country is confident that our energy system is resilient. We met the electricity demand on every single one of the days in question, although I do not doubt for a second that it was difficult on some of those days, as it was throughout Europe. The solution to that is to invest further in the stability of the grid, and also to tackle the fundamental question of why our temperatures are rising year after year, the answer to which is climate change. If the right hon. Lady genuinely believes in the long-term impact of what is happening, I hope she will change course herself and support the policies that would tackle it. In the meantime, we will take this issue seriously. We will investigate all allegations that come to us to ensure that there is confidence in the energy system, and that it is operating exactly as we would expect it to.

I call the Chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee.

Last week the Committee heard from Claire Dykta, the director of strategy and policy at NESO, who told us: “Operational decisions are taken by authorised, trained personnel only.” Her comments were confirmed by Alastair Martin, the chief strategy officer at Flexitricity, who, in the same session, said: “I do not think the idea that the head office at NESO told the control room what to do is plausible.” Does the Minister agree that it is important for public reassurance, especially at a time of threats to energy security, that the line is not crossed in any way between properly evidenced scrutiny on one hand and conjecture on the basis of rumour, which is verging on scaremongering, on the other?

I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. Let me first reiterate that, as I said a moment ago, incredibly skilled staff work in the control room 24/7 to ensure that we are balancing our electricity demand and supply across the country, and have done so without any disruption to that supply; I pay tribute to the work that they do. What I said earlier in response to the shadow Secretary of State was not that the allegations that have emerged today were somehow scaremongering. If whistleblowers have raised concerns, it is right and proper that we investigate them fully, and we will absolutely do that. However, it is scaremongering to take to social media or come to the House and somehow imply that we were close to blackouts, which is simply not the case. We have a responsibility in this House not to ratchet up the rhetoric simply to get some retweets on Twitter, but to take seriously the job of balancing our energy system, as we did every single day—and NESO has confirmed that.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

These allegations are extremely serious. If it is true that NESO bosses instructed control room staff to conceal evidence of grid instability from public scrutiny, that is a shocking breach of trust from a taxpayer-owned body. The investigation must be genuinely independent and its full findings must be published openly, not quietly filed away. However, let us also be clear about the fact that this is not a verdict on renewables, much as science-denying climate change sceptics wish to push that idea. It is a warning sign that our grid is straining under record heat, that ageing gas plants are failing, and that there have been years of under-investment in storage and capacity. The Government must get very serious about grid resilience. Will the Minister guarantee protection for those who have come forward, commit himself fully to a genuinely arm’s length investigation, and guarantee full transparency in respect of the findings of that investigation?

The hon. Gentleman has made a number of important points. The terms of reference are available on Ofgem’s website for the inquiry that NESO has commissioned an independent law firm to carry out. It will conduct interviews with staff who were in the control room on that day to get to the bottom of the allegations that have been made, because it is right for us to take them incredibly seriously, and transparency will be an important part of that. I should add, however, that if there are lessons to be learned, it is critical that we implement them very quickly. NESO has already said—and the inquiry will discover further details in this regard—that corporate affairs staff are present in the control room at a number of times, but that they do not interfere in any way with operational decisions. Obviously the inquiry will get to the bottom of the operator’s views on that, but that is the point that it has made in recent days. As for the hon. Gentleman’s wider point, I agree with him. It is important for us to recognise that grid stability is foundational to everything in our energy system. That is why we are investing record amounts in upgrading the grid so that it is resilient for the future; it is also why we are looking at how we invest in, for instance, storage—which the hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned—so that we can store renewable energy that we are generating until when we absolutely need it, and have more tools at our disposal at moments of tight margins such as the one under discussion. As I have said, however, although at times frequency moved outside the normal operating range, it never moved outside the statutory limits. We met demand for all customers, and there was no disruption for customers at all. That is an important fact that is borne out by all the data that has already been published, although it does not take away from the fact that if we have lessons to learn from those incidents, we will absolutely learn them.

I call the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee.

I commend my hon. Friend’s approach. He is right to say that these allegations are incredibly serious, and that it is crucially important not only for there to be a full investigation but for it to be seen to be independent so that people can have confidence in it. He is also right to draw attention to the difference between the concerns that are raised by those whistleblowers and any suggestion that our grid is about to lead to blackouts. Does he agree that while it is absolutely true that one of the terrible legacies that this Government inherited from the last Government was a grid that had been woefully under-invested in for a very long time, and that there is a substantial need for investment in it in order to achieve our energy ambitions, that should not be allowed to be conflated with the suggestion that the lights are about to go out? Can he give confidence to my constituents this summer that NESO has given him all the assurances that he needs that there will be no blackouts?

I thank my hon. Friend for the way in which he has framed his remarks. He is right to say that these are incredibly serious allegations, and we take them with the seriousness with which they should be taken and will take on board any lessons learned. As for his point about the importance of grid investment, we inherited a grid that was not only in dire need of investment, but had not been designed to meet the full needs of generation that had been built for many years and not connected. We are currently constraining renewable energy that has been built over the past few years because it had not been connected to the grid. We are doing that work to ensure that the grid can continue to do what it needs to do. As for my hon. Friend’s final point, let me state very clearly that electricity supplies were maintained throughout the June heatwave. No customer demand was subject to disconnection. Statutory frequency limits were maintained throughout the event, and the largest credible loss that could have occurred was also covered. Let me explain exactly what we mean by the margin in this instance. The margin represents the cushion of spare generation above the peak demand that is maintained by NESO, and at no point did we come close to breaching that. It did not indicate any kind of emergency situation. Demand was met, and those are the facts.

When I was in government we conducted one of the largest exercises, Exercise Mighty Oak, which involved more than 4,000 people testing the effect of a power outage. That exercise demonstrated that it cascaded very rapidly and that it very rapidly affected water supply, transport and other public services. Will the Minister confirm that he has had an opportunity to read the findings from that exercise, and can he update the House on what point the Government have reached in implementing its recommendations?

I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman, and to all who were involved in that incredibly important exercise. I was not aware of it at all until I came into this job and read the full report, as well as the breakdown of all the actions that had been started during his time in office and have been continued by officials now. As he says, the cascading impacts of a national power outage are extraordinary and very quick, which is why we are first investing in the grid to ensure that that remains a very low risk on the national risk register, and secondly taking forward all those actions. I do not have the detail in front of me, but very few of the actions remain open; most have now been completed. We are also, across Government, continuing to organise exercises—on a much smaller scale—to ensure that Ministers are prepared and that we continue to keep on top of the actions, because these are not one-time events. The water industry, to which the right hon. Gentleman rightly referred, must continue to look at preparedness. That is the wider work that we are taking forward on resilience.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for coming to the House and providing clarity and reassurance that the allegations will be taken seriously, but does he agree that alongside the transparency of this process comes the need for responsible reporting and a responsible Opposition? The electricity margin notices are a standard tool that NESO has used for many years, and that includes the time when the Opposition were in government.

Yes, I agree. At the risk of repeating myself, electricity supplies were maintained throughout this period. Tight margins were caused by unprecedented warm weather—as I think we can all testify, having lived through it that week—and we were not alone in that. Other European countries were facing similar challenges and similar pressures on their electricity systems because of the extreme weather. I say gently that our aim as a House should surely be to do everything we can to prevent that extreme weather from becoming even more frequent, and I hope we will rebuild some of the consensus on that. My hon. Friend is right to say that the margin notices are a standard operational tool. Although there is enough generation available on the system to meet demand, NESO would like to have an even bigger cushion on that generation, and that is what the electricity margin notices are for. They were withdrawn because that generation was met, and at no point were any customers disconnected.

There is complete chaos at the National Energy System Operator. Whistleblowers are phoning politicians to express their concerns about blackouts. Independent investigators have had to be appointed, and NESO had to cut the interconnector for exports, without notice, in order to guarantee supplies. I wrote to the chief executive, Fintan Slye, two weeks ago, but I have had no reply to my detailed question. There is arrogance and complacency from the Minister. Can he guarantee that there will be no blackouts? Does he have complete confidence in the chief executive? And will the independent investigation be published for us all to see?

It is right and proper that we are talking about this issue, but I can assure the hon. Gentleman that there is absolutely no complacency on my part or that of the Government. I take my responsibilities incredibly seriously, as do NESO and Ofgem, the operator, and I think he should be careful of his language on an issue as serious as this. [Interruption.] He shouts from a sedentary position about blackouts. That is exactly the point I am making: this is irresponsible language. We are not debating across the House, and it is totally irresponsible. I am not sure how much more clearly I can say it to the House, but I can point the hon. Gentleman to some published reading material on the nature of what happened during that week. I have not denied at all that an extreme weather event caused pressure on the grid, but at no time did frequency move outside the normal operating range, at no time did we not meet demand across the country, and at no time were we close to disconnecting anyone whatsoever from the system, let alone to a potential blackout, as he frequently likes to share on social media. We have a robust and resilient energy system that came under pressure, and it responded exactly as it should. The allegations that have subsequently been made about how decisions were made that day are serious and will be taken seriously in the investigations, and we will learn any lessons that come from that, but that does not detract from the fact that we met electricity demand on every single one of the days that it was under pressure. He can dispute that all he wants, but it is a basic fact.

In the past two years, during which I have had the privilege of doing this job, my hon. Friend has frequently shared her experiences as an electrical engineer, and she is right. I, too, am in awe of the grid and of the work that its operators do day in, day out as part of the extremely complex job of balancing supply and demand 24/7. I will not get into what the previous Government did or did not do, but they did not do enough. I am not saying that they had no interest whatsoever in this issue, but there was clearly a long period in which there was not enough investment to build the grid that we need for the future. They did not maintain the resilience of the grid or invest enough to ensure that it was able to cope with these kinds of weather events, which we know will become much more frequent, so there has to be increased investment. That is why we are driving forward the biggest upgrade in the grid in generations, and the work that the operators do at NESO is a critical part of that. The system is becoming more complex, which presents opportunities for decentralised energy and for using much more renewables in the system, but it is more complex to manage as well. I am absolutely confident that NESO is able to do that, but this is a lessons-learning exercise and we will learn the lessons from it.

I am really worried about this urgent question. We sat here last night and talked about requiring honesty from public servants, and we voted on the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, but as we have heard from my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Richard Tice), serious questions have not been answered. The chair of NESO is paid the equivalent of £230,000 a year. Has the Minister met him recently? May I ask about the whistleblowers, who were apparently told by the chief executive yesterday that they had let down the company? On the question that my right hon. Friend asked about record keeping, what discussions has he had with NESO about whether she is correct?

The right hon. Gentleman asks a number of questions. On his point about the governance of NESO, I engage with its chair but also with the Government’s independent director. NESO is regulated by the independent regulator, Ofgem, which has responded in the last few days by scrutinising and governing the outcomes of the inquiry, as we would expect it to do. On the right hon. Gentleman’s wider point about documents, I am not going to comment on a process that is now under way to establish the truth. The version of events that I have seen suggests that that is not the case, but we are now doing an inquiry to establish the truth about version control, the sharing of documents and everything else. That is one of the key questions in the terms of reference. The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the Public Office (Accountability) Bill, which we voted on yesterday, because transparency is important. I am not seeking in any way to suggest that we should not be transparent, but I am suggesting that we need to let the inquiry run its course so that we can establish the facts before we pass judgment.

My constituents in Stoke-on-Trent Central are used to just plugging something in, switching a switch and there being electrical power, but I think we can all accept that with extreme weather becoming a bigger pattern in our lives, these events may be more frequent in the future. What conversations is the Minister having with colleagues across Government about developing public education programmes to explain how consumers can do their bit to help reduce demand at peak times, much like the water companies do when there is extreme heat? Given that we have discussed the speculation, and the whistleblowers who have rightly come forward, on the Floor of the House, can the Minister commit that once the independent inquiry has completed, the report is brought to the House so that we can discuss the outcome with the same prominence as we have discussed the speculation?

I thank my hon. Friend for both of his questions. On the first, he is right to imply that it is good that the vast majority of the public do not think about the electricity system at all when they switch things on or off. That is the system working as it should do. He is also right to say that extreme weather events will become more frequent in the years ahead, unfortunately, and we do need to respond to that. That is partly why we are investing in the grid. My hon. Friend’s wider point is about how much we talk to the public about resilience. We are quite an outlier in Europe in not engaging with the public regularly on the question of personal and household resilience, whether during floods, storm events or any other incidents. We will take forward work as a Government to make sure that we are talking to the public much more, so that people are prepared for such circumstances and would be able to respond if they were to occur. On his final point, the report will be published when it comes forward, and I absolutely commit to making sure that the House has a copy.

I am curious about this mantra that there have not been any blackouts. Over the past six months, businesses in the St John’s area of Tunbridge Wells have complained of blackouts. I surveyed my constituents who live in the area, and 60% said that they had experienced some blackouts—not long-term ones, but intermittent blackouts. Will the Government engage with me on this issue and give my constituents some guarantees that the situation will improve?

I think we are probably speaking at cross-purposes. I suspect that when the shadow Secretary of State refers to blackouts, she means a national power outage rather than supply disruption, which does happen. I cannot give a guarantee that there will never be some supply disruption, because there are faults in the system and things will occur, which can lead to a temporary loss of supply. If the hon. Gentleman refers to a recurring issue, I am very happy to work with him so that we can make sure that the local DNO or the transmission owner is looking at particular faults. If he writes to me with the details, I will follow up.

These are very serious allegations. It is right that they are investigated independently, and I think all of us urge NESO to have full candour. Grid stability is really important, and the recent heatwave shows the challenges that climate change brings and the importance of our clean energy transition. Does the Minister agree that nuclear plays a vital role in providing stable baseload energy and supporting grid stability?

I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting a question about nuclear into this, and she is absolutely right.

Hear, hear.

I agree with my hon. Friend 100%—as, I hear, does the shadow Minister. This is one of those rare areas where I think we do have complete consensus—well, maybe not complete consensus, but widespread consensus—across the House. Nuclear is going to play a really critical part in our future energy needs. It provides the stable baseload power that runs on the system 24/7 for decades. Nuclear power that we build today could well still be operating by the end of this century. It is an extraordinary technology that we should be supporting and investing in as much as possible. That is why we are taking forward Sizewell C and Hinkley, but also why we have unlocked the small modular reactor programme and are delivering it at scale, and why we will take forward the reforms in the Fingleton review to make sure we can build things even faster in Britain.

Can I just point out that the very fact that the Minister is at the Dispatch Box answering this urgent question is itself an indictment of the confidence that not only the public, but people working in NESO, have in the resilience of the system? Can I also point out that commentators have been warning for a decade or more about the risk to the security of supply from the over-reliance on intermittent renewables? While we in the Conservative party have learned that lesson, and are determined to have a much more robust and secure electricity policy, why are the Government doubling down on the risks they are creating by rushing ahead with renewables, vastly expensive grid investment that would otherwise be unnecessary and, of course, these absurd and obscene constraint payments to wind farm operators that cannot feed their electricity into the grid and get paid for it anyway, costing customers billions of pounds?

There was a lot there, but I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not happy to see me at the Dispatch Box. I am very happy to see him in his place, and to be here to answer this important urgent question. On security of supply, let me say that, yes, renewables are not going to be the entirety of our mix at all times. That which is why nuclear is important as well, it is why storage is important—so we can store energy for when we need it—and it is why our interconnectors to Europe are critical. The hon. Gentleman said two things in his question that I think show the problem with the Conservative party’s logic at the moment. First, on an urgent question about the resilience of our grid, he is saying that we should not invest in the future of the grid, which is the very thing that would lead to more issues with grid resilience. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman did just say that. If Opposition Front Benchers read his question back, I think they will see that he did. The hon. Gentleman’s second point is rightly a challenge about constraint payments, which we should not be paying, but I gently challenge him: if we had not built renewables without strategically planning where they were and the grid to connect them into, we would not be paying that money. His party may want to reflect on exactly why that happened. We are fixing the problems we inherited, and that involves investing in the grid.

Mr Speaker, I wish you a belated happy Yorkshire Day for yesterday. [Hon. Members: “Oof!”] It’s all right—he didn’t hear me! I thank the Minister for his answers so far and the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), for bringing forward this urgent question. This is a really important issue and my constituents will be keen that it is dealt with. I think we would all reflect that, as we move more and more towards reliance on technology, grid connection and resilience are hugely important. Could the Minister tell us more about what he is doing to ensure we have grid resilience in Harlow, in the east of England and across the UK?

I almost thought my hon. Friend had asked a question without mentioning Harlow, but we got there in the end. I am afraid I cannot give him a specific answer about the work we are doing on the grid in Harlow, but I can confirm that we will be investing in ensuring that the grid is as resilient as it can be for all his constituents in Harlow. We are doing two things with the grid that really matter. One is recognising the scale of investment that is necessary to connect not just renewables, but the economic opportunities, growth projects and demand projects that need electricity, and we need the upgrade of the grid to do that. Secondly, we are reforming the grid so that it works much more efficiently. We are reforming the connections queue, which got completely out of control under the previous Government, so that projects can connect, and businesses and households in my hon. Friend’s constituency can benefit from clean, cheap, secure, home-grown power.

I have some sympathy with the Minister’s situation, because this is a highly technical issue, and presumably he will have been briefed to deal with this urgent question by the senior management at NESO—or at least they will have briefed the civil servants who briefed him. What is bothering me is the lack of independence in this process. It appears that the senior management made an all-staff call in which they denounced the whistleblowers as having let the company down. From what the Minister said, it appears that the firm that is going to conduct the inquiry is an independent legal firm, which will be paid by the senior management of NESO. Would it not be better, from the point of view of objectivity and transparency, for Ofgem to engage whoever is going to conduct this inquiry, not the very people whose own careers will be on the line if the whistleblowers are vindicated?

First, I am not going to comment on leaks from internal conversations that may or may not have happened. I was not in the meeting, so I am not going to comment. On the right hon. Member’s point about the review’s independence, I do not know Eversheds Sutherland, but I am sure it would challenge his view that it is not independent. It has been asked to carry out an independent review. The findings will be reported to the independent director on the NESO board, and it will be shared with Ofgem. I have also committed to sharing it more widely. If there remain questions that the process has not answered, clearly we will look at what further investigation is necessary. I take this matter incredibly seriously. At the bottom of it all, this is not about trying to conclude some process; it is about trying to understand the concerns of the whistleblowers, who have shared their information with the shadow Secretary of State. They have not shared it with me; all I have seen is a summary of those points in a letter—a one-page letter—from the shadow Secretary of State. I have not seen the detail of the allegations, and she has not shared the details with the Government. However, we take this seriously. We have to get to the bottom of the matter and find the truth, and we will do whatever is necessary to do that.

I should remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For 30 years, I have been a member of the GMB trade union, where I was greatly supported as a whistleblower, and I have just joined the board of WhistleblowersUK. With that in mind, what is the Minister doing to actively protect whistleblowers who come forward with serious concerns about both public and private organisations, and will the Government heed Liberal Democrat calls to establish an office of the whistleblower to better help and protect these individuals?

First, whistleblowers are protected under legislation, and rightly so. That is important, and we have reiterated to all those involved in this incident that they are protected in law from their employers when coming forward with allegations, as has clearly happened. However, the inquiry should also protect their ability to speak about their engagement in all this without any other NESO staff present, so that their evidence can be compiled for the inquiry report without the management being part of that process. I take the hon. Member’s point very seriously. On the second point about an office of the whistleblower, I am afraid that is not in my portfolio, but I will certainly pass it on to other Ministers.

This is a really worrying situation that perfectly highlights why we need an energy mix in our grid. In that energy mix, we need to have nuclear, as was mentioned before, but we also need to have gas to provide the inertia in our grid. The people of Aberdeen South understand that, but does the Minister understand that, and is he concerned with the lack of inertia in our grid as we move to more and more intermittent sources?

First, no, I am not concerned, because other tools can be deployed to ensure that need is met, and they are being taken forward. Secondly, if the hon. Member looked at the disruption caused by the weather, he would see that a significant part of the issue was caused by gas power stations not being able to operate at full capacity because of the heat. I am afraid that his suggestion is not quite the silver bullet he thinks it is.

May I associate myself with the comments of my right hon. Friend the Member for New Forest East (Sir Julian Lewis) about the management of NESO creating a hostile environment for technicians in the distribution centres? Like the Minister, I have met the individuals in the control rooms, and I have nothing but admiration for them, so for them to be condemned as enemies of the company by being whistleblowers is profoundly wrong. We have heard Members raise other problems. In particular, the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) spoke about small blackouts in his constituency, and the Minister brushed that off as a little local problem. The reality is that at the moment we use about 36 GW of power, and during the winter we use about 45GW of power, and that is before we have electrified transportation and before we have invested a huge amount in data centres and artificial intelligence. Blackouts are indicators that the grid is not working. A small blackout in Tunbridge Wells is an indicator that there could be big blackouts in the future. What is the Minister doing to resolve these problems?

First of all, I did not brush anything off. I gave a very serious answer and said I would follow up with the individual distribution owner to resolve the issue. I said what I hope will be pretty obvious to everyone: that there are faults in the system now and again that lead to temporary disruptions to supply in households and streets, which are corrected by engineers who do an incredible job to fix things and for whom I have huge admiration. That is the nature of the system. I do not think we could ever have 100% of every single part of the system operating—I wish we could—but I did not brush it off in the slightest. I am happy to look into the issue in the constituency of the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Mike Martin) if he wants to raise it with me. Secondly, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) refers to—I do not know where this has come from—a “hostile environment” and “enemies of the company”. I have not said anything of the sort here. People have come forward with allegations and we are going to investigate them seriously, because we appreciate the fact that they have incredible skill and knowledge of what is going on in that control room—better than any of us, frankly—from the job that they do day in, day out. An independent inquiry will now interview them to establish the facts. We should wait for those facts before we jump to conclusions.

Balancing the grid is really important, but why is the cost of so doing rising from about £1.5 billion a year to £10 billion by 2030?

First of all, investment is necessary to bring down the costs in the long term. We are currently paying to constrain the renewables that are generating often much more electricity day after day than we are able to get to homes and businesses. Instead of doing that—paying to both turn off wind and turn up gas somewhere else in England to fill the gap—we should be building a transmission system that brings that clean power to houses and businesses across the country. That requires an initial investment, but that investment is repaid, long into the future, from the virtually free fuel that comes from solar and wind. Many, many projects were built under the previous Government and I am very happy to champion those projects, but the problem is that they did not connect them.

I welcome the Minister’s response so far, amid the shocking allegations that staff covered up the greater risks of power blackouts during the recent heatwave, but it is not just heatwaves and climate change that are increasing demand for electricity. Artificial intelligence data centres are expanding rapidly across the UK and internationally, bringing with them significant demands not only for electricity, the demand for which is estimated to double globally by 2030, but for water for cooling, land, construction and infrastructure. Will the Minister set out what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure does not compromise our energy security, increase the risk of supply shortages or blackouts, place unsustainable burdens on local infrastructure, or leave local communities bearing the costs while others reap the benefits?

The hon. Gentleman asks a number of important questions about the role of data centres in the future of the country. First, there is a real opportunity if we get this right, but I take his challenge about properly planning where they should go. Data centres are an opportunity to soak up some of what we are currently constraining, which will actually bring down bills. If we can deploy them in the right places, we get a greater customer base for electricity, rather than consumers paying to switch off. Secondly, AI is a huge opportunity for us as a country and it will become increasingly important to have sovereign capability here in the UK. In the energy space, there is a real opportunity to utilise AI to run the system in an even more efficient way. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that we have to get this absolutely right so that local communities get the benefits and not any downsides. We are working through a data centre strategy with my colleagues in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology. On the energy side, we are working to ensure that we are getting the best possible locations for the benefit of the energy system and consumers.

I thank the Minister, as always, for his answers and for his solution-based responses. My constituents watch developments with absolute dread, when every day families and vulnerable pensioners face skyrocketing bills. The very least they deserve is the truth about whether the lights will stay on this summer. The Minister will know that that NESO recently signed a major partnership with the system operator for Northern Ireland to deeply integrate our grids and balance system resilience, so a crisis of integrity at the top of NESO is a crisis for the whole United Kingdom network. Can the Minister guarantee that the allegations will not undermine energy security or grid stability in Northern Ireland?

I am disappointed, Madam Deputy Speaker. I heard that the hon. Gentleman rapped some of his speech in a Westminster Hall debate today, so I am disappointed that he did not do a rap in his question. He is a man of many talents, but he has disappointed me in this final week before recess! First of all, he knows that my answer—I hope he never takes it to mean that I am not interested—on the grid in Northern Ireland is always that it is a transferred power, because there is an all-Ireland grid. However, he is right about the connections with NESO. Our interconnectors with Ireland and Northern Ireland are an important part of balancing across the system. When there were storms in Northern Ireland recently and generation was switched off, those interconnectors were vital. The partnership that we have and the partnership between the two system operators are really important, so I will take his points away.