I inform the House that Mr Speaker has selected amendment (i) in the name of the Leader of the Opposition. I call the shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.

I beg to move amendment (i), at the end of the Question to add: “but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech commits to banning the issuance of licences to explore new oil and gas fields; recognise that this proposal will have a particularly negative impact on Aberdeen, the North East of Scotland and the wider UK economy; believe instead the Government must approve the Rosebank oil field and the Jackdaw gas field, which would boost UK energy security; urge the Government to drop its opposition to new oil and gas licences and instead legislate for a presumption in favour of approving new licences, and permit the exporting of oil and gas technology overseas; further regret the cancellation of a third large-scale nuclear power plant at Wylfa; and further urge the Government to abolish the ‘carbon tax’ regime to avoid more refinery closures, protect the domestic supply of refined products, and reduce the tax burden on UK industry.” This may be our last meeting across the Dispatch Box, because the Secretary of State is once again on manoeuvres. Considering that he is gunning for a promotion, let us review his record, shall we? He promised in the election that he would cut everybody’s energy bills by £300. What has he delivered? Energy bills are up by £200 thanks to his plans. He said that he would protect pensioners, but weeks into office he axed the winter fuel payment—a policy that many Labour MPs have cited as their worst political decision in power. The Secretary of State promised that Great British Energy would lead to a mind-blowing reduction in bills. Yet, two years in, it has not taken a penny off household bills, but has given a six-figure salary to one of his mates. Now, we learn that Great British Energy has been putting solar panels, made by Chinese slave labour, on British primary schools—something that the Secretary of State promised to this House that he would not do. What is next? Oh, that’s right: the Secretary of State said that he could control the price of wind. However, his botched wind auction signed us up to the highest prices in a decade—way more than the cost of electricity that he inherited. Promise after broken promise, bills up, pensioners betrayed, six-figure salaries for his mates and eye-watering contracts for wind developers—now, to top it all off, a so-called energy independence Bill that would shut down the North sea, in the greatest act of industrial self-harm in a generation. If that is what gets someone a promotion in the Labour party, Lord help us all. Let us turn to the so-called energy independence Bill. For true energy independence, we need our own oil and gas, but the Bill enforces the wilful destruction of the North sea. We need our own petrol, diesel and jet fuel, but the Bill does nothing to save our refineries, which are being taxed into oblivion. We need an electricity system that keeps the lights on for British households and industry, but his plan will leave us at the mercy of foreign imports. That is not independence; it doesn’t even come close. It is an energy dependence Bill that would leave us weaker, poorer and more reliant on foreign regimes.

The shadow Secretary of State said that for energy independence we need our own oil and gas, rather than investing in renewables. She will know that her Government paid £44 billion to subsidise our energy during the time of the Ukraine price spike. Will she tell us by how much our bills were reduced as a result of having our own oil and gas when the Ukraine crisis happened?

First, let me say to the hon. Gentleman that bills came down £500 under me; they have gone up by £200 because of the Secretary of State’s plans. Secondly, let me tell him another hard truth. He should listen to this; he might learn something. Cutting off production in the North sea does not mean that we use any less oil and gas. Production is not linked to consumption. All it means is that we will import more of that gas from abroad. That is weaker and it makes us more reliant on imports.

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He used up his chance; he should have asked a better question. There are some parts of this work that I welcome. The Fingleton review is impressive. I thank those involved and, as I have made clear before, we will support that work going forward. Nuclear is the only form of energy that can provide round-the-clock, totally clean power, and I will always support policies that make it as easy as possible to build. There is a catch, however. The Secretary of State says he wants to ease nuclear regulations while, at the very same time, he has cancelled the project that they would be used on. By cancelling the third large-scale nuclear power station that I signed off, he has killed the nuclear pipeline. He is repeating his own mistakes. We are set to have yet another Labour Government who fail to start a single new large-scale nuclear power plant, and now we hear that Natural England is adding yet more delays to Hinkley Point C for little environmental gain. Is he fighting that? No. He is defending the status quo. By the end of this Parliament we will still be waiting for a decision as to whether small modular reactors will go ahead, by 2030 there will be less nuclear online than there is now, and in 2035, which is 10 years away, the Government still will not have started any new large-scale nuclear power plants in this country. That is the same old stop-start approach that killed the industry to begin with. If that is what the Secretary of State calls being ambitious for nuclear, he needs to give his head a wobble.

My constituency has the Heysham 1 and Heysham 2 power plants. The reason why nuclear power will possibly go down is because plants are coming to the end of their lives and the right hon. Lady’s Government did nothing about that for 14 years. Why did she not deliver when she was in government?

Let me tell the hon. Lady. Under the last Labour Government, which the Energy Secretary was part of—[Interruption.] Let me explain. Not a single new nuclear power plant was started. When we came into power in 2015 and got control of the energy brief, there was one nuclear welder left in the country. It is the stop-start approach that kills the nuclear industry. Here is the problem: the Government have killed the pipeline again. These are the same old mistakes, and I am raising them because we are getting into the same trouble again—[Interruption.] The Ministers say that those were not mistakes and that it was not a mistake not to start a single new nuclear power plant. That is what they think, on the record. On to the North Sea. Andy Burnham, who is hoping to be Labour leader, talked yesterday about reindustrialisation. Meanwhile, today the Secretary of State is asking his Back Benchers to vote to shut down the North sea. This is the single greatest act of industrial self-harm we have seen in a generation. Only a complete wacko would respond to a supply shortage by shutting down their own oil and gas industry. We are in the absurd position of the Labour Chancellor thanking Canada and Norway for increasing their oil and gas production while her own Government are shutting down British production. And why? It is so we can be more reliant on higher-emission gas from Qatar or the US and so we can send billions of pounds to Norway to import gas from the very same basin that we could be drilling ourselves. The Government are calling this energy independence. Have they lost their mind?

The right hon. Lady talks of absurd positions. I did a little research before the debate today. I went back to 21 May 2024, just before the last general election, and in this House, in her capacity as Secretary of State, she said that she believed in net zero. She said: “We are on track to reach net zero by 2050, and we will do so in a way that brings the public with us.”—[Official Report, 21 May 2024; Vol. 750, c. 724.] Her position now is that she does not believe in net zero, and does not believe that it is desirable or achievable. Is that not absurd?

People change their minds when they look at facts—[Interruption.] I am not hiding from this. I think the hon. Gentleman needs to look at the overall record of the things I said in government. The first thing I said when I went into position was that we cannot impoverish ourselves in the name of net zero. I started a true costing of renewables in the Department, because we did not have a proper costing of energy. Who cancelled that work? It was the Secretary of State. I backed the North sea; I signed off Rosebank; I legislated to protect those North sea licences. Who is turning all of that around? The Secretary of State. We all know the real reason that he is doing it. He is shutting down British oil and gas to show climate leadership. He put that in the King’s Speech. Let us be crystal clear, though. What he is saying is that he is willing to turn his back on British industry, even though we will not need any less energy. We will rely on higher-emission imports from abroad because he cares more about the climate bureaucrats than about the jobs of British workers. That is what climate leadership means to him. Where exactly is this meant to be leading us—bankruptcy? Where does it end—cheering as the lights go out as the last factory in Britain closes? That is what the Secretary of State’s North sea and carbon tax policies are doing. They are simply offshoring British emissions to the coal-powered refineries of India, the diesel tankers bringing us gas from the US and Qatar, and the factories in Trinidad from where we are now getting our ammonia. That does not help the climate and it does not help British workers.

Businesses in Bognor Regis and Littlehampton need stable and affordable energy to grow and invest, so does my right hon. Friend agree that our “get Britain drilling” Bill is vital not just for energy security but for our future economic security?

The North sea is a vital part of our industry. It provides us not only with the gas that we need for energy security but with the feedstock that feeds into our chemicals and plastics industries. There is a whole supply chain of other industries that rely on the North sea and on our having a successful industrial base. If we lose just one of those foundational industries, it is like dominoes: the rest will go. If we keep offshoring British emissions, it will not help the climate and it will not help British workers. Do the Government understand how bad it looks when they make speeches patting themselves on the back here in Westminster while hard-working Brits out there lose their jobs so that we can import more goods with higher emissions from abroad? That is why the vote on the North sea today should be a litmus test for them. Do they reject decarbonisation by deindustrialisation or not?

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

I will just make a bit of progress. Now let us talk about electricity. A key part of the Secretary of State’s plan is to make us more reliant on electricity imports. He does not like to talk about it, but at the height of winter, when we need it most, we will be importing twice as much electricity by 2030 as we did when this Government came into office. What does that mean? It means relying on the goodwill of France and Norway to keep the lights on in Britain. I remind the House that we are now in a situation where France is on the edge of a debt crisis, with the National Rally topping the polls. Does the House really think it prudent to hand over the keys to our electricity security to Marine Le Pen? Let us be honest, that is the Secretary of State’s plan. Whichever way we look at it, this is not an energy independence Bill. It is an energy dependence Bill that makes Britain beholden to Marine Le Pen for our electricity, to Xi Jinping for our solar panels and to Donald Trump for our gas. The Government’s plan is for energy scarcity, but what we need is energy abundance. That is why our plan would be to double down on nuclear, to axe the carbon tax to save British industry, to get Britain drilling and to make electricity cheap.

The right hon. Lady paints a picture of the stark consequences of the Labour party’s policy for a total proscription on new oil and gas licences. Can she advise us what the future will look like for the United Kingdom without access to oil and gas from the North sea basin?

I know that the hon. Gentleman’s party has changed position on this recently, and I welcome that change. As I have said, the North sea is a foundational industry. It is not just about the oil and gas it provides. It is not just about the tax revenues. It is not just about the jobs that exist within that industry. It is about all those other industries it supports, including the chemicals and plastics industries. By the way, even the renewables industry supports more drilling in the North sea, because it needs the specialist rigs, the undersea technologies and the exact same workers. There are so many industries and wider economies that the Government are killing just because of the ideological bent of this Secretary of State.

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

I will make a bit more progress. Here is the fundamental bind that the Labour party is in. It does not matter who its next leader is—they will all fail. Its supposedly popular leadership contenders will become unpopular very quickly when they cannot keep their promises. It happened to us in government. It is happening to Labour now. It is happening to Reform at council level. It will happen to whoever is in government next unless they face up to the trade-offs that get us better growth. Growth is the antidote to so many of our problems, but to deliver it, we need two things: cheap, abundant energy and economic freedom. By shutting down the North sea, cancelling nuclear projects and keeping a distorted electricity market in place, the Government are making energy scarce and expensive. Being part of the EU does not solve that problem. The EU leaders themselves rail against their own energy policy. Reindustrialisation is just a meaningless slogan unless we back the North sea, axe the carbon taxes that are killing British industry and cut the cost of energy. If none of Labour’s contenders has the courage to say anything about these issues, nothing will change. Alongside cheap, abundant energy, the most important ingredient for growth is economic freedom, but the Labour party openly stands for more state control, more tax and spend, more red tape on employing people, more expensive energy, less AI, fewer profits and more subsidies. It has been on this path for two years now, and what do we have to show for it? Higher inflation, weaker growth and soaring unemployment. Why would anyone want more of this? Families are working harder and harder and getting less and less at the end of the month. And if people want full-fat socialism, why would they choose Labour when they have the boob whisperer offering them bigger and better? Our whole system is flooded with caution. Nobody is incentivised to take any risks. That is what is making us poorer. The truth is that the personalities in the Labour leadership race do not matter. Unless we get cheap, abundant energy, remove the legal straitjackets and onerous taxes, and fix the broken regulators and the sluggish machine of government to set the economy free, nothing is going to change. If Labour Members think that Andy Burnham has the answers, let me tell them this. Andy is like the fun uncle who sits on the sidelines saying whatever he wants without anybody holding him accountable: “Let’s have ice cream for dinner! Let’s go to the zoo next week! Let’s nationalise everything! Who cares about the bond markets? Let’s rejoin the EU!” He has said whatever he liked because he has never had to pick up the bill. Now that he is actually looking at being in charge, he is having to go back on all those promises. Members should ask him this: how is he going to fund his nationalisation plans? He wants to stick to the fiscal rules. Is he really saying that he is going back to taxpayers, who already face the highest tax burden in history? When he talks about reindustrialisation, they should ask him whether he supports the Secretary of State’s plans to shut down the oil and gas industry—the biggest act of industrial self-harm committed in generations. If Andy Burnham wants more powers at a local level, amen to that—I could not agree more—but Labour Members should ask him how he can argue for economic freedom in one breath, while in another dictating to people what tumble dryers or cars they have to buy. If Labour Members really cared about growth and reindustrialisation, they would axe carbon taxes, get Britain drilling, double down on nuclear and make electricity cheap. In short, they would put the national interest ahead of the Secretary of State’s ideology and vote with us tonight.

It is a privilege to speak in support of this Gracious Speech. This debate takes place in the shadow of the second fossil fuel shock in four years. Families and businesses across the country are deeply concerned about the impact of the Iran war on the cost of living—a war which this country did not start and this Government chose not to join, but which is having significant effects here at home, just like when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and energy bills rocketed, and the British people and firms paid the price. The argument at the heart of this Gracious Speech is that there is one overriding lesson of these two crises: while we remain exposed to the fossil fuel rollercoaster, we are deeply vulnerable as a country. Our sovereignty, our security and the British people’s living standards are undermined by this dependence and exposure, for a simple reason: we do not control the price of oil and gas, which is set on international markets. It is different from what it was like in the 1970s when we had fossil fuel shocks. There is an answer staring us in the face: energy independence through clean home-grown power that we control—clean home-grown energy that comes from our own wind, sun and nuclear resources that cannot be disrupted by foreign wars, that cannot be controlled by the whims of petrostates and dictators, and that means that our national security and energy security cannot be held hostage. One commentator put it incredibly well in 2023, after Russia invaded Ukraine: “Moving to home-based, clean power mitigates risks to bill payers, now and in the future”, protecting consumers from “volatility in international fossil fuel markets.”—[Official Report, 16 November 2023; Vol. 740, c. 53-54WS.] I agree with that commentator—it was the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), the shadow Energy Secretary, in Hansard on 16 November 2023. I agree with her. The problem is that she no longer agrees with herself. Where the evidence says we need more renewables, not less, she opposes them. Where the evidence says we should electrify as much as we can, she says we should abandon support for people to get heat pumps. Where the evidence says electric vehicles can protect consumers, she opposes action for their take-up—not because the facts have changed, not because the evidence has changed, but because she has jumped on the anti-clean energy, anti-net zero bandwagon. I am very happy to give way to her, so that she can tell the House whether she agrees with herself.

I will very happily ask the Secretary of State the question—[Interruption.] Well, he said he would happily give way; he does not look so happy now. In government, I started work on the true costing of renewables, because the Department does not have an accurate costing of energy—it does not have an accurate costing of clean power 2030. Why has he not published one?

It was not worth giving way after all. The shadow Secretary of State cannot answer the question.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will not give way. [Interruption.] I will later on. What a sorry state of affairs: the shadow Secretary of State cannot even agree with herself. There was a gaping contradiction at the heart of the shadow Secretary of State’s speech just now. For all the verbiage—for everything she said—she has no answer to the crisis before us, because even she cannot seriously believe what she is putting forward. The idea that new exploration licences for oil and gas will solve our energy security challenges is obviously nonsense. According to the National Energy System Operator, new licences will make no material difference to capacity and therefore security of supply. Nor will new drilling take a single penny off bills. Members should not take my word for it. When asked if new oil and gas would cut bills, the shadow Secretary of State said new licences “wouldn’t necessarily bring energy bills down, that’s not what we’re saying.”

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I will not give way for a minute. The shadow Secretary of State comes to the House with a plan which will not take a penny off bills, which will not give us energy security and which rejects the things she used to believe.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I am not going to give way again. This is the difference with Labour: we are learning the lessons of the fossil fuel crises we face, and we are acting.

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. He is accused of being messianic in his approach to proscribing new oil and gas licences in the North sea. If it can be demonstrated that UK consumption of oil and gas is not falling at a rate that is equal to, or faster than, the rate of production in the United Kingdom, will he release his screeching U-turn on new oil and gas licences in the North sea?

The SNP has had more positions on this than the Kama Sutra, so it is genuinely hard to keep up. We have a very simple position: we want to keep existing oil and gas fields open for their lifetime. One of the things that the energy independence Bill will do is introduce transitional energy certificates—so-called tiebacks—which is what industry has called for. We are not in favour of a “turning off the taps” position, but I will be honest with the House: nor are we in favour of a “drilling every last drop” position.

Why not?

Because if we did that, we would end up in climate disaster. That is the truth.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I am not going to give way. Don’t take my word for it. This is what the Energy Transitions Commission, which includes energy companies, says: “Any national strategy which assumes that all fossil fuel reserves must be exploited is incompatible with limiting global warming to safe levels”. The truth is that new licences are totally marginal to the North sea.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I am going to make some progress, and then I will give way. For nearly two years, we have been moving at speed on our mission to make Britain a clean energy superpower. We came to office amid a legacy of the irrational onshore wind ban; the fiasco of the allocation round 5 auction, with no offshore wind secured; and years of dither and delay on nuclear—the shadow Secretary of State amused me on nuclear, and I will come to that in a second. The Conservative Government left us exposed through 14 years of neglect, and we are clearing up their mess. In less than two years—opposed every step of the way by the Conservative party—we have secured enough clean energy for the equivalent of 23 million homes through two record-breaking renewables auctions, but the lesson of these two fossil fuel crises is that we need to go further and faster.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

rose—

I will make a bit more progress. That is why we have already brought forward our next renewables auction and taken steps to fast-track the roll-out of renewables on public land. But renewables are only part of the story, and I want to come to nuclear, because this is going to be fun. Those drafting the Opposition amendment obviously have a real sense of humour. Here is the truth about their record. They promised a final investment decision on Sizewell C in the last Parliament and did not deliver. They promised SMRs and never delivered. They promised fusion and never delivered. We have delivered them all, and they have the cheek to complain when we are delivering the biggest nuclear building programme in half a century—delivered by this Labour Government. I should welcome the fact that the shadow Secretary of State supports our nuclear regulation Bill, but I am bound to ask: why did her party not do it? Was it incompetence, idleness, ideology or a combination of all three? There is always a great quote from the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) that we can read out. This is what he said following the last general election: “After 14 years of Conservative Government, we are now in a position where it’s more difficult to build critical infrastructure than it was when we came into power”. It is a Labour Government clearing up their mess.

Included in that list of achievements is the £12 billion deal signed last September to bring new nuclear to Hartlepool, making Hartlepool one of the biggest clean energy economies in this country. Does the Secretary of State agree that as we secure energy security, we must also secure economic security for those parts of the country that are left behind?

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and this is what is so exciting. Contrary to what the shadow Energy Secretary said, we are seeing a renaissance of nuclear in this country, and not just through the Rolls-Royce programme—although we were very pleased to sign the agreement with Rolls-Royce alongside the Chancellor recently; there are also other routes to markets. We are very encouraging of the efforts of my hon. Friend, and others.

rose—

rose—

I will give way to the right hon. Gentleman, because he and I go back a long way.

The Secretary of State and I do go back a long way, and we agree, actually, about the crisis of capitalism, in terms of the sacrifice of domestic production for imports; he and I have lot in common in that regard. He will understand that the economic uncertainty he describes and the need for greater national economic resilience applies to food too, so—while accepting that we should put solar on buildings and have offshore wind—surely he understands that by putting solar plants at scale on the most productive farmland, which is needed to deliver food security, his argument about economic resilience falls flat. Will he look at that again? There is a middle way. He and I do indeed go back a long way, so for heaven’s sake let’s compromise.

Well, we may agree on some things, but not on this. I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, so let me say this. Even the most ambitious plans for solar involve less than 1% of agricultural land—something like 0.6%. I say to Conservative Members that it is somewhat irrational that in relation to nuclear, they want to be builders not blockers, but in relation to everything else, they want to be blockers not builders. If we support the nuclear power plant, we have got to support the grid to connect that nuclear power plant. If we want to get away, as the right hon. Gentleman says he does, from our dependence on international fossil fuel markets, we need to support the cheapest, cleanest form of power, which is solar power. What an array of choices.

I want to see nuclear power in Northern Ireland, although unfortunately that is down to the Northern Ireland Assembly and it looks like there might be some obstacles. I welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment to tidal power, battery storage and green hydrogen. He has always been keen to ensure that Northern Ireland can also be part of the growth that is coming from here. Will he give Northern Ireland some encouragement that when it comes to moving forward with green energy, we are part of that plan across this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland?

I am always happy to work with the hon. Gentleman, for whom I have great respect, as are my team of Ministers.

The shadow Secretary of State did not take my second intervention when I attempted to get an answer from her. We know that Conservative Members propose to get rid of the energy profits levy, costing the Government about £12 billion, and they want to get rid of VAT, costing about £5 billion or £6 billion. We know they have a plan for oil or gas that might be here in four or 10 years, although it is owned by somebody else, and they believe they will use that collection of policies to reduce people’s energy prices. Does my right hon. Friend see any credibility in the plans from Conservative Members that he can share with us, because we have not heard it from them?

My hon. Friend makes his point incredibly well, and I do want to say something about renewables before I move on. At the time of the AR7 auction, the right hon. Member for East Surrey said that we should cancel that auction. As I said, that auction secured power for the equivalent of 16 million homes—[Interruption.] Perhaps Opposition Members could listen for a second. That included offshore wind at prices that are 40% cheaper to build and operate than new gas. At the time, the right hon. Lady shouted out from a sedentary position “Gas is falling!”, as a justification for her position—[Interruption.] She did say that. Today, the gas price is around 50% higher than it was then. There is a really important point here: there can be no clearer demonstration of the gamble that Conservative Members wanted us to take. What a terrible call; what a foolish position. We are at a time of the greatest geopolitical instability in generations. Anyone who would rationally learn the lessons from when Russia invaded Ukraine would say, “We cannot gamble on low fossil fuel prices, because this is what happens.”

rose—

I am going to make some progress. By contrast, we stand for national security through energy security and energy independence. How we protect consumers is very important. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor showed at the Budget last year that she took decisions to raise taxes, including on the wealthiest, so that we could cut bills for everyone, and we saw that happen in April. The Gracious Speech also includes legislation to raise the rate of the electricity generator levy from 45% to 55%, as part of our plan to break the link between electricity and gas prices, and act on the excess profits that arise from that link. We are also making a big call: keeping in place the windfall tax on oil and gas profits during this conflict. In the last few weeks, we have seen profits from major oil and gas companies soar.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I am not going to give way. These are unearned profits as a result of the war.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

I will just make a bit of progress. We say tax those profits to help the British people.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I am not giving way. The energy profits levy has raised £12 billion since it was introduced in 2022.

I am not giving way, no. Let me quote the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), the former Prime Minister, who was the Chancellor at the time. These are not my words—this is not Red Ed; it’s Red Rishi! He said: “The oil and gas sector is making extraordinary profits, not as the result of recent changes to risk taking or innovation or efficiency, but as the result of surging…commodity prices,”—[Official Report, 26 May 2022; Vol. 715, c. 450.] He was right.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I am not giving way. At this moment, what have the official Opposition, alongside the SNP, decided to call for? They have called for the Government to dump that policy. Let us get this straight: at the precise moment that the British people struggle with the effects of the war, those parties say that the priority with scarce resources is to cut taxes for the largest oil and gas companies making record profits. Let us be clear: no amount of false accounting or fuzzy maths can hide the facts about the idea of cutting these taxes at this moment of windfall profits to improve revenues.

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. Just so that no one is under any false interpretation of what that tax does and how it works, does the Secretary of State understand that the tax does not apply to trading nor to overseas production? It is on production from the North sea, which is not where those profits are being made, is it?

The hon. Lady obviously does not understand that prices are going up, including from the North sea. Let us look at the amount that the tax raises. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, even before this crisis the windfall tax was forecast to raise £5 billion by September 2027. Conservative Members—the official Opposition—have to explain: where is the money going to come from, then? They are going to cut that tax of £5 billion for the biggest oil and gas companies. By contrast, we believe that we should tax fairly and use the resources to help the British people.

Will the Secretary of State give way?

I am not going to give way as I need to finish soon. The energy independence Bill will legislate to help deliver the biggest investment in home upgrades in British history through our £15 billion warm homes plan. As part of this, we will act to help private renters. This is important, because it is about how we make sure that, in the drive to clean power, we help everybody in our society. It is a scandal that 1.6 million children living in private rented homes are suffering from cold, damp or mould, according to Citizens Advice. We say it is time to act. Minimum energy efficiency standards for renters were promised by the previous Government, then scrapped. The energy independence Bill will legislate for them by cutting bills for renters, and lifting 400,000 families out of fuel poverty by 2030. Part of this goes to the question asked by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who is no longer in his place. We believe that the drive for energy independence can deliver for workers and communities. We are already seeing the jobs that clean energy is creating across the country: 11,000 more workers in nuclear, according to the industry’s latest estimates, 8,000 more in offshore wind, with thousands more upgrading the grid, on the way to 400,000 extra clean energy jobs by 2030, and £90 billion of private investment announced since the election.

rose—

I am not going to give way. We want to ensure that those jobs are good jobs, so we will amend employment rights legislation, as part of the energy independence Bill, to enable us to bring the rights of offshore renewables workers in line with those working in oil and gas. It is by driving forward in clean energy that we have the best chance of a fair transition in the North sea. Some 70,000 jobs were lost in less than a decade under the last Government. We are determined to lead the world in industries such as offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon capture, and we will continue to use North sea oil and gas for decades to come by keeping existing fields open for their lifetime. That is why the energy independence Bill will legislate to introduce transitional energy certificates, something the industry has welcomed. I also say to Reform Members that we look forward to debating their plans for fracking during the debate on the EIB, because fracking will make no difference to bills. It is dangerous and roundly opposed by local communities, and we will act on it.

Part of my constituency is in Lancashire, where fracking testing took place. We suffered earth tremors as a result. Does the Secretary of State agree that the British people do not want fracking in our communities, and do not want the risks that we saw in Lancashire?

My hon. Friend puts it well. There is something ironic about the fact that Reform says nationally that it wants fracking, but its representatives in Scarborough and Lancashire seem to say that they are against it. From now until the general election, we are going to be asking where Reform candidates stand: is it with their local community, or is it with the fracking industry?

Will the Secretary of State give way?

No. I have set out the approach to energy security that underpins this Gracious Speech. Above all, we will learn the lessons of the fossil fuel crises of our age. We will build our energy independence, tackle the affordability crisis, deliver good jobs and investment in our communities, and make the right decisions for today’s generation and future generations. I commend the Gracious Speech to the House.

Before I call the Lib Dem spokesperson, I think it would be helpful for everybody to know that there will be an immediate five-minute time limit after she has spoken.

Oil and gas prices have a long history of spiking and damaging our economy. The UK was among those countries in western Europe worst hit by the price shock following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As long as we remain tied to volatile international fossil fuel markets, dictators and foreign wars will have a grip on our economy and on the pockets of families and pensioners across this country. Surely it is time to wake up to that reality and learn the lessons of the past. That is why we Liberal Democrats welcome the Government bringing forward a Bill on energy independence. We will scrutinise it carefully to ensure that it contains not only the urgent and ambitious measures necessary to bring down energy bills and ensure energy security, but a fair, managed and prosperous transition to clean energy. As households nervously await next week’s announcement of the energy price cap, with forecasts showing that households could be hit with a £300 Trump war tax on energy bills, we Liberal Democrats are clear that the best way to get energy bills down is through home-grown renewable power, with prices that we control.

I know that the Lib Dems are big fans of localism—that is not a dig, by the way. In my constituency, Church Langley primary school has led the way by having solar panels on its roof, and it is able to generate all the energy it needs from those solar panels. Does the hon. Lady welcome the work that this Government are doing to ensure that other schools can benefit from the same sort of system?

I definitely welcome that; as the hon. Gentleman will hear later in my speech, we want to go even further. As we know, it is Liberal Democrats who fix people’s church roofs and put the solar panels on them. For too long, the pace of change has been too slow. It has left people and businesses trapped, at the mercy of a broken energy system that they are literally paying the price for. It is time to take back control of our energy future, and that starts with our communities. In the last Session of Parliament, I welcomed the Government agreeing with our calls to include community energy and community benefits in the Great British Energy Act 2025. Now communities must be given the right to sell and buy energy locally, and we must mandate community benefit requirements where communities host renewable infrastructure. The transition must be done with those communities, not to them. I also welcomed the adoption of the New Homes (Solar Generation) Bill, or sunshine Bill, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Max Wilkinson), which requires solar panels on all new homes—but why wait until 2027, and why not go further? We Liberal Democrats want to see solar on new warehouses and car parks, turning rooftops across the country into sources of clean, affordable power. We also want to see solar panels on schools and hospitals. Since 2019, energy bills for schools and the NHS have more than doubled, forcing impossible choices between heating and healthcare or between bills and books. The current Government investment reaches less than 1% of schools. Liberal Democrats would go further and faster, helping to protect frontline budgets for our schools and hospitals. Families, too, want to do the right thing; there has been a record increase in sales of solar panels and heat pumps since the start of the war in Iran. We must build on that momentum and help households and small businesses to take back control of their bills, giving them access to zero-interest or low-interest loans for upgrading properties by establishing an energy security bank to support electrification. At the same time we need to fix the broken energy market. It remains absurd that electricity is still priced so highly compared with gas, meaning that people are often not rewarded for electrifying their homes and businesses. It is also crazy that consumers are paying billions to switch off our wind turbines when the grid cannot cope with surplus renewable generation. That is why I welcomed the recent steps taken to begin breaking the link between gas and electricity prices, a reform that the Liberal Democrats have long called for. However, we urge the Government to go further and faster in their Bill: moving unfair policy levies off electricity bills, providing a progressive social energy tariff for those unable to absorb repeated bill shocks, upgrading grid infrastructure and ensuring that customers benefit directly from cheaper renewable power through flexibility when there is surplus renewable generation. Yes, we need energy independence, but that does not mean isolation. The UK and the EU have deeply interconnected energy systems, but the damaging Brexit deal has meant a huge increase in energy costs. Our future lies in ever closer energy ties to our nearest neighbours, and this Government need to drop their red lines on Europe. Rejoining the EU’s internal electricity market and linking our emissions trading schemes will reduce costs and strengthen resilience. My right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) was right to say that “it is simply fantasy and fabrication for some in this House to pretend that there is a solution in the North sea”—[Official Report, 13 May 2026; Vol. 786, c. 31.] to people’s high energy bills. Even when North sea production was at its peak nearly 30 years ago, the UK was still exposed to global price shocks, because we have been price takers. Nor is the answer fracking, which some are calling for; it destroys our countryside and pollutes our waterways. We will push for a complete ban on fracking and complete clarity on closing all the loopholes. We need a secure energy mix, and that includes nuclear; we believe that small modular reactors have great potential to strengthen energy security alongside renewables. Oil and gas will also be part of that energy mix for decades to come, but we must recognise the need for a fair and managed energy transition, given that our remaining reserves are in decline. Communities cannot be left behind. We urge the Government to establish a just transition commission, to future-proof supply chain jobs, and to enable the retention of our brilliant, skilled oil and gas workers in high-quality jobs in renewables and other sectors.

Does the hon. Lady agree that new licences in the North sea would help protect the workforce and the supply chain, to help with the transition to new energies?

Research has shown that the hundreds of new oil and gas licences awarded by the Government between 2010 and 2024 have resulted in only about 36 days’ worth of extra gas. We need to look at the jobs that people can move into. I think there were 75,000 jobs lost without any outcry from the previous Government. We are looking at a just energy transition that helps those high-skilled workers into jobs.

Will the hon. Lady give way on that point?

I will keep going. Proponents of prolonged over-reliance on fossil fuels often ignore the costs of inaction. There is an overwhelming scientific consensus that transitioning away from fossil fuels is essential to our efforts to tackle climate change. Communities around the country are already feeling the impacts and costs of extreme weather events. My South Cambridgeshire constituency is one of the most water-stressed in the country; last month, we saw 5% of the average rainfall, and we are feeling it. Floods and droughts have battered farmers across the country—they are reeling from the worst harvest on record, which will lead to problems with food security and put up our food prices. One avoidable death is one too many for the elderly and vulnerable during recurrent heatwaves. No one wants ravaging wildfires ripping through our most treasured woodlands and national parks. As the Government-suppressed assessment on global biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and national security laid bare, the destruction of nature threatens the UK’s resilience, prosperity and national security. People want to know the truth. In my constituency and across the country, people’s emergency briefings are happening. People are taking control. They want to know and to be better prepared. That is why we must also look to prepare for the climate shocks that we cannot avoid. We reject the Government’s false dichotomy between climate and nature, where they say that nature is a blocker to growth. We have to be better prepared. We have to overcome the silos between energy, climate and nature. We need to promote nature-based approaches to capture carbon as well as adapting. We have to work on storing water, regenerating our soil, cooling buildings and protecting people’s homes from becoming uninsurable. A secure future for our country depends on our energy independence, on restored nature and resilient communities, and on meeting our responsibility to our children and young people for a healthier future for generations to come.

I call the Chair of the Select Committee.

The Select Committee has taken evidence on much of what is in the Gracious Speech, and a big part of this debate has been about the threats that we face as a result of the second fossil fuel crisis in five years. I remember the first in 1973: as a six-year-old, candles on the table were fun, but it was not much fun for most of the country. We have repeated that experience multiple times since. We have heard one piece of evidence again and again in the Committee: to address the challenge of the current fossil fuel crisis, the Government must bring down the cost of electricity, to enable the transition away from our dependence on oil and gas.

To support the hon. Gentleman’s argument about the price of electricity, renewable energy is largely generated in Scotland, north Wales and south-west England. We have the highest level of fuel poverty, we have no mains gas, and the suffering caused to those rural areas is remarkable. Until that is improved, we are not in a position to move to an electricity-based economy.

The Government were supportive of heating oil in the recently announced measures precisely for some of the reasons that the hon. Member sets out. We have to address this threat, and we have to transition for reasons of energy security, cost and bringing bills down. Anybody going to the pump now or looking at what their bills are likely to be—I think Martin Lewis was today predicting the latest increase in the price cap—can see what is coming for domestic and business consumers. Ukraine has learned about energy security the hard way, from the Russian attacks on its oil and gas installations, and it has shown us all. We have seen the same in the middle east with the war with Iran. Decentralising and moving away from dependence on oil and gas is key to protecting our energy generation. The economic arguments are strong. The shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), was talking about growth earlier; I ask her just to look at what the Office for Budget Responsibility is saying. The OBR makes the point that the costs of not addressing climate change are significantly more than the costs of making the transition. The Climate Change Committee predicts that, if we do not act, we will see a 7% fall in GDP by 2050. If we really want to be scared, we should listen to the actuaries: they know a thing or two about this, and they predict that global GDP will fall by 50% between 2070 and 2090, with catastrophic consequences across the world, unless we take the action that we need to take. We have to act. The North sea is a super-mature basin, with a fraction left of what was there to start with. We were in a hurry to extract from the North sea. Peak North sea extraction was 1999, with 4.5 million barrels of oil a day. By 2023, after 13 of the Conservatives’ 14 years in office, that had fallen to 1.23 million barrels a day. That is a quarter of its peak production, and it will halve again by 2030. As NESO says, new licences will not make a material difference to capacity or production. Jackdaw, if it is given consent, would provide only 2% of UK demand. Rosebank would account for only 7% of production by 2030 levels. Those fields would not stop the decline, but only slow it.

I thank the hon. Member for giving way. At last, I have finally got to my feet. I am surprised that I was not allowed to intervene earlier, because I agree with much of what has been said, and especially with what the Secretary of State said about renewables and Acorn. Would the hon. Member agree that granting a licence for Jackdaw would be much more environmentally friendly than importing liquefied petroleum gas from Qatar or the USA?

As I have said, the amount we are talking about is very small, compared to the needs of the UK. [Interruption.] The hon. Member might not be so disappointed by what I say next. There is an argument—the Government have done some of this with tiebacks—for continuing to support production in the North sea, because the supply chains in our oil and gas industry will be critical for the development of renewable generation in the North sea and more widely. Some of the workers involved have already moved into sectors such as nuclear. It is important that an agreement with the TUC on the clean jobs plan is pursued. I welcome what the Secretary of State announced about rights in the North sea for renewables. It is key that we enable that transition and give a well-paid future to people working in oil and gas now. I have talked about the opportunities for security. Increased generation and electrification will reduce the reliance on imports of oil and gas. The Secretary of State referred to what will hopefully be in the Bill about optimising the grid, and that will only help with that process, too. Through NESO, the Government have already addressed the issues with the connection queue, which is being cleared. Giving people access to excess renewables, being able to sell back to the grid and encouraging businesses to make greater use of flexibility will only help people to access cheaper energy. The economics add up. The clean energy economy is growing three times faster than the rest of the economy. It is delivering the jobs that the Secretary of State referred to. The warm homes plan, which will be supported by the warm homes agency, will deliver healthier homes to live in and better air quality. It is critical, as I said at the start, that we reduce the price of electricity so that people can take advantage of the technology in the warm homes plan. It is already cheaper, according to Autotrader, to buy a new electric vehicle, and the second-hand market has been cheaper for some time. Enabling more people to drive electric can only help in that transition and in the reduction in our reliance on oil and gas. The Government have to have the confidence to deliver this agenda. They have to have the confidence that they are right that energy independence will come from a move away from oil and gas and towards renewables. They have to make the case to people that they will benefit from investment in their homes, their transport and more widely. I very much support and look forward to debating in detail the energy independence Bill.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who speaks with great authority and talks a lot of good sense. I have to say to Labour Members that a change of Prime Minister will solve nothing. We tried that four times, and it did us no good at all. This King’s Speech should have been an opportunity for fundamental reform, but do the Government have the courage to do that? We Conservative Members suspect that they do not. For too many years, we have concentrated on wealth redistribution, rather than wealth creation, and we are getting poorer and poorer, and less and less able to do the things in the public sector that we want to do. But let me start with a more consensual point, and welcome the Government’s commitment to the nuclear fusion site at West Burton, which is only two miles from the town that I represent. I see that the Minister for Energy is present, and I have talked to him about this. This is fantastic, cutting-edge technology. Only this morning, I received a letter from the West Burton chief executive, who said “At the heart of STEP FUSION is a world-leading technical effort.” Those people who say that Britain is broken should look at the thousands of jobs we are creating, and the millions of pounds-worth of investment. The chief executive thanked us. He said: “The UK is recognised globally for its lead in fusion regulation, having set a proportionate approach comparable to industrial processes through the 2023 Energy Act.” So there we are: we have consensual, working-together, cutting-edge technology. We have heard a bit about solar farms. I visited over 30 villages in my constituency during an open churches festival this weekend, including the village of Fillingham. At Fillingham aerodrome, I saw solar panels being built. Nobody seemed to care that there is a brownfield site to hand, measuring 100 or 200 acres, but there is solar planned for 16,000 acres of prime agricultural land around Gainsborough. I heard what was said earlier by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes). What we need is a moderate approach. From my cottage, I can climb a hill on the Wolds and look across the North sea, and I can see that we are world leaders in offshore wind. That is fair enough, and it is popular, but I am talking about using 16,000 acres of prime agricultural land for solar, with all the profits going to entrepreneurs in London and large landowners.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for what he has said; and I always find his contributions interesting. My Committee heard from the Country Land and Business Association on the subject of solar panels on agricultural land, and its evidence was clear: this does not have the impact that is feared, and is actually often beneficial to farmers in providing them with an alternative revenue stream without affecting their ability to grow crops.

Of course, getting £100,000 a year for owning 100 acres is a wonderful incentive, but is it possible to grow those crops? We are the breadbasket of England. Is it possible to grow wheat and barley where there are solar panels? But I do not want to go on about it; we know the arguments now. As for nationalising British Steel, we do not take an ideological view. Hundreds of my constituents work in British Steel. Greg Clark ran it for nine months, and paid all the wages. I personally am neither for nor opposed to it. However, just nationalising British Steel will not make a difference when we have the highest energy costs in Europe. That is the real problem, and it is the problem that the Government need to address. Let us not get bogged down in the arguments about whether to nationalise. Let us find a private sector buyer. Let us get the workers back into operation, get our blast furnaces moving, and not be over-worried about ideologies. We want to create virgin steel.

My right hon. Friend is making an excellent point about British Steel, where hundreds of my constituents work. Does he agree that in the short term, nationalisation may be the way forward, but in the longer term, we need to get private sector investment into the industry, and the way to achieve that is to reduce energy costs? That is absolutely critical, not just for steel but for so many of our heavy industries.

My hon. Friend is very well respected in his area for the fantastic amount of work that he has done in Scunthorpe. He is constantly holding the Government to account, and indeed working with the Government. We have to do this together to protect our steelmaking capacity, for the sake of our industrial wealth. I agree—we all agree—that the energy independence Bill provides a framework for transitioning the UK energy market away from fossil fuels and towards alternative forms of energy. We have no problem with that; it is sensible in the context of nuclear energy. However, the ideological pursuit of renewables is doing harm, and is at odds with achieving energy security when we have our own fossil-fuel resources in the North sea. It is not a zero-sum game. I do not see the ideological virtue of simply exporting our carbon emissions, which we are doing.

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

No, I must make some progress. I do apologise. I should have thought that we could have a compromise on this. We could have a policy that is sensible, gradually moving away from fossil fuels and gradually becoming a more green-energy economy, but we should not simply export our emissions and set arbitrary dates. As this is a debate on the King’s Speech, I hope you will you forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, if I mention another subject in the short time available to me. When you get to my age, you can say unpopular things; I have not got much longer anyway. [Hon. Members: “Aah!”] I have two minutes! The problem with our country is that we are governing by focus group. What do focus groups want? They want less tax and, of course, better public services. Debt is already 100% of GDP, and within 50 years, because of the triple lock and other benefit increases, it will be 170%. Of course the old vote, but the old have children and grandchildren, and we have a responsibility to younger people in our country. The Government know that the present system is unsustainable. While the average increase in the triple lock measures over the past 13 years—and we brought that in; it was supposed to be a temporary measure, but no party has the courage to change it—has been about 40%, pensions have gone up by over 60%. That is nearly £20 billion of annual additional costs so far, and that will get bigger every year and more unaffordable. The gap is likely to grow to £120 billion, if not more, by 2050, exacerbating the economic crisis. Whoever becomes Prime Minister will have to cope with that. By then, there will be 20% to 25% fewer taxpaying workers—our children and our grandchildren—per pensioner in Britain. Of course we have to care for old people, particularly old people in poverty, and divert resources to them, but we must remember the younger people as well. This is entirely unsustainable. Yes, we want to keep a triple lock, but not the triple lock. We want it to be the average of the three indices, so that the amount does not go up exponentially every year. The Government should do the right thing by the nation, and bring in a measure to that effect. They should make our finances affordable, and those on my party’s Front Bench should not oppose them. We should govern in the national interest. We should make our finances sustainable, and then we really can help the people who are most in need.

His Majesty’s Gracious Speech set out a legislative programme for the Government, including plans to build our national security, our economic security and our energy security. I welcome this agenda, which is consistent with the manifesto on which my hon. Friends and I were elected. I urge all members of the Government to exhibit a relentless urgency, and a focus on delivery of that programme, to ensure that the ambition is matched by its impact. We were elected in 2024 on a mandate for change—for national renewal—after 14 years of decline under the Tories. As for the achievements, there is a great deal that I could focus on, if I had more time, but I want to deal specifically with the national health service, migration—on which there have been very positive announcements recently—the minimum wage increase, and workers’ and renters’ rights. This is a Government who are delivering on their agenda. Despite the prophets of doom on the Opposition Benches, the most recent figures once again show unemployment continuing to fall and the fastest growth in the G7 in the last quarter. So many of the fundamentals are going in the right direction, but anyone who spent time attempting to persuade voters to vote Labour in the recent elections will have been left in no doubt but that our voters remain unconvinced that we are going fast enough or far enough to bring about the change they want. I would like to focus on some specific measures in His Majesty’s Gracious Speech that I particularly welcome. First, on the energy independence Bill, I very much welcome the Government’s action to protect households and industry from global instability by powering forward with clean, home-grown energy to create energy independence and get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster. Both the energy independence Bill and the nuclear regulation Bill will strengthen our resilience to energy price shocks for the long term and bring down the cost of bills for families. As has been said, during the Ukraine crisis the Government at the time paid to subsidise customers’ bills, because we were so dependent on global markets. The intervention that the Government made—politically, I think they had to make it because of the impact in the number of people who would have gone under—cost the British taxpayer £44 billion in a single year. The idea that the response to the further global insecurity of the Iran war is to reduce investment in renewables is quite mad. So I welcome the Government’s two further Bills, and I absolutely support the increase in nuclear that this Government are getting on with after the dither and delay of the previous Government. It was quite remarkable to hear the speech of the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), who on the one hand said the Government have not done enough on nuclear in two years, and on the other hand said that the Government cannot blame the Conservatives for 14 years of inaction, because the previous Government got in the way of it. It was absolutely incoherent. The exchange of letters between the shadow Secretary of State and the chair of the Climate Change Committee, and I encourage everyone to look at them, made it clear that when she voted against allocation round 7, she simply did not understand what she was talking about in terms of the difference between an LCOE—a levelised cost of energy—and contracts for difference. So when she says that we should follow her advice, we should treat that with the greatest of scepticism. I should also say that I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on the need to reduce energy bills far more to help with the cost of living, but also to ease the green transition, benefit consumers and support industry in this country. The King’s Speech also has a clean water Bill, and alongside climate action we do need nature action. Nature is the foundation of our national economic security, and we cannot tackle climate change without restoring nature. The Government made a promise to clean up Britain’s rivers and seas, and I am delighted to see this clean water Bill in the King’s Speech—not only in tackling water industry reform, which is crucial, but in recognising the need to tackle agricultural water pollution and road-based water pollution. I welcome the European partnership Bill, because it is important that we work more closely with our European partners, and I fully support what the Government are doing on apprenticeships, because apprenticeships and greater investment in adult education are absolutely crucial if we are to equip tomorrow’s workers with the skills they need to support industry. So there are many measures in this King’s Speech that can make a real difference—there is also the need to go further and faster—and I look forward to supporting it later.

If we are moving into an era of electric cars—thousands of them, mostly made in China, of course—and if we are moving into an era of artificial intelligence developed in the United States, we will need infinitely more electricity than this country is capable of producing at present. Since the days of the great Walter Marshall, the head of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd at one time, I have been a supporter of nuclear energy. I believe passionately that we have to move much faster towards small nuclear reactors if we are to begin to meet the needs of tomorrow—the needs of our children and our grandchildren. I hope very much that we can unite behind that move. However, in the meantime we have to bridge the gap, and I believe it is sheer folly for this Government not to take advantage of the resource we have in the North sea to help us do that. It is absolute nonsense to buy in fuel from Norway or elsewhere, when we could be producing it from the same sources ourselves, and we should be doing that. Do not tell me that it is a drop in the ocean, because it is an important potential contributor to bridging the gap in our energy needs. Sadly, the Secretary of State is no longer with us. [Interruption.] I take no lessons from a former failed Leader of the Opposition. The Secretary of State, in extremely derisory fashion, spoke of the minimal cost to agricultural land of solar panels. Those solar panels are, in east Kent, covering agricultural land on which was growing bread-making wheat. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) referred to the breadbasket of England. We cannot lose that land, and we do not need to lose it when we have acres of rooftops in public ownership and acres of car parks that could and should be used first. The Secretary of State said that we will have to produce the network to get the future power we need to homes, businesses, hospitals and schools. He implied that that requires a network of pylons right across the United Kingdom. As a grandparent, I am not prepared to see my grandchildren’s future environment sacrificed on the altar of hideous pylons strung up by National Grid simply to meet the desires of its shareholders—we need to remember that it is a private company. We must learn how to underground our cables. It is happening throughout Europe, where they already have overhead cables and are taking them down. National Grid, for example through the Sea Link project, is planning to build in my corner of England a 90 foot high converter station the size of five football pitches. It is being built on marshland, which it has just discovered is wet. That means it will have to import thousands of tonnes of concrete and destroy the whole local environment around it, which includes a nature reserve and a site of special scientific interest. That is not progress; that is selling the family silver. It is selling the environment of our children’s future and we must not do that. We have to strike a balance between meeting our future needs, bridging the gap and protecting our environment. Madam Deputy Speaker, I have 18 seconds left so I will stop there.

I welcome the measures in the King’s Speech on energy security, as on many other issues. The Opposition’s wrong-headed approach would leave us tethered to global markets that we cannot control. They would lock our country out of much-needed jobs and condemn Brits to higher bills. The energy independence and nuclear regulation Bills, in contrast, are further leaps towards the stronger energy security we need. In my speech, I want to tackle an issue—it was actually touched on by the previous speaker, the right hon. Member for Herne Bay and Sandwich (Sir Roger Gale)—which will increasingly drive the amount of energy our country needs to generate: the development and deployment of artificial intelligence. The Government did not bring forward in this King’s Speech our manifesto commitment to “ensure the safe development and use of AI models by introducing binding regulation on the handful of companies developing the most powerful AI models”. Indeed, AI was not mentioned in the speech. The Government have acted decisively on one symptom of the lack of regulation: the widespread production of sexualised images. That, however, followed 3 million such images being generated. Harm was already done, and I underline here the recent comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Yardley (Jess Phillips). The Government have, rightly in my view, launched their sovereign AI fund, supporting innovative start-ups to scale up and generate value here in the UK, including access to compute. I know that many Ministers in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero have been working hard to ensure that the capacity is there to deliver that additional compute. However, when it comes to the design and use of AI systems and models, we have only the AI Security Institute, a world-first, expert-led organisation, but one that lacks statutory powers and has to ask companies politely to engage. Even the Trump Administration now appear to recognise the need for the evaluation of frontier AI models before release. If we are genuinely serious about our country’s economic security, we must devote as much attention to AI and its astonishingly transformative, productive and disruptive potential as we are rightly devoting to energy security and the delivery of home-grown renewables. That will first require working with the EU on digital regulation, and I will push for that to be reflected in the welcome EU partnership Bill. In the briefing pack for the King’s Speech, the Government maintain that nearly one third of UK AI start-up leaders are considering relocating overseas due to regulatory complexity and capital constraints. Given that regulatory complexity will often relate to cross-border issues, the prescription is not deregulation but regulatory co-ordination.

Will the right hon. Member give way?

In order to keep to time, I will not. Capital constraints, and relatedly, constraints in compute, are real. We must recognise that while unilateral measures to support sovereign AI are important, their scope is necessarily limited. We must again work with reliable partners that share our values, not least within the EU. Finally, we must be brave enough to open up the discussion on the fiscal framework for AI. We currently tax labour, the very thing that AI will—in some sectors and in specific ways—displace. We must examine now how we might use the public stake from our sovereign AI investments, or mechanisms such as a token tax or reform to capital gains, as the TUC has suggested, to build up the resources that may be needed. There is potential for significant disruption to the labour market, and we must be more ready for it. Research out today from King’s College London suggests that 69% of workers and 64% of employers are worried about the economic impact of AI-related job losses. A majority of all groups surveyed predicted that AI’s benefits will mainly go to wealthy investors or companies, not workers or society. A majority of all groups also backed Government intervention. If we are to secure the fastest adoption of AI in the G7, as is the Government’s intention, we must deal with those issues too. Our young people will not forgive us if we fail to engage with this generational challenge.

Britain is becoming harder to govern. That is not principally the result of disruptive, destabilising societal change, or even because an increasingly complicated world is creating more uncertainty for all Governments; the problem lies in governance itself. The Prime Minister complains that when he pulls levers in Downing Street, they have less practical effect than he had hoped. Simon Case, on leaving office, put that very clearly. He said that “an increasing number of English devolution settlements, independent quangos and arm’s length bodies, courts, statutory consultees and the like, block the path from what a winning political party promises at an election to what it can then achieve in power.” Successive Governments have delegated power to all kinds of unelected, unaccountable bodies, from the Office for Budget Responsibility to Network Rail, the Environment Agency to all kinds of other quangos, the names of which we barely know—and neither do we know how their memberships are chosen or to whom they are accountable. It is time for a more radical programme than this King’s Speech offers. It is time for Parliament and Government to be more confident about the difference that they can make. The Secretary of State, in opening the debate, talked about economic resilience, and he was right to do so. It is absolutely right that in the age in which we live we need to build greater national economic resilience. But that means facing up to the fact that we manufacture too little of what we consume and we grow too little of the food we need to feed the nation. The sort of economic resilience that he describes requires us to look again at the balance of payments. It is said that Harold Wilson, the then Labour Prime Minister, lost the 1970 election against expectations because there were bad balance of trade figures. No one now speaks of the balance of trade, yet the truth is that we import far more than we did then. In the mid-1980s we grew about 75% of the food we consumed; the import figure is now 40%. It is preposterous that we have lengthened supply lines and, as a result, decreased traceability. We do not really know where much of what we consume is made, or how or by whom it is made. In the far east, there are all kinds of unacceptable conditions that would not be tolerated in this country, and yet we still choose to import large amounts of those kinds of goods. If we really want to build more national economic resilience, let us have a fresh look at the character and shape of our economy. To do that, we will also need to look at productivity. As the Father of House described, it is not good enough for Government to spend endlessly without looking at the value they get from that expenditure. We know that both public sector and private sector productivity has stalled for a considerable time. That is not unique to this country; it is a problem for the whole of western Europe and most modern economies. None the less, we need new measures to focus on productivity, so that what we get for what we spend becomes the issue, not how much we spend as a whole.

My right hon. Friend is giving a good lecture on what needs to happen. What incentives do we need to provide to farmers to grow more and to use their land as effectively as possible, as well as to employers to use their time as effectively as possible, so that we can literally operate on a 24-hour day, three-shift production operation?

Before I deal with that excellent point—I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making it—I remind the House that the current trade deficit is about £25 billion, which would have been unthinkable a generation or two ago. On the question my hon. Friend asks, we have to rebalance the food chain. For too long, major retailers have held a gun to the head of primary and secondary producers. What matters is not the size of the cake, but who is getting what sort of slice of the cake. While major retailers continue to make huge profits, the people who actually grow and make the food have had their livelihoods under persistent pressure for the whole time I have been in this House, and no Government have had the courage to face up to that fact. We need to give more power to the Groceries Code Adjudicator to intervene where sharp practice takes place and to stand up for the hard-working farmers in Lincolnshire—farmers elsewhere, yes, but particularly those in Lincolnshire—who grow so much of the food that we consume across the kingdom. If we are going to build productivity, we have to invest in skills. When I was the Minister for Skills, I am proud to say that we built up apprenticeship starts to around half a million a year. That was still not enough, in my view—I think we should have more apprenticeships than that. Nevertheless, we got it up to about half a million a year, but that has fallen to about 350,000 now. That we have fewer apprenticeship starts than we did then means that we have to re-evaluate what advanced learning looks like. Higher education is all very well, but higher learning matters just as much. Vocational, practical and technical skills both deliver for the economy, because they satisfy economic need, and give a chance for fulfilment to people whose aptitudes, tastes and talents lie in that direction. To build productivity, we need to invest in skills. That is the kind of radical programme—boosting productivity, tackling the trade deficit and building skills—that I had hoped to see. I implore the Government to address those kinds of issues in the common interest, for the national good, for the common good, in the national interest.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), who made a characteristically interesting speech. I agree very much on the need to improve our investment in productivity and skills. I will start by making a very brief tribute to Suzannah Reeves, Joanna Midgley, John Hacking and Angela Gartside, four councillors in my constituency who lost their seats in the elections last week, not because they were not excellent councillors—every single one of them was a brilliant councillor, deeply rooted in their community—but because the public wanted to give the Government a kicking. Perhaps, on that basis, I should apologise to them for the loss of their seats. I think that loss is because as a Government—this is not aimed at any individual; this is collectively—we have not communicated the really good work that we did in the last Session, laying the foundations for this country’s recovery. This King’s Speech is packed with measures to carry on that work, do the same and move forward faster, such as the energy independence Bill, as the Secretary of State has set out. The move to clean power is absolutely key not just to build the green industry and green jobs of the future, but to deliver the climate commitments that so many people in my patch in south Manchester care about. I am conscious that I have limited time, so I will focus on some of the measures that will make a big difference to my constituents in Manchester Withington. I strongly welcome the northern powerhouse Bill. When HS2 was cancelled, it was a real kick in the teeth for people in the north. We were looking for that link between the northern economy and the south-east. Notwithstanding the shambolic planning and delivery that the Secretary of State set out earlier by HS2 Ltd, overseen by the then Government, it was a real shame that it was cancelled. But we have always argued in the north that Northern Powerhouse Rail is actually more important. Getting that east-west connectivity across the great cities of the north will drive our economy and make us able to thrive and compete on a global scale, so I am pleased that the Government have set out the Bill for Northern Powerhouse Rail. I want to make two points. First—maybe I am the first to do this in respect of the new Bill—can I make a plea? We need that underground through station at Manchester Piccadilly as part of that delivery. It is expensive, but anything else will be a false economy. That will be the way that we drive connectivity across the cities of the north, which we need to do. Secondly, can I get some early clarity on the route? The route proposed from Manchester airport to the city of Manchester at Piccadilly is under my constituency, as previously proposed, and there was some controversy and discussion about the site’s vent shafts. I will not get into that detail now, but it is important that we give our constituents early details and an early opportunity to have their voices heard. I want to speak briefly about the overnight visitor levy Bill because it has taken some criticism from a number of places over the last couple of weeks. Manchester has had an overnight visitor levy since 2023 and—believe it or not—the sky has not fallen in. We are still the third most visited city in the UK. The key point is it is permissive; it is not an obligation. I am sure that many of us visit cities across Europe and the US, and the visitor tax we see in those cities has never put me off, even in my impoverished interrailing days. It will not stop people wanting to visit a city like Manchester. It drives investment into the destinations, which makes them more attractive to visitors. In my constituency, the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill will be hugely welcome. Too many leaseholders have been trapped in the system with spiralling charges, opaque management and limited rights over their own homes. Our excellent Housing Minister is already making a difference on that, and I am pleased to see that coming forward. Likewise, the social housing Bill will make a big difference. Since I became an MP in 2015, the biggest issue in my inbox has been housing, and it is important that we can expand house building. Briefly, I want to mention the ticket touting Bill. In my role in the all-party parliamentary group on ticket abuse, I have realised that ticket touts costs approximately £400,000 every single day, intensifying cost of living pressures for households across the UK. It is great that the Government have set out a draft Bill, but it is disappointing that it is only a draft Bill. It is important to get this right, but I urge the Government to bring that forward as quickly as possible. I will end on a positive note. I have dealt with GOV.UK One Login on several occasions in recent times, and digital access to services is making a big difference already. Let’s ignore the conspiracy theorists and get on with the digital access to services Bill to improve our services for everybody.

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Manchester Withington (Jeff Smith). Something I find less pleasurable—indeed, I detest it—is the use of the phrase in our discourse that “Britain is broken”. I hate that phrase because it is not true. I wonder if we could reflect on how damaging and intoxicating the opium of nostalgia is. It is not like a wistful nostalgia, harmless and benign, used by commentators and politicians; it is an angry, aggressive and malign form of nostalgia. The reality—let’s open up and be honest about this—is that there was never a golden age, and the idea that somehow everything in the past is better and today it is all rotten and broken is utterly poisoning our democracy and discourse. The only things that were better about the past are that the music was better and we were younger. Let us not fall for witless, unpatriotic guff about Britain being in terminal decline. We are a wonderful people with a history strong and rich and resources second to none. We are not broken, but we must be better. A wise Government would acknowledge our challenges, strengthen our alliances with NATO and the Commonwealth, and reconnect with Europe, not least on energy security. John Maynard Keynes famously said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?” Members do not need to love everything about the European Union to know that our security and sovereignty now obviously depend on deepening and widening our alliances. We need to see Europe as the third bloc alongside the US and China; if we are detached from it, we are not safe. Our security also involves looking internally on energy and food security. Over the past few weeks, the energy market has been in the eye of the storm, with the loss of 14.4 million barrels of crude oil a day.

Food prices have become the biggest pressure on family budgets, and our food system is failing households, farmers and the economy alike. It is clear that a good food Bill is a glaring missed opportunity to back British farmers and improve public health, so does my hon. Friend agree that we cannot have food security without energy security, and that the Government must set out a national food strategy to support that?

I strongly support my hon. Friend’s food security Bill, and I will come to that in a moment. The loss of Gulf crude oil output since Donald Trump’s war began has been partly offset by draining stockpiles and other temporary reliefs. In the developed world, prices have risen and crippled many communities that I represent in Westmorland, as well communities across the whole country. So far, we have yet to run out, but the International Energy Agency warned just last week that oil inventories are being depleted at a record pace. Governments, companies and consumers therefore need to be ready. Are we? I do not think so. Energy security is now utterly urgent. If I cannot convince hon. Members of all the science that points to the need to tackle the catastrophic blight of human-made climate change, surely I can convince them that our energy security rests on domestically produced renewable energy: Putin cannot turn off the sun, the wind or our waves. Surely we should therefore rejoin the European international energy market and invest massively in the national grid. It is vital that we recognise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) wisely said, the importance of food security in all this. The United Kingdom is only 55% food secure. The outsourcing of our agriculture has become a national security liability. We need more short, diversified food chains, with more incentives to primary producers to grow food domestically. The problem is that England is now the only country in the United Kingdom and the only country in Europe that does not provide support for farmers to produce food. Perhaps we can agree that back in 2020, when the previous Government was drawing up the environmental land management scheme, which this Government adopted, that that was how things felt at the time. But the facts have changed. It is time to change our mind, and back our farmers to produce the food that we need. Food prices are projected to be 50% higher in November this year than they were in 2021. Agricultural inflation is double regular inflation, and is therefore feeding through to food inflation, which will harm our communities. We live against the backdrop of uncertainty. The technological and geopolitical shifts that we are living through include the threat to the very future of NATO, as well as Russian and Chinese aggression. Our energy, food and military resilience matters more now than it ever has before. We are fools if we do not respond. We are not a broken country. We are a brilliant country. But we are a vulnerable country. We should not be energy insecure or food insecure, should not have the smallest Army we have had in 200 years, and should not be decoupled from our allies in Europe, but the good news is that we can fix all those things if we have the will. That will mean uncomfortable choices and changed stances for many, but the facts have changed, so we need to change our minds.

I am really pleased to speak in this debate on the Gracious Speech. This Government were elected to deliver change. For too long in my community we felt at best ignored and at worst left behind. Decisions taken in Whitehall and Westminster did not address the challenges we faced, and investment and opportunities did not reach us. Frankly, Westminster did not hear us. The measures in the last King’s Speech began to change that: the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 brings decisions closer to home; the changes to the Green Book give us a fair go at securing the investment that we deserve; breakfast clubs and free school meals do not just set children up for the day but give them the best start in life; and we are starting the process of bringing buses back into public control. Meanwhile, public services are showing signs of recovery following 14 years of austerity. This King’s Speech builds on that, but we must deliver more, and we must deliver it faster. Today’s debate is rightly about energy. I recently visited the port of Blyth in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blyth and Ashington (Ian Lavery), where I heard about their vision and the jobs and opportunities that the renewables sector is already bringing. We have been at the mercy of repeated international crises, underlining why we must secure energy independence to protect people across the country. Previous Governments did not move quickly enough, and we are paying the price. My region is leading the way to building clean, renewable energy and energy security. New seabed sites off our coast can unlock at least 6 GW of offshore capacity. That means billions of pounds of investment coming to our region, creating jobs and opportunity. In my constituency, the West Hartford business park, with support from Arlington and the port of Blyth, will unlock 2,000 jobs and more than £400 million of local investment. The Moor Farm roundabout upgrades—never knowingly not mentioned by me—adds to the sense of possibility, acting as a gateway to growth across the north-east. We are building futures. The energy central campus at Blyth and the energy academy in Wallsend are training a new generation of skilled workers for the industries of the future. When Opposition parties talk down clean energy, they are talking down opportunity. Opposing this clean energy drive could cost up to 17,000 jobs in our regional renewables sector. Opposition Members should level with my communities about what their plans would mean for those people’s jobs and families. The energy independence Bill will take us further, and I want my region at the very heart of it. As a Labour and Co-operative MP, I am proud that we are delivering community energy and the local power plan, which will ensure that by 2030 every community can benefit from a local energy project. This will transform our energy future and give communities a stake in clean, affordable power. Let me turn to a few other measures in the Gracious Speech. Since being elected, I have championed the rights of leaseholders and freeholders, which is a huge issue in my community. In the ’60s new towns of Cramlington and Killingworth, many homes were built as leasehold, and too many are now trapped without the protections they deserve. Similarly, many new build estates—although some of them have been around for over a decade, pushing the definition of new build—still have not been adopted. I know that Ministers are passionate about ending these injustices and putting the protections that are needed in place once and for all. I would like to see us building on the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson) on ticket touting. Since being elected, I have worked alongside the Co-operative party to call for action to tackle ticket touts and price gouging for culture, music and sport events. Fans are at the heart of events, whether gigs, matches or shows, and too often they are robbed of the opportunity to go or are ripped off through price surging and touts buying and reselling tickets. There are many other Bills in this programme that I support and that will make a real difference in my community. On housing, education, national security and immigration, this King’s Speech is a programme to build on the change that has already been delivered, to go further and faster and to extend opportunity to communities such as mine. At the heart of this programme are measures to improve people’s lives and provide the good jobs and opportunities of the future. It is now time to get on with delivering this change. I look forward to supporting these measures.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cramlington and Killingworth (Emma Foody). As a scientist by background, I welcome the cross-party agreement on nuclear power forming a key part of our energy supply for the future. That was not always the case. There was certainly opposition to nuclear power previously on the Labour Benches, as indeed there was among Liberal Democrat Back Benchers, so I am delighted that we have agreement on this positive way forward. The key is ensuring a mixed economy in energy supply. I welcomed the use of solar power on the roof of the Aspire leisure centre adjacent to the Royal National Orthopaedic hospital, which was granted by the previous Conservative Government. The centre and the hospital are supplied by that solar energy, which also contributes towards the grid. That is welcome news, but I cannot understand why the Government will not agree to exploit the North sea to a further extent. That would not come on stream straight away, but surely we must think about it for the future. Let me cover one or two other areas. The Vagrancy Act 1824 is coming to an end, but we still require from the Government the necessary statutory instrument to make that happen—there was no commitment in the King’s Speech. Can we see that? On the social housing renewal Bill, the Government’s ambition is huge but timid. We must go faster and further to provide the much-needed social housing required in this country, which has not been built for more than 30 years. We live in a dangerous world. With the war in Ukraine causing energy price hikes, we must think about what that has done to the windfall from the petrol pumps going to the Treasury. At the same time, we have a fragile truce in the middle east, the civil war in Sudan, in which more people are being killed than in any other conflict, and half a million Christians in Nigeria have been massacred by Islamists. This is the sad reality. I was absolutely appalled that on 7 October 2023, after the attempt by Hamas to commit genocide against the people of Israel, we saw people celebrating on our streets. We have subsequently turned a blind eye to the hate marches that have assembled 100 yards away from a synagogue in London at midday, just as the Shabbat services were coming to an end. That has continued for week after week, and the congregation have been intimidated while going about their lawful business. The Prime Minister has quite rightly talked about combating antisemitism, but words are not enough; we need action now. A blind eye was turned to the Hamas and Hezbollah flags in those marches. A deaf ear was cocked to the phrase, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, which means the destruction of the state of Israel. Equally, a deaf ear was cocked to the phrase, “Globalise the intifada”. What have we seen as a result? Jewish businesses and restaurants have been attacked, synagogues have been attacked, and we now see Jewish people on the streets being attacked purely because of their religion. That is absolutely unacceptable. We have to start somewhere, so I welcome the decision by the Government to bring forward legislation on proscribing the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is long overdue. I have led the campaign for that in Parliament for many years, but we must go further. Why is the Iranian ambassador still here? He should be kicked out. The embassy should be closed down, and all the so-called diplomats should be refused entry to this country. Iran is the head of the snake that controls all the terrorism in the middle east, and we must recognise that.

There is one thing the Government have not done that they could do, which I know the hon. Gentleman would like to happen, as would I and many others in this House. There are assets in London owned by the Iranian Government, and it is well known where they all are. Does he feel, as I do, that here in London, where we have some control, it is time that those assets were taken away from Iran?

The assets of the IRGC and the despotic regime in Iran must be sequestrated and brought into use for the people of this country. There are 11 well-known properties—detached houses—owned by this despotic regime that are not used at the moment. They could be used for homeless families and Brits who need somewhere to live, but we do not take the necessary action. As I have raised previously, we have 13 charities that get their funding from Iran. They have their headquarters in the UK, and they are banned in Arab countries. Why are they allowed to exist and spread their poison? We must also go further on university campuses. Vice-chancellors have a duty to protect Jewish students, but they do not carry out that duty. Perhaps we could start in our schools by teaching our children the true history of the middle east. In 1948, the Arab countries tried to prevent Israel from being set up and encouraged and almost forced the Arabs to leave the state of Israel so that they could go in and kill everyone. Israel won that war, and no one has forgiven it since. We can also look to 1967 and 1973, when Israel fought wars once again to protect itself. The sad fact is that that is not taught in our schools. We need to understand that if we do not educate our children in the right way, propaganda will unfortunately be allowed to grow. Why was one of our Labour colleagues banned from going into a school in his constituency solely because he is Jewish? That cannot be acceptable. Words are not enough; we need prompt, firm action to root out antisemitism and anti-Jewish hatred once and for all.

Will the hon. Lady give way?

Last week in the Gracious Speech, the Government pledged to introduce a new Representation of the People Bill. Constitutional issues such as the electoral system can seem far removed from people’s daily lives, but that could not be further from the truth. With a better electoral system, politicians and parties will be more focused on the issues that really matter to voters. Electoral reform is a necessary step to ensure a fairer society with better schools, better hospitals, safer communities, clean air and clean water. The Representation of the People Bill has the potential to be the latest chapter in the evolution of our democracy. Ours is a proud history of a franchise that has expanded across the generations, extending the vote to an ever broader base of people. From the Great Reform Act 1832 to the Representation of the People Act 1918, which granted the right of voting to women, to the Representation of the People Act 1969, which made the UK the first democracy to give votes to everyone aged 18 and above, this is a story of progress and we should continue it. I welcome that the Government are continuing this trend with votes for 16 and 17-year-olds. When I trained 16 and 17-year-old recruits in the regular Army, some of them were bound months later to serve in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan, which they did. If 16-year-olds can join our armed forces and pay tax, they deserve a voice in how both of those are used. The new Representation of the People Bill has the potential to occupy a place in the pantheon of progressive extensions to the franchise. By contrast, our current system of first past the post enables parties to turn a small plurality of votes into a massive majority of seats, and 2024 showed that at its worst. The general election of ’24 was the most disproportionate in modern British history. Turnout was the second lowest since records began in 1885; less than 60% of the electorate cast a vote. They were unconvinced and uninspired by both Labour and the Conservatives. Labour won one third of the vote, Labour won two thirds of the seats and Labour won three thirds of the levers of power. The 2024 general election result was a direct consequence of the first-past-the-post voting system. This winner-takes-all approach threatens to reward populists who thrive in divisive and adversarial politics. I speak not in relation to our party political self-interest here in the Liberal Democrats. We were delivered a result that was proportionate to the votes cast. Yet I look around me at the MPs from Reform UK or from the Green party; if the 2024 general election had been conducted under the additional member system of proportional representation, Reform UK would now have 94 MPs sitting on these Benches and the Green party would have 42. Instead, they have five and four respectively. The disparity between votes cast and seats won adds significantly to the disillusion that many of us will have heard on the streets of the UK when we were out there campaigning in the local elections earlier this month.

Is not the biggest problem with first past the post that often people are voting against rather than for someone? That poisons our democracy, because everyone ends up with someone who they do not want.

My hon. Friend is spot on. I accept that former Labour voters vote for me to keep out the Tories and Reform, and former Conservative voters vote for me to keep out Labour and the Green party. That is not the system that we want. We want a system where people can vote positively for change, with hope. It is little wonder that the only other European country besides the UK that elects its Parliament in this way is Belarus. If first past the post continues, we could see just 30% of votes bringing in a Government with extremist ideas. I want to see a proportionate, not a disproportionate, number of MPs for Reform UK and the Green party. I do not agree with those parties on universal access, on defence or on immigration. On universal access, Reform UK talks about tax breaks for people who opt out of the NHS, while the Green party talks about bringing in a basic income for everybody, with no conditions. One wants to strip us of universal healthcare; the other wants to have taxpayers paying for universal income. On defence, we see Reform UK apologising for Putin’s aggression against Ukraine and the Green party pledging to dismantle the UK’s nuclear weapons; one is lowering the Ukrainian flag over town halls that it controls while the other would hoist a white flag over defence establishments in this country. On immigration, whether it is the Green party threatening to end proper controls on—

Order. Can I encourage the hon. Gentleman to return to at least some of the substance of His Majesty’s Gracious Address?

Madam Deputy Speaker, these parties do not represent the moderate majority, but with as little as 30% of the vote at the next general election, they could control all the levers of power. First past the post is unfair and unrepresentative, and it undermines the legitimacy of our elections. I urge the Government not to prolong the disenchantment, the apathy and the hopelessness. People are fed up with being told to vote for the lesser evil. The Representation of the People Bill is this Government’s opportunity to get it right.

I agree with every word that the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord) has just said about first past the post and proportional representation. It is Labour party policy, and it unites the left and the right of the Labour party. I think it is probably one of the few things that my hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Luke Akehurst) and I work together on passionately. If colleagues on the Government Benches think that first past the post was great for us in the last election, then just wait till the next one. Proportional representation is the right thing to do. It is the most democratic thing to do. It is also the best thing to do in our own self-interest. Our party came into government against a backdrop of the deindustrialisation, privatisation and austerity that, over the course of decades, have bled this country dry. That backdrop has left millions of people in abject poverty in the fifth richest country in the world, and millions more struggling to get by. Of course, people are enraged by the state of our society, but grifting far-right politicians declaring war on minority groups are exploiting this rage to sow division. They are funded by many of the people who cause these problems in the first place and who want us to punch down so that we do not look up at them. This threat is on our streets and in our political system, from the “Unite the Kingdom” rally, mocking Muslim women and calling for mass deportations, including of British citizens, to the Reform councillors celebrating the rape of a Sikh woman and saying that Nigerians should be melted down to fill potholes. Unless we want these people running this country, we have to get our act together. I want to be clear that this is not a criticism of the Secretary of State, who I think has done an excellent job in his role, particularly against some of the flat-earthers in the Opposition parties. However, while we have done some good things in government, including improving workers’ and renters’ rights, creating GB Energy and increasing funding to local councils, the fact is that we have not delivered change at the pace and scale that voters expect. There is also far too much that this Government have got wrong, such as attempting to limit jury trials and cutting benefits for disabled people, and their failures over the genocide in Gaza. These mistakes, and the refusal to learn from them, are fuelling the collapse of the two-party system and the rise of a multi-party political landscape, but the leadership’s strategy to stop Reform has just reinforced the narrative that immigration is what is wrong with our society. Not only is that completely at odds with Labour values, but it has also been a complete electoral disaster. We have smashed apart our own voter coalition, and as we haemorrhage votes to the Greens, we are also delivering seats to Reform. I refuse to put a positive spin on the last two years, because I want us to be better. We have to face unpleasant facts. I know it is painful. It is painful for all of us, because we all believe in the potential of a Labour Government. We all understand what is at stake here, and I know that colleagues who disagree with this analysis also genuinely want to improve people’s lives and stop a far-right Government, but I am afraid the argument that we can achieve this by sticking to a failed political strategy just does not hold water. This Labour Government need a total reset to show that they are listening, that they understand what they got wrong and that they have a clear plan to change, but their response to a catastrophic performance in the local elections has been to double down on the incrementalism that we have seen thus far, and that is what we see again in this King’s Speech. While there are positives, including the Hillsborough law, measures for Ukraine and a commitment to ban conversion practices, it is clear to most of us that they are not enough. We should be taking much bolder measures to tackle the cost of living crisis and rebalance the economy so that it works for working-class people. Let me give just two examples: rent controls, so that housing costs are affordable and people are not priced out of their communities; and nationalising utilities, to prioritise public need over private profit and bring down bills. We need to do that at the same time as unashamedly standing up for the full diversity of the working class—wherever people were born, whatever the colour of their skin, their religion, their sexuality or gender identity, whether they are disabled or not, and whether they are in work or not. Tinkering around the edges was never going to cut it.

I agree with so much of what my hon. Friend is saying. We need to be ambitious, and we need to be looking at the big picture and fixing systems as well as situations. Like her, I want to see us being far more ambitious from here onward. The headings of the Bills in the King’s Speech offer huge potential for us to do things that are far more transformative and meaningful, and address the root causes of many of the problems we face. Does she agree that if the Government take a radical, different approach to working through the Bills in this King’s Speech, there is a chance to deliver the kind of change we have been hoping for?

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. It would probably be best not to have a candid discussion about this in the Chamber. Yes, the King’s Speech provides headings, but I am afraid that is all they are—they are hints at what we need; they are not the sum of it. It is not that the change has been promised but I do not believe it is coming. It has not been promised. We are doubling down on the mistakes we have made. What we have heard from the Prime Minister is, “We’ve done great things in government. You just haven’t realised it yet.” Tinkering around the edges was never going to cut it. Chasing the far right on immigration was never going to work. If we do not learn these lessons now, it will be too late. We will be squandering the generational opportunity of a Labour Government to transform this country for the better, and we will be allowing the far right to win, and I refuse to sit here quietly and let that happen.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), because she made a very important point at the end. She is right: this is a very underwhelming King’s Speech. There are some welcome headlines, but the fact is that the ambition is very diminished. The reason for that—and she represents it—is that the Labour party is fundamentally split. It is unable to move forward boldly in any direction that is needed. I do not make personal accusations. I know what it is like; I sat on the Government Benches in the last Parliament, supporting a Government who were also fatally split and unable to move forward. This is the consequence of the politics that we are in. By the way, I welcome the eloquent and elegant repudiation of her previous position by the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho). She made an excellent speech about the difficulty of the Government’s policy, and she is now in the right place. Across the board, and particularly on the topic of energy security, we see bold ambition and the right statements being made, particularly about energy independence and resilience, but the detail that follows is utterly underwhelming. In this area, we see a decision not to exploit the enormous opportunities of the reserves we have in the North sea. We should all welcome the aspiration of energy independence, including eventually to reap the huge benefits of the abundant natural resources that we should be using for energy, but I am afraid we are not going to get there this way. Likewise, in other crucial areas of national priority—defence being the main one—we hear the right language about the need for investment. We hear about the need to recover our defences, which have been sadly depleted over many decades. We have a chronic weakness in our national defences, and yet we still have no defence investment plan and no clarity on where the money will be spent or even where it will come from. I represent a military constituency with many amazing tech and military firms that are developing the kit we need for our defences. They are laying off staff as we speak, because the money is not promised and it is not available to them. It is scandalous: in all sectors where the United Kingdom has real current and enormous potential advantages, the high-tech sectors of fintech, agri-tech and AI—areas that, thanks to Brexit, we are able to drive ahead on, boldly and independently—we are being hobbled by a lack of ambition and a chronic inability to release the talents and opportunities there. I was going to intervene earlier on the right hon. Member for Oxford East (Anneliese Dodds), who was bewailing the exit of UK tech entrepreneurs in the AI space and saying that we should be more like Europe in that regard. Those entrepreneurs are not leaving the United Kingdom to go to the EU; they are going to the middle east, the United States or the far east, because those countries have a pro-tech industrial policy, and that is what we need in our country. I have been meeting a bunch of businesses recently—we are on a bit of a prawn cocktail operation in the Reform party, and it is amazing which businesses want to come and talk to us at the moment. It is very encouraging, but they are all depressed about the state of the economy. Yesterday, an AI entrepreneur said to me, “If we are not careful, this country’s economy will simply be US tourism.” That is all we will be able to offer, because we are driving away all the entrepreneurs and businesses that represent opportunities for growth in future. Last week I was talking to a pharmaceutical firm that is now exiting to Europe—to Switzerland, in fact. This morning I saw a company developing the technology for small modular nuclear reactors. They are giving up and going to the United States. We are driving away the talent that we need for the future. I am enthused by the opportunities that our high-tech sectors represent and what we could be doing, but there is also the ordinary economy. Labour used to talk a lot about that—indeed, some years ago the Chancellor wrote a book called “The Everyday Economy”—and it is a vital focus for us. But what are we doing for businesses that are the backbone of our highstreets—both national businesses and small and medium-sized businesses? We are ramping costs on to them through national insurance contributions and business rates. For small businesses the VAT threshold is way too high, inhibiting growth and job creation. A Government who want growth and productivity are going in directly the opposite direction. I end with a plea to Ministers: I extol and applaud their aspiration for a clean transition, but right now we are in a national emergency, and we need to crowd in every possible source of electricity that we have to get our economy growing. That includes nuclear and it includes fossil fuels.

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I thank the Energy Secretary for making another clear case for the energy transition. I welcome the energy independence Bill, which will be one of the most significant and pragmatic pieces of legislation that we seek to work on in this Parliament and is directly entwined with our national security. Energy independence sets us free from the energy cost chaos caused by Putin’s erratic warmongering and is another step that enables us to stand in strong solidarity with the people of Ukraine. The stabilisation of our energy security will enable us to work on Jo Cox’s agenda of progressive internationalism, by improving our capacity to be a force for good—the 10th anniversary of her tragic murder is coming up shortly. On Jo’s progressive internationalism, I am also proud to see the European partnership Bill, and I welcome the youth mobility scheme. Many of my constituents will be able to take advantage of that, so I am keen to see even more progress in our European relations, including freedom for European musical acts to tour Europe and visa-free travel. I also hail the power of rail, with delivery of a fair deal for the north of England, something that was sadly neglected during the 14 years of Conservative Government prior to 2024, and the northern powerhouse rail Bill, a scheme announced and then cancelled by the previous Conservative Government. That said, there is more work to be done on the clean water Bill to ensure that we establish true water resilience for our national and energy security. We must ensure that the Bill does not tie us into a failed, privatised system owned by overseas actors. The only route to our security is through mutual ownership. In England, we should have a system like the one in Wales, where the people own the water company—notably different from 1970s-style nationalisation. As we know, nationalisation is at the mercy of any future Government who might seek to privatise the sector again, whereas mutual ownership puts the public first, with local people making key decisions about their water supply systems. We should have mutual ownership of the entire water industry, which would ensure a stable and secure future for our water systems. The public must have a say in the future of our water, with genuinely clean waterways that are publicly owned and secure for the future of the nation. Restoring waterways and nature is not separate from national security—it underpins it. My amendment (g) on today’s Order Paper recognises that functioning and healthy ecosystems reduce flood risk, protect our homes, hospitals and transportation systems from overheating, sustain soils to be able to grow food, and clean the air we breathe. The UK’s key ecosystems are every bit as vital as our roads, energy grid and water networks, yet we continue to treat them as an afterthought. As the Treasury-commissioned Dasgupta review has made clear, we undervalue the natural assets that our economy and security depend on. By legislating for a strategic nature network and recognising it as national infrastructure, we can restore, connect and maintain a system of key functional ecosystems that strengthens our national security, protects communities and builds resilience across the UK. Other Members have mentioned the prospect of electoral reform through the Representation of the People Bill. We have just seen local council elections in which a councillor was elected on 20.5% of the vote, even lower than the lowest percentage at the last general election. Candidates are winning with increasingly low percentages of the vote as we move to a five-party system in England and a six-party system in Scotland and Wales. We need a national conversation and to think about this issue clearly for the long-term future of our country, so I will be tabling an amendment to the Representation of the People Bill that would establish a national commission for electoral reform. I urge the Government to set one up so that we can take clear actions to ensure the future of our voting system and its integrity. I am sure that those on the Treasury Bench have heard what I have had to say about amendment (g) and the need to consider nature as infrastructure. I am content not to press it, knowing that the spirit of the amendment has been heard and taken on by the Government.

The security and price of energy affect every household, individual and business in every constituency, up and down the country. It is a matter that concerns everyone. That is why, when the Secretary of State was in opposition, he promised during the last election to cut household energy bills by £300. Instead, in government, he has presided over a £200 increase in those bills. That is his record as he sets his sights on his next job, the job he so desperately craves: replacing the Prime Minister. He is also the Secretary of State who has set up GB Energy, which will not produce any energy, will cost taxpayers £8 billion and, as its own chief executive says, will take something like 20 years to employ just 1,000 people. There is nothing in the King’s Speech that will secure the country’s energy supply, bring down energy costs or create the jobs and investment that the Government have promised. As we have heard from Members across this House, there is a consensus—there is unity. We all want to decarbonise energy use, but Conservative Members will not support doing so at the expense of families, households and individuals, particularly those who are hard up and least able to pay. This is not a binary choice, where we are either pro-decarbonisation or against it; we can be for it, yet understand that the security of energy supply and household energy bills must come first. What country in the world would run headlong into an ideological experiment for the sake of it, leaving hard-up citizens behind? No country in the world. This country should not, and this Government should not either.

Many of these problems have been put in the “too difficult” box for too long; they are long term and difficult to fix. Does the hon. Member at least acknowledge that the Government’s investment through the national wealth fund of £600 million into small modular reactors is a real step forward and will bring people’s bills down in the long term?

I accept that there are some difficult questions in and around this whole area of debate. The truth remains that no Government have done more to decarbonise the economy and to bring forward green technology than the last Conservative Government, but we would not do that at the expense of hard-working families. The bonkers green tax agenda that this Government are peddling is harming the debate on decarbonising the economy. I will give an example of that.

I am comfortable with accepting that there has been a growing consensus about decarbonising our energy system over a period of time, starting with the Climate Change Act 2008, which only a handful of Conservative MPs voted against. However, I am puzzled that hon. Member thinks that the last Tory Government did that without any burden on the taxpayer or on bills, when the so-called energy savings package that Liz Truss put in place cost £44 billion and has left this country in profound debt.

I acknowledge that the last Government made mistakes—I do not have a problem with that—but that is not an excuse for the hon. Lady’s Government to do even worse for hard-up working families. Bonkers green taxes harm the debate, and I will give this House an example. UK emissions trading scheme levies on the maritime sector are levied on ferry companies. My constituents on the Isle of Wight rely on those ferry companies to access things that everyone else takes for granted: health, education, jobs and seeing friends and family. Next month, someone can travel across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, taking their car on one return trip, for £511. That is for a five-mile return crossing. The Government, instead of helping us—they say they will help, and I am still holding out hope that they will—will in July levy a carbon emission tax on the Fishbourne to Portsmouth route that the ferry company cannot avoid. It cannot decarbonise its ferries and go electric, because there is no grid charging capacity in Portsmouth harbour. There is no grid charging capacity in Southampton either. These are not strange little harbours—they are the naval base of the United Kingdom and one of the biggest export container ports respectively—yet there is not the grid capacity to charge an Isle of Wight ferry. The ferries will pay, however, and guess what: they have passed on that charge to consumers and my constituents.

Will the hon. Member give way?

I will give way to the hon. Lady to try again.

Specifically on the Southampton point, it was under the Tory Government that the Labour-run Southampton council wanted to clean up and install that grid connection to be able to decarbonise shipping in that port and specifically to tackle air quality in that city. The Tories had 14 years, and they did nothing.

I gently say to the hon. Lady that the reason her Government are in such a mess and polling at under 20% is that she and her colleagues think that the universal excuse for her Government’s inaction is to blame a previous Government. She won that argument at the last election, and since then her Government have done nothing. Southampton will have that grid-charging capacity for boats in the mid-2030s, yet the Government are bringing in a charge in July this year. Do you know what the irony is, Madam Deputy Speaker? One of those ferries has batteries on board. It is a hybrid boat that can use batteries to cross the Solent and not burn fossil fuels, but it is being charged because it cannot use its batteries, because it has nowhere to plug into. The EU is bringing in that charge and ringfencing the money it receives from its emissions trading system to invest in grid capacity in ports—but not the UK Government; they are taking the money, shoving it into the Treasury and making no promises about investing in grid capacity. That is not the last Government; it is this Government. I say to those on the Government Front Bench that these bonkers green levies make no sense, harm ordinary people and undermine the entire case for their green agenda.

For more and more UK households and businesses, the monthly energy bill is one of their largest bills, and it is increasing. That is largely due to rising international oil and gas prices, which in turn have been exacerbated by the recent war in Iran. It is for exactly that reason that for too long we have been energy insecure. Energy security is needed to give us cost of living security. If we get this right, we can cut bills, cut emissions and cut our dependence on volatile foreign oil and gas markets, all at the same time. I have not yet heard a single argument from Conservative Members—including the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East (Joe Robertson)—about why continued dependence on those markets is a good idea, as opposed to a driver of price shocks and increases. For most of the past 50 years the UK has been a net importer of electricity, much of it coming through interconnectors such as the one in my constituency. The growth in British renewables is at long last, and rightly, being pushed forward by this Government, and that is starting to reduce our heavy reliance on imported energy and fossil fuels. Last year our energy production was the most British and the most clean that it has been for years. Under this Labour Government, energy production has defied the doubters who decry the decline of North sea oil and gas, and who urge us to open new fields.

I just want to make sure that everyone is clear that the hon. and learned Gentleman is talking about electricity, rather than energy. He is talking about the power that makes up just 20% of our energy mix, not the oil and gas that makes up 75% of it. The two are very different.

Interestingly, the hon. Lady has come up with no justification for continuing to be in hock to the international oil and gas markets, so my argument that that is not a good idea has been reinforced by her intervention. I want us to be energy independent and, eventually, energy dominant, exporting our energy around the world, generating more revenue for the Treasury, creating more jobs here at home and helping to fix our current account deficit. The new energy security Bill rightly seeks to hardwire in strong consumer protections, a stronger watchdog and a more flexible, modern grid. Giving Ofcom a clearer duty to protect households, changing the way in which support is targeted at low-income and vulnerable families, and making local grids smarter so that people can benefit from cheaper off-peak energy are not technical tweaks; they are issues on the frontline of the fight against fuel poverty. The vast majority of my constituents in Folkestone, Hythe and Romney Marsh want to tackle climate change and lower energy bills, and they want Britain to be energy independent. The best way of achieving all those objectives is to deliver a balanced energy mix, and to ensure that savings and opportunities reach people’s front doors. That means introducing a serious warm homes programme, upgraded insulation, modern heating systems, and clear duties for landlords so that renters are not left shivering in leaky homes while their landlords take all the profits. Solar finance has evolved to the point where there can be no excuse not to have a solar panel on every domestic rooftop, which could allow tenants as well as landlords to benefit from lower bills. The Government must do everything they can to make that a reality. Renewables play a critical part in our energy production, along with new nuclear. We should continue to extract from the existing North sea oil and gas fields, but the Government are right to oppose the opening up of new fields. That would not lower people’s energy bills, because the oil and gas price is determined by global markets. Moreover, as many of my colleagues have said, it would undermine our mission to tackle climate change, and would weaken our global leadership role on the issue. I pay tribute to the Secretary of State and his Department for their work in that regard. The real jobs plan for energy is to invest in clean power, grids, storage and efficiency, and to give workers in existing industries a clear path into those new roles.

I have sat through the entire debate, which is now getting on for three hours, and I have read the Bill, but nobody this afternoon—not one Member of this House, including myself—has referred to hydrogen, which is probably the best clean future energy there is.

I agree with the right hon. Member that hydrogen is an important part of where we need to go, but we need to fix the fundamentals, which were not fixed during the 14 years before Labour was elected, and we need to get on with that. New nuclear creates jobs. In my constituency we have two old nuclear power stations at Dungeness that are currently being decommissioned. Dungeness is a brilliant candidate for new nuclear technologies, with an existing grid connection, land available, population centres nearby and high electricity demand. Fundamentally, there is also strong support for new nuclear at Dungeness from the people of Romney Marsh, who understand that this is about good jobs, clean power and long-term investment in their community. I recently helped to organise an event at the community hub about new nuclear, and it was packed out with local residents who are desperate for new nuclear power generation to return to their community. So I commend the actions of this Government to help speed up the development of new nuclear technology. My predecessor pushed for many years for the Tory Government, run by his own party, to bring new nuclear to Dungeness, but I am afraid he got nowhere, because his party was just not interested in helping him. I do welcome the intention in the nuclear regulation Bill to implement the Fingleton review to cut unnecessary delay and duplication. That is not to say that we will undermine environmental protections, which must of course remain effective and credible, as well as evidence-based. The argument is not nature versus nuclear. Climate change is itself a major threat to habitats and species, so changes must focus on faster decisions, but with real environmental integrity. If we are to achieve true energy security, we need new nuclear to play a critical role, because the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow. We need warm and efficient homes, fair energy bills and a regulator with the teeth and the remit to stand up for the public as the system changes. New nuclear can generate a significant number of well-skilled, well-paid, unionised jobs and help support the reindustrialisation of Britain, which we of course desperately need, and so can the mass roll-out of renewables, grid upgrades and home retrofit. I welcome the energy security Bill and the nuclear regulation Bill, especially the measures that help speed up the development of new nuclear. This is about whether families can afford to heat their homes, workers have good jobs in the industries of the future and Britain can stand on its own two feet in a dangerous world. To the champions of the oil and gas industry sitting on the Conservative Benches, I say that they should do the right thing for the country, and accept that we can never get bills down while we rely on international oil and gas markets, and support these measures to give us clean, cheap power and energy independence for our great nation.

One of the many challenges facing rural constituencies such as mine is the rising cost of fuel. When the war in Iran pushed up prices, I had constituents telling me they could no longer afford their planned orders of heating oil and would try to manage without heating for as long as they could. As we might expect, residents in Frome and East Somerset rely heavily on car use, and therefore fuel such as diesel and petrol, to access health services. I am very concerned about the lack of community input into decisions being made about health services, which disproportionately affect those in communities who have to drive or get the bus, or run patient transport services in rural areas. The King’s Speech brings forward plans to abolish NHS England, but in my constituency of Frome and East Somerset, NHS Somerset has been running what it calls a test and learn exercise at Frome community hospital. For six months the number of beds was temporarily reduced from 24 to 16, and at the end of that period the test and learn was simply extended for another six months, meaning that for a full year capacity has been reduced and no full consultation with communities about these changes has been required. People are rightly concerned that a reduction in their local service will require them to travel further afield, the cost of which is rising. I have serious concerns about whether the evidence provided so far is strong enough to justify making these changes permanent, and I am deeply troubled by how little the community has been involved in that conversation. I decided to do my own consultation, hosting a pop-up in Frome two weeks ago, and asking local people to tell us why the hospital was important for them. One constituent wrote, “I feel strongly that Frome Hospital provides so many services for local people. When I hear from elderly friends who have ended up with long stays in Bath, I find it incomprehensible that once they reach a certain stage of recovery they cannot be moved nearer home.” Another constituent said, “It is a shame we must lose beds. My friend was in Bath for five weeks, then had to go to Wincanton Hospital for another seven weeks as there were no beds in Frome, and this was so hard for her family, who live miles away.” The people of Frome and its surrounding villages rely on their community hospital, yet they woke up one morning to find that a decision had, in effect, already been made to reduce its capacity, a decision that means some of the most vulnerable members of our community will not have a bed in a local community hospital setting if they are discharged from our general hospital in Bath. For an elderly person, for a carer managing on their own or for those without access to a car, the risk of being placed in a community hospital somewhere else in Somerset is a serious barrier to suitable care. A lack of public transport and increasing fuel costs place a huge additional stress on families and carers. Two weeks ago, I was pleased to meet the Minister for Care to discuss the Government’s plan for neighbourhood health centres, a policy I broadly welcome and one that I believe could genuinely benefit parts of my constituency. In the meeting, the Minister was explicit that our integrated care board was required to consult local MPs and other stakeholders on their plans for the new health centres. Not only has our ICB not been in touch, but when we followed up with them ourselves, we were told two things: first, they had no idea they were expected to engage with MPs on this matter; and secondly, they had already decided where the hubs would go, without consulting anyone else. In both the cases I have set out, there seems to be a lack of mechanism to force ICBs or trusts to consult local people and a total lack of sanction if they fail to do so. People who live in Frome and the surrounding villages are the experts in their own lives, and they have helpful, constructive and innovative ideas to input into decision making around the future of local health services. The Government are also overseeing the removal of Healthwatch and the Citizens’ Senate, two additional bodies that centre patients’ voices at the heart of discussions about their care. I am worried that without those bodies being replaced or without mechanisms in place to ensure good consultation, communities risk being entirely unheard in decisions that will, for some, affect their daily lives. I hope Ministers will co-ordinate with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Transport and elsewhere to ensure that people in Frome and East Somerset can get the health services they need in the places they need them and in an affordable way.

It is a real pleasure to see you back in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker—the model of calmness and authority. After the week my party has had, there is virtue in the stability you represent in that Chair. I am pleased to be back in this Chamber for the first time in this Session of Parliament to talk about policy and not personality, and to focus on one of the biggest issues our country faces: our energy security. The decision by the United States and Israel to strike Iran on 27 February has seen thousands of lives lost, billions expended in weaponry, a stalemate in the strait of Hormuz and a global energy crisis. For many countries the situation has become very grave, very quickly. In the UK, at the pump on the day before the strikes the price for petrol was £1.35 per litre and for diesel was £1.43. The average prices now stand closer to £1.58 and £1.86 respectively. While we are relatively less reliant on the strait of Hormuz than many countries, our exposure to the fossil fuel rollercoaster that is the global market means we are being hit hard, too. The choice before is simple: get off the fossil fuel rollercoaster and accelerate our transition to green and clean energy, or people and the planet will continue to pay the price for our reliance on gas and oil. A word on climate change: records on global temperatures date back to 1850, yet the past 11 years have been the 11 warmest years on record. We must pursue the transition to clean and green energy for our political and economic security today and for the tomorrows of all the generations yet to come. When it comes to embracing green technology, the public are already voting with their feet. The CEO of Octopus Energy has reported a 50% increase in demand for solar panels and a 30% uplift in demand for heat pumps within weeks of the conflict in Iran starting. This is welcome news, but the transition to green, clean and home-grown energy is not a challenge that the market alone can fix. I am proud of the record of our Labour Government in the past two years: two renewable energy auctions, with bids for enough energy to power 23 million homes; ending the de facto ban on onshore wind; and scaling up the social housing warm homes fund, including more than £6 million for Welwyn Hatfield borough council in my constituency, which will see more than 600 council homes retrofitted in my community. But we have to go further, and I hope that the energy independence Bill can be a focal point for the Government. We have to innovate. I was with the Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister in January when he made an excellent speech on how to speed up the delivery of policy, which is something so many colleagues have talked about today. He talked about learning the lessons of the vaccine taskforce model and applying it more universally. I encourage colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Cabinet Office to work together with this model in mind, and particularly with a view to speeding up the all-important connections to our grid.