Speeches by Miliband.

“Yes, I will. My hon. Friend makes an important point about the role of trade unions in the renewable industry, too.”

“There is a two-decade disagreement between the right hon. Gentleman and me on these issues. The biggest threat to the countryside is the climate crisis. That is why this Government are tackling it.”

“I do not think I would characterise it quite in the way that you suggest, but I acknowledge that we have got to make sure that path dependency—to use a really wonkish phrase—does not rule out or undervalue technologies that could be helpful in the future. Again, that is something that Jeremy and I discuss and are consc…”

“The point is that we have got to make this transition work in a way that is good for people’s standard of living. Take what we announced on EV charging and EV support: it is about saying, “We’re going to have to make this transition. It’s the right thing to do. It can be good for our manufacturers, because they can get…”

“It is right to say that the Government are in a battle with some people who want to upend this mission. It is really important to say that the public get this in a way that Richard Tice and Nigel Farage definitely do not. The public do want to see action on clean energy. Whether it is solar panels or the good jobs we a…”

“Yes.”

“I would say one thing—I hope I am not going to get into trouble for saying this—which is that we had an excellent discussion across Government about the whole EVs question. What you have seen, both on the 2030 mandate and on the recent announcement on demand support, has been a product of discussions across Government.…”

“We are all frightfully connected. Patrick Vallance always said to me that the covid taskforce had a great thing on its side, which was that it was a Prime Minister-led response to a national emergency. He always said to me that this needs to have the authority of the Prime Minister, which the mission does—both limbs of…”

“This is the kind of difficult question you refer to the permanent secretary. Let me give some context. A bit like with Cabinet-level Committees, we do not tend to share the details of mission boards publicly. I will talk broadly, because it is important, and we have not really talked about the mission-led nature of thi…”

“Oh, gosh.”

“I am sorry to disappoint you—or pleased to meet your expectations.”

“We obviously have a windfall tax in place, which has been playing an important role in raising revenue. There is a wider question that I think you are making reference to, which is about the balance between levies and public expenditure. You always have to be careful what you say, given that the Treasury is always watc…”

“We want to do everything that we can to get bills down. There is a truth here, which is that lots of what is happening is to do with the gas market, but we are determined to bring bills down.”

“We have got the capacity market in place for gas plants. I do not think we are about to go into public ownership of the gas plants—that is not on my agenda; I have seen the report you talked about—but obviously we continue to look at how we can get best value for money from the capacity market. It is interesting that i…”

“On the standing charge, Ofgem is thinking about how to do it. Let me deal with it in two different ways, because I think there are two different ideas in the question. One is about whether there are reforms we can make to things like the standing charge, and Ofgem is looking at that. We do want to bear down on the cost…”

“Here’s the interesting thing, Luke—I want to expand a little bit on my thinking here. We have got the top-down commitment of up to £300 by 2030, but we do not need to wait until 2030 to start delivering benefits to people. Let me give you some examples. The warm home discount is giving 3 million extra families—or 2.7 m…”

“I think in a way, Mike, you have partly answered your own question. If I can put it this way, we are dealing with the dilemma of doing things at pace, but in a collaborative way. If you think about the partial list of the things we have done over the last year that I gave at the beginning, it has involved acting at spe…”

“We said that we would cut people’s bills by up to £300, and that remains a commitment. It was based on independent modelling. The key thing is that we need to move to a system that can cut bills for good. The way to do that is with the lower wholesale prices that renewable energy will bring.”

“The thing I would say to you is that REMA was an incredibly complicated process and an incredibly complicated piece of work, and it was really important we got it right. We said at the end of last year that we would announce a REMA decision in time for the opening of the AR7 auction, which is at the beginning of August…”

“Happy to be tougher. I think what Richard Tice is doing is deeply irresponsible, and I think, frankly, it is playing politics with people’s jobs and people’s bills. For all of the workers who rely on working in clean energy, to the nuclear workers at Hinkley Point and the future nuclear workers at Sizewell, for those w…”