Speeches by Davies.

“Do you think you might be able to give us an update, perhaps within three months, on where you are?”

“I want to ask about aspects of the delivery plan. Green hydrogen, if we can generate electricity to deliver it, is a massive opportunity, especially for the steel industry, which accounts for 14% of Britain’s industrial emissions and 7% of all global emissions. To what degree will the opportunities offered by green hyd…”

“Thank you for joining us today. Information that the Government provided alongside the preparation for the carbon budget 7 delivery plan talks extensively about its economic benefits—perhaps more than £800 billion-worth of economic benefit, while cutting carbon emissions by 87% compared with levels in the 1990s. Indust…”

“I am not standing in the way of this Bill. I want to see it proceed tonight.”

“National parks and natural landscapes provide huge benefits to people’s health and wellbeing, and to biodiversity and the economy. Can the Minister tell me what steps we can take through the next iteration of the national planning policy framework to ensure that the aforementioned benefits are not undermined when infra…”

“I was interested in what the right hon. Gentleman said about the pooling of money following resale through the hall’s box office. Would it not be palatable for the members of the hall to have an agreed price by which those tickets are resold? Instead of the money being pooled, they could receive their portion of the co…”

“We undoubtedly have more work to do on this Bill, but we must continue to do it through the parliamentary process that we have.”

“The Royal Albert Hall is undoubtedly one of our premier cultural institutions, and it does a great deal of public good. It hosts a great many events that simply could not be hosted elsewhere, particularly large-scale choral and classical music. It is worth noting that the hall was an early adopter of the ticket levy sc…”

“That is a risk that they take on behalf of a venue whose future they seek to secure. I encourage the proposers of the Bill to work with this House and the other place to make sure that we get it over the line, because I want to see the Albert Hall thrive.”

“To move us on a little bit in terms of why this is such an important growth sector, we know that demand for data centres outstrips supply in the UK at the moment. There are probably a number of factors behind that, but it would be helpful if you could tell us what is leading that demand. Perhaps I can start with you, M…”

“Are you able to give us a sense of how much money the sector is stumping up to support the development of advanced modular reactors?”

“Ms Christopoulou, do you have any reflections on this, perhaps from a more commercial, private sector perspective?”

“On co-locating, the Government have stumped up £1 billion to support heat networks through the heat network transformation programme. How plugged in are you to the conversations around that? Is it difficult to bring the stakeholders together? You have DESNZ and local authorities, and they are not your usual stakeholder…”

“On why the UK is a desirable destination for data centres, I was interested to see that on many of the limiting factors—grid connections, energy sourcing, use of waste heat, sustainability, data protection or financial incentives—the UK appears to outperform Germany and the Netherlands. I think that is correct. Startin…”

“Do you mean advanced modular reactors, rather than small?”

“What about green hydrogen? Are those conversations happening? You talked about gas. That still requires a huge amount of electricity to produce. But if we got to a stage where we were doing that with renewables, as the Nordics are, and supplementing it with nuclear, is that technology you could scale up for data centre…”

“As yours is a commercially driven organisation, Ms Christopoulou, what would make the UK more attractive to the people who back your organisation?”

“That leads me on to my final question, which I will direct to Mr Birtwistle. I read with interest that there has been a planning decision in Slough about building a new data centre. The local authority initially rejected it—it was due to be in the green belt—but that was overruled by the Secretary of State for Housing,…”

“There are a couple of things that I am surprised have not come through in our discussions with the various panels. These questions are about efficiency improvements to offset growth in data centre demand. The role of advanced modular reactors is significant. That technology is nascent at the moment, but some of the big…”

“Surely one of the levers to mitigate the environmental impacts is to have better collaboration in relation to the opportunities that can be created through the waste heat. Previously, I was a local councillor and cabinet member. I was very keen to have a data centre at the local swimming pool, because we could use some…”