Speeches by White.

“I feel very fortunate to have a Minister of State for Housing who I think previously sat in my job in Opposition, so has a strong personal commitment. As I say, I find ministerial colleagues incredibly helpful. We are looking forward to the future homes standards coming forward imminently.”

“You referred to some of the interventions we have already made. We have doubled the warm homes discount, so it is now available to 6 million people over the course of this winter. We will be taking, as you rightly mention, £150 off energy costs thanks to the announcements in the Budget. Obviously, we had the warm homes…”

“I certainly feel I have strong support from my ministerial colleagues within other Departments. I work really closely with them, whether they are at DFT, DEFRA or MHCLG, and I have no reticence in saying that they feel as much commitment to this as I do. They feel it is cross-Government.”

“I apologise—I was trying to make sure I remembered all five of those pillars. It is a test! I will tell you later about which lyrics from songs—but we can play that game later. What we have done with the Energising Britain report is we have looked at more—the call from the Climate Change Committee was for us to do more…”

“Generally on our communications strategies, we are looking at overall support, which you have referred to a couple of times, and making sure of support for our policies. That is a big collaboration, but we are making sure that our overall support is there adding to it. We are then looking at the different audiences, wh…”

“If in a year’s time public attitudes are getting worse? I hope to goodness, I am not coming back with that. We are acting now. We are not waiting for that attitudes tracker to worsen. Things are changing constantly. The thing I have been really struck by is the amount of opportunities and positive stories that are out …”

“Ryan, you go with Secretary of State to the mayoral group, don’t you? We already have a local net zero delivery group that works with representatives not only of the LGA, but of councils across the country and of UK100 to look at actually what is happening. We are working through that as a delivery body, but we also ha…”

“That is an excellent question. My understanding is that, actually, in some areas—certainly in Hull—the experience has been slightly different. While some of the names might have been removed, some of the actions and support have continued. In the real world, is it taking climate change off the agenda? This is good for …”

“That is an excellent question—absolutely. As the Chairman said, we can hold two views that might almost appear to be conflicting. We know that when local infrastructure is proposed, support can drop for some of it. To go back to my answer about the community piece, that is an area that we have started work on, but we n…”

“The local power plan will come out imminently, so more will come on that. I am sure that when the Secretary of State appears, he can give you the detail on that, but it is imminent. On how that will work, in terms of local groups getting involved in energy, we have talked about having a direct community benefit. Ryan, …”

“Absolutely; but, as I say, I have already witnessed an improvement. That was under way before I joined the Department. There is definitely more to do, but I have already witnessed an improvement in us working collaboratively.”

“The clean energy mission is more in our gift than the carbon budget. To go through it, we have to be much clearer with DFT, DEFRA and other Government Departments that we are working with. Please chip in whenever you want, Ryan, but the clean energy mission is much more in the gift of the Department. We do work really …”

“Absolutely.”

“We are in a very active conversation at all times. We have a Government mission, but how to deliver that will be a co-creation to make sure we can do that. Ryan, I defer to you on whether there have been any practical differences, or whether it is a sentiment change, to the Chair’s point on ensuring consultation with l…”

“If I jump in, we are obviously monitoring in different ways and looking at where the different audiences are. The way I look at it is that there is a national debate at a country level, and then we have a community-constituency level and then a citizen-consumer level. Obviously, they all feed in and interrelate to each…”

“That is a really good challenge. I was using the North sea as an example of where there will be energy systems still being used. It is a different form of energy. In Aberdeen it is whether it is going from oil to offshore wind and you have those pontoons side by side at the same time. It is how we can make sure that th…”

“I will look forward to that. In terms of the skills, you raise a really good point. We all want to learn from what has happened in the past when we have had energy transitions. We all know that the scars of those transitions are still on many communities up and down our country. We want to learn and not have any of tho…”

“I think climate change and biodiversity loss are two sides of the same coin. Many people have said that before, but clearly there is a strong integration—there is a symbiotic relationship, in many ways, between those two things. When we came into Government, there was a complaint from stakeholders that we were not work…”

“No. On the list of the things that I want to do, it is nowhere near my list of priorities, because it would take a lot of time and money, and I would rather spend that on talking to people around a table in a normal way and trying to communicate in different ways. There are so many great things that the Department is d…”

“I think it should be multiple message carriers. I am working with multiple message carriers. We work with the Net Zero Council, which was relaunched under the Secretary of State, and a great selection of individuals, from trade union leaders to corporate leaders to leaders of NGOs, within that. Each of them has a role …”