Speeches by Shanks.

“We decided not to pursue zonal pricing because to split the country up into individual zones would, in the assessment that we made, lead to a significant period of uncertainty and potentially to increased costs of building projects, wherever they might be in the UK. Any benefit that may have come from zonal pricing in …”

“I would need to look at the specific assessment; I did not see that.”

“It could be. That particular fund is to recognise the really significant costs of distribution in the north of Scotland and to balance it out, not so that they have lesser bills than anyone else but so that the cost is equalised to the level of others. We have kept it under review every year, so it has a slightly diffe…”

“Probably not, but it is worth saying that not all data centres are equal. Within that, there will be some really significant data centres, and some much smaller ones as well, so it is a question of scale. You will recall that we cleared out the generation queue that had built up with a significant amount of batteries, …”

“That is absolutely a fair point. But that is partly why the warm homes plan targets some of those households: so that they are not the most left behind.”

“The gas network is a hugely important asset and, at the moment, we want to maintain it in a way where there might be future potential for other types of molecules to pass through it. Green gas is an important part of that, but we are also looking at other options as well. To be honest, these are some of the questions t…”

“There are a number of schemes that we are going to have to look at in terms of their sustainability as people move off gas. Investment in the gas network itself is something we have consulted on recently, because the number of gas users is decreasing and will continue to decrease. We have to keep those schemes under re…”

“That is absolutely right, and it is why the strategic spatial energy plan and the centralised strategic network plan are really important. They are projecting into the future, beyond the current period, what the future energy system will look like, based on projections of future demand, which we know will increase sign…”

“Particularly with this, if we are going to target it at the most vulnerable, we need to have some sense of who that is. The second thing is a practical thing around how the Government actually reaches those people. A complexity with the warm home discount is that, at the moment, my Department does not have access to th…”

“It is not a tariff, but it achieves some of the same aims, which I think was probably the point that was being made. The aim is for us to direct financial support of £150 to the most vulnerable households. In some ways, it achieves the same aims. There are two challenges with a social tariff, and we have looked at this…”

“I come back to the point I made a moment ago on your general question, which is we cannot build the electricity system we need for the future without building the grids, so the investment in the grid is not optional. Frankly, even if there was a different Government taking a different path, you would still have to buil…”

“Again, we are looking at this across the board, because, yes, there is a fairness argument around standing charges, which we accept are too high. If we can have efficient homes and charge things through the unit rate, people will obviously pay less, but there are trade-offs within that where we have households who are …”

“Not specifically, no. We expanded the warm home discount so it would reach 6 million households. That was important in order to say that low-income and vulnerable households would get £150 off their bills. Clearly, we look at the cost of that, and we have obviously expanded the scheme and will continue to look at it, b…”

“We are going to build the transmission projects that are critical for the country. If I were to go back 15 years and plan where some of the renewables projects were built, I would not place them where they are in many cases, and we would have therefore built less grid. We now have to connect the projects that are there…”

“We are focusing on reducing the price of energy, but we also have some of the worst homes anywhere in Europe. If we are not going to improve the quality of our housing stock now, and improve the design of future homes so that we are not having to retrofit, people are going to keep paying much more to achieve the same o…”

“You are a very good civil servant. [Laughter.]”

“Again, that is a really important point. I have been contacted by a lot of people working in this space who are doing a very good job. We should be really clear: this terrible practice was not everywhere, but it was on a concerning scale. There were good people working in this space. Our expectation is that although th…”

“It is a hugely important point. Since we have been uncovering the practice—the delivery that has not been up to standard—we have obviously found more and more examples of it. It was a scheme that was not run well; the Government have accepted that and we want to make sure that the next scheme learns the lessons of that…”

“We take these things on a case-by-case basis, but there is no doubt that the warm homes plan—the £15 billion investment funded from general taxation—was seen as the fairest way, with taxation being a distributive way of raising revenue, to fund a really important upgrade of Britain’s homes. That was a decision that was…”

“I don’t have the exact number in front of me at the moment, but they sound around the right—I mean, they are far too high, is the bottom line.”