Speeches by Shanks.

“I think a balance is important here, but we have also invested in those renewables significantly over a period of time, so for many of those who have feed-in tariffs, they have had that revenue source for a long time. I understand that that was partly why they made those investment decisions in the first place, which i…”

“It is very likely. I think the scheme design across the board is based on the CPI—not just in the energy world—so it is very likely that that will be the future.”

“Well, it is. I would also say that there is not some magic button we can push that electrifies the country without building the things that get electricity to homes and businesses. Look, we built the grid in the ’50s and ’60s. It was an extraordinary project then to electrify the country. We have not done any big scale…”

“First of all, the previous Government built a sizeable amount of renewables—I think I am the last man standing that credits them with that—but they did not build the grid that connected it all, and so we are curtailing many of these fantastic projects that were built under the previous Government. The second thing is t…”

“I think it is coming to a fair position where very few people use the existing measure of inflation. It is coming to a fair balance. We consulted on a range of measures, and we think this is the fairest way to take it forward. We recognise that it will be a change for people who have those arrangements, but equally, we…”

“I think it is a really fair challenge. People often forget what an early stage the development was in when the renewables obligation scheme was set up and just how little deployment we had of those technologies. We have matured a lot in terms of the technology readiness, but also in terms of the financial instruments t…”

“We were right to raise the price cap. We should remind the public that the price cap has not yet come into force. It will come in on 1 April, and, because of the decisions the Government have taken, it will see bills fall by 7%. That was a conscious decision to take £150 off bills, in order to bring them down for peopl…”

“I always welcome unanimous support from the House for the Government’s energy policy, and it sounds like we will have that this afternoon, which I appreciate. I always thank the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey, for her lessons, although they often do not involve her own time in the Gove…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Renewables Obligation (Amendment) Order 2026. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Barker. The draft order was laid before the House on 2 February, under the affirmative procedure. We are all acutely aware, particularly at this moment in time, th…”

“Thank you, Dr Huq. There is genuinely nothing I would rather do on my birthday than answer an important Westminster Hall debate on this topic. It is a pleasure and a privilege to be here—cake to follow. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray)—that beautiful constituency on the other side of Glasgo…”

“I was going to come on to the North sea later, but let me do that now, because the hon. Lady raises important points. Yes, our domestic supply is important—particularly the gas that goes straight into the pipes around the country—and it creates jobs for thousands of people in the industry, many of whom I have got to kn…”

“That is a well-trodden argument that, unfortunately, the facts do not bear out. The energy produced in Scotland is more than it uses, but at any given time Scotland often relies on nuclear energy; in fact, it is quite often imported from England when necessary—when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining. Nu…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Electricity Supplier Payments (Amendment) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to be in this Committee this afternoon, Sir Alec. The statutory instrument, which was laid before the House on 2 February 2026, amends regulations concerning the levies used to fund th…”

“I am grateful for all those technical questions on the statutory instrument before us. Let me turn to the more general questions that were asked. I welcome the support from the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine; it is always a great pleasure when he supports things that this Governm…”

“It is a pleasure to join this debate under your chairship, Mr Twigg; I know that you take a great interest in these issues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing the debate. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right: my hon. Friend is making a name for…”

“The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point; a generation of lobbyists should look back at the history books of Shetland Islands council at the time, because it is an extraordinary story of how it seized the opportunity of what it knew then would be decades North sea oil and gas and has still benefited from it. I was a…”

“As we explained in our solar road map, the Government consider effective community engagement to be crucial as we scale-up solar deployment throughout the country. Developers must consider local community views as part of their applications, and the quality of that community engagement is taken into account by decision…”

“I have had many productive meetings with the hon. Gentleman, and I shall be happy to meet him again to talk about these issues. The Government absolutely believe that communities that host infrastructure should benefit from doing so. We have consulted on mandatory community benefits and we will respond to the consultat…”

“Perhaps unsurprisingly, I warmly welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. He takes seriously the issue of how we can build the infrastructure that the country needs for our energy security, but he also rightly draws attention to a fact that Opposition Members seem to ignore completely: the fact that renewables are the cheape…”

“This is just the most absurd nonsense from the Conservatives, who I see are now crowdsourcing their energy policy on Twitter. It is not surprising that they come up with that sort of nonsense, when that is the information that they use. Even in the most ambitious deployment scenarios, all the statistics suggest that 0.…”