Speeches by Shanks.

“We will say more on the plan, but we are not fixing a scheme.”

“We consulted on how we would use that power. It is a very helpful power that the previous Government legislated for. I am not quite sure that they knew what they were doing when they did that. It is a really important power, but it has not been used, and so we have consulted on how we would enact that power. At the hea…”

“The third part is a reflection on the state of the country after a decade or more of austerity. The capacity in local councils, for example, which often drove some of these innovative projects, has been hollowed out, and so we are having to rebuild some of that capacity. We want to give communities a sounding board and…”

“I have not prioritised them. They are all important, and they are all critical. If we fix the regulation, but we do not sort out the financial aspects or the capacity, there still are not going to be the projects coming forward. They all play a part, and we need them all to work in tandem. They are all the responsibili…”

“I have slightly more than three things working in tandem at the moment, but I will leave that there.”

“I have wrestled with this; we have wrestled with this. In theory, I could say yes, because it seems like absolutely the right thing to achieve the outcome that we want. When we get into the reality of how we then do that with a queue that is already complex, the competing priorities—of course, this is really important …”

“They have had some direction. They will get more direction on the principles, and the local power plan will outline more of what we want to do. I say genuinely that Ofgem has a very difficult balancing act. Although I and other Ministers will challenge it on many things, of all the regulators, it is aware of the fact t…”

“They are local energy projects.”

“The way that we have sought to deliver the clean power mission is partly how my Department is driving everything, which is to say that, in the past, Government have set out an objective, then gone away and let others just deliver it in the background, and hoped that the outcome would be achieved at some point. The clea…”

“That is the vision we really have. Solar panels on the rooftop of the school are great. I have visited a number of them. They reduce the bills of the school. The money goes straight back into schools and they spend it on all the things we want schools spending money on, but you can see a school as a real hub for commun…”

“Just to give you an example, a few months ago, I was at a conference in Glasgow, where Community Energy Scotland was referencing some of the data in Scotland where community energy is not defined in a clear enough way. The number of projects that are, in fact, owned by landowners, not by communities, is really quite si…”

“Inevitably, it is largely from our European neighbours, which have been doing this for a very long time. I had a fantastic visit to Denmark to visit, I think, one of the first community-owned offshore wind farms, Middelgrunden, which was excellent. We learned from that that ambition should not be micro-scale generation…”

“I do not have the figures to hand. We can write to you on the questions.”

“I cannot say what is specifically in the local power plan, but it definitely will be a balance of local and community energy. We have been clear on that. We will set out the fact that this is a Government commitment, but it is a shared enterprise between Great British Energy, Government and communities.”

“Let me just say right now, knowing that it is on the record, that I am accountable for this. Ed Miliband, as the Secretary of State, has taken it incredibly seriously. We, as Ministers, are responsible.”

“I would challenge that. I see my job as a Minister not to just sit behind a desk and say yes or no to things, but to drive forward the outcomes of what we have said. Before I was an MP and before I was a teacher, I worked in an organisation that was all about outcomes, not about activity. It was about saying, “You can …”

“It is a really good question. It will play a part in helping the system overall and helping deal with constraints as well. Quantifying that is difficult, because the scale we have at the moment is so low that, over the whole system, it has very little overall impact. There are two things we are determined to do as a co…”

“It was a wonderful trip.”

“Emma might want to come in on some of those points, but let me take it head on. I am accountable for this to Parliament. On the question of who is responsible for it, we have set up Great British Energy as a publicly owned energy company to be our energy champion and for the public to own a share in it. It will drive f…”

“I cannot give you examples of what is in a plan that has not been published yet.”