Speeches by Shanks.

“It is a really important framing of the question. The Prime Minister was really clear with all of his Ministers before this crisis, in fact, that the sense of fear and dread that many people have that the next letter coming through the letterbox is a bill that they cannot afford should be uppermost in every single one …”

“The Chancellor is leading this work across Government, so there are a number of areas that she will be focusing on that are not in my brief. Specifically on things that we are looking at as the Energy Department, the price cap is really important, so we are doing everything we can to monitor what is happening at the mo…”

“We are not putting a timeline on it, but the information has been received from the developers, the process has been followed by the regulator, and decisions will be made.”

“There is slightly more to it than that. There have been officials appointed to look at this question, and they are working through that work. It is not that the decision has been taken not to do anything. Work is going on. It will just take slightly longer than I would like. It is worth saying that the inclusion of CBA…”

“I have to say that I take the exact opposite view. It reinforces the fact that we need to move off fossil fuels much more quickly. We remain exposed to fossil fuels for as long as we are reliant on them. I have said very clearly that the oil and gas industry has contributed an enormous amount to this country, and we sh…”

“I am not sure what you mean by “emergency”.”

“We absolutely should be moving as fast as possible on everything, but there is a particular case to be made for bringing more flex on faster. We announced this week that we would start a trial of being able to utilise so-called “wasted” wind—the wind that we currently pay to turn off in areas of high constraints—so tha…”

“We learn from those situations. Ofgem has a role in making sure the market is as resilient as possible, and looking at individual companies as part of that. Ofgem has introduced higher capital requirements on companies to demonstrate that they are more resilient than they might otherwise have been. There is a lot more …”

“We are investing significant amounts in building the system of the future, so there often are costs that come down on bills that are matched by investments that we have to make, particularly on grid, so that we can keep the system as resilient as it is. If you take an average of the price cap in 2025 to 2024 in real te…”

“We carefully considered this. This was a proposal that was put forward without consultation with Government from Ming Yang. We welcome investment from China, as we have announced in the past few months, when it is in the national interest. When the Prime Minister was in Beijing, we have seen a lot of inward investment …”

“I did not see the evidence earlier, but I know that, previously, the industry has confirmed that there would not be a penny off bills due to further extraction in the North sea.”

“The Chancellor is leading this work across Government, so there are a number of areas that she will be focusing on that are not in my brief. Specifically on things that we are looking at as the Energy Department, the price cap is really important, so we are doing everything we can to monitor what is happening at the mo…”

“The work is nearing completion. What we asked them to do was look at whether there were potential sites in Scotland, recognising that the Scottish Government and the SNP have an objection to all nuclear. It will be a look at potential sites without being a full siting assessment, because there is no prospect of them be…”

“The tax income we have received for 60 years from North sea oil has funded public services for a long time. I am not going to suggest that the revenue is not hugely important. It is. The question that we have been answering about what the future of the North sea looks like is: how do we manage what is a super-mature ba…”

“I would say that, first of all, the Government were taking seriously our resilience before this situation. This brings very sharp focus to a lot of the work that we were doing, and a lot of the assumptions that we have made as a country for some time, but the work was going on before that. Our national resilience and t…”

“These are the kinds of things that we have been monitoring very closely. We take it very seriously. There is no point in me saying anything other than that this has been a huge disruption to global supply chains. The IEA has said that it is the biggest disruption there has ever been. Of course, this is a serious moment…”

“It is a really important framing of the question. The Prime Minister was really clear with all of his Ministers before this crisis, in fact, that the sense of fear and dread that many people have that the next letter coming through the letterbox is a bill that they cannot afford should be uppermost in every single one …”

“On CBAM first of all, I am not one for banging drums, but I have absolutely engaged with the Treasury on this, and the Treasury has engaged with the industry. There have been conversations about how this happens, and I can write to the Committee on some of the technical details that go into how CBAM works, but it is wo…”

“We absolutely are looking at options in that space. I hope that people would expect us to be looking right now at every option that is on the table. If something deals with a particular problem now, but maybe is not the long-term answer, we will absolutely look at it. There are mechanisms in place that will support som…”

“I am sure you have a suggestion for me, Torcuil, of where that might be, and you and I certainly stood on a very windy hilltop a few weeks ago in Stornoway. As for the way we are doing this, it will be a pilot. The Government will put £20 million into that pilot to look at the final levies that people pay on the megawa…”