Speeches by Billington.

“I congratulate my right hon. Friend and, indeed, the Chancellor on making the decision to tax online gambling in particular. The fact that people effectively have a casino in their pocket destroys lives and families, and it is right that we send that strong signal, as well as make sure money is available to tackle the …”

“May I confirm that the right hon. Gentleman is then perfectly happy for children to continue to live in poverty while we try to reform the welfare benefit system?”

“I am interested to know whether the hon. Lady welcomes the fact that the youth guarantee will benefit hundreds of young people in the Ynys Môn constituency. It will give free support for apprenticeships for the under-25s. That will help small and medium-sized businesses that want to recruit and train young people in Yn…”

“Will the hon. Gentleman give way?”

“I am sure the Secretary of State would not necessarily like me to remind him that it is 16 years since the first COP he attended with me, which was significantly less successful than the one this year. I commend him for his great effort over that time in managing to demonstrate the UK’s leadership on climate change. Th…”

“I support my hon. Friend in his advocacy of new clause 29. The Minister mentioned that the Bill should be a floor on ambition, not a ceiling, and I am keen to seek reassurance on the climate duty, as I am sure my hon. Friend is. In particular, it is vital that local authorities can shape it locally, partly because they…”

“My right hon. Friend will be aware of the appalling environmental pollution incident at Camber Sands in East Sussex last week. A few days later, we also had huge sewage dumps in the seas around my constituency, leaving beaches in Ramsgate and Broadstairs effectively unusable. Not only do these incidents have appalling …”

“It is 12 November 2025, so we have less than five years to get 8 GW of community energy power on to the system. What is your honest assessment of our prospects of being able to do that under the current system?”

“Let’s go on to the barriers. How long does it normally take to get a community energy project online?”

“That would be a problem if you just gave it to the energy nerds, for example, who do not think about how many people there are, or you forgot to factor in the grid capacity, but grid capacity is pretty crucial for a local area energy plan, isn’t it?”

“It is interesting that there are other benefits apart from the generation of the energy that is factored in. Of course, that is not including a metric for Clean Power 2030; should it be?”

“I would love you all to answer on that.”

“I am making a back-of-a-fag packet point, but it still stands. We had NESO in the other day. It does not take any responsibility for the 8 GW target, so my concern that is no one is taking responsibility. National Grid did not take any responsibility for it either. The distribution network operators do not take any res…”

“Yours is 1 GW across London just for solar.”

“I do not expect you to know specifically the answer to this, but it is worthwhile just putting it on the record. Do we know how much community benefit in gigawatts is already in development, conceptually? Tanuja, you mentioned the 1 GW of solar planned across your part of north London. Does anybody have an idea about h…”

“We rely on committed councils to get us to 8 GW by 2030.”

“What rules need to change for that 8 GW to be achieved?”

“How else are we going to get to 8 GW, then?”

“Local area energy planning mandated?”

“Those are things that NESO and the DNOs must do.”