Speeches by Jones.

“I thank my hon. Friend for that speech—[Interruption.] I mean, for that beautiful short question. I welcome the jobs that are coming to the port of Mostyn. This Labour Government are driving investment in our communities from carbon capture, hydrogen, nuclear, wind and solar energy. Opposition Members have to explain t…”

“The North sea will continue to play an important role for years to come, which is why we are keeping existing fields open for their lifetime. This is a declining base, and the hon. Gentleman knows that. This is not where the jobs of the future will be. They will be in the clean energy transition, which we are investing…”

“We are developing proposals that will minimise costs and ensure a fair outcome for consumers throughout the country.”

“The Northern Endurance Partnership, which is developing the infrastructure to transport CO2 across Teesside and the Humber, will create thousands of jobs. There is a 50% local content target, but we want to exceed that, and I urge the partnership to use British suppliers. I think my hon. Friend is meeting its represent…”

“When we hear the SNP opposing jobs, it seems sad for the people of Scotland. We are supporting jobs up and down Scotland. The hon. Gentleman does not have long to wait to hear about Acorn, because the spending review will be published later this week.”

“Under the previous Government, we lost 70,000 jobs in the oil and gas industry and more than 1,000 jobs in the ceramics industry. We produced only 30% of the steel that we need in this country, and the chemicals industry fell by 30%. The Conservatives’ record is shocking. We are putting together a plan that will ensure…”

“Although it was unclear, I think the Opposition support these regulations. If they do, I am grateful. We do not need to replay the arguments about the dash to clean power, which is the only way to bring down our energy costs in the long term. We do not need to rehearse the fact that the North sea is a declining basin t…”

“Gas is still being produced in this country, and that will continue for many years to come, as the hon. Gentleman knows. We could rehearse these arguments, but I am not sure they are pertinent to these draft regulations. I will just celebrate the fact that we are now the fastest-growing economy in the G7 and that the e…”

“I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Pollution Prevention and Control (Fees) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2025. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 23 April. Before outlining the provisions, I will briefly pr…”

“At the moment you have people like welders and engineers coming in from other countries, and we do not have enough training courses and training provision for those. Through the spending review I would hope we get to a point where we are able to fund more of those here. There is also a role for communications in trying…”

“I do not think it is agile enough yet. That is what we need to do and that is the point of Skills England and the workforce plan. The scale and the pace of the skills demand for clean energy is relatively unprecedented. You talked about the 1970s gas transition in one of your earlier sessions, and you could look at som…”

“Definitely. Real-world experience is important. I know I keep talking about construction, but it is because I spend quite a lot of time on it. In the construction plan, part of that £620 million is to fund 60,000 placements. One of the challenges with construction training that you talked about in the previous session …”

“Again, the modular decisions on apprenticeships will sit with DfE but, of course, we are feeding into that. We want employers to be able to get the skills they need, and we want them to have the flexibility to be able to do that. You can, through the current apprenticeship system, design new apprenticeship schemes. The…”

“Yes. The apprenticeship levy sits with DfE, so the decisions will be made there, but we have obviously had lots of conversations. We have already seen it reformed to have shorter programmes, to have different criteria in terms of maths and English so that more people can go into it. What we are interested in, and we ar…”

“A lot of this will come out in the skills strategy, Skills England and the decisions that are made in other Departments, but there are things you could do. Just as an example, in the £625 million construction fund there is a pot for big schemes that could support a big project if an employer comes along with a big plan…”

“That is the reality, you are absolutely right. There is a £70,000 average for oil and gas, £50,000 average for offshore wind. There is a gap there. Nobody is going to make a decision other than to take the higher salary, you would think. Of course, we are working on that with trade unions and others. We are working on …”

“We know the North Sea is a declining basin, and we have lost 70,000 jobs over recent years. With the best will in the world, even if there was no climate change and we were not trying to make a transition, the number of jobs would decline over time just because the oil and gas in the basin is declining. We know we need…”

“They do not have to. I am not going to force them. You had some really interesting conversations about the definitions of clean energy, green jobs and all of this, which you might want to talk about a bit further down the line. The trade union view is that we need to be providing good jobs. If you look at the jobs in c…”

“The spending review. The workforce plan has to sit within the wider skills agenda. A lot of work, whether on FE college funding, apprenticeship levies or the funding that might be available for wider schemes, relies on that spending review. We want to get this done, and we will get it done because the opportunity of th…”

“Yes, for sure. You do not want organisations to have to feed into multiple different bits of Government. They will definitely be feeding into Skills England, they will have provided that information, they will be working with the Construction Leadership Council, they will be working with other bodies, so I do not want …”