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- I beg to move,That this House has considered the potential merits of a levy on energy developers.It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg. On the Suffolk coast, communities and nature are facing a stack of separate, fast-moving nationally significant infrastructure projects. Those are new generation, multiple offshore wind grid connecters, major transmission reinforcement, multi-purpose interconnectors and Europe’s largest energy project, Sizewell C. As we speak, we have six NSIPs being built or seeking consent in a small, 10-mile radius of my constituency of Suffolk Coastal. Each has been planned separately, but the impacts are felt cumulatively.I find it absurd that our planning system still examines proposals project by project, and developers are not required by law to co-ordinate. My community is expected to host multiple billion-pound schemes simultaneously, without any statutory tools or funding to force or enforce co-ordination between developers. I need to say that, since I have been raising the profile of this problem, Ofgem has been leading co-ordination meetings with those NSIPs, but Ofgem’s role is only to chair those meetings. There is no statutory obligation to make them happen, and they have come about only because of increased pressure about the need for better co-ordination.Some improvements have happened because of those meetings, and that is welcome, but we need to go much further. Co-ordination between NSIPs, when they operate in the same area, should be enshrined in law. That is precisely why I tabled new clause 33 to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which would have placed a legal duty on energy developers in the same area to share information, co-ordinate and co-operate on design and construction, and take responsible steps to reduce cumulative impacts.As I have said before, the failure we are experiencing in Suffolk Coastal is because the previous Conservative Government totally vacated the leadership space when it came to our country’s energy and biodiversity planning. Energy developers filled that void. The Conservative Government sat back and allowed developers to take the lead and introduce proposals for totally unsuitable landscapes, all because it was cheaper than developing on brownfield sites. We have been left with a series of unco-ordinated whack-a-mole projects on the Suffolk coast. There is no brownfield-first strategy, no shared corridor strategy, no binding requirement to co-ordinate construction schedules, no mechanism to prevent the same land being dug up twice and no requirement to look at, or assess, the cumulative impact on nature and the environment.It is not just me saying this. The Energy Security and Net Zero Committee report, “Gridlock or growth? Avoiding energy planning chaos”, highlighted the need for more strategic co-ordination in environmental impact assessments. It warned of “unnecessary costs and delays” from that “project-by-project approach”. The environmental impacts are assessed separately rather than cumulatively at habitat or seascape scale. In other words, communities in Suffolk Coastal are experiencing a national problem playing out locally, and that is exactly why I am calling for legislation to fix it.The Chair of the Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), agrees that it is completely crazy when construction is not co-ordinated. He sees the real need to apply that to not just energy companies but utilities digging up roads and pavements for repairs, or maintenance of gas, electricity and water, and construction projects. The Minister for Energy has previously acknowledged, publicly in debates and privately to me in meetings, that he agrees with me. He believes it is a source of deep regret that the previous Government did not do more to properly co-ordinate the huge build-out of new and important infrastructure. He has challenged me before that the statutory co-ordination I am seeking requires investment. That is a fair challenge. My response is a proposal to meet that challenge by setting out my proposed energy infrastructure co-ordination levy.In simple terms, that is a levy payable by energy NSIP applicants, designed to fund cumulative planning, shared mitigation and co-ordinated delivery in host communities. It would apply to all energy NSIPs across generation, transmission and interconnectors. The payment would be triggered in two stages: a small amount when the application is accepted for examination, and the main payment when the development consent order is granted.The levy would be calculated using a hybrid model reflecting real impact drivers: a base rate per gigawatt capacity; a base rate per kilometre of onshore cable; a base rate per substation or converter station; and a cap and a floor to ensure proportionality. That aligns cost with scale and disruption, not simply capital expenditure. Crucially, the funds will be ringfenced locally—that is really important.
- I really appreciate the hon. Member’s having secured this important debate, as we have issues very similar to Suffolk Coastal’s in Caerfyrddin and west Wales in general. A levy is really important for cumulative planning and mitigation. I would also add that there are tangible benefits for our communities, such as public transport and affordable homes. Those are things that we do not have in rural communities, but which a levy could support. Does the hon. Member agree that that is the way forward—not the piecemeal dribs and drabs that companies are offering us?
- I am looking forward to the Minister’s response, but I agree that the whack-a-mole strategy, which I have talked about, needs far better strategic oversight.A dedicated energy co-ordination fund for affected host areas would be established and delivered through a locally accountable team. That is important, because all too often developers are headquartered elsewhere; they do not live in the areas with the repeated traffic disruption and the cumulative land take. Local institutions— the local council, for instance—must have the capacity to co-ordinate what developers currently are not required to.The fund would support four priorities: shared modelling and evidence; design co-ordination, such as corridor planning and joint construction scheduling; strategic mitigation for nature, such as landscape-scale habitat restoration and long-term management funding; and the community impact reduction—stronger traffic enforcement and transparent liaison, for example.Alongside that, there should be a statutory co-ordination board, independently chaired, that could set binding co-ordination objectives that applicants would have to respond to in their DCO documentation. Some may argue that the existing DCO obligations already address that issue; I tell Members explicitly that they do not. There is no statutory requirement for co-ordination between NSIPs.
- I commend the hon. Lady for bringing this debate forward. I spoke to her beforehand; she is certainly making a name for herself in this place for being assiduous and hard working. Does she agree that the consumer cannot afford greater cost-of-living increases through energy prices and that any levy cannot simply be handed on to the consumer, bearing in mind that energy costs are still a third higher than they were five years ago?
- I thank the hon. Member for his well-timed intervention; I have that heard said before and was just coming to that issue. I suspect that the Minister may have similar concerns. As the hon. Member points out, there may be concerns that a levy would increase consumer bills. That grates on me given that the National Grid reported an adjusted operating profit of £2.29 billion for the six months ending 30 September last year.Let us be clear. This is not about asking bill payers to shoulder more of the burden; it is about asking developers, when they are developing multibillion-pound investments and returning substantial profits, to absorb a proportionate cost and ensure co-ordination.
- The hon. Member has really come to the nub of the matter: the energy companies that are building and installing the renewable capacity are making a lot of money out of it. In my constituency, there are turbines whose owners are being paid for not generating anything, while we have the highest levels of fuel poverty in the country. Does that not speak to the fact that we need wholesale reform of the way the energy market is regulated?
- I thank the right hon. Gentleman; I am sure that the Minister will address that issue, which has long been talked about.I was discussing the incredible profits that the energy developers are making. For me, this issue is about simple fairness: those creating the disruption and generating the return should fund the systems to manage the cumulative impact. More importantly—most importantly, perhaps—what I am suggesting would not lead to higher bills. Proper co-ordination would reduce bills: reduce the duplication, prevent redesign and avoid the need for repeated construction and legal conflict. Proper co-ordination saves money. This is not anti-growth, but smarter and inclusive growth.Suffolk Coastal must not become the unmanaged frontier of energy development. So many in my constituency are pro-net zero, pro-investment and pro-growth, but we are asking the Government to be pro-co-ordination. What we have now is a fragmented planning system and eroding trust in the energy transition that we all support. If we are serious about delivering clean energy power at pace, we must treat host communities as partners, not afterthoughts, in that transition. We must do more to bring communities with us.I am asking two things of the Minister today: first, a meeting with officials to examine this proposal; and secondly, a departmental feasibility study into the merits of an energy infrastructure co-ordination levy and how that could support both growth and nature recovery. The Government have already consulted on mandatory community benefits for low carbon energy infrastructure. The question now is whether we go further—by creating a clear levy model that funds meaningful co-ordination between clustered projects, such as those on the Suffolk coast; that builds local accountability and capacity; and that provides independent oversight, delivering tangible community and environmental mitigation. Communities such as mine are not asking for less ambition. We ask simply for better co-ordination when projects are approved.
- 4:11 pm
- 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 herself as a hard worker in this space. Our meetings about this issue have been genuinely really helpful and insightful for me—and her as well, I hope. She is right to flag these issues.I should also say at the outset that I genuinely welcome the tone that my hon. Friend has taken since she has become MP for Suffolk Coastal. In this place at this time, it is very easy to take the view that the easy answer is simply to say that we should not build anything anywhere ever again and let the country continue to slide further and further backwards; many on the Opposition Benches, who of course are not here at all, would say that.My hon. Friend concluded her speech by saying something worth repeating: many in her community and across the country are pro the energy transition—they are pro-investment, pro-growth and pro-building the infrastructure—but they rightly want to know that that will be well planned and benefit their community. It is entirely legitimate for communities to ask for that and to be concerned when it does not happen. Given that spirit, she has raised this debate in the right way.I want to pick up on a couple of things and also go back to why the infrastructure is so important in the first place. We sometimes lose sight of why it is so important for us to build energy infrastructure—in particular, much of the transmission infrastructure that is in my hon. Friend’s constituency. She said that the previous Government had not done that work, and I will come back to that.It is worth remembering that since this Government came to power we have sought to tackle the energy trilemma: how we bring down bills and make the cost of living more affordable—today’s decision on the price cap is an important statement of how seriously we take that mission; how we deliver our long-term energy security in an uncertain world and how we move away from the volatility of fossil fuels, which have cost us so dearly in recent years; and how we build infrastructure that sets the country up for the future. This is about connecting not just renewable energy but the demand projects that will stimulate economic growth across the country. If we do not do these things, all we will do is harm that economic growth. Those decisions are incredibly important.
- I urge the Minister to learn from the experience of Shetland and Sullom Voe, 50 years ago. We took the most important step on North sea oil and gas coming ashore in Shetland, but on our terms: there was a genuine funding stream coming to the community. If we give the whip hand to the corporates, they will always use it to their benefit.
- 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 also going to come to the right hon. Gentleman’s other point, around the Viking wind farm, which I have seen in the Shetlands myself. The scale of it is extraordinary, but the community benefits are not where they should be and the community is not feeling enough of the benefit of it. It is important that we do everything we can to reduce the constraints on wind, so that local communities benefit directly from it and the country as a whole benefits from cheaper power on the grid, bringing down bills.Let me turn to some of the actions that we have taken since we came into government. We have set up Great British Energy—a really important moment for us to say, for the first time in 70 years, that we want the public to have some ownership stake in our energy future. We have delivered the most significant programme of investment in home-grown clean energy in our history. Just a few weeks ago, we published the local power plan, the biggest shift of wealth and power in the energy space in British history, to make sure that energy projects are not just built by developers, but owned by local communities that have a real stake in their energy future. We also published the warm homes plan, so that we can have the biggest upgrade to homes in British history.Any infrastructure, in the energy space or elsewhere, brings local impacts, and there is no point in anyone pretending that those impacts do not upset local people. That is why we have an extremely rigorous planning system, why we take great care over decisions that are made and why, at times, there is great frustration about the length of time it takes for planning decisions. However, that is because the public rightly have a voice in that process, and important determinations should take time. We should always remember the fundamental outcome: since the poorest in our society have paid the price from our exposure to fossil fuels, the infrastructure we are building today is imperative, and it is important that we move faster than ever before.
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- Sitting suspended.