Great British Energy: Regional Offices

We announced that Great British Energy’s headquarters will be in Aberdeen, recognising the decades of experience in that city as the energy capital of Europe and our determination to invest in good, well-paid jobs in the city. With £8.3 billion-worth of investment behind Great British Energy, it will deliver economic value and jobs right across the supply chain across all parts of the country, including in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Great British Energy is the right idea for our time: public ownership, investment in supply chains and the reindustrialisation of our nation.

I commend the Minister on the progress he has made on setting up Great British Energy. Can he outline to the House what opportunities our publicly owned champion will bring to Southend East and Rochford and the wider south-east region?

My hon. Friend is right. Of course, the Great British Energy legislation is still going through Parliament at the moment; we hope that process will conclude soon, but in the meantime, hard work has been taking place to identify all the opportunities for Great British Energy to invest. Both Opposition parties—the SNP and the Conservatives—seem to oppose Great British Energy. Every single investment that it makes, every job that it creates, and every part of the supply chain that it incentivises will be delivered by Great British Energy against the SNP and the Conservatives, who have opposed it at every single stage. I ask them to rethink their position on what is a publicly owned champion to deliver for communities, create good, well-paid jobs, and deliver the clean power future that we need as a country.

We heard from the chief executive officer of Great British Energy the other day. He said that it was not in his brief to cut bills by £300. What is Great British Energy for, then? It turned out that the jobs were not going to materialise either, so how will the Government make sure that we do not have some bureaucrat job-creation scheme in every region of the country, as the Minister’s Back Benchers are calling for, but actually have a company that invests in things that otherwise would not be invested in? Technologies such as wind and solar are already investable, so will Great British Energy focus on those things that need to be brought closer to market?

The right hon. Gentleman strongly makes the case for the importance of a publicly owned energy champion investing in parts of the energy system that are not currently getting that investment; I appreciate his recognition of that. What the interim chair of Great British Energy said very clearly—of course, it has not appointed a CEO yet—and what we have said consistently is that Great British Energy’s headquarters in Aberdeen will of course create jobs, but the majority of the jobs that will be created by that investment will come from the investment that Great British Energy makes in supply chains, in projects, and in developing the clean power that we need. Great British Energy will champion the industries that the right hon. Gentleman speaks about and deliver jobs in this country to reindustrialise communities, and Conservative Members will have to explain why they are against those jobs when they are created, including if they are created in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

It was refreshing yesterday to have some clarity on Great British Energy’s plans, not from the Secretary of State or from Ministers—that would be asking far too much—but from the Manchester-based chairman of the Aberdeen-based company, Juergen Maier. He stated that cutting energy bills is a “very long-term project”—not £300 by the next election, then—and that the Aberdeen headquarters, if we can call it that, will employ only 200 to 300 people, far from the 1,000 initially promised, although that may come in 20 years’ time. On behalf of the tens of thousands of energy workers worried for their future, and indeed the millions watching their energy bills rise yet again, can I ask the Minister whether he agrees with the now very interim chairman?

The shadow Minister must be the only Member of Parliament representing Aberdeenshire who is against investment in Aberdeenshire. He will have to explain to his constituents and businesses right across his community why he stands up and opposes investment in his constituency. Of course, in doing so, he misunderstands the role that Great British Energy will play; the key point of it is that it will invest £8.3 billion over the lifetime of this Parliament in clean power projects right across the country, helping to unlock private sector investment and create supply chains in this country. The shadow Minister has now turned his face against all of those jobs that will be created in Aberdeen, which is a question he will have to answer for his constituents.

The Minister has a right cheek to come to this Chamber and talk about protecting jobs in Aberdeenshire, when tens of thousands of energy workers are going to lose their jobs because of this Government’s decisions on the North sea. The British people were promised lower bills by the next election; now, they have been given a vague assurance that in the very long term bills might come down, and they are meant to be grateful for that.

The arrogance of this Government is staggering, if not surprising. They are so driven by ideology that they will not even allow Government lawyers to defend licences issued for Rosebank and Jackdaw, and are willing to see imports of fracked gas increase as long as they go down in history as the Government who shut down the North sea. While pensioners freeze as the Minister’s Government strip them of the winter fuel allowance, and as people are made unemployed due to his Government’s position on the North sea, can the Minister see why people across this country are quite miffed that the Government get to waste £8 billion of their money on the GB Energy white elephant?

First, let us be absolutely clear that Great British Energy will invest in clean power projects right across the country, including in the shadow Minister’s constituency. Secondly, he has an absolute cheek to come to this Chamber and talk about jobs in oil and gas, when more than 70,000 jobs were lost in North sea industries over the past decade—the shadow Minister was in the Energy Department for at least a chunk of that time. The truth is that a transition is under way in the North sea. Conservative Members were quite happy to bury their heads in the sand and pretend that it was not happening as thousands of people lost their jobs. This Government are determined to build what comes next; the shadow Minister stands opposed to that, and he will have to explain to his constituents and the people of Scotland why he does not support that investment.

That brings us to topicals, and questions and answers will have to be very brief.