Alex Cunningham
Main Page: Alex Cunningham (Labour - Stockton North)
Mr Speaker
I say two things to the hon. Lady. First, as she well knows, she has found her own salvation through the ingenious use of the point of order procedure. Secondly—this is not uncommon in this place—I do not think she will seek to contradict me, and neither will anyone else, when I say that in raising her point of order she was vastly more interested in what she had to say to me and to the House than in anything I might have to say to her.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. More than a year ago, Lord Maude of Horsham, the then Minister for the Cabinet Office, signed a contract on behalf of the Crown Estate with Air Products to take the electricity from two innovative energy-from-waste plants being built in my constituency. This was to save taxpayers some £84 million a year. Sadly, the company announced last week that it had failed to get the new technology working and planned to walk away from Teesside, at the cost of hundreds of jobs and leaving the plants incomplete. Are you aware of any plans by Ministers to make a statement to the House about the ramifications of this failure, about what will happen with the Government’s contract and about what Ministers are doing to help seek a new developer who could take over the plants and secure the jobs?