Andrew Murrison
Main Page: Andrew Murrison (Conservative - South West Wiltshire) UK-EU Summit: Policy Priorities
Andrew Murrison Excerpts
Liam Byrne
The hon. Member is absolutely right. He knows, because of the extraordinary record of service that he brings to this House, that there is an immense amount of work that we still need to do to conquer the inefficiencies and fragmentation of the European defence industrial base. We cannot spend the money that we propose to spend on defence wisely unless we change the way that we procure military equipment. On the one hand, that will provide greater certainty and long-term contracts to defence suppliers and, on the other, it will help ensure that we are building an innovative ecosystem of funding to help smaller, innovative, nimble and agile suppliers of weaponry to come forward in the way that they can to ensure that the lessons that we have learned on the battlefields of Ukraine inform our military strategy in future.
If there is one lesson that we have learned, it is that any warfighting capability depends on the strength of our defence industrial base. Quite obviously, today’s defence industrial base in Europe is not in the right place, and together with our partners we have to work hard on that. I hope that the strategic defence review will set out some practical steps for how we will do that together with our allies in Europe.
Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on his statement and on the work of his Committee. Clearly, renewable energy is an important part of our relationship with the European Union. What opportunity did his Committee have to examine that and the trade of energy between the UK and the European Union, particularly in the light of the possibility in the near future of an interconnector between Morocco and the UK by way of the UK-Morocco Power Project, or Xlinks? He may know that if the UK does not greenlight that in the near future, other European countries certainly will.
Liam Byrne
The right hon. Member is absolutely right to say that Morocco is a country that we should work more closely with. Xlinks is an exciting proposal. As a stable, long-term partner to Europe, Morocco is a country with which we have a shared interest in the future.
The perspective that we brought to the question was on how we can ensure a faster, cheaper and less risky path to net zero for us and for Europe. We heard striking evidence from many in the electricity and energy sectors about almost the thoughtless way that we had been disconnected from electricity trading schemes. What really worried us in the near term was that, given different carbon prices in the UK and Europe, if Europe introduced a carbon border adjustment mechanism, and we did a little later on, almost a tariff wall would be created.
We think the Government have done well in seizing that win-win, but that is not to take anything away from the logic and force of the hon. Member’s remarks. Ultimately, we will need several big infrastructure initiatives if we are to do what we all know needs to be done in this country: to drive down industrial electricity prices.