Anna Turley
Main Page: Anna Turley (Labour (Co-op) - Redcar)
Alex Cunningham
My hon. Friend and near neighbour makes the point clear.
Being a leader is critical to our energy-intensive and other industries if we are to overcome the competition threat from across the world. It is no use hanging back when other nations look like stealing a march on us. I have mentioned the Teesside Collective project to develop an industrial CCS project on Teesside, home to some of the country’s most energy-intensive industries. I invite the Minister and the Chancellor to the next meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on 23 March to learn about those ambitious plans. I know the Chancellor will be busy until the night before, but I guarantee that the APPG will be much more focused on the needs of industrial Britain than will his Budget.
The Government have made clear their intention to build a new series of gas-fired power stations and nowhere is better placed than Teesside to build one. Not only does a site exist there, but so does the infrastructure to put the electricity out directly into the national grid. Developers Sembcorp believe it could house a conventional combined cycle gas turbine plant or an integrated gasification combined cycle plant, both of which could incorporate carbon capture. Although Sembcorp could develop its own power station, a potential partner is looking to install a 300 MW gas-fired power plant on the plot.
I know that some may have reservations about the use of fossil fuels, but what an opportunity for the Government to put some meaning into the much abused term “northern powerhouse”—a large-scale power plant, an opportunity to develop it with CCS, but with the immeasurable bonus of doing it with the Teesside Collective and developing an exciting project that could mean boom time for Teesside, with the kind of inward investment that only people in the south believe can be a reality.
Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)
I appreciate my hon. Friend’s generosity. He is right. At a time when Teesside has seen so many job losses in the past few weeks, carbon capture and storage could provide a huge opportunity for people there. Does he agree that in order to enable a transition to a low-carbon economy, we need to ensure that such jobs go to local people, and that nationally agreed terms and conditions are not undercut by recruitment from overseas?
Alex Cunningham
Indeed. I know that local trade unions have been campaigning on this. There are examples on Teesside of companies undercutting what is, in effect, a living wage for the skilled people on Teesside.
I know that projects such as a power station are always fraught with planning complications, but I hope that when the time comes the doors of Ministers in both the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Department for Communities and Local Government will be open to ensure a quick decision on the planning application.
It is difficult to see how some of our industries, many of them critical to our economy, can remain located in the UK without CCS if our long-term national carbon reduction commitments are to be met. The Government appear to have no strategy for CCS development, let alone a means of funding it.
New clause 7 could compel Government to fill this huge hole in their energy policy platform. It does everything that any self-respecting Government would want to do, but, more than that, it could send that much wanted signal to the sector that Ministers are serious about carbon capture and storage, understand it and are prepared to deliver, and our country could benefit from potentially hundreds of thousands of jobs if they got it right.