Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

BCW in my hon. Friend’s constituency is an extremely important engineering firm not only for Jaguar Land Rover, but for our manufacturing supply chains. The concerns he has raised about access to finance for companies lower down in the supply chain are ones that I have raised with both Jaguar Land Rover and banks—I had with a meeting with most of the lenders. However, I commend the work of the Confederation of British Metalforming, which works with the supply chain. I understand that it had positive meetings with Jaguar Land Rover recently, although of course there is a cash financing issue as factories come up to speed. I will be paying close attention to that in the coming weeks.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Peter Kyle)]

The growth emergency we inherited from the previous Government demands a proportionate response. That means an unrelenting focus on pro-business policies. It means harnessing investment in our high growth sectors and tirelessly implementing our modern industrial strategy. It means shaking up our entire regulatory system. The Department for Business and Trade is stripping out the rules, regulations and red tape that are holding business back. We are helping reduce the regulatory burden by 25%, cutting out 200 hours of needless paperwork for companies so far. We are simplifying rules around company reporting, saving firms £230 million. We are bringing in a strengthened growth duty for regulators and launching a new performance dashboard, injecting agility into our regulatory regime. Where regulators are doubling up, we are streamlining them. We are abolishing the British Hallmarking Council, transferring functions to the Department. This is a new ministerial team acting with urgency. We are using every lever we have to grow the economy and to deliver for this Government’s plan for change.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

On Tuesday, the Ministry of Defence announced the launch of Project Fairfax, which will see a defence technology cluster established on surplus MOD land at RAF Wyton in Huntingdon. This is a hugely exciting opportunity for both Huntingdon and the MOD, as we seek to create a defence ecosystem in sites we have identified across Huntingdonshire. With a decision yet to be made about identifying investible sites, and regarding the £600 million fund available through the strategic sites accelerator programme, will the Secretary of State meet me and the chief executive of my local council to discuss the inclusion of potential defence sites in Huntingdon?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s question, and I know that his community will be grateful for his question, too. I can assure him that we are working to mobilise the strategic sites accelerator, which will operate across the nation. We expect to communicate how and when the programme will deploy in the coming period into spring. As he knows, RAF Wyton is a key site for cyber and specialist operations command. It is an important asset for our nation. I, or the relevant Minister, will of course meet him to discuss how we can better support that site going forward, but already within Government it is a very highly valued asset.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I feel that is a question for either the Treasury or the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, but the hon. Lady made it well. Agriculture features prominently in trade and business, and I will ensure that she gets the right opportunity to put questions about taxation to the Chancellor.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

Across my constituency in recent weeks we have experienced severe delays to post in those areas served by the Huntingdon delivery office. That follows a recent restructuring of the workforce and changes to delivery routes. Rural communities and businesses, in particular, have been impacted, with missed hospital appointments and several businesses telling me that it is affecting their ability to receive and therefore pay invoices. Will the Minister urgently investigate those ongoing and worsening delays in Huntingdon, and write to me with the outcome of his findings?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)]

I had to wait 50 minutes for a question, Mr Speaker, but this is an important one and I share the hon. Member’s concerns. We regularly meet Ofcom to discuss the performance of Royal Mail, and I will certainly write to him about the discussions we have in respect of his constituency.

UK-US Trade and Tariffs

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Reynolds]

My hon. Friend is right to talk about the historic scale and significance of the announcement last night, particularly for her constituency, which has economic infrastructure that is so vital to the country, and how we will process the scale of the changes. I assure her that the Prime Minister, members of the Cabinet and I as the Secretary of State are at all times doing what she mentioned, in the decisions that we have had to make at pace, so that we can put our national interests forward in a way that has allowed us to progress negotiations and to keep opportunities open.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

For all the carefully choreographed bonhomie in the Oval Office last November, the Prime Minister failed to secure a US military backstop for his coalition. Despite No. 10 briefing a narrative about productive discussions at the weekend, the Prime Minister has admitted to business leaders that there will be an economic impact from the decisions that the US has taken. On Times Radio this morning, the Business Secretary said that he would roll up his sleeves to try to remove the impact on businesses entirely. That is a bold claim, given the circumstances and the impact that the Chancellor’s Budget is already having. What timeframe does he envisage for an economic deal with the US? What will he be doing until 1 May while waiting for the views of UK shareholders?

Solar Farms: Agricultural Land

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I cannot comment on the individual case in his constituency, of course. But of course when developers are applying for planning permission, they go through a series of criteria and have to adhere to a series of criteria, whether that is for the development of smaller solar plants, where it goes through local authorities, or whether it is through the nationally significant infrastructure project process. The solar taskforce is looking at all these issues as well. We are making sure we are mindful of all of the range of issues that we need to consider when we are looking at bringing infrastructure into communities. I will come to this later, but it is really important to say that we want to do this with local communities—with consultation of local communities and with consideration of what other options are available to us as well. That will continue.

Solar is one of the cheapest sources of power available to us, which is an important consideration when we are looking at the full range of options that we have between us. We are setting a target for around 45 GW to 47 GW of solar power by 2030. That is up from the 17 GW that we have today and it is a substantial increase.

I want to tackle the issue that a number of Members mentioned—the rooftop versus ground-mount issue. The hon. Member for South Cotswolds is right to talk about how we need to be going further to make sure we are putting solar panels on our roofs, and to ask what Government can do to encourage that. We are bringing in new building standards to ensure that all newly built houses and commercial buildings are fit for a net zero future. We expect those standards to encourage the installation of solar panels on new developments. We are issuing later this year a call for evidence on the construction of solar on outdoor car parks. The reconvened solar taskforce is focusing on rooftop solar, and further actions to increase deployment will be set out in the road map this spring.

I was talking to one of our big mayoral authorities yesterday about the power purchase agreements that people could potentially have in this space. If people look at public sector roofs and the collaboration they could have across some of our transport infrastructure and some of our public sector infrastructure, they could do more ambitious projects when it comes to solar, and of course we want to push that as much as we can. If we can put solar panels on rooftops, that is what we want to do. But we consider that we need a mix of both: we need ground-mounted and rooftop panels to get to the numbers that we want to see.

Let me turn to the planning system. All proposed solar projects are subject to a rigorous planning process, which considers the interests of local communities, as I said to the hon. Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller).

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

In my constituency of Huntingdon, a new solar farm of 1,900 acres is proposed. It spans from my constituency across into North Bedfordshire, which my hon. Friend the Member for North Bedfordshire (Richard Fuller) represents. The local population have spent a lot of time liaising with both me and my hon. Friend with regard to the impact that it will have and the lack of consultation that they have experienced. They have been told that realistically, they will receive no real benefit from the solar farm’s being there. They will certainly not receive directly cheaper energy bills for having it built right on their doorstep. What would the Minister say to those constituents, and the constituents of the other Members in this room, who are in effect having nationally significant infrastructure projects foisted on them and who do not feel that they have a say or any real ability to push back on that?

[Sarah Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He expresses a concern that local Members of Parliament will always have when constituents come to them with issues. Look, we are balancing an issue when it comes to solar. At the moment, about 0.1% of all our land in the UK—and, it turns out, about 0.1% of all agricultural land as a proportion as well—has solar on it. Even if we were to reach our targets or go beyond them, it would still be less than 1% of land. We have to look at that statistic, but we also have to look at the local situation, which is where we absolutely accept that we are asking people to have infrastructure in their communities that will affect them. It could change their view, change their roles or change the jobs that are available; it has an impact. Through our clean power action plan, we are looking at the community benefit systems that we need to put in place. I cannot speak to the hon. Gentleman’s particular case because it is going through a process and it would not be right for me to do so, but I am mindful of what he says about the need for communities to feel like they will have some direct benefits and to understand why we need some of this infrastructure.

The reality is that we have not kept up to speed with infrastructure developments in this country over the past couple of decades, and we need to move faster. Whether it is our grid system, renewable energy or our transport systems, we need to build these things for our children and grandchildren to have the future that we want to see. Of course we need to be mindful of the impact and how local people feel. That is why, for the nationally significant infrastructure projects, there is still consultation and strong engagement with communities. That needs to get better, and we are looking at that through our clean power action plan.

I am mindful of the time. I want to move on to food security, which the hon. Member for South Cotswolds mentioned. Food security is national security, and it is very important for this Government. We need a resilient and healthy food system that works with nature and supports British farmers, fishers and food producers. That is why the Government will introduce a new deal for farmers to boost rural economic growth and strengthen Britain’s food security.