Business of the House

Duncan Baker Excerpts

Thursday 4th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The testing strategy has achieved 205,000 tests as of the 30 May in terms of capacity, and that is important. It is the largest diagnostic testing programme in our history, and from scratch it has in a number of weeks got to more than 4 million tests having been undertaken. So that is a significant success, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has driven this personally, and has, to my mind, done absolutely brilliantly in managing to force something through that would not have happened without his individual and personal determination. However, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and this is one of the ways in which this House being here is always so useful, because specific constituency examples where things can be improved can be brought to the attention of the House. I will certainly pass on to my right hon. Friend the point that the hon. Gentleman has made.

[Duncan Baker (North Norfolk) (Con)]

Can the Government find time to debate the appropriate mechanisms for connection of the new wave of offshore wind turbines and farms to the national grid and include consideration of an offshore ring main?

That is particularly important to my constituency of North Norfolk, where many cable corridors are being built across the rural countryside, causing enormous disruption to residents. Surely it is now high time that the Government review the current method of connection to the grid.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am not sure whether “the current connection” was a pun or not, but it was certainly a very good one—