Significant Energy Infrastructure Projects: Suffolk Coast

Debate between Jenny Riddell-Carpenter and Michael Shanks

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend foresees what I was going to say. I was just about to come on to his earlier intervention, which was really important. He is right about the need for infrastructure plans to be generated by communities and bottom-up. We need to take a national view of the future of the energy system as well, but I think both can work together.

The third great part of this planning is the regional energy plans. We also see a place, on a very localised level, for the local energy plans that many local authorities and combined mayoral authorities are working on, but the regional plans break up the whole of Great Britain into smaller areas so that we can look in detail at what energy can be sited in different areas, and crucially, at how the two kinds of plan can work together—the Government’s land use framework for the future use of land in the country alongside the capability and interest from communities to host infrastructure as well. I hope that we are doing that, but my hon. Friend should continue to bring that challenge to the Government, because it is something that we are committed to doing. I am confident that he will do so, which is great.

Let me finish on a point around the impact on communities. We do not want to get to a place where the future energy system is something that is done to communities, and we recognise that the failure of strategic planning across the country has meant that that is all too often what it has felt like for communities. We have a role to play in ensuring that, where communities do host important energy infrastructure, they benefit from it. Hosting such infrastructure benefits the whole country—without a resilient energy system, we all lose out, and we will not deliver the economic growth that we need—but the communities that host this infrastructure should feel a benefit from doing so.

That is why, in March, we announced two community benefit initiatives, guidance on community funds for communities that host this key infrastructure, and a bill discount scheme for households that are sited in proximity to new transmission infrastructure. The guidance sets out our expectations for how communities hosting that infrastructure should benefit. We will have more to say as the bill discount scheme is developed through secondary legislation, but that is an important statement: people should directly benefit, through money off their bills, if they are doing the country a favour by hosting that infrastructure. In May we also published a working paper on wider questions around community benefits, to make sure that other types of energy infrastructure also benefit communities.

In conclusion, I again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal for securing the debate. I know that we will continue to have these conversations. In this job I sometimes wish, for a number of reasons, that we could turn back the clock and do things slightly differently. I have been told repeatedly that, unfortunately, that is not an option, although I continue to push for it. Strategic planning is one of those regrets. As a country, whatever the political view, we will look back and wish that we had planned our energy system more holistically across the country. We are doing that. That does not change some of the decisions that have been made and some of the decisions that are in the system now, but it will allow us to build a more holistic system in the future.

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

Will the Minister meet me to talk about what more co-ordination can happen now through the projects that are live, in the way that I set out in my speech?

[Michael Shanks]

I am always happy to meet any hon. Member from either side of the House, and I do regularly, but I will certainly meet my hon. Friend to discuss that. For obvious reasons, it is difficult to comment on specific applications in the system, but I am happy to meet her.

Let me finish with a general point that brings us back to our national mission. As a country, we must move quickly to replace a 19th-century fossil fuel-based energy system with a system that is fit for the 21st century. Even if we were not on that mission, the huge increase in demand for electricity necessitates the building of more energy infrastructure across the country. We must make the change that we are making to bring down bills and benefit consumers, to benefit our national energy security in an increasingly uncertain world, and to tackle climate change. Anyone who says that we can get by with not building any infrastructure is quite wrong.

Since time began, there has been opposition to any pieces of infrastructure built in any part of the country, but we must as a country recognise that, for us to deliver on the outcomes we want as a Government and improve people’s lives, we have to build infrastructure across the country. We want to do that in partnership with communities, to ensure that we do so in as well planned and strategic a way as possible, and to ensure that communities that host such infrastructure genuinely benefit from it. There is much more work to do, and I look forward to engaging with hon. Members on these difficult questions so that we can find the right solution for the country and local communities. I thank my hon. Friend once again for securing the debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Jenny Riddell-Carpenter and Michael Shanks

Tuesday 12th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter (Suffolk Coastal) (Lab)]

I was delighted by Ofgem’s announcement this morning that it now recommends that the proposed Nautilus interconnector should be located at the Isle of Grain, not on the Suffolk coast. Since I have been elected, I have made firm representations to the Minister and Ofgem, including via its consultation, that the Suffolk coast should not have been considered and brownfield sites should have been considered first. Will the Minister meet me to discuss other National Grid projects in my constituency?

[Michael Shanks]

Ofgem has announced today decisions on a number of interconnectors. Those are decisions for Ofgem and not for the Government. We have recently announced the launch of a strategic spatial energy plan, to ensure that we plan such projects holistically, across the whole of the United Kingdom, and take into account a number of schemes when planning future energy, such as those my hon. Friend mentions in her constituency. I will continue to have discussions about that with Members from across the country.