Energy Grid Resilience

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 30th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I congratulated the hon. Lady yesterday on her remarkable marathon; I think she ran it two hours faster than I did, which leaves considerable room for improvement on my part, but congratulations to her again. She is right to raise this point, and I have answered questions on it before. I have met Centrica on several occasions to discuss various things, including that proposal, but it is a commercial matter for Centrica to bring the proposal to us. The Rough storage facility, which we last talked about in this House a few months ago, was mothballed for a number of years under the previous Government. We are looking in the round at the role it could play in energy security and at the value-for-money arguments. We want to ensure that value for money for the public is protected alongside the security of energy.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

My issue with the hon. Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) is that she has knocked me off my place as the second-fastest woman MP marathon runner—but I will be back.

While thousands of airline passengers were impacted by Monday’s outage across Spain and Portugal, only 500 flights were grounded out of a possible 6,000, the rest managing to fly. That is because there were no airport closures. Is there a lesson here for UK airports?

[Michael Shanks]

My hon. Friend is perhaps referring to the most recent situation at Heathrow. The Secretary of State commissioned a report after that incident to find out what the causes were, and that report is due. Airports in this country are private businesses, but given that they are clearly critical national infrastructure, the Government have a role in ensuring that they function. If there are any lessons we can learn, it will be invaluable for us to learn them, but I do not want to be drawn on the conclusions of a report that the Government have not yet seen.