Jackdaw Gasfield

Tessa Munt Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend and any other hon. Members from across the House who have experience that they want to raise or ideas about how we can do this. I chair the North sea future board, which has trade unions at its heart to bring the story of workers to the heart of the decisions we are making, not just because we owe that to those workers, who are powering the country right now and have done for decades, but because they are the critical workforce that will help us build what we need in the future. He is right to point to failed transitions—we will all have experience of that in our communities, but some more than others. There is a lesson from history that if Government do not actively engage in building the next part of the transition, we will not support those workers. We are doing everything that we can on that, but there is a lot more that we can do and I am happy to work with him on it.

[Tessa Munt (Wells and Mendip Hills) (LD)]

My colleagues and I have consistently called for electricity prices to be decoupled from the wholesale gas price. The Minister has accepted that approving more domestic gas production will not in itself protect households from international price shocks, but doing that might. Will he accelerate the decoupling? Can he offer a timetable in which he will do that?

[Michael Shanks]

The hon. Lady is right to point to that fact. We have renewables in the system, but we are not getting the benefit of the pricing, because the last margin unit that we need in order to meet our supply is often gas. That used to be 90% of the time, but it is now less than 60% of the time. We are making huge progress; since the closure of the strait of Hormuz, we have been saving £50 million or more a day on displaced gas costs, because of the renewables that we have built. We are going as fast as we can, but I cannot just pull a lever and make decoupling happen, because the marginal price setting is important to ensure that we can meet our supply every single day. We are doing everything that we can on that issue. It is a No. 1 priority to ensure that people feel the benefit of clean power coming through on to their bills.