Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill

Tom Collins Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Commons Chamber

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I am pleased to support the Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill and the Lords amendments. The Bill is about backing a world-class aviation sector and supporting its growth in a way that meets our decarbonisation responsibilities. The fact that SAF could contribute to the 65% reduction in emissions needed by aviation to meet net zero by 2050 is a useful reminder that technological development can ensure a future for higher carbon emitters while improving our environment. That is policy in action, and it will reduce disruption to consumers—something that we also have to bear in mind.

SAF matters not just for its decarbonisation credentials, but for its clear potential to support job creation and economic growth. As my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) said, it will bring into existence a circular economy, including flooding alleviation and the development of feedstocks. That would perhaps alleviate some of the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) about the source of feedstocks.

Increasing home-grown SAF production can position the UK as a leading destination in this new market. Low-carbon fuels can support up to 15,000 jobs and contribute up to £5 billion to the economy by 2050. That is not an abstract prospect for those of us who represent communities built on industry and energy. In northern Lincolnshire, we already see what that can mean. Phillips 66’s Humber refinery in Immingham—in my neighbouring constituency—is the UK’s first and largest commercial scale producer of SAF. I was pleased to discuss the potential for the expansion of SAF operations with P66, especially given its recent acquisition of the Lindsey oil refinery site, which has a uniquely placed direct pipeline to London Heathrow.

It is of the utmost importance that UK refineries such as P66’s Humber refinery play a crucial role in the transition to and upscaling of cleaner fuel sources. That would retain the domestic skills base and supply chains that communities such as mine depend on. That is why I particularly welcome Lords amendments 1 to 3, which will ensure that the Secretary of State can enter revenue certainty contracts only where the supported SAF is produced in the UK. That is a crucial step in protecting domestic industrial growth. Given recent global events that other colleagues have referred to, the amendments present straightforward, sensible safeguards that help the UK to build fuel capability and resilience in an ever volatile global fuel supply chain.

For SAF to be a success, and as we build the market, we must get the wider policy framework right, including carbon pricing and the UK emissions trading scheme. The ETS can support sustainable aviation fuel investment, but it needs to be negotiated with care so that British industry has the clarity and confidence it needs to invest for the long term. It must not face uncertainty or any unintended disadvantages.

I support the Bill and welcome the Lords amendments. I look forward to working with the Government to strengthen the link between ambition and real industrial opportunity here at home, creating jobs and career opportunities in communities such as Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes.

[Tom Collins (Worcester) (Lab)]

A few of my colleagues have been offering jokes. I was not able to prepare detailed remarks, so I hope they will forgive me if I just wing it. [Laughter.]

Although we have discussed decarbonisation a number of times in this debate, it has not been said yet that the Bill is about addressing the climate crisis. That incredibly important and urgent piece of work demands the utmost urgency and ambition. For that reason, I naturally support it and what it is trying to achieve. Similar mechanisms have been incredibly successful in developing the thriving renewables industry that we now see in the UK, which provides a lot of our energy.

It is worth while recognising that the Bill is part of a much longer journey to decarbonising aviation. I declare an interest early in my remarks: I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on hydrogen. In a very long timeframe, we can potentially see aviation using cryogenic hydrogen as a fuel source, so we should keep that in view.

Similarly, SAF has various generations of development, with different feedstocks and mechanisms of production. The fuels also have different characteristics and ways of interacting with gas turbine technology. Therefore, the devil will absolutely be in the detail of the mechanisms that the Government are putting forward to build a market for the various generations of SAF. I hope we will see more detail about that strategic approach as this legislation goes forward.

It is important, as the amendments make clear, that the UK benefits from what we are doing in the Bill. I am passionate about seeing the whole UK low-carbon energy supply chain building and scaling rapidly. That includes electrons—the Government already have very ambitious goals around decarbonising electricity—as well as molecules and hydrogen. We are still awaiting the hydrogen strategy. I recently spoke to the Minister about that, and I understand that it is close. It is incredibly important that we have an ambitious and comprehensive strategy for the development of the hydrogen economy in the UK that does not just serve a small number of industrial clusters but underpins our decarbonisation of electricity, provides dispatchable power and provides an opportunity for industrial renewal as we move forward.

Hydrogen is an important feedstock for producing SAF by any route. We need a hydrogen economy, and for that we need a price. For a price, we need storage and transmission. As we fulfil our desires for SAF to be ambitious, bold and effective in decarbonising, we must also do the work as a Government to build a hydrogen economy to establish that anchoring price, as well as demand and production, so that we can see a thriving, decarbonising aviation sector, the renewal and regeneration of the whole UK industrial sector, and an absolute renaissance underpinned by low-carbon energy—both electrons and molecules.

[Keir Mather]

Madam Deputy Speaker, it would be remiss of me not to start by asking for the leave of the House to speak again, and then wish a very happy birthday to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith). I was so keen to wish him a happy birthday, I nearly put a foot wrong when it came to parliamentary protocol. I had the pleasure of celebrating my birthday during consideration of the Railways Bill with the hon. Member for Broadland and Fakenham (Jerome Mayhew). May I say, it was raucous, as I am sure the right hon. Member for Melton and Syston (Edward Argar) will attest?

I thank the shadow Minister for his support for the Lords amendments and for his strong support for the principle of decarbonisation of aviation. I am starting to receive slightly mixed signals from the shadow Transport team as to how passionately they stand behind this prospect across different modes of transport. Perhaps that is one to be hashed out over a beer at his birthday celebrations. I am glad that the shadow Minister agrees with the Government amendments. He is right to point to the economic value of decarbonisation across the United Kingdom and the need to focus on value for money for taxpayers. We are committed to delivering that in the revenue certainty mechanism by controlling the scale and the number of contracts that are entered into, as well as the prices that are negotiated in each contract. I assure him that the cost of the scheme and the impact on passenger ticket prices will be kept under continual review. I do not just acknowledge his commitment to be vigilant on this issue; I actively welcome it, and I thank him for his contributions.

May I also acknowledge the presence of my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane)? I have already thanked him for his work on the Bill, but he was not in the Chamber, so I would like to take the opportunity to restate my thanks to him for getting this crucial legislation to where it needed to be.

I turn to the remarks of my hon. Friends the Members for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn), for Doncaster East and the Isle of Axholme (Lee Pitcher) and for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson). They were right to focus on and say that the benefits of SAF production must be felt in my home of Yorkshire as well as in Lincolnshire and across the United Kingdom. The point about Doncaster Sheffield airport is important, because the consumers who use our airports and seek to use aviation travel to connect themselves to the world also care that they can do so in a form of technology that the Government are doing their utmost to try to decarbonise. I am glad that they feel that that level of ambition is reflected both in these amendments and in the Bill as a whole. My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) also pointed to that.

The Lib Dem spokesman, the hon. Member for Didcot and Wantage (Olly Glover), was right to say that SAF is only one piece of the puzzle in aviation decarbonisation. Hydrogen flight, greenhouse gas removals and airspace modernisation all require focus. Those points were also made by my hon. Friends the Members for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins) and for Worcester (Tom Collins).

My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield asked me about the concerns about crop use in SAF. Currently, crop-based SAF will not be eligible for the SAF mandate, but a call for evidence on the subject is open and will close on 16 March. More broadly, he asked me a range of questions that were quite detailed, some of which lie outside the exact scope of the Lords amendments. I would therefore be grateful if he would write to me and set them out so that I can give him the full response that he requires.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow for his contribution. He is right to point to the skills benefit that the generation of a thriving UK SAF industry can bring to his constituents and to support the work in Stansted airport. My hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) also raised the important point of ongoing questions surrounding the Grangemouth refinery. I reiterate, as he asked me to, that we are calling on investors to come forward and join us in the major opportunity to secure the long-term industrial future of Grangemouth as a hub for our clean energy future. With Government backing, we believe that now is the time for private sector partners to step forward and help shape the next chapter for Grangemouth. The National Wealth Fund stands ready to invest £200 million to support those new opportunities. I encourage my hon. Friend to keep working with us, and we are ready to engage with investors on that point.