Great British Energy Bill (Third sitting)

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 10th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Uma Kumaran (Stratford and Bow) (Lab)]

It is really good to see this cross-party support for community energy. I am sure all Members here today can speak to brilliant innovations in their constituencies. I have one in my constituency of Stratford and Bow, Community Energy Newham: its vision, very much like that of the Government, is to provide clean, affordable energy to homes and public buildings across the borough of Newham.

As we heard extensively on Second Reading, GB Energy will be owned by and for the British people, to help to promote energy independence, as well as to maintain Britain’s standing as a global leader. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Monmouthshire. The Bill has already baked in the fact that community energy will be possible. We heard extensively from our witnesses that if the Bill does not give GB Energy the ability to innovate and advance, or to be flexible, there may be constraints in the years ahead. That is why we do not need the amendment.

Community Energy Newham is looking to provide our local library with a cleaner source of energy. As I said, many Members have exciting projects in their constituencies. That is why it is so important to maintain this cross-party support for the Bill and get it through as quickly as possible, so that not only our constituents but the whole country can benefit from Great British Energy.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I rise to reinforce not just the evidence that we heard from the Minister and Juergen Maier about the commitment to community energy, but the evidence we heard from private companies about foreign Governments that are willing to allow communities and municipalities to take a share in community energy.

None of what is in the Bill or what GB Energy proposes will happen without communities being involved. Communities will have to be involved at every stage —in generation, in transmission and in the purchase of the energy—otherwise we will find ourselves fighting communities every step of the way. It is vital that communities are involved. They are not just knocking at the door; they are taking over.

My constituency, Na h-Eileanan an Iar, has the largest number of community-owned windfarms in the UK. They serve as a template for what could happen across the rest of Scotland and Britain if communities are engaged and take on the challenge of producing their own power.

I was delighted with what the Minister said in the evidence session on Tuesday: GB Energy will be there to enable and help communities to get on the grid, get over the planning obstacles and the legal and financial obstacles that are sometimes in their paths. I think we should allow GB Energy to be set up and to get on with its business, and to enable communities to be engaged and involved not just in the production of energy, but in earning and reaping some of the profit that we will see from the wealth of wind.

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[Michael Shanks]

That is a really helpful point. The community energy hubs that already exist are certainly something that we want to build on. The £10 million commitment is welcome. We have committed more than £1 billion to the local power plan over this Parliament, but we are building on what is already there, such as the local hubs. In Scotland, there is the community and renewable energy scheme, where we are already working with the Scottish Government to look at how we can jointly fund the project. It is really important that we work to build on what is already there.

The Government will not be supporting amendments 2 or 9 today. Amendment 2 seeks to insert an additional object to clause 3 specifically about community energy. As a few hon. Members have said, the purpose of the Bill is to set up the confines of Great British Energy as a company in as little detail as possible. We are not seeking to fill the Bill with every possible mechanism the company could use or every possible priority it could have. We are clear that we are setting up the minimum necessary provisions for Great British Energy to function.

My hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington made the really important point earlier that we are not seeking to set in train, for however long GB Energy will deliver projects, our objectives right now, in 2024. We want to give it the most minimal possible scope, so that it can go forward in an agile way and move into areas that, at the moment, we may not think are critical. Community energy will change over time—it already has changed with regard to the models we are using.

There is nothing in the Bill that excludes communities at all. The production, distribution, storage and supply of clean energy extends to large-scale offshore programmes, but I do not think we should discount communities’ involvement in those. There are some really good models around the world. In Denmark, 20% is now expected for community ownership, so there are models of large-scale projects as well, although as the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire rightly said, much smaller-scale generation projects that directly benefit local communities should sit alongside that.

Amendment 9 would require the Secretary of State to specifically set, as a strategic priority, measures to ensure that local communities benefit from low and renewable energy projects operating in their area. As we will discuss later, the Secretary of State will outline Great British Energy’s strategic priorities to ensure that it remains aligned with Government policy on energy more generally. The first statement, which we will make as soon as possible after Royal Assent—before Christmas, as was said earlier—will focus on driving clean energy deployment, creating jobs, boosting our energy independence and, crucially, generating benefits for UK taxpayers.

We have been clear that that process—I will say more about this later—will include consultation with Ministers in the devolved Administrations. We are already working on community energy with the devolved Administrations in Wales and Scotland, in particular, which are doing great work on it.

Clause 3 sets out the parameters for Great British Energy to carry out the five key functions that we outlined in the plan for it, one of which is to deliver the Government’s local power plan. We are very clear that Great British Energy’s role in delivering the local power plan will be to support and champion local community groups. In my evidence on Tuesday, I built on the comments of a number of our witnesses and said that there are two strands to our proposal. GB Energy will provide some of the funding, but it will also have a critical role where communities can access funding but lack capacity. I am thinking in particular about rural communities and local authorities across the country that previously had in-house energy expertise but are no longer in a position to lead on some of these projects.

There are great municipal schemes across Europe, and we would like to see some of them in this country. That will require GB Energy to provide funding and, crucially, capacity building.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I am pleased to hear that the Minister has such enthusiasm for municipal and community schemes. There are examples in my constituency of communities that have come together. There are three community-owned estates on the west side of Lewis with a plan for nine turbines generating 43 MW. That could bring in £4 million into that community, but it needs need pump-priming and help to get it there. Similarly, onshore windfarm schemes have been proposed and are in planning, with the offer for municipal and arm’s length companies of local authorities to take shares of up to 20%, as the Minister said. That is the kind of thing that GB Energy could do if we just get through this Bill.

[Michael Shanks]

I take my hon. Friend’s point in the spirit in which it was intended and not as an attempt to rush me through the rest of these proceedings so we can get the Bill up and running, but we will move at pace. Every time he speaks, he is very good at reminding me that I need to visit those projects in Lewis with him at some point. He is absolutely right that it is important that we give communities, in whatever form—local government, local island communities, villages or towns —the ability to come together with the capacity to deliver on their energy potential.

I fundamentally believe that the Bill is at the heart of what the Government desire to do on the local power plan and community ownership more generally. We are absolutely committed to community energy, including through things such as what the Co-operative party has put forward. There is nothing in the Bill that prevents that from happening. For those reasons, I hope that the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire will withdraw her amendment.

[Pippa Heylings]

It is wonderful to hear hon. Members say how supportive they are of community energy and give examples from their local areas. In Cambridgeshire, the expertise is still there—it is absolutely amazing. We have community energy projects, including wind energy, and a whole village has an off-grid heat network, which is a national case in point.

I ask the Minister once again to take into account the cross-party support for the amendment. It is not a bauble, nor is it about crossing t’s and dotting i’s; it is about public ownership models. At the moment there is real concern, because although we talk about the great things happening, in the latest meetings we have held with advocates of community energy, we have been told that it is in crisis. Although GB Energy is removing the barriers to large-scale clean energy projects, there are barriers to community energy, which is why we have so few new community energy projects, in contrast to the past. We need investment, but it is not just about the money and capacity. It is about the rights—the ownership model and the right not only to generate but to sell locally, with an equal cost to connect.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I take the hon. Member’s point about rights. Usually, land rights prevent communities from taking a stake in energy projects. Community-owned land, which we have plenty of in the Western Isles and across Scotland, is the key—land that the community has ownership of.

The other problem, which I am sure GB Energy should and will unlock, is access to the grid, to get community companies on to the grid; GB Energy and regulation from the Department should be crucial to achieving that.

[Pippa Heylings]

I thank the hon. Member for making that point about the cost for communities of connecting to the grid, which makes it completely unviable for them to do so. It is not about capacity; the communities know what they want to do and are ready to do it. Unfortunately, although there is a right to sell energy locally, the cost of connection makes it completely unviable.

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[Andrew Bowie]

I will not detain the Committee long, but I want to express the Conservatives’ support for the Liberal Democrat amendment, primarily because of our concern about the impact of the removal of the winter fuel allowance from so many pensioners this winter, and the fact that the warm homes plan, as welcome as it is, will not be up and running until next spring, which leaves considerable concern over what might happen in and around this winter.

Those pensioners should be at the forefront of our mind as we look towards winter and as we are discussing an increase in the number of well-insulated homes in this country—on which, by the way, we had quite a good record when we were in government; we increased markedly the number of homes at EPC level C or above. For those reasons, we will support the amendment if it is pressed to a vote.

[Torcuil Crichton]

It is difficult to argue against home insulation, but I do not know whether we need legislation or an amendment to the Bill to achieve it, particularly when it is happening already in community-owned power companies such as Point and Sandwick Trust in my constituency. The company raises £1 million a year for its community, and distributed in the last 18 months £250,000 to people living in fuel poverty, to help with home insulation and heating costs. That is the template, the model and the example that GB Energy could help and sustain without need for the amendment.

[Andrew Pakes]

I share huge empathy with the sentiments behind the amendment, but I believe that the answer to home insulation sits not in the Great British Energy Bill, but in the wider clean power and clean energy mission. I find it quite rich for Opposition Members, who used to be in government, to talk about supporting an emergency home insulation programme when they decimated the apprenticeship programme that delivered the workforce that could actually insulate our homes.

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[Andrew Bowie]

The fact is that the Labour party has brought forward this legislation and is creating this company—a company that the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and Labour candidates, now MPs across the country, claimed time and again through the election would cut bills by £300. It was one of the reasons why Labour is creating the company in the first place, so it is surprising that it did not want to put the £300 as a specific object in the Bill, given that it was so proud of the fact that this would deliver the savings it said it would.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I, too, have been checking online—with Full Fact, which discloses that the £300 figure that the shadow Minister raises is not based on Labour’s plans; it comes from a report from an energy think-tank Ember, and it is an estimate of what people would save. There was no Government commitment—there never was a Government commitment—to such a figure.

[Andrew Bowie]

That might be in Full Fact, but if the hon. Member goes to Channel 4’s “FactCheck”, he will see that it says:

“During the election campaign Labour suggested bills would be brought down around £300 a year”

through its “net zero energy plans”, including the creation of GB Energy. The Prime Minister said:

“Yes, I do. I stand by everything in our manifesto and one of the things I made clear in the election campaign is I wouldn’t make a single promise or commitment that I didn’t think we could deliver in government.”

So the question is this: will energy bills be cut by £300 by 2030 and, if so, why is that not in the legislation before us?

Great British Energy Bill (Fourth sitting)

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Bowie]

The amendments would create a specific strategic priority for Great British Energy to create 650,000 new jobs in the United Kingdom by 2030, and require the production of an annual report on the progress of meeting that strategic priority.

It is worth our while this afternoon to take some time to consider the achievements of the previous Conservative Government in driving towards a cleaner energy future. It was a Conservative Government, under Prime Minister Theresa May, who legislated for net zero in 2019. It was a Conservative Government who began and created the contract for difference process, which was looked at with awe by the world at that stage—

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andrew Bowie]

I am mid-flow, but yes.

[Torcuil Crichton]

Was it not also a Conservative Government who refused to take the decision to give Harland & Wolff the funding that would have kept it open and avoided administration and now sale, and who left that hard decision to the incoming Labour Government?

[Andrew Bowie]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there are many hard decisions to be taken in government, and every decision that the Government have to take has to provide value for money for the British taxpayer. I know that this Government recognise that, given the decision they have taken to remove £300 from every pensioner in the country—something I think they will come to regret.

As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, the Conservative Government built the first to fifth largest offshore wind farms in the world, ended coal for power generation and halved emissions at the fastest rate of any G7 power. In that regard, I know that everybody in the room is proud of the record of the Conservative Government just gone and will champion it in our work as we move forward.

Nevertheless, the issue of skills, and the lack of the skilled workforce required to deliver the next phase of the transition, was always at the forefront of Ministers’ minds. Indeed, because of that we established the nuclear skills fund when I was the Minister responsible for nuclear.

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[Andrew Bowie]

I am very proud of everything that we did in government to support our steelworkers and those communities around the country that depend on those jobs. It is desperately sad to see what has happened in Port Talbot recently. That is an example of what we must avoid moving forward, and something that we must avoid happening in the North sea, for example, where workers engaged in traditional industries are fearful about where their jobs sit in the forthcoming transition. Although I do not agree that we did not do everything we could to support steelmaking at Port Talbot, I do think that it is an example to learn from and one that we must avoid in the future.

[Torcuil Crichton]

What the shadow Minister is describing sounds like an industrial strategy—something that we have been missing for 14 years.

[Andrew Bowie]

Well, not quite. We did have an industrial strategy. We had a Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. It is not an industrial strategy. The amendment aims to establish within the strategic priorities of this company a commitment to deliver a UK-based supply chain, which is something that we sought to do while in Government, with the sustainable industry reward scheme that will launch next year with the auction round for the contracts for difference, and through other programmes and investment opportunities that we were seeking to see come to fruition. I am very glad that this Government seem to be taking the challenge in this regard just as seriously as we did.

The transition we are in just now spans our entire energy industry and incorporates the North sea and our homegrown petroleum outputs. As noted by the Climate Change Committee, we will need oil and gas for decades to come, not just as an energy baseload but as a key component in the transition and in the technologies for the transition.

In our electric vehicles and our batteries, we will need lithium. In 2023, Cornish Lithium opened Britain’s first lithium mine in Cornwall, with £53.6 million investment led by the UK Infrastructure Bank, which we established in 2021, to invest in our domestic supply chain, our clean technology supply chain and our energy future.

In our solar panels, we need silver, indium and copper. In our grid systems, we need kilometres and kilometres of copper. In fact, renewable energy will drive 45% of copper demand by 2030. Our reliance on China for low-cost, clean technology and minerals should worry us all. In 2022, we imported 64% of rare earth metals and 49% of lithium batteries from China.

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[Stephen Flynn]

These amendments are hopefully self-explanatory to Members. I am extremely keen to hear the Minister’s thoughts on them. As I referred to in my initial remarks, much of the success of the UK’s energy sector will be derived from the success of renewables projects in Scotland, whether that is the continuation of onshore wind, further development of fixed-bottom offshore wind, floating offshore wind, pumped storage hydro, green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, tidal, wave, and so on. The sun sometimes shines as well, so we might get some solar panels in there too—perhaps just in Na h-Eileanan an Iar, though, as opposed to Aberdeen.

I know that the Minister has been engaging proactively with my colleagues in Scotland, that there have been a lot of positive discussions, and that Mr Maier was up with the First Minister in recent weeks to discuss the future outlook for GB Energy. If the respect agenda that the new Labour Government appear to have put in place is to mean something, it is important that they are willing and confident enough in their arguments to seek the fulsome consent of the Scottish Parliament—not just the Scottish National party, because I am conscious, as I said earlier, that it may not always be the Scottish National party that is there.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I rise not just to reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the sun does shine in the Western Isles, but to note that these amendments seem quite complex—blocking amendments, actually, that would prevent the business and progress of GB Energy. They read a bit like last year’s script because, as he mentioned, the Scottish Government and the UK Government work hand in hand now. My friend the Secretary of State for Scotland, and the Deputy First Minister of Scotland, who is a frenemy, speak on a regular—daily or at most weekly—basis. The Governments work together, rendering these clauses unnecessary.

[Stephen Flynn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, although I am a bit disappointed that he regards seeking the consent of Scotland’s nationally elected Parliament as a blocking amendment. That is quite a Westminster mentality that he has adopted already in the few short weeks that he has been here—perhaps that is an indication of where his party intends to go in the months and years to come. Notwithstanding that, because I do not believe it was a necessary or helpful intervention in that context, I would be very keen to hear from the Minister on why he does not believe he should seek the consent of Scotland’s Parliament.

Great British Energy Bill (First sitting)

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Pakes (Peterborough) (Lab)]

This is registered, but I have been told to say it out loud: I am a member of the GMB, which is appearing before us later, and before the election I was the deputy general secretary of Prospect, which is also speaking to us this morning.

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I am also a member of the GMB.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

I am also a member of the GMB.

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[Torcuil Crichton]

Q Good morning, Mr Maier. Following on from Catherine’s questions, can you highlight how GB Energy will involve communities in the renewable transition? What kind of benefits will there be? The Secretary of State spoke about a mandatory community benefit.

Juergen Maier: Thank you for the question. We have laid out the five key priorities of Great British Energy. One is to invest and co-invest; another is to enable and help to accelerate development; the third is very much about the local community energy that your colleague talked about earlier. That will be through community energy schemes. The reason we are so keen on that is that it is where community engagement really comes in. That will not be the gigawatts of renewable energy— the gigawatts will be in floating offshore wind—but I passionately believe that by engaging with local communities, whether that is with local solar, with onshore wind or with tidal-type schemes, you can really get that community engagement and community acceptance. Indeed, you can really deliver the local social benefit that those schemes can deliver.

[Torcuil Crichton]

And economic benefit too, we hope.

Juergen Maier: Of course.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Q Good morning, Mr Maier. It is very good to see you here. I have some questions about the overall aims that the Bill and the company are trying to achieve. You have just said that it will be an enabler, so we have to imagine it as something that will happen before any contracts for difference are attributed. It is an enabler to make people and companies ready to bid into the CfDs, for example. Is that how you see the role? People are used to the status quo, and the CfDs have been very successful. Some companies are wondering how it is all going to fit together.

Juergen Maier: Certainly the enabling part of what we do will be pre-CfDs, as you say. That is also where our partnership with the Crown Estate comes in. This is where we will be doing a lot of the early consenting and engaging on the willingness to co-invest and give confidence, but we will also be there past the CfDs. As and when the schemes get developed, there may be opportunities to come in and be a co-investor. We would also be supporting that.

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[Harriet Cross]

Q We have heard a lot about public investment and the importance of private investment for meeting net zero. Is there anything in the Bill that encourages you that the amount of public investment going in will attract the amount of private investment that is needed? We have to take this Bill in the round with other energy policies coming forward. How does it sit alongside those in ensuring that we continue to attract private investment into the energy sector?

Marc Hedin: I may be playing devil’s advocate here, but there is a slight risk if a public company were to invest in a utility scale project. At the moment in GB, we manage to attract quite a lot of capital to deploy renewable projects, for instance. There is also a risk of perceived unfair competition that would be detrimental to future capital attractiveness, so I would add that to the global reflection around this topic.

Ravi Gurumurthy: To come in on that, it is very common in other countries for the state to co-invest. I have spoken to a lot of other organisations, and we need to attract £350 billion to £500 billion of capital into power generation in the next 10 years. I think it is perfectly possible for the state to play a role in that. Everything that GB Energy is trying to do is to reduce the risk and increase the predictability of the investment environment. If you take the developer role, at the moment the private sector, when it bids in for a seabed lease, has to have the uncertainty of whether that project will ever get commissioned and the long delay in planning and consenting, grid connection and environmental surveys. If we can actually have the state do some of that and de-risk it, I think it is more likely to get that private sector investment. That is what happens in the Netherlands and it is what the Danes are moving towards, and it is also partly what happens in Germany. There is a good track record of these sorts of environments working well to attract private sector investment.

Shaun Spiers: That is right. You cannot dictate the culture of a company in a Bill. There was a criticism of the Green Investment Bank, for instance, that it invested in rather established technologies and had an insufficiently high appetite for risk. It will be important that GB Energy does pump-prime private investment and not replace it.

[Torcuil Crichton]

Q You anticipated my question. To pivot back, Ravi, you talked about innovation, and you talked, Shaun, about closing that 20% towards net zero. What can this Bill and GB Energy do to drive that private sector investment?

Shaun Spiers: Ravi has written the report on it.

Ravi Gurumurthy: Your question is: what can it do to drive private sector investment?

[Torcuil Crichton]

Yes, what can the Bill and GB Energy itself do?

Ravi Gurumurthy: I have already articulated what it can do on the development side to get rid of some of the risks to do with planning, consenting, grid connection and so on. On the more novel technologies—small modular reactors, floating wind, tidal range and so on—I think we have also talked about how if the state is co-investing in some way, it signals a degree of commitment and insulates companies slightly from the risks. In both the investor and developer roles, GB Energy can play a role in accelerating things. The biggest way in which the state can de-risk investment and increase private sector contribution is through the National Energy System Operator, providing a clear, strategic plan and forward visibility of what is happening in terms of technology and location. That is how I think we will get the investment—not just in the assets, but in the supply chain as well.

Shaun Spiers: On clean, flexible power, what Green Alliance has proposed is a sort of vaccine taskforce-style operation to crowd in all potential technologies for this. It is not clear who would fund it, if GB Energy did not. That is a really important part of 2030 power decarbonisation. There is also the local power plan. The previous Government had a plan—I think it was in 2014—to power 1 million homes by community energy, which was abandoned four years later with about 67,000 homes powered. There is a clear remit here for making community energy economically viable and getting local investment in community energy.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Q I want to come back to what Shaun said a little earlier about the slight risk of the great power that the Secretary of State has. Do you think that there should be some protection in the Bill for communities, so that they can have a say? We also know that quite a lot of the delivery of our new transition infrastructure might be delayed because communities are not entirely certain, for instance. Is there a risk, and should there be something in the Bill that protects communities, so that they can be confident they are part of the transition and are being listened to?

Shaun Spiers: I think a nature recovery or nature protection duty in the Bill would be helpful in reassuring communities. The investment in community energy, where people really have a stake in the energy, will take some of the sting out of the opposition to renewables, but I would not overload the Bill with things that are better dealt with in the planning system. This is a Bill to enable a lot of investment in achieving a decarbonised power system and long-term energy security. To try to overload it with things that are best dealt with in other parts of government, or other legislation, would be a mistake.

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[The Chair]

We are getting away from the Bill a bit.

[Torcuil Crichton]

Q Good morning, gentlemen. Dan, you have argued in the past that GB Energy should have a very focused mission. What is your view of the objects for GB Energy set out in clause 3?

Dan McGrail: I firmly stand by the idea that GB Energy, at least in its initial phase, should do three or four things excellently, with some fundamental underpinning. It should champion the UK supply chain; it should act to promote skills; it should enable innovation. The market segments in which it operates should be focused on and defined early. Its budget of £8.3 billion is a lot of money, but to get value from that in the context of the energy sector, GB Energy needs to focus on two or three areas in which it can really deliver additionality. I think the place for that is in the business plan, rather than in the legislation. As the legislation is currently framed, it allows the team the space, when they begin the work of the company, to define those two or three areas; it does not narrow them down. My view is that the legislation as drafted gives it that space.

[Josh MacAlister]

Q Dan McGrail, this is a question for you. What are the views of your private sector members about the role that GB Energy can play in de-risking investments and crowding in private sector investment? What are they saying at the moment?

Dan McGrail: Occupying space where there is a highly liquid market for private capital is unlikely to bring much additionality. Offshore wind is one of those places —fixed-bottom offshore wind, to be precise. That is a mature market; there is capital that will flow to projects if the wider investment conditions of those projects are right, and that is more Government policy-related. However, there are other markets. For example, onshore wind in England has basically been under-invested in for the past decade. There will still be nervousness within the private sector: “Do I want to be the first developer to test local planning? What does the risk profile of that look like?”

I see a clear role for GB Energy to partner with the private sector to help to accelerate the return of investment in that market, or for example within the growth of the floating offshore wind market, where there are clear opportunities that go beyond just the energy sector and into transition, such as floating offshore wind in Scotland or in the Celtic sea, where we know that there is a much bigger economic growth story. Those are areas where I think we could see public and private capital working very comfortably together.

Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Torcuil Crichton Excerpts

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your appointment, and it is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Mid Buckinghamshire (Greg Smith) and to hear so many other maiden speeches today. They make faraway places such as East Thanet and Lowestoft, with which in fact my constituency has old herring connections, seem closer to us. It has also been a pleasure to hear so many maiden speeches this week from my 35 fellow new Scottish Labour MPs. I realise that that number somewhat brackets the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), who blazed a trail for us. I am delighted to see him on the Front Bench, just as I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey) bar the doors so that everyone has to hear what I am about to inflict upon them.

With your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, and my translation, I begin: Mar urram dhaibhsan a thànig romham agus iadsan chleachdas i as mo dhèidh, tha mi togail mu ghuth nam chànain fhèin airson Na h-Eileanan an Iar. In honour of those who became before me, and those who will surely use my native language after me, I raise my voice today for the people of the Western Isles.

The commonest question I am asked in this House, apart from how to pronounce the name of my constituency, is how I manage to travel from Westminster to the Western Isles. Of course, the easy answer is by Tardis, but the honest answer is that here we are a mere hop and a skip away from Glasgow, and then I travel by a small jet—on schedule, hopefully—to Stornoway. As I board that small, tubular jet, I feel almost like a character in “Succession”, but I know that there is gold at the end of the flight.

Of course, we are connected; we are not in the middle of nowhere but at the heart of the Atlantic. We have the wealth of wind that will deliver the benefit of jobs, growth and energy security for this country in years to come. Those Atlantic islands and the western seaboard are what will give GB Energy meaning and reality in that transition from east to west, away from the North sea and away from the myth that we will not be there in another two generations. Two generations of my constituents have earned energy security for this country from the North sea, and two generations more will continue as we make that just transition to renewables.

That will be done with the heft of two Governments—the UK Government and the Scottish Government—and will require the muscle, investment and expertise of commercial developers. Vitally, it must involve the consent, involvement and power of communities. Just as the Labour Government of ’97 established, from the pre-devolution Scotland Office, a community land unit enabling communities to have the means and wherewithal to take over their own land, setting in chain the land reform revolution in the highlands and islands, I am encouraged that this Labour Government are open to ideas such as a community energy unit, to enable communities such as mine to take their stake in that wealth of wind, and create a template that can be used across the whole of Britain. These are themes to which I will return, alongside the unfinished business of land reform—I read today that a highland estate is for sale at £12 million, with carbon capture and the Ponzi scheme of peat restoration attached, and I know that that is unfinished business.

Of course, wild weather and radical land politics are not the only things that the Western Isles have to offer the United Kingdom. There are deep connections to the country and to this place itself. The tide of the Thames that rises and falls outside, marked by Mary Branson’s “New Dawn” high up there in St Stephen’s Hall, is the same tide that covers and uncovers “Sheol an Iolaire”, a tidal installation that I installed in Stornoway harbour, along with my good friend Malcolm MacLean, to mark a wartime tragedy and the loss of a ship of that name.

That same tide that sweeps into the Viking bay of Stornoway also laps Tarbert in Harris, Lochmaddy, North Uist, Lochsboisdale and Castlebay in Barra. That Hebridean archipelago of nine—or is it 10— islands guards our western approaches. Were they to be transposed on to a map of mainland Britain, they would run from London to Sheffield in length—with better scenery, of course. That is why I am reluctant to enter the traditional rivalry between maiden speakers of declaring their constituency the most beautiful in the country: when they come, they will see that there is no competition.

I do not intend to give a Cook’s tour of my constituency, but Barra, the jewel of the Hebrides, is where Angus MacNeil, the former MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar, resides: fior Ghaidheal—a true Gael—and a generously spirited man, whose chairmanship of many Committees in this House was testimony not just to his political acumen, but to his ability to befriend people across the Chamber. That is one characteristic of my predecessor that I hope to emulate.

I will not take the House around the whole of the Western Isles, because time is short, but there are some other political monuments that deserve mention. I have no fewer than four former Labour MPs in my constituency on whom to lean for advice: Dame Anne McGuire, the queen of Stirling; Ian Davidson, the former Chair of the Scottish Affairs Committee, who is still campaigning for Labour; Calum MacDonald, the former Labour MP for the Western Isles and our community wind farm expert; and, foremost among them, Brian Wilson, a former Energy Minister, whose counsel I commend to those on the Front Bench, and who has been a guiding light for me since he hired me at the West Highland Free Press as a journalist many years ago.

In passing, I cannot but pay tribute to those above us. I do not mean the angels; I mean the devils in the Press Gallery, among whom I danced for many years as a journalist for the Daily Record and The Glasgow Herald and as a freelance broadcaster for the BBC. Of course, it is Friday and nearly lunchtime, so they are not there. When I was in the Lobby, it was always nearly Friday, and always nearly lunchtime.

In a double transfer deal, which performed that rare feat of uniting the Westminster Lobby and Downing Street, I am joined on these green Benches by my hon. Friend the new Member for Rochdale (Paul Waugh), who was my Lobby roommate upstairs and will now join me here. On the old maps, my constituency might have been marked “Here be dragons.” My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale slayed one to get here.

I will not detain the House with descriptions of whisky, salmon, scallops that reach Singapore in 24 hours, Harris tweed or beautiful bays, but I remind the Minister that the people of the Western Isles have the tenacity, the wherewithal and the resourcefulness, embodied in the Arnish yard near Stornoway, to act as a stepping stone in the journey to renewables and to clean energy.

It has been a long road from there to here. Many people have helped, and since I have arrived I have had many messages of support, and prayers and passages too. As I come from one of the most religiously observant parts of Britain, that comes as no surprise. One passage, from an old friend, has stayed with me. To save the Hansard reporters, who are probably struggling with the accent, never mind the translation, I will do the task for them. She said: “May your conversation always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to deal with anyone”—biodh ur comhraidh an-comhnaidh grasmhor, air a dheaneamh blasta le salainn.

Seasoned with salt, Madam Deputy Speaker. I like that. I hope that all our exchanges in this House will be gracious and seasoned with the salt air of the Atlantic and our common future, because in this Chamber and in this kingdom, we are all islanders.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Adrian Ramsay to make his maiden speech.