Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what recent progress his Department has made on the development of tidal energy.

My rt. hon. Friend the Secretary of State made a statement to the House on Monday 25 June 2018 setting out our position on the support for the proposed Swansea Bay Tidal Lagoon project. The Department’s analysis of the project and the proposed follow-on programme of lagoons was that it did not represent value for money. This remains the Department’s position.

In February, the Minister of State for Energy and Clean Growth met the rt. hon. member for Orkney and Shetland, along with a cross-party delegation of Members of Parliament and representatives of the sector, to discuss the potential for alternative methods of funding early tidal stream and wave energy deployment.