UK Low Carbon Transition Plan

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and I congratulate him on his personal commitment to ensuring that we move to being a low-energy country. I welcome the announcement of carbon budgets throughout the sector as well as for the Government as a whole, and I thank the right hon. Gentleman for announcing that the regulator will be given new requirements. ...I am going to ask the Secretary of State questions, not because I want to be confrontational but because his policy is lacking in certain areas. Will he confirm that the Government will wish to be judged at the next election not on words but on delivery? Will he therefore explain why, on the day that we have heard that the only company producing turbines in this country is going to close, the Government have done nothing specific to support the growth of UK-based industry in the sector? What is his estimate of the amount of new technology that will be produced in this country, as opposed to abroad, by the end either of next year or of the next five years? Given that we are at the bottom of the European league table on renewables, with a contribution of 2 per cent. compared with more than 30 per cent. in Sweden and almost 10 per cent. in Germany, is not the reality that, although the Chancellor announced incentives for the renewables sector in the Budget, he has subsequently failed, because the renewables industry has been waiting three months for the promised meeting to discuss how the European Investment Bank money can be accessed, and no meeting has taken place? Why have all the English regions bar one failed to reach their renewables target? What will change that situation over the next year, and the next five years? Will individual communities, including counties such as Cornwall and countries such as Wales, be able to get on with their own policies to deliver the green peninsula, in Cornwall, and the green country, in Wales, without the Government telling them what to do? On fuel poverty, given the criticisms by the Secretary of State's own advisory body and the fact that the number of people in fuel poverty has gone up from 1 million to 4 million, will he give a categorical promise that none of the policies that he has announced will adversely affect those on low incomes—not just the 800,000 whom he mentioned in his statement, but the millions of people on low incomes—and that they will not be forced to pay the bills for the policy that he has announced? Will the bills fall on the private sector, with its big profits, and on those of us who can afford to pay, so that in the end we have a fairer Britain, not just a greener Britain? The Secretary of State knows that my party does not share the Labour-Tory love-in with the nuclear industry. Is it not true that no new UK nuclear power station has ever been built on time or to budget? Is it not also true that the more that he and his friends cosy up to the nuclear industry, the more likely it is that the renewables industry will not get the support and technological investment that it needs? On the grid, I welcome what the Secretary of State has said as far as it goes, but how soon will there be flexible access, which has been denied for years, so that people can start to contribute as they have been waiting to do? Are we as a country now committed to the European super-grid? If so, what are we going to do about it? Two last things, if I may. First, are we going to— ...Mr. Speaker, I am grateful. Are we committed to decarbonising the power sector fully by 2030? And, what will the Government do to help the biofuels industry? Many small businesses have supported it but now believe that it is being regulated out of existence. For example, it has produced fuel from used chip fat and wants to contribute to a new renewables industry, but it has been told that it cannot do that in the future.