Conservative and Unionist Party: a sourced timeline of public activity, with filters by source type and a sidebar of tracked totals

Conservative and Unionist Party

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  1. ParliamentGreg Smith

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting)

    Q This is my final question before we get to go through the Bill in detail on Thursday and next Tuesday. Accepting the agnostic position, has anything you have heard today from the various companies who have given evidence, be that global giants such as Shell, UK-based innovators such as Zero Petroleum or the companies developing SAFs from waste, changed your thinking on whether there might be emerging winners and losers, given some of the challenges that we have heard about—not least the municipal waste challenges? Mike Kane: As the Minister leading on the Bill, I would say, “My kingdom for a chemistry degree.” Actually, Mark said something that I thought was very pertinent towards the end: we just have to allow the technology to emerge. That way, as we get to the power-to-liquids and the harder piece to do, in five, 10 or 15 years, there will be a market for it. The beauty of the Bill is that we can let contracts over five or 10 years. Personally, even though Exxon has reservations about this measure, the only emotion I would convey to Exxon is thanks for producing this fuel now, in this country. Exxon is happy about the SAF mandate; its issue is with the revenue certainty mechanism. That is an area where, once the market is established, the Government have an exit strategy; once the market begins to work, the then Secretary of State will have ways out of it, because Government will not need to be in it once we have established it.

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  2. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Net Zero Policies

    Around Beverley, there are proposals for five solar farms, totalling 465 MW. Can the Minister assure my constituents that the scientific evidence that will be used to assess this will include the cumulative impact of these projects on the area around Beverley?

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  3. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Topical Questions

    T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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  4. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Topical Questions

    Evidence from the National Grid, Ofgem and Imperial College London shows that locational or zonal pricing would save billions of pounds a year, lower bills and reduce the need for expensive and often unpopular grid infrastructure. Why has the Secretary of State ruled it out?

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  5. ParliamentGraham Stuart

  6. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Welfare Spending

    The Minister and Labour Members are in absolute denial about the state of the country. The Government came in with growth as their No. 1 mission, and what have they done? They have brought growth to an absolute, shuddering halt. They have done what every Labour Government do, which is to increase unemployment. Who does that hurt the most? It is the poorest. From an age point of view, who does that hurt the most? It is the young. An increase in youth unemployment of 45% was a scar on this country that the last Labour Government left. It was the Conservative Government that outgrew Germany, France, Japan and Italy over the 14 years we were in power. She should be ashamed of her record, even though it is only 12 months old.

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  7. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Welfare Spending

    Does the hon. Lady recognise that there were 800,000 fewer people—including 300,000 children—in absolute poverty and 4 million more people in work in the UK when the Conservatives left power in 2024 than there were in 2010? Labour Governments take us in the opposite direction: they put people in the dole queue and make the whole country poorer. That is why the Conservative party can be proud of its role in poverty reduction, including for children.

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  8. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Welfare Spending

    The focus of the motion today is the two-child benefit limit, yet we heard not a single word from the Minister about it. That shows just how listless and drifting the Government are, when those on the Front Bench cannot tell the truth to this House or to those on the Back Benches. The truth is that the Labour party is riven in two, and those on the Front Bench no longer have any power of propulsion.

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  9. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Welfare Spending

    I am sure that the Minister wants to give a fair and balanced overview, and we all wish to see fewer people in relative poverty, notwithstanding his support last week for a measure that would have put it up by a quarter of a million. Just to have balance on the record, does he recognise that, in absolute terms, between 2010 and 2024 the number of children in poverty dropped by 300,000, and the number of people in poverty overall by 800,000?

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  10. ParliamentGraham Stuart

  11. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Welfare Spending

    On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given collective responsibility, is it in order for a Minister of the Crown to argue against a policy of his own Government? If I have understood correctly, it is the policy of the Government and the Labour party to maintain the two-child benefit cap.

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  12. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    Amid the shadow Chancellor’s quite correct exposition on the subject of where the Government have gone wrong, does he not have a little pity for the Ministers on the Government Front Bench? After last week, it is quite clear that they are no longer responsible for the running of the Government, as that has been handed to the hard left who have no interest whatsoever in balancing the books, and do not care about rising debt, rising gilt costs and the other irresponsible outcomes of this Government, who are now absolutely out of control.

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  13. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    The Chief Secretary said the name of the game is to get the maximum number of seats. I gently suggest to him that that is not the name of the game; the name of the game is to serve the British people and honour the promises we make to them. [Interruption.] He thinks that is amusing. If he wants to know where his vast majority came from, it came with a series of promises that, one by one, he is breaking.

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  14. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    As a Scottish MP, does the hon. Gentleman wish to differ slightly with those on his Front Bench, who have said there should be no new licences for North sea oil and gas? That policy does not mean that we will consume a drop less oil and gas; it simply means that we will import it from abroad with higher emissions and with tens of billions of pounds of tax and tens of thousands of jobs lost. Surely, as a Scottish MP, he should speak up for his constituents and say to those on the Front Bench, “Come on—let’s get those licences going again.”

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  15. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    The hon. Gentleman is giving a powerful speech on this subject. I was at the Great Yorkshire Show last week, and there we had not only livestock and farmers, but the whole supply chain around that. The only conversation there was exactly as the hon. Gentleman describes, of a whole industry brought low because of this misconceived measure. He talked about Chancellors being presented with things. The caravan tax was presented to the Chancellor in 2012, and it took Government Back Benchers to persuade those on the Front Bench to change path. I hope Labour Members might do the same with the farm tax.

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  16. ParliamentGraham Stuart

  17. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    On the trade deals, it turned out that the deal with the US entirely excluded the British bioethanol industry, until the President of the United States phoned up the Prime Minister and he unilaterally gave away the entirety of the market, putting at risk hundreds of jobs at Vivergo and thousands of jobs in the supply chain and at Ensus.

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  18. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    I am sure the hon. Gentleman would not want to mislead the House, so he will recognise that in 2010, fewer than 12% of homes in this country were properly insulated with an energy performance certificate rated C or above; when we handed over power last year, that figure was over 60%. He can look up those numbers, and I ask him to never misrepresent that record in this House, because that is the reality.

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  19. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. It is worth reminding the House of the situation in July last year: we had the fastest growth in the G7; employment was 4 million higher than in 2010, with up to 33 million people in employment; inflation was on target, at around 2%; and the UK, between 2010 and 2024, had grown faster than Germany, France, Japan and Italy. That was the legacy of Conservative stewardship. I have asked Labour Members to give a more rounded picture, but sadly they almost always refuse to do so. Debt to GDP had gone up significantly, partly because of the massive deficit that we inherited in 2010, at more than 10% of GDP—that was phenomenal and had to be brought down over time—and partly because of covid and Ukraine, when we intervened to pay half of everyone’s energy bills. That is a more rounded picture. Overall, we managed to come out with people helped through covid and through the energy crisis, and with remarkably high levels of employment. Yet just a year later, under this Chancellor’s watch, that strong foundation has crumbled. The Labour party needed to recognise that the economy was recovering and to let it grow. Instead, by coming in and being held by the manifesto commitments not to put up the main taxes on the one hand, and on the other, thinking that they were being clever and somehow keeping to their pledges by imposing national insurance rises on business but not individuals, that had the most bizarre and perverse effect. The £25 billion hit on the economy created by the jobs tax comes down to about £16 billion after behaviour change, according to the OBR. Then, after compensation for the public sector, it comes down to about £11 million. Then, people have had to scrabble around for hospices, GPs and so on, which means the net is probably about £10 million, and that is before the depressing impact on the overall economy, meaning it almost certainly comes to single-figure billions. But guess what the OBR also says: from next year, 76% of the impact of the £25 billion hit comes out of ordinary people’s wages. That is the situation. The Government have imposed a tax of £19 billion on ordinary people’s earnings in order to generate less than £10 billion of tax revenue. That is utterly insane, and I ask Members on the Government Back Benches to have a look at that, follow it and come back. I would love to hear that those numbers are wrong, because I would love to hear that we are not doing something as suicidal, crazy and damaging as it appears to be. I wish I could drink the Kool-Aid, like the hon. Member for Rugby (John Slinger). The funniest thing about him—a man for whom I have a great deal of respect and affection—is that, unlike some of his colleagues who spout this stuff, he gives every impression, which I believe, that he believes it himself. That is what is truly extraordinary.

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  20. ParliamentGraham Stuart

    Taxes

    I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. The economy has contracted for two consecutive months, shrinking by 0.3% in April and 0.1% in May, in a textbook sign that we are in, or could be headed into, recession. Employment is down too, with Office for National Statistics data showing that payroll jobs have fallen by more than 100,000 in a single month, with around 274,000 fewer jobs compared with last year and unemployment climbing to 4.6%. Following the excellent speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen), I would just say that we should look at the big picture. Again, I appeal to colleagues on the Labour Benches. There was a magnificent victory for Labour last year in the election, with 400-plus MPs elected, and it really is up to Labour Members to recognise just how scary a position we are in. We have debt to GDP at about 100% and we have a world in which the fastest growth is to be found in developing states, some of which are quite hostile to us and to our values. The truth is that no rich, powerful country has a divine right to stay that way. Wealth does not just come down from the heavens. Even in the 14 years when we were in government, too often in this place we seemed to obsess only on how we would spend money. From the moment we got up in the morning to the time we went to bed at night, we would talk about how we would spend the money, but we have to generate it first. It does not matter whether our No. 1 concern is the alleviation of poverty, the defence of the nation, education or the health service—we have to have a strong economy. That is why the Government were right. One of the reasons they got that majority may be because they said that their No. 1 mission was economic growth. Remember that? It does not come through in the speeches from Labour Members now. Their No. 1 mission was economic growth. We should be sweating in Select Committees, in all-party groups, on the Floor of this House and in Westminster Hall over how we deliver that economic growth, so that we are not going backwards but are actually growing the economy. We also have to accept something that is going to be tough for Labour Members, most of whom have not had any private sector experience and who tend to believe that the rich are just there to take money off and wealth creators can be endlessly offered haircuts and will just put up with it and if they do not, it shows some moral flaw on their part. We have to accept that the art of government is to recognise the realities, to align the incentives of actors—in this case in the economy—with the public goods we want to see. After a year, there are so many flashing red lights and warning signs that the Government are not getting that right, so they need to be prepared to think again. I was involved after that omnishambles Budget of 2012, when I was part of helping the then Chancellor see his route to a better path forward, and my experience tells me that Labour Members must recognise that the country is potentially in a really serious, parlous position. We have no divine right to be a wealthy, powerful nation. The next four years are important. I hope and expect that there will be a Conservative Government after that, but whatever happens, the next four years are important and I hope that Labour Members will start to give rather more nuanced and thoughtful speeches in order to influence the Front Bench.

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  21. ParliamentDr Luke Evans

    Taxes

    I am grateful to the shadow Chancellor for making that point. Does he believe that a humble toolmaker who happens to own a small business is a working person?

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  22. ParliamentDr Luke Evans

    Taxes

    The shadow Chancellor makes a very good point. Is he surprised by the Federation of Small Businesses, which has come out and said that for the first time ever in its index—since records began in 2008—more small businesses will contract than will grow? Is he as worried as I am about what signal that sends to those small business owners who are trying to grow for our economy?

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  23. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, which at its heart is about fairness and what works, rather than what sounds good. I believe that supporting families and helping parents requires a balanced system that provides support for those who need it, but that also ensures a sense of fairness to the taxpayer and the many working families who do not see their incomes rise automatically when they have more children. The previous benefit structure, which adjusted automatically for family size, was unfair on taxpayers, who pay for the extra benefits being received. Indeed, under the previous Labour Government, 1.4 million people spent years trapped in out-of-work benefits, with 50,000 households allowed to claim benefits worth over £500 a week, or over £26,000 a year, which was higher than the average wage at that time. Taxpaying families who are not in receipt of benefits often have to make tough decisions when choosing how many children to have, and many will have made the decision not to have more simply because they could not afford it. As others have pointed out, for demographic reasons we may wish that that was not the case, but it is, and it simply is not fair to ask families who are making those difficult decisions to pay for the benefits of others who are not making those choices.

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  24. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    I agree. I find it hard to believe that Labour Members would allow and support a system where someone could have five, six, seven, eight, or nine children—all being paid for by somebody else—and think that that is fair.

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  25. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    It is the inability to have difficult conversations and make difficult points that puts Labour Members on the wrong side of these issues and on the wrong side of British taxpayers, who understand the complexity of these things.

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  26. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    Not right now. I recognise, of course, that some people are not able to make the same choice about the number of children in their family—including, for example, children who are cared for under kinship arrangements, or adopted; there are many exceptions to the policy to make it fair. The welfare system is already growing unsustainably, with spending on health and disability benefits alone set to hit £100 billion by the end of the decade, yet Labour, Reform and the Liberal Democrats all back higher welfare spending, including scrapping the two-child limit, which will keep taxes high. The Resolution Foundation estimates that scrapping the two-child benefit limit will cost £3.5 billion a year by 2029-30. Is this really an appropriate time to put more pressure on the public finances?

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  27. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    As others have pointed out, the Government put forward welfare reforms that were supposed to save money but ended up costing money, and this is yet another attempt to placate their Back Benchers in a way that we cannot afford. We must be clear about our record: we brought down absolute child poverty when we were in government. Labour Members are happy to quote figures on relative poverty and take them at face value, but when we quote figures on absolute poverty from the same datasets, they do not want to hear it. I am clear that I care more about absolute poverty, and how much someone actually has to spend on things that they need, than I do about relative poverty.

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  28. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    I think we need to look at the absolute poverty figures and at what difference we can make to them—and what makes a long-term difference to the number of people in poverty of any kind is employment. We reversed the decline in employment, but we are now seeing it get higher every day under this Government’s policies. That is what is bringing even more people into poverty—their record on the economy and on employment.

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  29. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    I want to finish my speech. Poverty is, of course, a matter for Government. It is about policies and about incomes, but there is another important side to child poverty in this country that people are too uncomfortable to talk about: child maintenance and the absence of payments made in single-parent families. Research by the single-parent advocacy organisation Gingerbread found that 43% of children in single-parent families in the UK are living in poverty, compared with 26% in couple families. We know that poverty has many causes and there is no single solution, but there is clear evidence that when child maintenance is paid in full, it has a significant impact in lifting children out of poverty. Research shows that where it is received, child maintenance cuts the child poverty rate by 25%. Gingerbread’s “Fix the CMS” report found that 57% of parents who care for a child and had a child maintenance arrangement in place reported that they did not receive the full amount. The amounts involved are significant. At the end of September 2024, total cumulative arrears of payments that were formally expected stood at £682.1 million, and that figure is due to reach £1 billion by the end of the decade. That is just a fraction of the story, because those figures are based only on the sometimes quite pitiful amounts that non-custodial parents have to pay, either because they earn little or because they hide what they earn. Those figures also do not include parents who are not pursued for money by the custodial parent. Absent parents are denying children much higher amounts of money than the official figures suggest, and there is a deep unfairness to that. If a custodial parent simply chose not to provide any more resources to the child they care for, they would face criminal sanction for neglect. A non-custodial parent who does not give money for the upkeep of their child faces no similar ramifications. I have no idea why we do not place an expectation on a non-custodial parent to make the same efforts to find work and earn money as we do with out-of-work people on benefits, as they are also creating a burden on the taxpayer. As the Minister may know, there is legislation that allows steps to be taken to place non-paying parents in home detention. I urge her and the Government to look closely at that. If people cannot be bothered to go out, work and pay for their children when they do not live with them, they should not be allowed out on a Saturday night to drink beers with their mates. That would help to drive down the huge amount of money that is owed to children by parents who are simply not paying for them—

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  30. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

  31. ParliamentDr Kieran Mullan

    Welfare Spending

    I am deeply moved by the Minister’s commitment to reducing poverty. Will he explain why, as a Minister, he supported the Government’s proposals in the Universal Credit Bill last week, which their own impact assessments said would increase poverty?

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  32. ParliamentDr Andrew Murrison

    British Nationality (Irish Citizens) Act 2024

    Mr Gregory Campbell will move the motion and the Minister will respond. I remind other Members that they may make a speech only with prior permission from the Member in charge of the debate and from the Minister.

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  33. ParliamentDavid Simmonds

    West Coast Main Line

    It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, for the first time. I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Connor Naismith) on securing the debate. Hon. Members will know that I am not the usual face to respond to a debate that sits with the transport team, but colleagues are busy discussing sustainable aviation fuel this afternoon, so I stepped into the breach. It has been an informative debate and I highlight the contributions from my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) and my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth). The line that we are debating passes through my constituency. Hatch End station, although not served by high-speed trains, provides an opportunity for my constituents to see them go past and wish that they had access. I am familiar with the line, having travelled on it a great deal in my working life before Parliament. Hon. Members, sharing the pain that we have all experienced when stuck on a long-distance railway journey, set out a number of important and detailed points. I am sure that Ministers will consider those as they look for improvements while addressing the points made powerfully by hon. Members on both sides of the House, including how to ensure a high degree of integration between the line and the important population centres, economic development centres and other transport nodes that lie along the route. If the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) were here, I am sure he would highlight that the west coast main line is also an opportunity for those wishing to travel in the direction of Northern Ireland, and Strangford in particular, because of connections to lines across north Wales and over to Anglesey. Indeed, as an MP whose constituency not only includes that line but the HS2 line, I empathise with the points about why we did not start HS2 in the north and build it down in the direction of the south. That is a sentiment that my constituents would wholeheartedly agree with, because they are very much of the view that rail connectivity is about benefiting the whole country. Improving and investing in connectivity, including in the north and the midlands, is therefore vital, not only for improving standards of living and quality of life in those places but for taking some of the development pressure off London and the south. I will address a couple of points that were highlighted. It is striking to me, as a spokesman for the Opposition, that there is a high degree of consensus about the issues that exist around the west coast main line and about their possible solutions. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills made specific references to stations in her constituency, and my hon. Friend the Member for Chester South and Eddisbury talked about her constituents’ need to access the west coast main line and all the routes it leads to via effective and affordable local public transport. Under the previous Government and now under the new Government, the concept of Great British Railways has been a key part of the strategy to begin to create a sense of coherence and integration and to make sure that the connectivity highlighted by a number of hon. Members is delivered in practice. Many hon. Members have spoken about the growth in rail demand. We know that our country’s population is increasing. The levelling-up agenda started under the previous Government, but it has been committed to— perhaps more in spirit than in word—by the new Government. There is also demand for increased rail freight capacity, which has been spoken about in the context of the work being done on the west coast main line. Having travelled on the line just last week to go to the Local Government Association’s conference in Liverpool, I know that, in striking comparison with some other rail lines, it is very visible infrastructure and it makes a considerable contribution to removing freight traffic, in particular heavy lorries, from the already busy motorway network. As I say, there seems to be a high degree of consensus about the investment required for stations, the public benefits that would be delivered through that investment, and the role that such investment would play in the economic development and opportunities that people across and adjacent to the west coast main line route can expect to benefit from. As an outer-London Member of Parliament, I am very conscious of how good-quality and reliable commuter routes are valued and the economic contribution they make, and therefore the extent to which the absence of such routes in parts of our suburbs acts as a drag on opportunity. That is not purely confined to the north of England or the midlands; it is an issue that affects all of us. We need to make sure that is properly considered as the Government look at the rail system and transport in the round. I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members—particularly those who served as Transport Ministers in previous Governments—would want me to draw attention to the fact that the sense of priority around the railways is reflected in the numbers. For example, maintenance spending on our railway network has gone up on average 3% every year since 2010. Previous Governments—both the coalition Government and Conservative Governments —therefore recognised that rail maintenance was a high priority. At the end of the last Labour Government, there was £7.4 billion of rail spending. In the last full year for which we have accounts, which was when the last Conservative Government left office, that figure had risen to £26.8 billion. Although there will always be some disagreement about whether the delivery was what it should have been, and about whether the optimal priorities were selected, there is no doubt that all political parties represented in this House have a strong sense that improving and upgrading our rail network is critical, alongside improvements to motorways and local transport, and that we need to see it being delivered. I will close by making two final points. The first is the value of learning—a number of hon. Members referred to the importance of open access—from the improvements that have been delivered in recent years. Not everything has been a success. In particular, we know that the impact of people working from home during the covid years on our rail network, including on the revenue gained from ticket sales and ridership, was absolutely catastrophic. The consequences for the system that we had in place at the time were very significant and we know that the Government acted by nationalising some railway lines to ensure that the travelling public could access what they needed to access. There have also been strengths, however, such as the model on the east coast with Grand Central, which is often referred to positively, including by colleagues who use it to come to Parliament. We need to make sure that we do not simply assume that everything was a disaster and that we recognise those real strengths—not just the priorities for investment, but the things that have improved the quality of the service and that we can learn from and apply in the new model of Great British Railways. The second point is the need to enhance integration. It is clear that the UK is a very politically centralised country, so transport projects tend to be delivered and funded by central Government rather than in a decentralised manner. The devolution White Paper has landed with Parliament, so we will be considering the roles that the Government envisage within that for elected mayors and regional authorities in developing and improving the transport network, but it is striking how many hon. Members in this debate talked about the need for additional scope so that their constituents could benefit from the speed and capacity that exists on the west coast main line, or the need to invest in other forms of local transport, including affordable public transport, to make that process more straightforward. Coming back to HS2, it is striking that a huge quantity of the available investment has been sunk into very large national projects that are slow in materialising their potential benefits and that are creating huge cost overruns. All of the evidence appears to suggest that it is investment in locally-led transport—in the systems that make it possible for those who need to access trunk routes such as the west coast main line to do so—that produce the biggest economic benefit. That is something that many hon. Members have articulated, and I hope the Government will consider that as they look at their overall strategy for the United Kingdom, so that everybody can benefit from the additional investment that has been spoken of today.

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  34. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting)

    To pick up on Mr Greenwood’s point about unintended consequences, at a time of increased international instability, the need to produce things domestically in the coming years has become more and more apparent. Do you think this will impact our traditional ways of producing those fuels that we will probably need in the UK? Paul Greenwood: First, from an energy security point of view, and as Gaynor rightly pointed out, a very significant amount of the road fuels in the UK are imported. They are imported rather than refined here, as it is not economic to refine them here, because of all the cost issues we face in energy, labour and carbon dioxide. That has effectively driven refineries to not invest or expand, and in some places, to go bust. That is the major driver here. If you are prepared to import 70% of your jet fuel now, I do not see why you need to increase local production of SAF. There is a very good reason for doing that—the creation of jobs—but there are unintended consequences in the costs and how you are going to pay for that, which need to be thought through seriously. I do not think this is an energy security issue, given the amount of product that you are importing into the country now. By layering cost on to refiners and fuel suppliers as you are doing now, you actually risk precipitating the decline and demise of the refining sector even more, which will mean importing significantly more fuel across the piece. To my mind, that is a quid pro quo. Gaynor Hartnell: We import about 85% of our road fuels. Lamentably, that figure is going to go up, because existing biofuel and renewable fuel production facilities are falling away. There was a Greenergy announcement last week about the closure of the Immingham plant, and two bioethanol producers are at risk of closure. They are linked into the UK in so many different ways, from CO2 production to the market for grain that does not meet the required grade for milling, so it has to be used as feed wheat instead. We will suffer the consequences of not taking care of our domestic industry. We need production in the UK. It is not just a question of saying, “We can simply buy it from overseas”. As Rob has pointed out, the SAF mandate creates a specific demand for waste-based SAF that is not specifically encouraged by any other mandate around the world, so we need this. If we are not going to make it, we cannot rely on other people making it, and the airlines and fuel suppliers ultimately rely on pulling that into the UK to avoid paying the buy-out for the mandate. Paying the buy-out for the mandate would be a really bad situation for everybody, so we need to safeguard against that happening. You also asked about the waste hierarchy and what could be done to encourage residual municipal solid waste to find its way to the best carbon outcome, rather than being used to produce electricity, which is already going on to a largely decarbonised grid. Adjusting the waste hierarchy to recognise the carbon benefits of this route for residual solid waste would be really helpful. At the moment, local authorities are in a situation where they have a reliable route through just sending it off to an energy from waste project, against prospects of hopefully SAF projects coming down the line in future, if all else goes well, then RCM comes along and they win contracts. There is a lot more risk involved in choosing the SAF route. That has to be specifically encouraged, and the waste hierarchy would be a way of doing that.

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  35. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting)

    Q Following on from the shadow Minister’s questions about scalability and production, Ms Haywood, you talked about the globally distributed nature of this technology sector. With international supply chains becoming more contested and the view that traditional production methods will be scaled down and SAF will be increased, where do you see the biggest blockers to growth and scalability, and how do you balance that against energy security? Sophia Haywood: That is a great question. In terms of the international value chains, as I said before, all eyes are on the UK. For a lot of projects that are developing globally, even if they are being developed in countries significantly further away from here and Europe, we are going to see a lot of opportunity for product to be moved over to the UK, at least until other mandates in other countries are put in place, and then we will start seeing shifts in where this goes. Instead of a blocker, perhaps, I would phrase it more as an opportunity about things that we could maybe do slightly differently. One example that we have just had is a project in Japan that we have done. We had a large amount of funding. It is quite similar to the advanced fuels fund principle, but a lot larger in terms of the quantity of funding that is available, albeit with a smaller number of participants. That has enabled a much larger-scale project in partnership with one of Japan’s largest oil companies to develop a SAF project. This is a transition, and they are going to move at the same pace as one another. As much as we can support investments on existing sites with existing infrastructure, such as both of our projects in Teesside in terms of the regeneration, I think more activities like that could be a great opportunity for the UK. The steps that have been taken so far with Project Willow are a good example of how that could be taken to the next level. The project is looking at opportunities on the site of the former refinery at Grangemouth; maybe this could be a similar example, where you could take it to the next level. However, we will see increasing competition globally. Coming back to the points around planning and electricity connections, anything that could help us to bring investments to the UK, where we have some of the highest energy costs, would be welcome. We saw a commitment in the industrial strategy to reducing electricity costs, which is fantastic. We would welcome greater clarity as to whether SAF can definitely be included in that. I saw that it is an extension to an existing scheme, which is why I am asking that question. These are some of the things that help us to compete better globally.

    Hansard source

  36. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (First sitting)

    Q That is a very good answer; I am happy with that, and it is obviously coming from a company’s perspective. In terms of Government engagement, how many conversations have been had with the Cabinet Office and the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero around energy security and your production capability? Sophia Haywood: It is not something that we have had great levels of conversation about, particularly when it comes to energy security. It is a really important part of energy security. Coming back to the point about access to locally produced bioethanol, I see it as another great example of something that would be sustainable, affordable and secure, if we are able to take wheat that is produced locally by British farmers, and convert it in local facilities and then at a SAF facility. With all the additional benefits on things such as CO2, that is a great opportunity on energy security, but speaking more broadly it has not been a huge part of the interest in SAF. Noaman Al Adhami: I will focus more on scalability. When it comes to scalability, allowing all the routes to SAF and not focusing on one route will potentially enable SAF production to be scaled up. Green hydrogen will also potentially be there in large quantities with an affordable price, and that will contribute. For example, we could utilise green hydrogen to triple production if it were available, but currently it is not. We are also designing our plant to utilise multiple types of feedstocks. It is mainly solid waste to SAF. I would start with a less challenging feedstock to prove the line-up and then explore much more difficult feedstocks, such as MSW. Even sewage sludge, chicken manure and grease, for example, could be used to co-fire the gasifier, so we think the supply chain will potentially build once it sees a home for their waste. We will start with a safe option for the feedstock, but our objective is to explore all other potential feedstock and increase capacity. We have plans for at least phase 2. Our site in Teesside can accommodate phase 2 and we are already planning for that. Hopefully, once we reach FID, we will announce phase 2 of the project.

    Hansard source

  37. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting)

    Q I think it is fair to say that the international supply chain is becoming more constrained and that there is a more protectionist international global economy. Can you give us a flavour of some of the economic and logistical challenges that you would face, importing SAF into the UK? As a follow on, if there is a requirement around energy security to set up shop in the UK, given the known knowns, would you look for subsidies from the current Government to set up production in the UK? Ruben van Grinsven: I am afraid I cannot fully answer that question because it is not the part of the business that I am in. I am not importing SAF to the UK, so I do not know how trade limitations are currently impacting SAF supply. I would have to ask a colleague and come back to that question. It is also hard to predict what the future is going to bring for global trade and how protectionism will impact the global free trade of all types of fuels. If you produce domestic fuels, that is, of course, going to be helpful if you want energy security. I must say, though, that if you look at the volumes that we are talking about today, the energy security element in the early days is going to be limited because of the volume of the fuels involved.

    Hansard source

  38. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting)

    Q If British money is being spent on British technologies, and if you are leveraging capital to go on those SAF programmes, where is that money coming from? Is the investment attitude right in this country toward green technologies and SAF? Which countries are quite front-footed in their approach to investing in these technologies? Josh Garton: We are most active here in the UK and Europe with sustainable aviation fuel and the investors that are interested. We deal with commercial banks, private equity and other investors, and they are all very enthusiastic about the prospect. Unquestionably, they want to deploy capital into this space, but they will not be throwing out their investment rulebook when it comes to their risk-return profiles and the way that they assess risk. For that reason, we need things like this revenue certainty mechanism in place to provide confidence that investors, when they deploy capital in this space, will get the returns they need to justify their investments, or that lenders providing debt capital into this will get the returns they need within the regulatory frameworks in which they operate.

    Hansard source

  39. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting)

    Q You did your independent report in 2023. Obviously, the world has changed rapidly in the past couple of years. We are seeing global economic change, with tariffs, international supply chains becoming more contested, and increased conflicts and volatility. How have the conclusions that you drew in 2023 changed, and where would you say that delta is? Philip New: I think the key change has been in the United States. When I wrote that report, it was in the context of Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. The concern was that we might be out-competed by investment in America, and we would end up being a net importer of stuff from America, not just in first-generation SAFs but in second-generation SAFs. They have lower energy costs, which are very important in these sorts of industries, and their build costs are about 20% less than ours. That was a real worry then. Especially coming out of the big, beautiful Bill, America is out of the game. That is kind of a good thing at one level, because it means that, particularly with the way the mandate is designed around second-generation SAFs, we now have a globally unique position. We could therefore become an incubator for a series of technologies that will have to play a significant role in aviation decarbonisation over the next couple of decades. The bad news is that if we fail to get this new industry kick-started, I do not think we can hope to rely on imports from somewhere else to get us out of trouble. It will mean that we will not meet our mandate targets.

    Hansard source

  40. ParliamentDavid Reed

    Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill (Second sitting)

    Q Just a small follow-up, if I can. You are saying that the biggest change is the US pulling back from innovation and production of SAF. Is that in direct response to what the Chinese are doing? Philip New: No. For most global markets that have started to look at SAF, the preferred mechanism has been to impose some form of mandate—even China has put in place the beginnings of a mandate mechanism. None of them are as ambitious as those in Europe and the UK, but that is the normal mechanism. The reason for that is simply that SAF costs more than aviation fuel. Left to its own devices, an airline in a very competitive industry is unlikely to voluntarily buy more SAF than it needs to buy. If it has big corporate clients that want to offset some of their scope 3 emissions and are willing to pay a premium to have their flights decarbonised, that is fine, but there is a real limit to how big, dependable and investable that market will be. That is where America is right now, and it is because of the structure of the other incentives in the American mechanism. A critical part of that was a change in the big, beautiful Bill, in which the premium given to SAF producers was removed completely. They now get no more money than those making diesel for ground transport use, but it costs more money to make SAF. The airlines do not have an incentive to buy SAF because there is no mandate, and the producers do not have an incentive to make SAF because it costs more to make and they get less credit from the American mechanisms in place to support renewable fuels.

    Hansard source