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Tag: Grant Shapps

  • Grant Shapps – 2023 Statement on Spaceport Cornwall and the First Launch of Satellites

    Grant Shapps – 2023 Statement on Spaceport Cornwall and the First Launch of Satellites

    The statement made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in the House of Commons on 10 January 2023.

    Last night, Virgin Orbit attempted the first orbital launch from Spaceport Cornwall. Unfortunately, the launch was unsuccessful. We will work closely with Virgin Orbit as they investigate what caused the failure in the coming days and weeks. While a failed launch is disappointing, launching a spacecraft always carries significant risks. Despite this, the project has succeeded in creating a horizontal launch capability at Spaceport Cornwall, and we remain committed to becoming the leading provider of commercial small satellite launch in Europe by 2030, with vertical launches planned from Scotland in the next year.

  • Grant Shapps – 2023 Statement on Industrial Action and Minimum Service Levels

    Grant Shapps – 2023 Statement on Industrial Action and Minimum Service Levels

    The statement made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in the House of Commons on 10 January 2023.

    With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on industrial action and minimum service levels.

    Nurses, paramedics and transport workers are called key workers for a reason. They truly are the lifeblood of this country; every person sitting in this Chamber is grateful for the work they do and I know everyone will agree that we cannot do without them. The Government will always defend their ability to withdraw their labour.

    However, we also recognise the pressures faced by those working in the public sector. Yesterday I invited union leaders in for talks across Government, and I am pleased to say we have seen some progress. We want to resolve disputes where possible, while also delivering what is fair and reasonable to the taxpayer. At the moment, all households are struggling with the repercussions of high inflation caused by covid and Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine, and the Government are absolutely focused on tackling that.

    Granting inflation-busting pay deals that step outside of the independent pay review settlement process is not the sensible way to proceed and will not provide a fair outcome. We will instead continue to consult to find meaningful ways forward for the unions, and work with employers to improve the process and discuss the evidence that we have now submitted. In the meantime, the Government also have a duty to protect the public’s access to essential public services. Although we absolutely believe in the right to strike, we are duty-bound to protect the lives and livelihoods of the British people.

    The British people need to know that when they have a heart attack, a stroke or a serious injury, an ambulance will turn up, and that if they need hospital care, they have access to it. They need to know not only that those services are available, but that they can get trains or buses—particularly people who are most likely to be the least well-off in society.

    I thank those at the Royal College of Nursing, who, during their last strike, worked with health officials at a national level to ensure that safe levels of cover were in place when they took industrial action. They kept services such as emergency and acute care running. They may have disagreed, but they showed that they could do their protest and withdraw their labour in a reasonable and mature way. As ever, they put the public first, and we need all our public services to do the same.

    A lack of timely co-operation from the ambulance unions meant that employers could not reach agreement nationally for minimum safety levels during recent strikes. Health officials were left guessing the likely minimum coverage, making contingency planning almost impossible and putting all our constituents’ lives at risk. The ambulance strikes planned for tomorrow still do not have minimum safety levels in place. That will result in patchy emergency care for British people. This cannot continue.

    It is for moments such as this that we are introducing legislation focusing on blue-light emergency services and on delivering on our manifesto commitment to secure minimum service on the railways. I am introducing a Bill that will give the Government the power to ensure that vital public services will have to maintain a basic function, by delivering minimum safety levels to ensure that lives and livelihoods are not lost. We are looking at six key areas, each of which is critical to keeping the British people safe and society functioning: health, education, fire and rescue, transport, border security and nuclear decommissioning. We do not want to use this legislation, but we must ensure the safety of the British public. During the passage of the Bill, we intend to consult on what an adequate level of coverage looks like in fire, ambulance, and rail services. For the other sectors covered in the Bill, we hope to reach minimum service agreements so that we do not have to use the powers—sectors will be able to come to that position, just as the nurses have done in recent strikes.

    That is a common-sense approach, and we are not the first to follow it. The legislation will bring us in line with other modern European countries such as France, Spain, Italy and Germany, all of which already have these types of rules in place. Even the International Labour Organisation—the guardian of workers’ rights around the world to which the TUC itself subscribes—says that minimum service levels are a proportionate way of balancing the right to strike with the need to protect the wider public. The first job of any Government is to keep the public safe, and unlike other countries, we are not proposing to ban strikes, but we do need to know that unions will be held to account.

    Opposition Members who object to minimum safety levels will need to explain to their constituents why, if they had a heart attack, stroke, or life-threatening illness on a strike day, there were no minimum safety standards in place—[Interruption.] I can see that they do not want to hear it, but they will also need to explain why their leader, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), has already promised—without hearing any of these details—to stand in the way of this legislation and to repeal minimum safety levels, which are in the interests of their constituents, are in place in every other mature European democracy and neighbouring country, and would protect lives and livelihoods in this country. That is the difference between a Conservative Government who take difficult decisions to protect the welfare of our nation, and the Opposition, who too often appear to be in the pay of their union paymasters. I commend this statement to the House.

  • Grant Shapps – 2023 Speech to the Atlantic Council at its Global Energy Forum

    Grant Shapps – 2023 Speech to the Atlantic Council at its Global Energy Forum

    The speech made by Grant Shapps, the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in Abu Dhabi on 14 January 2023.

    The UAE seems to be playing some part in my fate.

    Last year, I found myself just 100 kilometres away from here.

    But, far from the beaches and the skyscrapers of Abu Dhabi and Dubai, it felt like a different world.

    There, in the middle of the desert, I saw a sparkling sea of a different kind.

    The deep blue shine of millions of photovoltaic panels in the sun, generating hundreds of megawatts of renewable electricity.

    Panels which will eventually become part of one of the largest solar plants in the world.

    I had little idea then that fate would return me here only a year later as the Minister responsible for energy.

    Today, some things remain the same; the UAE is still right at the cutting edge in generating low-cost solar power on a frankly stunning scale. Right here in Abu Dhabi, they’re breaking fresh records in solar technology at Al Dhafra and Shams.

    But much has changed, and not just for me.

    In many ways, we find ourselves in a different world.

    The last time this forum convened, Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine was just beginning.

    Now, we face a winter which, for many in Europe, is overshadowed by concern about falling energy supplies and rising prices…

    …a winter when households have had to think twice before turning up the thermostat…

    …when factories have been forced to pause production…

    …when inflation has rocketed…

    and growth has slowed.

    It is also a winter that comes at the end of a year that saw flooding in Pakistan…

    …heatwaves in the UK…

    …and bomb cyclones in the US.

    A year when we began to feel the likely impacts of climate change in earnest.

    There is much about the last twelve months that I could not have foreseen back then.

    And looking forward to 2023, the future is far from clear; I certainly wouldn’t want to make too many predictions.

    But – putting matters of predestination aside – there’s one thing we can be sure of: energy matters now more than ever.

    So where do we go from here?

    Perhaps we are best off starting with the ways that world has changed for the better in 2022.

    Off our Eastern coast, we completed Hornsea Two – the world’s largest offshore wind farm.

    There, you will find over a hundred turbines.

    At their very highest point, they are a dizzying 200m above the stormy seas below.

    For those of you who have visited the Zayed Sports City Stadium, that’s almost the height of two football pitches stacked on top of each other.

    Just a single rotation of one of these turbines generates enough electricity to power a home for 24 hours.

    But Hornsea Two is far from our first success – because we’re home to the world’s second, third, and fourth largest wind farms, too.

    Today, all of them are capturing the high winds of the North Sea, in a year when we beat our record for wind power generation three times.

    And across the Atlantic in California, we’ve witnessed another extraordinary achievement.

    Just a month ago, scientists at the Laurence Livermore National Laboratory announced one of the most significant energy breakthroughs in living memory.

    Aiming 192 high-powered lasers at a tiny spherical capsule just 2mm wide, they were able to harness the same reactions that power the sun and stars to demonstrate fusion ignition, proving what until now had only existed in theory and paving the way towards what could be one day a near-limitless source of energy for the future. And back in the UK, we’re taking leaps of our own.

    We’re not just developing our very own fusion power plant, a ‘spherical tokamak’ on the site of an old coal power station in the Midlands. We are also operating the Joint Energy Torus, the most powerful fusion facility in the world and taking the lead in regulating and commercialising fusion technology, working out the best way to get it out of the lab and into the real market place, and into the world.

    These are stories of entrepreneurs and innovators, working together to deliver clean, secure energy for millions, and jobs for thousands more.

    Stories that tell us that the fates of energy security, net zero, and the economic growth are inseparably intertwined.

    Dependable supplies of fossil fuels, particularly natural gas, have a crucial role to play in easing the energy transition, which we just heard about in the discussion on stage.

    But it is only by harnessing the power of transformative green technologies that we can build a global energy system that is fit for the future.

    Whether that’s in the UK, where we’re developing small modular reactors which promise to make nuclear easier, faster, and cheaper… and we have been running them in the sea for the last six days.

    …or here in Abu Dhabi, where operations have begun at the Barakah nuclear power plant, the first nuclear power plant not just in the UAE but in the whole Arab world, expected to deliver up to a quarter of the nation’s electricity needs when fully up and running…

    …and where, last week, ADNOC announced $15bn to accelerate its decarbonisation strategy, investing in everything from energy efficiency and electrification to carbon capture.

    Now yesterday, I signed a Clean Energy Memorandum between the UK and the UAE to promote energy security and investment between our two nations.

    Agreements like this matter. Because when it comes to climate change, the whole world has a stake. And none of us should have to settle for less.

    So working together really matters…

    …to deliver a low-carbon future that isn’t just more secure and more prosperous…

    …but a future that is fairer is a future I think that is worth fighting for.

    Our International Climate Finance has already provided an astonishing 58 million people with improved access to clean energy since 2011.

    But we are delivering on our pledge to double it up to at least £11.6bn from 2021, reaching tens of millions more.

    Because the Green Industrial Revolution must not leave anyone behind.

    After all, you can’t just shut down your power stations and be done with it, leaving millions without energy or employment.

    That’s where Just Energy Transition Partnerships come in. They are mobilising billions to support the transition from coal power to clean growth in key economies like South Africa and Indonesia.

    And, by investing in new green energy supplies, electric vehicles, and hydrogen, they are providing security and opportunity for communities across these countries.

    Ladies and gentlemen, I have to say it is fitting that we are here in the UAE, 2023’s COP28 President elect Sultan Al Jaber and his great leadership and speech this morning. Because it is here that we are seeing and building on the extraordinary progress that has been made since Glasgow, built on in Egypt, but this year we will have to see those real developments, in this stocktake COP taking place in November and December.

    We face challenges the likes of which no generation has ever faced before.

    Let me just take you briefly back to that solar sea in the desert that I talked about visiting last year.

    Today, they’re building the tallest solar tower in the entire world.

    Concentrating the heat reflected by tens of thousands of moving mirrors onto a single point, it will be a shining a beacon hundreds of meters above the ground – and a lighthouse above the blue beneath.

    Innovations like these -creating powers in new ways –  must  be an inspiration for us all, guiding us towards a better energy technology of tomorrow.

    But none of this can be done alone. None of it can be done alone.

    I have talked today about fate, not just my fate but also your fate – or our joint fates.

    And I said before that we could only be certain of one thing: energy matters more today than it ever has done in the history of humanity.

    In the face of great challenges, we have no oracles to turn to…

    …nor do I have any Delphic maxims to offer.

    But, without climbing the steps of Mount Parnassus, or any other high mountain, I think there is one thing that we can be absolutely sure of…we will succeed as humanity in doing this.

    One thing I can’t be certain of is my fate, other than to say, I know the UAE will continue to be a big part of it and I can predict with absolute confidence that I will be back here in December. I look forward to seeing you all at COP28. Thank you very much.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what method and criteria were used to select the Board of HS2 Ltd.

    Andrew Jones

    All Non-Executive members including the Non-Executive Chair of the HS2 Ltd Board are appointed by the Secretary of State for Transport. All Executive Members of the HS2 Ltd Board are appointed by HS2 Ltd on the delegated authority from the Secretary of State. The Chief Executive Officer of the HS2 Ltd Board is appointed by the Chair of HS2 Ltd.

    All Ministerial appointments, extensions and exemptions to the HS2 Ltd Board, come under the remit of the Office for Commissioner for Public Appointments (OCPA). They are made using the process from the Commissioner’s Code of Practice for Ministerial Appointments to Public Bodies. The Commissioner may, in exceptional circumstances, agree that Departments may depart from this Code where he believes that this is justified in the public interest.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-14.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to substitute funding to start-up loan schemes previously funded completely or partly by EU programmes after the UK leaves the EU.

    Mr David Gauke

    As set out by the Chancellor, the Treasury will guarantee funding for structural and investment fund projects and funding secured through direct bids to the European Commission, even after the UK leaves the EU. This is where the funding provides strong value for money and is in line with domestic strategic priorities. These include projects signed after Autumn Statement and before we leave the EU.

    Alongside this funding, the Start-Up loan programme, funded by the UK government and overseen by the British Business Bank (BBB), has supported over 39,500 entrepreneurs to set up their own business and facilitated loans of over £230m.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Exiting the European Union

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-14.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of adding a five years sunset clause to the proposed Great Repeal Bill governing the expiry of EU legislation which has entered the statute book.

    Mr David Jones

    The Government has committed to introducing a Bill in the next parliamentary session which will repeal the European Communities Act 1972. The principle of the Bill is about creating legal certainty for the UK on exit day and we will set out its content in due course.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-20.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent estimate he has made of the date that the first phase of High Speed 2 will be completed and open to the public.

    Andrew Jones

    The hybrid Bill for HS2 Phase One is proceeding through Parliament and we are aiming to achieve Royal Assent by the end of 2016, with construction starting in 2017 and the first trains running by the end of 2026.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-09-09.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what his Department’s policy is on the waiver of the five-year British citizenship requirement for Commonwealth recruits to military support roles.

    Mike Penning

    On 12 May 2016, the then Minister for the Armed Forces (Penny Mordaunt) made a written ministerial statement (HCWS 726) which announced that the five year UK residency requirement was being waived to allow for 200 Commonwealth citizens per annum to be recruited to fill a limited number of roles in the Regular Armed Forces which require specialist skills. The limit and the list of roles that can be filled under these arrangements were agreed in consultation with the Home Office. Those Commonwealth citizens who do not have the required skills to fill one of the 200 specialist roles are still required to meet the five year UK residency requirement.

    Since the written statement, some 9,500 applications for specialist roles have been received from Commonwealth citizens. Many applicants will be rejected for not meeting the relevant eligibility criteria, or will fail the various stages of the selection process. The numbers who are enlisted and then successfully complete the training to fill one of these roles will therefore not exceed the 200 per annum limit.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Transport

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-17.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether any assessment has been made of the effect of driverless vehicles on future demand for extra rail capacity.

    Mr John Hayes

    There is currently no evidence linking driverless vehicles and future demand for rail.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-14.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of reducing Government tax incentives in the tech start-up sector in order to reduce the number of companies potentially unable to attract private investment after tax reliefs expire.

    Jane Ellison

    The Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme, Enterprise Investment Scheme and Venture Capital Trusts scheme provide tax reliefs to encourage individuals to invest in early stage, higher risk companies that would otherwise struggle to access finance. The government has no plans to withdraw these tax reliefs.