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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 Ministry of Defence

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-03-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what plans the Government has to extend the period of time separating spouses of service personnel have to vacate his Department’s accommodation.

    Mark Lancaster

    The Ministry of Defence (MOD) has no plans to extend the period of time in which separating spouses of Service personnel have to vacate MOD provided accommodation. However, the current 93-day period can be extended further according to individual circumstances, such as children’s schooling, relevant welfare and any medical considerations.

  • 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 2016-09-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what assessment his Department has made of the future sales projections for the F35 Joint Strike Fighter in the last two years.

    Harriett Baldwin

    Initial Operating Capability for the UK’s F-35B Lightning aircraft is scheduled for December 2018.

    The most recent US Selected Acquisition Report (SAR 2015) estimates that the production, sustainment and support revenue generated by the global F-35 fleet through the life of the programme will be over one trillion US dollars. The UK manufactures approximately 15% of each F-35 aircraft, however as the F-35 programme is still determining its Global Support Solution footprint, we are not yet in a position to determine the potential revenue for UK industry.

    The programme is expecting to procure over 3,000 aircraft across the F-35 Partner Nations. This will be further supplemented by Foreign Military Sales (FMS) customers. FMS engagement and future sales projections are managed by, and are a matter for, the US Government.

  • 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 estimate has been made of changes in property prices in and around (a) all major High Speed 2 terminals and (b) Birmingham High Speed 2 terminal.

    Andrew Jones

    The Department for Transport has not produced estimates of the expected impact on property prices in the areas surrounding HS2 terminals.

  • 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 2016-10-14.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, how many applications his Department has received for modifications and adapted housing in each year from 2000 to date; and whether data on such applications is available before 2000 and to what date.

    Mark Lancaster

    I refer the hon. Member to the answer I gave him on 15 September 2016 to Questions 45414 and 45461.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-10-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the effect of the renewable subsidies programme on household electricity bills.

    Jesse Norman

    Renewables subsidies are estimated to account for around 6% of an average household dual fuel bill of £1,029 in 2016.*

    * Source: National Audit Office analysis of Department of Energy & Climate Change data, July 2016. Figures in real 2011/12 prices.

  • Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    Grant Shapps – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Grant Shapps on 2016-03-24.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps the Government is taking to ensure all frontline NHS staff are trained in suicide prevention; and whether such training will be compulsory.

    Ben Gummer

    It is the responsibility of the professional regulators to set the standards and outcomes for education and training and approve training curricula to ensure newly qualified healthcare professionals are equipped with the knowledge, skills and attitudes to provide high quality patient care. It is the responsibility of employers to ensure staff receive appropriate training to deliver high quality healthcare. This includes training in suicide prevention. There are no plans to make it compulsory.

  • 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 2016-09-15.

    To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether his Department plans to fund transport infrastructure projects that are completely or partly funded by EU programmes after the UK leaves the EU.

    Andrew Jones

    The Department for Transport has responsibility for UK involvement in the transport element of the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) and the Trans European Transport Network programme (TEN-T). These schemes have provided co-funding for a number of public and private sector transport infrastructure projects.

    On 13th August my Right Honourable Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer made an announcement[1], outlining the Government position on EU funding schemes, which included a commitment to provide continuity of funding for UK participants in EU programmes.

    In line with that announcement, my Department will work closely with HM Treasury and concerned stakeholders to review EU funding schemes in the round, to ensure that any ongoing funding commitments best serve the UK’s national interest, while ensuring appropriate investor certainty.

    [1] The following is a link to the announcement:
    https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-philip-hammond-guarantees-eu-funding-beyond-date-uk-leaves-the-eu