Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire MP Angus MacDonald calls for answers during a Westminster Hall debate on Community Benefit from Labour’s energy minister Michael Shanks.
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00:00Thank you for allowing me to intervene, Minister. I wonder if the Minister would spare a minute
00:07to talk about community benefits. Thank you very much.
00:14I wasn't expecting that under Rodin himself. I saw him in his place earlier and I knew that I
00:20would talk about community benefits, and it is important. I want to turn to both of those points
00:25about community energy and about community benefits, both of which are important.
00:30Firstly, on the question of community benefits, in all of this we want to bring communities with
00:34us on this journey. That is important. We have made a very clear case that this Government
00:40intends to build the energy infrastructure we need, build the transmission infrastructure we
00:45need, build the homes that people need, build the industry that people need to grow our economy. It
00:50is important, and for far too long this country has not built the infrastructure it needs.
00:55But in doing so, yes, we want to streamline the planning process so that applications are
01:00dealt with far more efficiently and far faster, but we want to bring communities with us,
01:05and this is absolutely vital. We'll be saying much more very soon about community benefits
01:12on several fronts. Firstly, on how we expand some of the community benefits for particular
01:18technologies, which is already well established in Scotland, for example around onshore wind.
01:23Clearly, because of the absurd policy of the onshore wind ban in England, that has not developed
01:27as much, but we can look to Wales and Scotland for advice on that. Also, to expand that to other
01:36technologies, particularly to solar, which does not have the same community benefits at the moment,
01:40but also to network infrastructure, so that if we are building network infrastructure,
01:44if you host this, which is essential for the country, you are essentially, and I've always
01:48said this, you are doing a favour for the rest of the country by hosting that infrastructure.
01:52You should feel some benefit from it, and we'll announce a package of community benefits for that
01:58shortly. The wider point around community ownership is that not only do we want communities
02:03to benefit, but we want them to actually own the infrastructure that gives social and economic
02:09benefits as well.