I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement. While I welcome the news today, I am saddened, if not surprised, that he has not had the grace to acknowledge the work of the last Government in getting us to this place. I know that his opinion is not that of the many partners who have come together to get this project over the line, and it does a huge disservice to his officials, who have worked so incredibly hard over the last couple of years to get us here. As far as I can see, the only positive investments that the Labour party seems to have made in its first 100 days—the Blackstone artificial intelligence data centre in Northumberland, the sixth assessment report and now this—were negotiated under the Conservatives. This is what the right hon. Gentleman’s party has turned into reality: it has crashed business confidence, and overseen £666 million of assets from UK-focused equity funds fleeing the country. No wonder it has had to have a change of management.

In 2022, in the Energy Security Bill, we set out £1 billion of investment and the business models to support the CCUS market. Our aim was to have four industrial clusters by 2030. I must pay tribute to all who have worked together on those plans, including BP, Equinor, Eni, and all those involved with HyNet and the East Coast Cluster.

The brilliant Mayor of Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, has been a leading light in this regard for many years. I noted that the Secretary of State did not mention him, which was pretty graceless, but I am sure that he would like to welcome his work. I must also mention the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend Jeremy Hunt, who first announced Government support for carbon capture technology amounting to £20 billion last year. That, ultimately, was the breakthrough step that got us here.

The Secretary of State says that CCUS was not funded. Let me remind him of the extent to which he is resting his laurels on a set of draft policy statements for nuclear from back in 2009 that had no Treasury funding attached. I had agreement that at least £20 billion would be spent following the next spending review. The Secretary of State is a former Treasury spad, so he knows what that means. As always, it is the cheap politics that he reaches for. He is, I am afraid, the ultimate career politician. In fact, the funding that we had announced, which would run for 20 years, was about £200 million more per year than what he has set out today. Can he confirm that the projects have not been scaled back, and if they have been, will he tell us where the losses will be?

We have also had no word on the track 2 clusters, Acorn and Viking, on which we were due to make progress over the summer; they were conspicuously absent from the Secretary of State’s statement. Many people will be deeply concerned, so can he update the House on those two projects? More widely, while his announcement rightly drew attention to the importance of British industry, both the TUC and the GMB have warned repeatedly about his net zero plans and what they will mean for British industry. In the words of Gary Smith, the leader of the GMB, the Secretary of State’s approach has been to export jobs and import virtue.

Let us look at what has happened on Labour’s watch. At Grangemouth, 400 jobs are at risk, with nearly 3,000 potentially affected. At Port Talbot, 3,500 jobs are under threat, and at Scunthorpe, there is the potential for 2,500 job losses before Christmas. Moreover, Labour are putting 200,000 jobs at risk through their plans to ban new oil and gas licences and to make the UK regime the most punitive fiscal regime for the sector anywhere in the world. When will the Secretary of State publish an assessment of the impact that his plans for the North sea will have on jobs, and on investment in clean energy? After all, this carbon capture investment today would not be possible without Eni, Equinor and BP—companies using the stable finances of their oil and gas businesses to invest in clean energy.

The Secretary of State has talked about the importance of UK decarbonisation in tackling climate change, but will he acknowledge that his plans to target UK production will not mean that we use less? They will just leave us importing more from abroad—importing more oil and gas from the United States and the middle east, and importing more steel from China, which is still 60% powered by coal. Will he acknowledge that both those developments will actually increase global emissions? It would be carbon accounting gone mad. It might leave some in the green lobby cheering at our reduced emissions, but overall there would be more carbon in the atmosphere and fewer jobs here in Britain. Is the Labour party seriously going to be responsible for the end of steelmaking in the UK, with the added cost of the loss of more than 10,000 jobs in our most left-behind communities? The Secretary of State must acknowledge that a better balance has to be found.

The Secretary of State has still made no comment on, and no apology for, promising the British public at the general election savings of £300 on their energy bills by 2030. Will he finally give an answer to his Back Benchers, the House and all our constituents, and explain what has happened to that pledge?