Green Party co-leader Adrian Ramsay has called on MPs to “move beyond some of the comments made” about his stance on a string of pylons along England’s east coast.
Making his maiden speech on Friday, the Waveney Valley MP said he welcomes the Government’s plan to scale-up renewable energy generation but added Whitehall must turn its attention towards adapting and mitigating “climate breakdown”.
Mr Ramsay leads the Greens in England and Wales with Carla Denyer, the MP for Bristol Central who made her maiden speech on July 18, and is one of four from his party newly elected to the Commons at the General Election earlier this month.
At Wednesday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Sir Keir Starmer said Mr Ramsay had opposed “vital clean energy in his own constituency” and added: “He talks about leadership, and I’d ask him to show some.”
Mr Ramsay said in his maiden speech: “If we are to scale up renewable energy at pace – the pace required to tackle the climate emergency – we do need to take communities with us and make infrastructure decisions that are right for the long term.
“So what I’ve called for in relation to the infrastructure proposals that are currently on the table for East Anglia is a proper options assessment of the different ways in which the energy generated by new wind farms in East Anglia is connected to the grid.”
The National Grid has plans for a 112-mile power line between Norwich in Norfolk and Tilbury in Essex, through Mr Ramsay’s constituency which straddles the Norfolk and Suffolk boundary, to help connect offshore wind farms with the grid.
Referring to the Prime Minister’s wish to “reset” the tone of political debate, Mr Ramsay said: “I’d ask that we move beyond some of the comments that have been made in this chamber to date on the particular infrastructure proposal that I referred to, and that the Government commits to working with communities to ensure that infrastructure decisions are made in a way that properly accounts for the issues raised by wildlife organisations and local communities.”
The Green Party co-leader also said “far more public policy attention needs to be given to how we adapt to a changing climate, as well as mitigating against the worst excesses of climate breakdown”, and he raised dentistry when he told the Commons he “had examples in Suffolk of people telling me they’ve resorted to pulling out their own teeth”.
He said: “Whether it’s the growing use of food banks, whether it’s people suffering from flooding or the decline in our services, I want to see real action that genuinely accounts for the needs of our rural communities.”
In her speech last week, Ms Denyer vowed to speak up in Parliament “regardless of whether others might find it contentious, and regardless too of whether we are swimming against the popular tide”.
Also making her maiden speech on Friday, Liberal Democrat MP Pippa Heylings spoke about chalk streams in her South Cambridgeshire constituency, describing them as “our blue veins, the silvery threads weaving together our villages”.
She said young people “want action on the twin climate and nature emergencies”, and added: “I speak to them now – I want what we do in this chamber to restore your faith, give you agency, so that together we can be the change that we want.”
Torcuil Crichton, Labour MP for Na h-Eileanan an Iar in Scotland, said: “Two generations of my constituents have earned energy security for this country from the North Sea, and two generations more will as well as we make that just transition to renewables.”
Also on the Labour benches, Zubir Ahmed said in his maiden speech that his father settled in Scotland in 1963, where he drove buses then black cabs, which he “still does”.
The Glasgow South West MP said: “I believe it is important to be unashamedly proud of the fact that we are demonstrably the most successfully diverse ethno-religious legislator in the world.”
Conservative MP for South Northamptonshire Sarah Bool vowed to champion hidden disabilities.
She said she “understands the difficulties of adapting to life with a hidden condition” after she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes three years ago, but added: “One upside is I always will be carrying some form of sweets for a low blood sugar, so you know where to come if you need.”
