Energy-intensive Industries

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 18 October 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:22, 18 October 2022

Well, Llywydd, I agree with what Luke Fletcher has said about the long-term importance of having a different system of energy supply. That will have a particular set of advantages to those energy-intensive industries. I thank him for drawing attention to the fact that, in our discussions of energy-intensive industries we tend to have the debate dominated by the very large companies—the Tatas and the Celsas of this world. And I was pleased, Llywydd, to see that the new Prime Minister had had a meeting at the very end of September with the chief executive of Tata in India. I wrote to the previous Prime Minister, following meetings that the economy Minister and I had had with senior figures in Tata, asking him to come forward with a UK plan for investment in that industry. He replied to me to say that that would fall to his successor. Well, I've written again. I've had no reply, but I've written again, and I was glad to see that that meeting had taken place, because resource-intensive energy industries are at a particular disadvantage in the United Kingdom, especially in comparison with competitors elsewhere.

The Welsh Government's part in this is inevitably at a different part of the spectrum, but we do work through the Development Bank of Wales, through Business Wales as well, to provide advice and sometimes direct financial support to industries that are interested in fuel switching, in efficiency measures, and being part of that wider move from fossil fuels to renewable energy, on which the future of Wales, I think, depends.