No energy nationalisation, says Labour’s Nandy

The Labour party will not seek to renationalise the energy sector, the shadow energy minister said at the party’s conference on Tuesday morning.

The Labour party’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn controversially told the press in the run up to the leadership contest that his personal wish is for an energy industry under state control. But Lisa Nandy denied the move would form a part of the party’s plans.

“Jeremy and I don’t want to nationalise energy. We want to do something much more radical. We want to democratise it,” Nandy told the Brighton-based conference.

The dramatic row-back on Corbyn’s previous comments underlines the party’s intention to focus their energy agenda on community based energy schemes and collective switching.

Nandy also vowed to back home-grown clean energy developers.

“We want secure, affordable, energy, designed, built and owned by the people of our country, drawing on inspiration from around the world. Conference, at this historic moment, let’s change the story the Tories are writing,” Nandy said.

Nandy took aim at the current government, saying the Conservatives are risking the UK’s economic security and the security of household budgets by “pulling the rug out” from domestic developers of renewable power and “paying over the odds” for the Hinkley nuclear power project.

Elsewhere at the Labour party conference junior shadow energy minister Alan Whitehead said the “quite random and bizarre announcements” from Government cutting support for large- and small-scale renewables raises concerns about the extent to which investor confidence will be destabilised over the next period.

The call for investor certainty was backed by Energy UK chief executive Lawrence Slade, who told delegates that “more than anything else” cross-party consensus on energy policy is needed.

“We need long-term, multi-parliamentary term commitment to a policy framework that gives international investors the confidence to invest tens of billions of pounds in the market to create the sustainable energy future we all deserve,” Slade said.

Whitehead added that the shadow energy team would “scrutinise, analyse and make sure that policy is going in the right direction and, at the same time, develop our distinctive positon on energy policy”.