In July, Jesse Norman was appointed to a junior ministerial post (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State) in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. His energy responsibilities are Nuclear and Oil & Gas including shale gas. Soon after his appointment, we contacted him to seek a meeting, intending to discuss the Hinkley Point decision, and fracking, among other issues.
We met him just after Hinkley Point was given the go ahead and shared our views on fracking, managing energy demand, the transport sector, home insulation, ratification of the Paris Agreement (COP21) and the extent to which government should directly manage the UK’s low carbon transition. Unsurprisingly, there are still considerable differences between his position and ours, but it was a nonetheless a useful meeting.