IN the House of Commons this week I asked the Energy Minister about skills in the energy sector. Again and again in my surgeries and in my mailbag this comes up - constituents who want to upgrade the insulation in their homes or even install a new boiler or heat pump, and find that the skilled practitioners who can do the job locally are booked up for months, and are forced to look as far as Manchester to find someone to do it.

I therefore asked the Minister what the Government was doing to get the right skills into the supply chain to provide these services nationwide, particularly where Government schemes make the requirement more acute.

This is the tension that sits at the heart of our environmental policies. We often describe it as a 'race' to Net Zero, but the reality is that it is more of a marathon. And for those of you who have ever run marathons (my last one was over a decade ago to be fair!), they are marked by preparation and planning. We have to get over that finish line, but we need to make sure we've done the hard training and planning to carry us there.

That's what the Prime Minister addressed earlier this week when he made his announcement, not on changing the end goal of net zero by 2050, but achieving it in a way that will not cause people undue hardship. This is reassuring given that phasing out diesel and petrol cars, and oil and gas fired boilers, would have meant huge and disproportionate costs for those of us living outside of cities, especially when we are already experiencing a cost-of-living crisis.  Refocussing, as the Prime Minister has done, on rethinking energy supply and de-carbonising elsewhere is pragmatic, thoughtful and proportionate.

In case you missed, it he announced that: he was easing the transition to electric vehicles from 2030 to 2035; giving families far more time to change to heat pumps – and exempting households where changing simply doesn’t make sense; significantly increasing grants to upgrade boilers; scrapping burdensome energy efficiency requirements; supporting new oil and gas in the North Sea so we are less reliant on foreign imports, and speeding up grid infrastructure, more wind, nuclear and R&D.

It’s also been a busy week in Furness.  On Thursday I hosted the Nuclear Minister, Andrew Bowie, on a visit to Cavendish Dock to meet the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Nuclear Transport Solutions. What their team does is world-leading: transporting nuclear materials around the globe safely and securely. Seeing the security and innovation in force at the NTS’s site in Barrow, across both shipping and rail, was remarkable.  I am grateful to them for hosting us and providing a real insight into another aspect of the amazing work done locally.

I also hosted the Business Minister, Kevin Hollinrake, on Thursday at the SME Forum held in Barrow.  I strongly believe that Furness’ best days lay ahead of it, but while we have incredible opportunities flowing from the Dreadnought and AUKUS programmes in the shipyard, there are immediate challenges being felt by local employers from across Furness around recruiting and retaining talent as a result.

There are considerable challenges to lean in to, but it is testament to the fantastic local community that so many local leaders are stepping up to find solutions together.