From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
This week, Ed Miliband had two clear opportunities to explain why he will not publish the UK’s energy cooperation agreement with China from March 2025. First, in the House of Commons, when challenged by the Shadow Energy Secretary, Claire Coutinho, he dismissed the concern as a “wacky conspiracy theory that she gets on the internet”. Then again before the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, where he was asked repeatedly why the agreement has not been disclosed and refused to answer the question seventeen times.
But this is not a conspiracy theory. Energy security is national security.
This is an agreement that concerns critical infrastructure. It has been signed with a state that NATO describes as a “systemic challenge”. Last year, China and Russia described their partnership as having “no limits”. As such, Parliament and the public are entitled to know what ministers are signing in the country’s name.
The debate so far has centred on human rights. It is suspected that publication could expose the companies embedded in Britain’s green supply chains, potentially triggering strategic litigation and even delaying key Net Zero targets. That would be politically awkward for a government that presents itself as legally scrupulous and morally exacting.
Yet the uncomfortable reality is that without Chinese manufacturing dominance in turbines, batteries and grid equipment, Clean Power 2030 becomes far harder to deliver. And as one of America’s Founding Fathers, Benjamin Franklin, once observed: “Necessity never made a good bargain.”
Human rights concerns are serious and legitimate. But when the subject is energy systems and supply chains, the central issue is strategic.
Anyone concerned with Britain’s hard power capabilities – and the independence of our democratic institutions – in the face of revisionist powers such as China and Russia should be concerned about an agreement that deepens structural dependence in sectors Beijing openly treats as instruments of strategic leverage and as foundations of its military-industrial strength.
This is not paranoia or alarmism. Let’s just take what China’s President Xi Jinping said in 2020.
Full story here.
