Select committee: Energy Security and Net Zero Committee
Recommendation 21
6th Report - Workforce planning to deliver clean, secure energy
Published 5 Dec 2025
Addressed to Department for Energy Security and Net Zero
Energy Security and Net Zero Committee Workforce planning to deliver clean, secure energy All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Targeting consumer demand on its own is necessary but not sufficient and public funding is needed aimed at addressing the supply of skills directly. The commitments in the Spending Review and Industrial Strategy are welcome as is the direction of travel. At some point market signals will be strong enough and funding can be scaled back but we are not at that stage yet. While public funding could be deployed across a variety of worthy initiatives, the schemes the Government chooses to fund must be robustly and regularly evaluated to ensure they adequately address the skills shortages identified in its workforce strategies. (Conclusion, Paragraph 93)
From: Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, 6th Report - Workforce planning to deliver clean, secure energy (HC 393), 5 December 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 27 February 2026 (deadline 11 February 2026).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it agrees with most of the Committee's recommendations on clean energy and retrofit workforce planning, and says it partially agrees with others, including on skilled immigration conditionality and impact assessments for procurement conditionality.
- On existing workers, it "agrees" and cites a new North Sea Jobs Service, and says it is "continuing to support" expansion of the Energy Skills Passport, including "exploring" additional sectors such as electricity networks and nuclear.
- On skilled immigration, it "partially agrees" and states: "We do not currently plan other labour conditionality measures beyond those we set out in the IWP", while keeping policies "under review".
- On impact assessments for procurement conditionality, it "partially agrees" but says conditionality "would not be within scope of requiring the publication of an impact assessment", and that it will be considered "on a case-by-case basis".
- On the Regional Skills Pilots, it "partially agrees", says it has "commissioned an independent evaluation", and does not commit to the Committee's summer 2026 reporting date.