Cost of Energy: Ceramics Sector
Aaron Bell Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)
The small but mighty city of Stoke-on-Trent is the home of our country’s outstanding ceramics manufacturing industry. Its rich history and heritage in ceramics played a leading role in the United Kingdom’s industrial revolution, putting our great city on the map around the world. It is important to point out that the term “ceramics” covers not just the important tableware and giftware sector but bricks, clay roof tiles and pipes, wall and floor tiles, sanitary ware, refractories—critical to manufacturing steel and glass among other items—and advanced technical ceramics used in everything from aerospace to medicine.
In Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, we have world-class ceramics businesses such as Churchill China, Steelite, Burleigh, Moorcroft and Johnson Tiles, to name a few. They all welcome the energy bill relief scheme, but I worry that energy-intensive ceramics businesses will still face crippling energy bills if prices spike next winter or sooner.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. Next door, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, we do not have quite as many firms as in Stoke-on-Trent, but we do have Silverdale Bathrooms and Ibstock Brick, which makes bricks in Chesterton. They have both come to me because they are also worried about the potential for energy prices to go back up if support is not there in the future. We all hope that the increase in energy prices is temporary. Does it not make sense—I am sure that he will come to this—for the Government to shepherd our companies through the war in Ukraine and this period of difficult energy times so that they can continue to provide jobs for our constituents for many years to come?
Jonathan Gullis
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who is an incredible champion for the people of Newcastle-under-Lyme and the ceramics sector, as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who is sat behind me—he was made in Stoke-on-Trent, born and bred, and is the heartbeat of our city. It is great to be surrounded by such supportive colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) is correct to say that as support will decrease from April onwards, there is a fear that, if prices were to go back up, while companies may be receiving good orders, they would be left with unaffordable bills. Wages are also having to be increased massively just to retain staff, let alone manage the recruitment crisis that the sector presently faces.
Energy Security
Aaron Bell Excerpts(1 year, 12 months ago)
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Grant Shapps
My hon. Friend is right about the importance of private investment in carbon capture, utilisation and storage. The Energy Bill will look to unlock that private investment.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his place. Global gas prices have been at record highs. That has been caused by Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine and it has been a problem for the whole of Europe, so I welcome what the Government have done to protect my constituents from this impact through our energy price guarantee. Does he agree that the long-term solution to ensure stable and lower prices is to have diverse sources of British energy providing the power to our homes and businesses?
Fertility Treatment (Employment Rights) Bill
Aaron Bell Excerpts(1 year, 12 months ago)
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Nickie Aiken (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be read a Second time.
Fertility treatment affects hundreds of thousands of people from all ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds —infertility does not discriminate. Treatment is emotionally draining, costly, risky and a very long process. Someone might go through multiple cycles before conceiving, and they will quite often fail to conceive at all.
According to the latest figures from the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority—the UK fertility regulator—it takes on average three cycles of in vitro fertilisation to achieve success. Cycles can be unpredictable, and women have to deal with the symptoms, the risk of complications and the daily practicalities, such as self-injecting with hormones. Undergoing fertility treatment is difficult at the best of times, but doing so while juggling a job is particularly tough.
Unlike for pregnancy, maternity and paternity, there is no legislation to compel employers to give time off work for fertility treatment or even initial consultation. Women are, of course, protected from pregnancy-related unfair treatment and discrimination throughout the protected period. In the case of fertility treatments, however, the protected period begins only at implantation stage, not before. In practice, there is little recourse to legal, medical, practical and emotional support for men and women undergoing fertility treatment.
That leaves people vulnerable to unfavourable treatment or dismissal during the early stages of treatment, and without legal recourse. I hope that my Bill will address that significant gap in the law.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on her Bill, which is in the best traditions of private Members’ Bills, because although the matter does not affect that many of our constituents, for those whom it does affect, it does so quite profoundly. I realise that we do not have much time today—I hope she will make more progress on another occasion—but I want to wish her well and congratulate her on her work encouraging employers to adopt some of the principles in the Bill voluntarily.
Nickie Aiken
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Only a small percentage of the population is affected by fertility treatment, but it is so important that we support those people through what is quite often a difficult time.
Electricity and Gas Transmission (Compensation) Bill
Aaron Bell Excerpts(1 year, 12 months ago)
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Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friends the Members for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) and for North Herefordshire (Sir Bill Wiggin), and my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox). There seems to be a theme; perhaps what we are debating only affects people in the north of their counties. Representing north Staffordshire, as I do in Newcastle-under-Lyme, it may be appropriate that I am speaking as well. It is always a pleasure to be here on a Friday doing important work on Bills such as this one. I pay tribute to everybody who is here doing so, particularly the hon. Member for Newport West (Ruth Jones). Instead of listening to me, she could be watching Gareth Bale—I wish Wales well and I am sure she is not following the game on her phone. [Laughter.]
I pay tribute to the Bill’s promoter, my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset, not only for what he is doing today, but for what he did with the Down Syndrome Act 2022. He referred to it today, as have colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond). I noticed the other day that he won campaigner of the year at The Spectator awards, which goes to show that the legislation will really make a difference to the lives of many people with Down’s syndrome and their families throughout the country. That is what these sitting Fridays are all about. If he could tell me how to win the ballot—he has been lucky twice in a row—that would be greatly appreciated.
My right hon. Friend is right to say that we need to upgrade our grid. As we move to decarbonise our sources of heat and electricity, more will be delivered through electricity, because heat pumps and transport—electric cars and so on—will put an increasing demand on the grid. The Government consultation on land rights and consents for electricity network infrastructure, which was held in August and September, summarised the scale and pace of change to electricity networks that is anticipated; peak electricity demand is expected to go from 58 GW in 2020 to between 130 GW and 190 GW in 2050 to meet both our net zero targets and, increasingly in the light of Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, our energy security targets. The report went on to say:
“Over the next decade and beyond, this means an unprecedented build of new electricity network infrastructure and reinforcement, especially of the existing distribution network where between 200,000-600,000 km of additional distribution network cabling could be required by 2050.”
My right hon. Friend is at the sharp end of that, with his constituency near Hinkley Point C. That is because these big new developments will put a lot of demand on the capacity to get that electricity out and across the country more widely, as we on the Science and Technology Committee have heard in our current investigation into nuclear. We are generating a huge amount of electricity in one place in Hinkley, as we will be in Sizewell following the Chancellor’s welcome announcement last week that we are going ahead with that.
My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset is right to champion his constituents. Although I have not had the cases he has had, I am sure the criticism of National Grid is warranted, because we see this kind of thing all too often. I do not have the data, and one thing I noted when preparing for this debate is that we do not have good data about how often such consents are sought in our constituencies. Perhaps the Government could look to get Members of Parliament more information about how much of a problem this is in our areas.
The constituency represent is not nearly as rural as those of the Members who have spoken before me, but the principles remain the same—solid, Conservative principles of justice, fairness and people’s property rights. As my right hon. Friend said in his opening speech, sometimes it feels as if the odds are stacked against individuals. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire said, the principles that ought to apply with compensation—putting people in the same position as they would otherwise have been in—often do not seem to be observed. That is why Bills such as this, which create independent means for people to seek redress and compensation at an appropriate level, are so important.
That does not make me a member of an anti-growth coalition, or anything like that. If we want infrastructure in this country—if we want to build things for the overall betterment of our national population and build national infrastructure—we need to be more constructive and work with people affected. My hon. Friend the Member for North Herefordshire said that HS2 was better than what we have here, but in truth HS2 has caused no end of trouble as it carves its way through the countryside, and, indeed, through Staffordshire.
People have to fight so hard even to get back to the position they were in. We perhaps need to offer them more than 100%, as France does. In France, they make sure that affected people are not only made whole, but get some compensation and acknowledgement of the disruption that is caused when their land is concreted over or they have to sell their house subject to compulsory purchase. In this country, we do not work with the grain enough when it comes to housing or infrastructure.
I welcome the Bill, which is all about ensuring that we treat our constituents fairly. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset has been an undoubted champion for his constituents in this Bill and in the speech he made today. As he said, this will flow to other people. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley said that this could usefully be extended to other utilities, not just water but perhaps broadband—sometimes the disruption that that causes is quite substantial. I look forward to further progress on the Bill, and to what more can be done in Committee. I welcome the fact that the Government will work with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset in pursuing this important piece of legislation, and I hope that it goes through its further stages in this place and the other place.
Energy Prices: Support for Business
Aaron Bell Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement, which I know will be welcomed across Newcastle-under-Lyme both in our hospitality industry and at the brickworks in Chesterton, which is energy intensive. Does he agree that we must not be in this position again in the future—indeed, western Europe must not be in this position again—and that that will require investment not only in diversifying our energy but in storage? What will his Department do to work on energy storage?
Mr Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend is right: we must not be in this position again. That is why we want to ensure that we maximise our own domestic sources of energy and look at long-term contracts with friendly nations across the world that are fundamentally more reliable. Yes, there is a great deal more to do, and storage is something that we are looking at.
Post Office: Compensation for Horizon Scandal
Aaron Bell Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
Can I add my name to the chorus of praise for the Minister? I also thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), for her generous words to him. The reality is that it has taken far too long to get to this point, and not just in miscarriages of justice like this. We have also seen scandals in the NHS where people have to wait too long for Governments finally to admit fault and then to compensate people. That is often because they have been badly advised along the way. Given what we have heard from so many people around the Chamber today about the people involved in these cases being old, retired and often still in poverty—and, as the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) said, some of them have died—can I impress on the Minister the urgency of his continuing his good work so that we can get this fully resolved as speedily as possible and everyone can get the justice and compensation they deserve?
Paul Scully
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. Receiving this praise is great for me, but this is not about me. As he rightly says—please do carry on, by the way—it is about the people who have suffered terribly at the hands of people in authority. Some of them have taken their own lives and many of them have been stigmatised and left in debt and abject poverty, so we have to keep the pace going, not just to get that compensation for them but to get those lessons learned and hold people to account.
Oral Answers to Questions
Aaron Bell Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Lady will know that we have committed to the “Net Zero Strategy”, which was lauded across the world as a world-beating document. She also knows that, as I have said repeatedly and my right hon. Friend the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change has also said, we are committed to a transition, not extinction. We have to work with fossil fuel companies and the industry to transition to a net zero future, and that is exactly what we are prepared to do.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
As part of our step-change increase in investment in science research an innovation—an increase of 30% over the next three years to £20 billion a year—we are putting levelling up at the heart of our investment through clusters around the country. That is why we are putting £200 million into the strength in places fund for 12 projects across the UK; making the groundbreaking pledge that 55% of BEIS funding will go outside the greater south-east; launching three innovation accelerators in Glasgow, Manchester and the west midlands; and extending eight freeports, with two in Scotland.
Aaron Bell
I thank the Minister for his answer. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, Keele University plays a substantial role in levelling up north Staffordshire through its work with local authorities and its Keele deals addressing economy, health, culture and social inclusion. There is also the enterprise zone, including the science and innovation park, which provides a home and support mechanism for more than 50 companies, with more to come. Will the Minister confirm that universities’ role in such work will be supported as part of our levelling-up agenda, as we get more money spent outside the south-east?
George Freeman
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I pay tribute to his work and that of Keele. The enterprise zone is first class—similarly, the work of Keele University. I confirm that we are taking into account the very important role of universities in innovation and levelling up. He will see that reflected in the allocation of £40 billion to UK Research and Innovation and Innovate UK in the next three years.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (George Freeman)
I will happily talk to the hon. Member offline about the extensive vaccine pipeline that we are in the process of procuring. It includes next-generation mRNA vaccines for both flu and the next phase of covid. We are ahead of the curve on the next phase, as we were during the pandemic.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lee Rowley)
My hon. Friend highlights the amount of opportunities that are coming to constituencies such as his in Staffordshire. I would be delighted to meet him to talk more about them.
Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill
Aaron Bell Excerpts(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Paul Scully
As I said, the £4.3 billion figure cited is an inference by journalists; that money has not been written off by this Government. We are working with partners to ensure that we tackle the fraud that is clearly in the system, having given the money out at a crucial stage in the pandemic to enable businesses to survive. On the phoenix companies that the right hon. Gentleman talked about, that is exactly why we introduced the Rating (Coronavirus) and Directors Disqualification (Dissolved Companies) Act 2021, which tackles such directors, but there is clearly more that we need to do, and we will do it when parliamentary time allows.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and endorse everything he asked for. I know the Minister cannot anticipate the Queen’s Speech, but may I ask him to read the debate the House had on lawfare last Thursday, to which the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, our hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge), responded? Right now in our courts, in cases that are being investigated, litigants are outgunning the Serious Fraud Office. Oligarchs are basically waging lawfare in judicial review against our regulators and preventing these cases from being prosecuted properly. Will the Minister speak to our hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Justice and make sure that any future legislation takes into account the threat of lawfare?
Paul Scully
I agree that the lawfare debate was incredibly interesting and enlightening. We will make sure that we work together across Government to take all those matters into consideration when drawing up future legislation.
Postmasters with Overturned Convictions: Settlement Funds
Aaron Bell Excerpts(2 years, 11 months ago)
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Paul Scully
I have said that the majority of them are pioneers, and I need to do more work with them. I say “the majority” because some of the 555 were convicted themselves and will potentially have unsafe convictions, so they will be eligible for the interim payment of £100,000 and will move on to the wider compensation that we are discussing today.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
The Horizon scandal is one of the worst we have seen, and the wider Government—not just the Post Office—particularly need to learn the lessons on how to treat IT evidence. I welcome the statement and the approval of these funds, but does the Minister agree that the Post Office must now make significant cultural and organisational changes to repair the relationship with postmasters and to make sure that such a situation can never be repeated?
Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill
Aaron Bell Excerpts(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Paul Scully
I raised it as an interesting point. I do not underestimate the stress, and I will cover that later when I talk about the solution we have come up with. It was a resolution, but none the less we want to get rid of the bully-boy tactics—the use of fire and rehire as a tactic of negotiation—because that should never be able to happen. As we have said, it has been exacerbated by the pandemic, but we want to make sure that we get our resolution and our approach correct so that it does what it says on the tin rather than have some of the unintended consequences that we have heard about today.
I was talking about the recovery. We have one of the fastest recoveries of any major economy in the world, thanks to this Government’s will to act and plan to deliver. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said at our conference that we were embarking on a change of direction for the UK economy, away from the broken model of low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity; away from a broken model underpinned by reliance on uncontrolled immigration to keep wages low. We want to build back better in a new direction towards a high-wage, high-skill, high-productivity economy, which the people of this country—workers and employers—need and deserve.
A key part of the building of that economy will be to continue to champion a flexible and dynamic labour market, creating the conditions for new jobs, protecting existing ones and maintaining the UK’s excellent record on workers’ rights—one of the best records in the world.
Aaron Bell (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Con)
Is it not the case that now, with unemployment lower than before the pandemic, the bully-boy employers that mistreated their workers will find that those workers—this is the genius of capitalism—will go and look for jobs with better employers?
Paul Scully
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are taking proportionate and appropriate action on the issue of fire and rehire, but that must avoid any course of action that runs the risk of doing more harm than good, increasing the risk of collapsing businesses and subsequent increasingly redundancies and unemployment. I have real concerns about the approach in this Bill, as it would significantly increase administrative burdens and costs to employers, when they are already facing challenging circumstances.
I want to assure the House that the Government take reported misuse of fire and rehire really seriously, and we are continuing to assess the evidence available from different perspectives. I will set out today what I believe to be a proportionate response to the available evidence on the practice of fire and rehire. It is an approach that encourages best practice by employers, protects workers from unscrupulous employers and, above all, protects jobs and livelihoods by not forcing employers into a situation where they need to make redundancies or close entirely. That is an approach which, in line with the Government’s actions over the past two years, has supported businesses, livelihoods and jobs through the profound impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the whole country.