Draft European Research Infrastructure Consortium (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Debate between Angela Eagle and Claire Perry

Monday 3rd December 2018 General Committees

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady is right. It is why the proposed framework is to have as close as possible alignment on goods. I know she speaks to many universities and researchers, so she will know that we have an endemic problem with scale-up. What tends to happen is that the intellectual property is sold overseas before the commercialisation stage, and often the full commercialisation of projects and services is done by overseas companies, rather than the IP being held back in the UK—but I am digressing slightly. Forgive me, Mr Sharma.

I am going to address the migration points. I thank the hon. Member for Wallasey for her contributions to the European Statutory Instruments Committee. I know she has a lot of stuff going on with that, and these are important questions. Third countries cannot host ERICs, so there is a question about hosting versus participation. We host two ERICs and we are members of 12. This relates to our future negotiations, which are spelled out in the political declaration, but we have expressed a desire to continue to host. We hope that our special status as one of the world leaders—I cannot remember the patent numbers, but I believe we are up there with economies very much larger than ours—will allow us some special status for ERICs hosting. I believe that is part of the future negotiations.

[Ms Eagle]

Clearly it is worrying that third countries cannot host ERICs given that we are about to become a third country. Will the right hon. Lady indicate the sort of timescale and approach or process that will be in place for trying to negotiate ERIC 2 or whatever we want to call it?

[Claire Perry]

I will clarify my remarks to the hon. Lady in writing, but I believe that forms part of the negotiation we are having around Horizon 2020 and the entire science and innovation piece. It is part of the ongoing negotiations before we have a legal political declaration, if that makes sense, on a future framework, but I will clarify that in writing to her.

The hon. Lady asked me a very important point about migration. She is absolutely right. We have benefited enormously from the incredible talent of those who come to study in the UK and who often choose to remain and work here, and that absolutely must continue. She also asked me to say a little bit about policy. I do not want to pre-empt my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but essentially the policy position we have taken on migration is one that is entirely consistent with wanting to remain a world leader in science and innovation, and that has been stated in every public declaration. It has also been reiterated in every conversation we have.

Since January 2018, we have made a series of changes to the immigration rules to support that objective. For example, we have doubled the number of exceptional talent tier 1 visas for those qualifying in science, engineering, the humanities, medicine and so on. We have expanded the number of institutions that can sponsor international researchers, making it easier for research councils to bring in researchers for two years under a temporary work route. We have waived the resident labour market tests for supernumerary international researchers and members of sponsored research teams, and we have enabled faster switching between students visas, which are tier 4, and highly skilled tier 2 visas.

[Ms Eagle]

Obviously, any expansion and increased flexibility in that area will be very important to maintaining the UK’s leading place as a centre of scientific and research excellence. The Minister will probably be more familiar with this than I am, given her announcement regarding her personal arrangements, but when I went around the country meeting university researchers, what I heard about that concerned me more than anything else was the bureaucracy involved in granting visas. It takes much longer to get researchers from non-EU countries, as well as to get UK researchers into third countries. There is a bureaucracy issue, a timing issue and uncertainty about whether visas will be granted, which makes it much easier to organise research where there is free movement. That is the key issue that will bind us in the future if we do not get it right.

[Claire Perry]

As always, the hon, Lady makes an important point. She is right to distinguish between EU and global talent pools. Of course we want to attract the best and the brightest, wherever they come from, to work in the research and innovation sector, to be part of the industrial strategy, and to benefit the wider-UK economy.

Something that is not in my briefing notes but which the hon. Lady might find interesting is that one of the challenges, I am told, is that not enough home-grown students, particularly women, are emerging from our education system to be grown into those research and innovation positions. One might hope that, in time, we will see more acceleration of women and others through our education system, until we reach the point where we can fill more of those important research positions with UK talent. Regardless, we will still be open to the best and the brightest supporting our world-leading research and innovation base, and as we have been absolutely clear, both in public and in conversations across Government, we want to make sure that we work closely with the research sector to ensure that our visa arrangements are closely aligned to the sector’s needs. She makes an important point: it is not just the availability of research, but the ease of access. If we are bidding in a global talent pool, we must make sure that we have streamlined activities.

Draft Offshore Environmental Civil Sanctions Regulations 2018

Debate between Angela Eagle and Claire Perry

Tuesday 15th May 2018 General Committees

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Offshore Environmental Civil Sanctions Regulations 2018.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. The regulations will allow the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy’s Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning to impose financial civil sanctions for contraventions of offshore environmental legislation, which we believe provides a more appropriate and proportionate enforcement option and will further encourage operators to do the right thing in ensuring that those limits are not breached.

The regulations will, moreover, bring OPRED in line with the onshore environmental regulators, which already have such powers. The regulations will provide the offshore regulator with the ability to impose financial penalties on operators that are breaching environmental legislation.

I have visited OPRED and want to pay tribute to the civil servants working so hard in the fair city of Aberdeen who are doing a marvellous job to ensure that our offshore industry adheres to among the highest environmental standards in the world. One problem they have, unlike onshore regulators, is that they do not have the power to impose fines when they uncover a breach. The regulations will allow that gap in their current enforcement options to be filled.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I do not think that there is anything anyone could object to about having a civil penalty as well as a criminal one, but the Minister implies that there have been some breaches that her inspectorate has not considered to be serious enough to bring criminal proceedings against. Therefore, the companies perpetrating them have been allowed to get away with it. What kinds of breaches does the Minister think the new civil penalties will enable her inspectorate to get a handle on? Such breaches have, by implication, gone by the board because of the inflexibility of the current arrangements.

[Claire Perry]

I welcome that intervention. I will say a little more the sort of breach that will attract the new civil penalty. To reassure the hon. Lady, a series of enforcement actions are already taken and they will have the effect of removing any breaches as quickly as possible. Those include serving an enforcement or prohibition notice, revocation of a permit, and referral for consideration of prosecution.

The majority of contraventions tend to be quite minor and the only enforcement option available is a criminal prosecution, which is costly and time-consuming for all parties. Of course, OPRED does not determine whether those matters should be prosecuted; that is rightly for the judicial system to decide. Giving OPRED these powers, which are in line with those enjoyed by the onshore regulator, would allow it effectively to make that decision and impose a financial civil sanction. That would allow for a more timely and cost-effective response, and it would not lead to the criminalisation of operators that have committed only a minor breach that they are anxious to put right but for which there is currently no sufficient penalty regime.

[Ms Eagle]

I am just trying to find out how large this issue is, in terms of companies that have been in breach but whose actions the prosecuting authorities did not think serious enough to bring criminal charges against them. By implication, there has been a series of breaches that are not serious enough to merit criminal charges but which would fall under the Minister’s proposed civil prosecution structure. Will she give us an idea of how great an issue this is and what has been allowed to pass because we did not have flexibility for a civil rather than a criminal process?

[Claire Perry]

I will give the hon. Lady numbers, because she and I both like facts rather than opinions. Since 2016, there have been 4,178 total breaches of environmental regulation. That sounds a lot but many are very minor. Of those, 78 have been subject to investigation. The assessment of my officials is that 10% of those 78 would have reached the required standard of proof for receiving a civil sanction. OPRED’s view is that that number will not change dramatically. We are talking about tens rather than hundreds. Of course, the measure is almost a threat; it is unlikely to be the outcome. As the Minister responsible for oil and gas, I believe that we have, by and large, very compliant companies that are anxious to maintain the reputation of the North sea basin as the most environmentally well-regulated. I hope those data satisfy the hon. Lady, who asked an excellent question.

Returning to my opening remarks, the measure is the ultimate penalty. It allows the regulator to have more arrows in its quiver when it gets out there and ensures that enforcement notices are taken seriously. In addition to the civil sanction, the ultimate threat is the revocation of a permit, which means that an operator can no longer operate. It is felt that those and the prosecution option are perhaps too severe for some of the sanctions being investigated. I have mentioned the numbers. Although criminal prosecutions can carry substantial penalties, they are used relatively infrequently, because they are so resource-intensive to carry out.

The sanctions will be applied instead of, not in addition to, criminal prosecution for cases where the required criminal standard of proof is met. The fixed and variable civil sanctions that OPRED will have the ability to impose range from £500 to £50,000. Those recommendations follow a consultation that finished on 15 February, seeking views from the public, the hydrocarbon sector and other relevant stakeholders, such as nature conservation bodies and environmental non-governmental organisations. There were only 13 replies, the majority of which responded positively to the regulations. No additional substantive changes to the regulations were needed as a result of the consultation.

Concerns were raised about the potential overuse of powers, the burden of proof and, fundamentally, the legislation to which the civil sanctions would apply. My team published a response on 16 April that detailed all those points, should people be interested. Many of the issues raised are relevant to OPRED’s enforcement policy and civil sanctions guidance document, which is being produced alongside the regulations, rather than to the regulations themselves. Both the guidance document and the enforcement policy will be subject to consultation and published in final form before any civil sanctions are issued.

In summary, the objective of the regulations is to create an equivalent environment for onshore and offshore operators, which in many cases are the same company; maintain the UK’s position as having excellent environmental standards for hydrocarbon extraction; give OPRED additional powers to impose financial civil sanctions for contravention of specified environmental legislation; and provide an element of proportionality for a breach that is deemed sufficiently serious to invite a potential criminal process but without actually taking the operator to court, although that option is retained for the most serious breaches.

Our intention is a proportionate and measured approach that will ensure greater compliance by offshore operators and allow enforcement action to be taken swiftly. If agreed by the Committee, the regulations will enter into force alongside the supporting documents on the next common commencement date of 1 October 2018. I recommend the regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Perry]

I thank the hon. Members for Southampton, Test and for Wallasey for their good, probing questions, to which I will respond in three blocks.

The hon. Gentleman suggested in his tone that OPRED was making up the fact that it was really busy. He will know—the hon. Lady will, too; I am sure she has done the dunk test and been out to see the various rigs—that we now have 299 oil and gas installations. We have 20 inspectors, who are required to go out and inspect in the most awful conditions, and it is absolutely right that we give them the tools that they have asked for to do their job most effectively. Let me again put on the record my gratitude and admiration for what they do.

The hon. Gentleman made a good point, as he often does—he always does, actually—which helped clarify something in my mind. He is right to flag that we already have a civil penalties regime for breaches under carbon emissions legislation, which is dealt with by an entirely separate set of regulations. The draft regulations will bring the same suite of tools—enforcement notices, civil penalties and, for the worst cases, prosecution—to bear on non-CO₂-related breaches: in effect, in this case, oil and chemical spills. It was helpful for him to make those points, because that helped me to ensure that I was clear about what we are doing. In a way, the numbers that he pointed out show that this will be an effective way of dealing with lesser breaches, just as it is under CO₂ legislation, which requires civil sanctions and/or prosecutions for the most serious cases.

I defer to the hon. Lady’s long knowledge of this area. She is right to point out that the North sea, although it is probably past peak production, is in a period of real renaissance. That is partly because of what the Government have done in listening to the oil and gas industry—

[Ms Eagle]

indicated dissent.

[Claire Perry]

The hon. Lady shakes her head, but she will know that this Government proposed the transferrable tax history, which my hon. Friends north of the border campaigned for very strongly and the industry had been asking for. Along with investment in the Oil and Gas Authority, which is the oil and gas regulator, and the wonderful Oil and Gas Technology Centre in Aberdeen, which is co-funded by the Westminster Government and the Scottish Government, that has stimulated a whole wealth of new investment and interest, and asset transfers from the big boys—she was correct to call them that: they are mostly boys—to smaller, more nimble companies that are better able to exploit those assets. We should all be very proud of that.

I want to push back a bit on the idea that the regime is being weakened. There are some serious large breaches—in effect, oil and chemical spills—that are absolutely worthy of prosecution. Then there are a whole suite of lesser offences for which enforcement notices can be issued and, most importantly, remediation action can be taken, both in clean-ups and ensuring that it does not happen again. However, other than through an exchange of letters and conversations, there is no way to make it clear to that operator that that is totally unacceptable behaviour which must not happen again.

I argue that having a civil sanctions regime enables that message to be sent even more strongly. For operators who—knowingly or unknowingly—are effectively allowing smaller breaches to happen, a suite of sanctions that did not exist will exist and be in force thanks to the regulations. I say unequivocally to the hon. Lady that this feels like a tightening of the regulatory regime. She is right that we have an offshore sector that is capable of generating hydrocarbons into the future. Ultimately, we will get to a hydrocarbon-free world, but, in the case of gas, if we invest in carbon capture and storage technology as we want to do, we can keep that gas being burnt cleanly in the system for a long period of time. It is economically vital to this country that we do that, and we need a regulatory regime that enables good operators to do what they do.

The hon. Lady said there might be some rogue operators creeping in. I am not suggesting that—there is no evidence of that—but we do have to bear that in mind, and these are the sorts of regulations that will send a strong message. Sanctions can be applied and penalties, which can be reinvested in the industry, can be collected to ensure that that message is sent loud and clear.

Vauxhall (Redundancies)

Debate between Angela Eagle and Claire Perry

Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I pay tribute to the many people who I am sure live in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency who work in the other major Vauxhall plant and who I know are as committed and productive as those in Ellesmere Port. He is absolutely right, and this is why we have to have the negotiation and why we have to come up with a good deal and ensure as seamless a relationship across borders as possible. He will know that 65% of the Luton plant’s production is exported to the EU. We want to make sure that continues.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Perry]

I am not sure who the winner was in that contest, but the hon. Lady is absolutely right. She should not listen to the noises off, which people seem to be obsessed by, that are reported to come out of the Cabinet. There is an absolutely obvious view that we have to get a deal. We will get a deal that works for the UK and for businesses such as this in the UK, and we will have the opportunity over the next few days and weeks in the debate on the repeal Bill to show that we are unified on this and want to stand up for the businesses and those they employ in our constituencies.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

I have constituents who will be losing their jobs as a result of these extremely worrying announcements. The Minister has said that the Government are standing ready to help, but the future of the plant would certainly be enhanced if the plant were a front runner for a new model. What are the Government doing to ensure that it is?

[Claire Perry]

That is absolutely part of the conversation. I understand from listening to the general secretary of the union today and from talking to the company that decisions about the new model have to be taken in the next few years. It is incumbent on us all, therefore, to make sure that this is perceived as the best place to build that model. That is how to protect, preserve and enhance the jobs and productivity of the plant.