Infrastructure Bill [Lords]
Debate between Caroline Lucas and John Hayes(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Hayes
My right hon. Friend has made that point to me previously. Let me tell him, with a candour equal to that of my earlier expressions, that I am absolutely determined that the lines of accountability for the strategy we have in place should be clear and that Ministers’ lines of reporting in this House should be palpable and known. Indeed, I have missioned my Department to make sure that that happens.
I will make available in the Library of the House, not only for my right hon. Friend’s benefit but for that of the whole House, a description of precisely what those lines of accountability will look like. When he sees that clear description of how the House and Ministers are going to exercise their proper authority in the name of the people, I think he will be more than impressed and will feel that this Government and this Minister have gone further than even he expected us to.
Caroline Lucas
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; it is good to see that he is on his usual courteous form. He talks about the importance of facing up to the future, but the question is what kind of future it is. Why does this Bill lock us into such a high-carbon future at exactly the time when we need to be shifting towards being able to meet our climate change objectives?
Mr Hayes
As the hon. Lady suggests, the kind of future that I anticipate is very different from the one that she sees, for my kind of future is ambitious for Britain and virtuous in its intent; I am not sure that that is true of hers. I do not mean to be unkind in any way. However, as I said, I will come to invasive species by those that are apparently ornamental when they first arrive but turn out to be nothing but a nuisance.
Hon. Members will see a virtuous pattern that demonstrates my and the Government’s unrelenting commitment to delivering better infrastructure. At the heart of the autumn statement made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor last week was the biggest and most far-reaching roads programme in decades, with over 100 improvements to our major roads. As the House knows, that extra capacity will be underpinned by £15 billion of investment. Better infrastructure means more jobs, more opportunities and more growth. Those things will ultimately help to build a better future, drive down the deficit and inspire our people.
On taking office, we produced the first ever national infrastructure plan. We have made big calls on HS2, on Crossrail—the biggest construction project in Europe—and on shale gas exploration. We have got Britain building, with over 500,000 new homes built since April 2010.
High Carbon Investment
Debate between Caroline Lucas and John Hayes(11 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Mr John Hayes)
I am delighted to respond to this debate and I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing it.
It seems to me that the hon. Lady’s argument is based on three fundamental misassumptions, and because of that much of her case is invalidated. The misassumptions are these. First, there is the notion that carbon-intensive industries and other parts of the economy that rely on them are at a peculiar and specific risk. The hon. Lady made that case—I shall put it as generously as I can—with confidence. However, it would be a hard case to prove and she brought very little evidence apart from the letter, sent to Mervyn King, the chairman of the Financial Policy Committee at the Bank of England, that she quoted at the beginning of her speech.
Let me deal specifically with that letter. The hon. Lady is right to say that it was signed by a number of people. The Bank’s current position is that the interim Financial Policy Committee is aware of the issue and should the FPC conclude at any point that carbon assets do pose a systemic risk to the financial system, it will report and explain that risk in its six-monthly financial stability report. It has not done so at this stage, because it has not come to the hon. Lady’s conclusion—that there is that particular risk—on which the rest of her argument is predicated.
The hon. Lady’s second fundamental misassumption—
Caroline Lucas
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. Will he explain whether he thinks it is a misassumption to state that only one fifth of known fossil fuel reserves can be burned and their emissions released if we are to stay within the carbon budgets? That is not predicated on any letters, but on the figures coming from some of the foremost climate institutes and others.
Mr Hayes
But this is about the connection between that fact and the effect that it has on the financial climate in which these organisations operate, on their stability, and on their attractiveness to investors. That is the myth. The hon. Lady’s argument is based not on the bald fact but on the connection between it and other things.
The second misassumption that underpins the hon. Lady’s analysis—I am afraid that I must put it this way; I always try to be generous, as you know, Madam Deputy Speaker—is that she assumes a superior grasp, or understanding, of the patterns of investment, the basis on which investors operate, and the climate and modelling that they take into account in making these large-scale investment decisions, than I would have the temerity to claim. I do not want to lecture her—I say this as a paternal bit of advice, really—but a degree of humility is required in these matters. I am by no means wedded to the idea of the market, but I do take the view that the market has an important role to play in signalling to us and to the business community what investors believe to be attractive and unattractive. I therefore do not claim the kind of insight, prophetic powers and extraordinary understanding that the hon. Lady clearly does.
The third misassumption on which the hon. Lady’s performance was based was her extraordinary ability, so it seems, to predict likely changes in the availability of technologies such as carbon capture and storage, changes in the patterns of demand for energy, and changes in cost and price. It is true—perhaps this is where we can reach a synthesis—that in acknowledging that almost all we know about the future is what we do not know, we cannot simply therefore take no strategic view or no long-term decisions. Indeed, the Energy Bill, which she mentioned, is very much about trying to take long-term decisions. However, it is best to do so on the basis that those decisions are not framed around a definitive view of what is bound to occur but an understanding that the creation of a highly responsive system will allow us to deal with those things that are, by their nature, unpredictable, or certainly so in their detail and extent.
Therefore, for the hon. Lady to claim that “carbon capture and storage is not the answer”, to use her precise words, is a pretty bold—some might say a pretty extraordinary—claim. Of course it is true that carbon capture and storage is still at the beginning of its journey and that it will take some time for it to reach the scale that will allow it to become commercially viable. She knows, however, that the Government have invested in a £1 billion competition, that we are backing four projects in that competition, and that they offer significant potential. She will also know, because she studies these matters assiduously, that the taskforce we set up to look at cost reduction for carbon capture and storage concluded just a fortnight or so ago in its interim report—a considered report that I recommend to her if she has not seen it—that carbon capture and storage could become available and commercially viable much more quickly than she has said; it speaks of the early 2020s. I recommend to her the graphic illustration of that argument in the document, which shows that carbon capture and storage is not only becoming technologically proven but is more widely admired than perhaps she wants, because once one accepts that fossil fuels and their effects can be mitigated, the rest of her argument becomes less plausible. Those fundamental misassumptions rather colour her approach to these matters.
There are further problems. I challenge the idea that investment in fossil fuels and the move to a low carbon economy are fundamentally incompatible, and I believe that the market is better able to assess for itself how to manage its assets and investment decisions and that the Government’s Energy Bill provides investment, clarity and certainty. The hon. Lady will understand that the point about long-term contracted prices is that they lower the cost of capital and create an environment for investors that is, by its nature, more certain. Not only do I think all of those things, but I think, less apologetically —not that I have been particularly apologetic so far—that the mix of technologies that we believe is necessary to deliver energy security is not only a guarantee that, in the unpredictable world that I have charted, doors will be left open that the hon. Lady would want to shut, but is more likely to deliver the kind of secure, efficient and effective future that will allow us to be confident that supply can meet demand in an affordable way.
I think there is some agreement, in general terms, on this subject across the House, although there will be differences of opinion with regard to detail. I do not want to anticipate too much of tomorrow’s debate, but the Opposition have made some plausible arguments about demand reduction, market entry, liquidity and regulation, and they will no doubt want to articulate their case tomorrow. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), the shadow Minister, is in his place. Far be it for me to write his speech for him, but I have no doubt that those things will be in it.
In those terms, I think that the hon. Lady is not only outside the mainstream, but, arguably, on the very fringe of the debate. I do not want that to be the case, because, as I have said, I am generous and am approaching the issue as paternally as I can. Dickens wrote about
“a heart that never hardens, and a temper that never tires, and a touch that never hurts.”
I do not want to hurt the hon. Lady.
Caroline Lucas
How disappointed I am with the Minister’s response. I base my statements on expert advice from financial analysts, university academics and climate experts, so his patronising response is particularly misplaced. We may disagree about the precise time that CCS will come in, but the very fact that there is uncertainty surely means that financial markets should be addressing it.
On the Minister’s point that the Greens are somehow on the fringe, we have been told that for 30 years. We were told that when we started talking about the ozone layer and about climate change, and eventually the other parties caught up. I hope that he catches up soon, too, because if he does not the future looks pretty grim.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Lady knows that the Committee on Climate Change has recognised in its recent progress report—I know that she takes that seriously and that she will have read it—that we are on track to meet our first three carbon budgets, which amount to a 35% reduction in emissions by 2020. She knows that, as a result of the levy control framework negotiations that led to the bargain between the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Treasury, we have made £7.6 billion available for investment in renewable technology, carbon capture and storage and, at the back end of that period, nuclear power, which she acknowledged recently as salient, because it is a low carbon technology.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Lady shakes her head, but it is, of course, a low carbon technology. All I am saying is that a degree of humility in these matters is important. That is not patronising—far from it. It is about acknowledging that we want a system that is robust but flexible; that takes a strategic view but that does so in a measured way; that is balanced, not extreme. We want a system that allows investors to choose from technologies that can stand up to the kinds of tests that the market would expect. That means that the technologies need to deliver and that they need to be resilient—technologically sound and commercially viable. I believe that that can be true of carbon capture and storage and of renewables, as scale grows and costs fall.
As I have said, in my view, ours is a balanced, measured, moderate and humble approach. Before the hon. Lady speaks tomorrow, I hope she will think again about the Government’s position.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Caroline Lucas and John Hayes
Mr Hayes
Let me be crystal clear, because the right hon. Gentleman is right to inquire about this. There will be no levy, no direct payment and no market support for electricity supplied or capacity provided by a private sector new nuclear operator unless similar support is provided more widely for other types of generation. I could not be clearer than that.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
With respect, the Minister could be a lot clearer than that. A subsidy is still a subsidy even if it is given to other types of generation as well as nuclear.
According to recently published estimates, just the 16 GW of new nuclear capacity to be built by 2025 will require between £5.5 billion and £12.6 billion a year in finance. That is a huge cost to householders and businesses. Does the Minister agree with those figures, and will he admit that given the constraints of the levy cap, he faces a choice between breaching the renewables directive, breaching the Climate Change Act 2008 and abandoning his increasingly implausible plans for new nuclear build?
Mr Hayes
Nuclear power is a low-emission technology, and the hon. Lady should welcome it accordingly. She obviously regarded this week’s good news as bad news, but it is good news in terms of the supply chain—as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said—it is good news for the British people, and it is good news for our energy mix and our energy security. I will not be influenced by the preoccupations of bourgeois-left academics; I will be inspired by the will of the people.