National Insurance Contributions (Employer Pensions Contributions) Bill

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Report stage
Thursday 5th March 2026 Lords Chamber

If we are to be consistent within the canon of the tax system and avoid gaps, clearly a three-year carry-forward for salary sacrifice must come into it for equity and consistency. This is otherwise just another tax policy that is damaging the national economy and growth while benighting incentives for individual employees and the companies for which they work. It makes it more difficult to work hard and climb the ladder, and it makes it harder to save for a secure retirement; it harms incentives for employers to attract the best talent. It is the worst possible message at the worst possible time. I beg to move.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to support my noble friend Lord Fuller, who has similarly reciprocated his enthusiasm for one of my amendments. Quite a few things come to mind in the amendment from my noble friend. One is the normality across other parts of the tax system. It is very normal, because life does not fit into a timeline of 6 April to 5 April every year. We could have a discussion about why we on earth we have 6 April to 5 April, but life does not fit within those dates completely cleanly. It changes on an annual basis: one might have a good year, then one might have a bad year. That is reflected in pension contributions for tax purposes. One is allowed to carry forward three years’ worth of unused allowance. Currently, £60,000 of pension contribution is allowable if relevant earnings are sufficient. In year 4, one could technically pay £240,000. It seems very normal, therefore, that we should apply a similar carry-forward of unused prior-year benefits, as my noble friend Lord Fuller has explained so eloquently.

The reason I have laid my Amendment 6 and Amendment 22, which is the mirror for Northern Ireland, is the total ambiguity that we heard in Committee last week. If this legislation has some flagship numbers and ideas, £2,000 comes to light as a key one. After the Minister was unable last week to assure the Committee whether this £2,000 was per employment or per employee, to manage for themselves, I have laid a very simple “beyond doubt” amendment so that we can perhaps flush out from the Minister what is intended. It will not be sufficient today merely to say that it will be sorted through regulation, advice and guidance in the future. We need this on the face of this Bill, because it is what the Bill is all about.

There are numerous thresholds in the national insurance regulations. We have the primary threshold; we have then the secondary thresholds; we have upper earnings limits; we have special thresholds for under-21s, for apprentices up to 25, for employees in freeports and for employers and employees in investment zones, and special exemptions for veterans. The employee need not worry about the complexity of those arrangements because they are all worked out by the employer on a per-employment basis. If an employee is in multiple employments, which is not uncommon these days—the circumstances might be, for example, that one was getting paid at the lower limit—the accumulation of benefits of national insurance payments, even though they may be at 0%, would apply across each of those employments, so, technically, no national insurance might be paid in certain circumstances. Surely, then, something similar will need to apply for these regulations and the £2,000 threshold. If it does not, we will have some extreme complications, which the Minister explained and said he wanted to avoid in respect of Amendment 1 on which we have just voted in favour. In opposing that amendment, his claim was about the complexity across employments and the employer not knowing whether the employee in question would be a basic rate taxpayer or a higher rate taxpayer. Similar complexity seems to be an ambiguity within this Bill, which I am now trying to solve. It surely must be per employment.

There is also an issue of GDPR. Why should a primary, secondary or tertiary employer have the right to know what an employee is earning elsewhere? That is a matter of secrecy, of privacy, of confidentiality and certainly of GDPR. If the idea within this legislation is that this is £2,000 per employee, I struggle to understand how the confidentiality that the employee is entitled to can possibly be allowed to stand. Perhaps this will come out in the rules and guidance later.

My amendment is one of ease, of getting this into the open now so that the complexity that would apply across multiple employments does not come to pass. We may otherwise be left with the grave fear that national insurance is going to become yet another tax. Many of us have thought for a long time that it really is a little bit of another tax, but its operation is very different, which makes it not a tax. We need to get this rounded down, because otherwise we will start to wonder whether the next stage, across all those different rates that I have described within the national insurance administration rules, is then going to apply for multiple employments, so national insurance becomes cumulative, a little bit like tax. That will be the fear: that to take national insurance as a new tax is the Government’s new plan.

As a chartered accountant and chartered tax adviser who is still practising, I could go on about this for some time. In brief, however, this legislation is a sledgehammer to crack a nut that does not even exist. As was so ably mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, why are we considering this today, on the basis of 51 replies out of 250,000 employers? Surely leave this a year or so, get a better sample—rather more than 51—so that we can base government ideas on some facts rather than on guesswork.

[Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak principally to my Amendment 20 in respect of optional alternative arrangements. I thank the Minister for his letter of last night setting out the position on optional remuneration arrangements. I think it is fair to say that was already in the public domain and raises questions on second reading. The letter does not provide any illumination on interpretation of what an optional remuneration arrangement is in certain scenarios; we have discussed those scenarios at previous readings. Perhaps the one to highlight is collective bargaining. It is disappointing that there are not many Labour Peers here with a union background as there were earlier this afternoon.

Imagine a collective bargaining situation where there are two options on the table. First, a 5% pay increase with employer pension contributions staying at 8%, and, secondly, a 4% pay increase—lower than 5%—but with an increased employer pension contribution of 10%. If the workers take the latter option, is this an optional remuneration arrangement? I think, by the definitions given, that it is. Are the unions ready for this? Be assured that, if the Bill goes through, we will pursue this, and unions will find, to their horror, that their members are paying national insurance, which they did not think would be the case.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

Yes, I believe it will, because it is per job.

I will make three main points in response to the amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. First, the changes proposed would impact only a minority of those in receipt of salary sacrifice. The vast majority of people using salary sacrifice undertake traditional employment on stable contracts: 85% have been in their job for over a year, 88% work full-time and 97% have a permanent contract.

Secondly, although the cap we are introducing will be based on each employment, the Government are committed to continuing to engage with stakeholders as we design the detailed operation of the cap and provide for it in secondary legislation. That engagement will enable us to test how different approaches affect those with uneven salary patterns and ensure that the policy is introduced in the least burdensome way.

Thirdly, on the point made in Amendments 2 and 18 on the pensions annual allowance, that allowance limits the amount of pension savings that can benefit from tax relief in any given year. It is set at £60,000 for the vast majority of individuals. The purpose of the allowance is to deal with exceptional or uneven patterns of pension saving, including one-off spikes or fluctuations in defined benefit accrual. It is specifically not designed to deal with day-to-day saving. The allowance also relies on individuals holding accurate records across multiple years in order to track eligibility and usage. That may be manageable in a pensions tax context, but it would be wholly unsuitable for a national insurance cap that must operate through real-time payroll systems. This also applies to other mechanisms proposed by these amendments that look to roll an allowance over multiple tax years.

For these reasons, the Government believe that introducing a carryover in this Bill would create significant complexity, and consequently administrative burdens, for individuals, employers and payroll providers.

I turn now to Amendments 4 and 20, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Leigh of Hurley, and noble Baroness, Lady Altmann. I begin by setting out clearly that these provisions operate squarely within the existing framework of the optional remuneration arrangements, or OpRA rules, introduced in 2017. The Bill relies on that existing statutory concept rather than creating a new or expanded test. As a result, its reach is already constrained by well-understood boundaries that are routinely applied in both tax and national insurance contexts. Under that framework, the legislation is engaged only where remuneration is structured in a way that offers the employee a genuine alternative, typically between receiving cash earnings and receiving a pension contribution. It is that element of choice which brings an arrangement within scope. Where no such alternative is presented, for example, where pension contributions are made as a fixed and non-negotiable part of the remuneration package, those arrangements simply do not meet the statutory definition.

[Lord Mackinlay of Richborough (Con)]

This is an important point in many ways. The Minister will be aware that within an owner-managed director business, the director has absolute discretion about how he or she may take their overall package, whether that is dividends, usual PAYE employment or, quite normally, the company making a pension contribution. Would such a situation fall within these rules because the director is effectively the be-all and end-all making that option and discretion themselves? No other party is deciding whether thou shalt have this or that. Can the Minister give his early impressions about how that situation may be dealt with?

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

It sounds to me, although I realise it is an odd phrase to use because you are negotiating with yourself, that that is established as a negotiated contract and, therefore, that is not an option that arises for you after that contract is negotiated. I think that in the example the noble Lord gives it would not be, but obviously that will be set out very clearly in guidance going forward.

The Government’s view is that the Bill already draws the appropriate and proportionate boundary. It addresses arrangements involving a choice between cash and pension provision, while leaving ordinary, non-optional employer pension contributions wholly outside scope.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Craig Mackinlay.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This is an emotional day for me, and if you will indulge me, I will say a few thanks, because a few are due. Apologies are due, actually, as I have caused the breaking of so many rules today: there has been clapping; I have got trainers on because my shoes would not go over the plastic feet; and my jacket would not go over the bionic arm.

First, I thank you, Mr Speaker, for being there for me and for coming to visit. I will tell everybody this little story: the rest of the hospital thought I must be dreadfully ill, because they said, “That guy’s got the funeral director in already.” [Laughter.] But you have been, and you have cared for me throughout, and I thank you for that. The other person in this Chamber I would like to thank is the Prime Minister, who has been with me throughout. He has not advertised it, but he has been to see me multiple times. To me, that shows the true depth of the character of the Prime Minister, and I thank him for that.

I thank my wife, who is in the Chamber, my daughter and other family members—my father and my father-in-law. I thank my wife for being there every single day of those many months in hospital. She could only do that because of the support of family behind her. In the Public Gallery—they cannot quite see me, unfortunately—are many of the staff from the NHS. [Applause.] They took me from where I was, close to death, to where I am today, so I thank them for that. I am not entirely sure I am that happy that the two surgeons who took this lot off are there, but never mind.

There is a question here. Prime Minister, can we please ensure that we embed recognition of early signs of sepsis? It would not have worked for me—mine was too quick and too sudden—but many people do get a few days. If we can stop somebody from ending up like this, I would say that that is a job well done. I would also like to impress upon Health Ministers the importance of allowing the provision of appropriate prosthetics, particularly for multi-limb amputees, at the right time. Thank you, Mr Speaker; thank you, Prime Minister. [Applause.]

[The Prime Minister]

It is so wonderful to hear from my hon. Friend. I thank him for his kind words, but I also personally pay tribute to his family, who are here in the Chamber. I know first hand the extraordinary job they did to support him over the past several months, and they all deserve our absolute admiration and thanks for what they have done. Before I answer the substantive question he has raised, I also join him in paying tribute to the NHS workers who looked after him.

My hon. Friend is right that sepsis is a devastating condition; we are working hard to raise awareness of it, and I know that he will play a leading role in doing that. Without getting into all the details, I will just say that he is right: as the NHS itself has recognised this morning, more needs to be done, and I can assure him that we will do that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins) will discuss with him shortly, as will I, his suggestions for how we can improve care and awareness for people, but I will end where I started earlier today: Craig, you have inspired each and every one of us. Thank you.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

We of course will continue to invest in renewables, but I say to the Scottish National party that we should also invest in our energy independence, and that means investing in the North sea. If we fail to invest in the North sea, we will be more reliant on foreign producers and we will have higher carbon emissions as we import from elsewhere.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Q2.   If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 12 July.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister is in Vilnius, attending the NATO summit. It is an opportunity to build on the work we have done over the past year, strengthening NATO and supporting Ukraine. In addition to my meetings in this House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Craig Mackinlay]

New Labour’s old mantra was “Education, education, education.” Its new one seems to be “Tax education, tax education, tax education.” Does the Deputy Prime Minister share my disgust at Labour’s plans to tax education of choice, which could lead to 40,000 pupils being sent into the state sector, with a cost to the taxpayer? A number of English language schools in my constituency are concerned that this will also apply to them, as well as to out-of-hours tuition and sports training. Does the Deputy Prime Minister object to those measures as strongly as I do?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

Once again, we have seen the Labour party putting the politics of envy above the interests of children in this country. As my hon. Friend rightly highlights, recent analysis shows that it could lead to over 40,000 pupils leaving the schools they are in, placing further burdens on existing schools and costing £300 million.

Civil Service Impartiality

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

My hon. Friend refers to conversations he had with Sue Gray, and says that he does not know whether Sue Gray was having conversations with others at the same time. I am not aware of anybody in Government being informed of those discussions before last Thursday, but that could easily be cleared up if the Labour party were just to publish the timeline this afternoon.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I believe in the integrity, diligence and value of our most unique civil service. All civil servants, as with everybody else, have a right to a political view, and they can exercise that privately at the ballot box. I want to put on record that I rigorously defended Sue Gray as she did her work on partygate last year. But in this case what is important is the job that has been left, the time in between, and the job that has subsequently been taken up. I do not need to make the House aware that the events of last year are not just dust that has settled; they are still hanging thick in the air. I am asking, on behalf—

[Mr Speaker]

Order.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I’m finishing.

[Mr Speaker]

No, you don’t finish; you’re finished now. When I stand up, that means you sit down. I hate to say it, but we have both been here a long time, and we should know the rules of the House. Now can we just have the question without going into the areas that I asked people not to venture into?

[Craig Mackinlay]

Yes. Thank you, Mr Speaker—my apologies. I am asking a question of the Minister, from the men and women on the normal Clapham omnibus: does this smell right?

[Jeremy Quin]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is very succinct. We do need to get the facts out and to know exactly what took place. We are doing that work, and it would help if the Labour party were to assist us in that process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

It was the Labour party that showed its cards this week when it came to backing working people. [Interruption.] What I would say—[Interruption.] What I would say to the hon. Gentleman is that if he really cares about supporting patients, if he really cares about children getting the education they receive, if he really cares about working people being able to go about their lives free from disruption, he should join in supporting legislation which is prevalent in many other countries to ensure minimum safety levels in critical public services, and get off the picket lines himself.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Q13. To continue a theme, evidence is now very clear that the London Mayor’s sham consultation has suppressed 5,000 negative responses from members and supporters of FairFuelUK, for which I chair the all-party parliamentary group. What angers me is that this proposal is a tax against my South Thanet residents, it is a tax against Kent residents and it is a tax against all of the home counties. It is true taxation without representation. Will my right hon. Friend assure me that he will do all he can to stop it? This tax is a fill-up for a failed Mayor’s budget and a failed Mayor.

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent and powerful point, and he is right to highlight that the Labour Mayor is imposing that tax on a public who do not want it. Expanding that zone is not something that communities want. I look forward to working with my hon. Friend to urge the Mayor to consider and respond properly to all views and stop that unfair tax.

Illegal Immigration

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Member will remember, I am sure, that after the Windrush situation data sharing was stopped in a range of different places and has not restarted. We will be restarting data sharing with the banks, so that when someone tries to open a new bank account, and on a quarterly basis for existing bank accounts, the banks will have to check against the database of illegal migrants that we hold to ensure people cannot disappear into the black economy having arrived here illegally and then participate in a normal way. That is not right and not fair, and I am glad he will be supporting the proposals.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

I am very pleased to hear about the new approach to Albanians, which is both obvious and very sensible. My question to the Prime Minister is on how we bridge the gap. We approve 76% of all asylum applications, but the EU average is just 14%. We are all ECHR signatories. They are not held out as international pariahs or as breaking any abstract of international law. The Prime Minister may be surprised to hear that I have no issue with the ambit of the ECHR as long as we have an outcome of about 14%, too. What has been going wrong with our approvals and refusals process?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. A big part of that difference is how we are treating Albania. That will be changed as a result of our new guidance and deal. More broadly, one of the changes that we have made today is to increase the threshold that someone has to meet to be considered a modern slave. It was based on simply a suspicion that someone may be; we are changing that to make sure that there is objective evidence that they are. That change will help us to close down some of those grant rates, but there is more work to do and that is what our legislation will deliver.

Tributes to Her Late Majesty The Queen

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Friday 9th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a true honour to be here at this time in our nation’s history and to be able to speak about my sorrow and the great grief of my constituents in South Thanet. Yesterday was a day that we all knew would come, but we all hoped that it never would. We were all trusting that the huge longevity of the Queen Mother, who died at 101, would give us more years of the Queen in her place, giving us certainty and calm through her powerful and steady service to our country, her realms overseas and the Commonwealth.

As yesterday developed—it was a day that I will never forget—from mid-afternoon I felt a deep sadness, and as the official announcement came out at about half-past 6, my emotion was overflowing. I asked myself why. Why did I have this emotion, this love, for a 96-year-old whom I had never met and who died peacefully after a life well lived in a home that she loved, surrounded by family? Few in this House would have met her properly, apart from Prime Ministers. Most interactions would have been brief and fleeting—they are moments that everybody cherishes—with that most remarkable lady. I was saddened because she had been ingrained in my life, and in all of our lives. She was that true and reliable person that the country had grown to rely on for all of our lives. We grew up looking every day at banknotes, coins and stamps with that image, which was replicated literally hundreds of billions of times in this country, in her overseas realms and across the Commonwealth. We knew her on a daily basis.

Across those 70 years, this remarkable woman saw new nations form. She saw empires collapse. She saw Governments here and abroad come and go, and she met most of the characters involved. We looked to her at this nation’s times of great crisis and great joy. Consider this: the first Prime Minister whom the Queen called on to form a Government was Winston Churchill, who was born in 1874, and her last Prime Minister—our current Prime Minister—was born in 1975. That spans a period of more than 100 years, which is quite staggering. She was on the throne for close to 30% of the entire time for which the United States has been in existence. The changes that she lived through were staggering, and yet she adapted seamlessly to each and every one.

The Queen was the rock that we thought would stand forever—she was our Head of State, Queen in many other realms and dominions, and Head of the Commonwealth—but she was more than that. I feel she was the true matriarch of the world, and I think we are seeing that in the grief and the tributes from across virtually every country in the world today. There is no part of this United Kingdom and no constituency that she did not touch with either a visit or a patronage, and in my patch of South Thanet people still talk about that visit to Ramsgate in 1993 and Margate in 2011.

It is at times like this that we see our constitution in play. All roads of that continuity—the community, Government, our armed services, our police and justice—led to her, and now we see a smooth transfer of the Crown to her dear son. She managed to keep the magic and mystery of monarchy, while we in this country and everybody around the world took her into our hearts. In our dear Majesty’s words after 9/11:

“Grief is the price we pay for love.”

We grieve now, and we look to a new era under Charles III. Rest in peace, Your Majesty. Thank you for your service, and God save the King.

Sue Gray Report

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

No, but I want to assure the hon. Gentleman that I understand the reasons why he feels as he does. I also want to say that everybody in No. 10 took the pandemic with the utmost seriousness. I grieve for his loss. We were doing our best to contain a very, very difficult situation.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that I voted against much of the covid legislation over the past couple of years, because I felt that a lot of it was pettifogging, ridiculous and unnecessary. I think this entire House should apologise to the British people for allowing a lot of this nonsense legislation to be in place. Whereas I take great comfort in and have respect for the fact that the courts tend to come to the same conclusion for the same offences, it would seem that the legislation we passed allowed an individual police force to come to different conclusions and certainly allowed different police forces to do so. From the photos I have seen, I would much rather have been at the curry and beer than the birthday party the Prime Minister had in the Cabinet room.

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend very much. All I can say is that those matters are for the relevant forces.

Committee on Standards: Decision of the House

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

I think we gave Owen Paterson a fair hearing; in all honesty, it is very difficult to argue that we did not. I have wracked my brain as to measures that we might evince, but I am only the Chair of the Committee and want to allow the Committee to come to a view on reforms that we might suggest, although I have suggested in the newspapers over the past few days a few things that I personally would like to see.

The important point is that we are reviewing the code of conduct, as we are required to do in every Parliament. We did not manage to do it in the 2015 or 2017 Parliaments because we kept on having general elections, so it would be great if we did not have a general election for a while so that we could finish our work on the code. It is worth saying that we published the terms of reference for our code of conduct review on 22 September 2020 and have been engaged in the review since then. We took evidence from the Leader of the House earlier this year.

There is an argument for improvements to some of the process. As the hon. Member for South Leicestershire knows, I personally favour clarifying what we do about appeals. There is currently an appeal, and a Member can appeal to the Committee on any basis whatsoever, whereas if we were to have a de jure appeal instead of a de facto appeal process, we would need a set of criteria against which a Member could appeal, which might actually restrict Members’ rights of appeal rather than enhance them. That is a difficulty that we have to deal with.

There is an issue in respect of whether a Member should be able to appeal against the sanction rather than the findings, and I am quite happy to listen to what the Committee eventually decides on that, as I am sure the House will want to do as well.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I think the hon. Member came into the Chamber only recently, but if he has been present, I am happy to listen to him.

[Craig Mackinlay]

I have just been outside the Bar of the House.

The hon. Member is making a point about sanctions; I wonder whether this might be helpful. I am interested to hear that there is progress on a new code of conduct. If we put the specific case aside, does he appreciate that there is a world of difference between a sanction of nine days and a sanction of 11 days, for obvious reasons? Therein might be the reason for an appeal, because of the changes and outcomes that could flow from it that my hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Alberto Costa) so ably put forward.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not inimical to that view—there is a perfectly decent argument that perhaps there should be an appeal against sanctions—but in the Committee we try to stand by precedence, because otherwise we would be unfair. We list all the mitigating and aggravating factors in each of our reports and, at the end, come to a conclusion based on the precedents we have met. My suspicion is that any appeal body would do exactly the same, so I am not sure that it would necessarily change things, but there is an argument for bringing in such a thing. I note that the hon. Member referred to leaving this case aside, which is the most important thing for me: in the words of the Leader of the House, we cannot conflate one case with change of the system. In the end, that is the precise, polar opposite of justice: that is injustice and has brought the House into disrepute.

I have only a couple more points to make—

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Mackinlay of Richborough Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

Of course I am very grateful to everybody who helps with food banks, and they do a fantastic job. What this Government have done throughout the pandemic is to put the most protection for those who need it most across society, and I am proud of what we have done by uplifting the living wage, and proud of the arm that we put around the whole of the British people.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

Q7. Will my right hon. Friend offer me an answer for my constituents of the future, as they sit around a tepid radiator powered by an inefficient and expensive air source heating unit, worrying about the payments on the electric car that they did not want either, while they watch the growing economies of the world going hell for leather building new gas and coal-powered stations? They will be asking me, “Why?” Will the Prime Minister please commit to solutions that are technologically possible to reduce Britain’s CO_2, rather than uncosted commitments that—I am sorry—we will be hearing a lot of at COP26?

[The Prime Minister]

Not only has the price of batteries fallen vertiginously, as has the cost of solar power, but I can tell my hon. Friend and the people of Thanet South that they have huge opportunities. The cost of wind power in this country has fallen by 70% just in the last 10 years. What I think the people of Thanet want to see, and I am sure my hon. Friend exemplifies it, is a spirit of Promethean technological optimism.