Net Zero Emissions Target

Debate between Greg Clark and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Last night, at the Renewable Energy Association dinner, its chair, Nina Skorupska, said that the Committee on Climate Change should be renamed the committee for climate emergency. With that in mind, this net carbon zero statement is going in the right direction. A practical step to help what the Secretary of State is talking about would be to build a 600 MW interconnector to the Hebrides, rather than a 450 MW one. That would give us 33% more capacity for only 5% extra cost, and the extra electricity it would produce would probably drop wholesale prices and even eradicate that. Given today’s statement, will he make sure that Ofgem sees the big picture and gives the 600 MW the green light? Ofgem is currently not fit for purpose in this regard, because if it keeps its blinkered formula, its policies will result not in 600 MW or 450 MW, but in net zero MW.

[Greg Clark]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is frustrated at the decision that Ofgem has taken. He and I had a successful and productive meeting in Stornoway a few years ago, as he will recall, to make it possible for remote islands to benefit from wind. He knows that Ofgem has an independent role, but I will follow up on his concerns.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between Greg Clark and Angus Brendan MacNeil

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 28th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I absolutely recognise that one of the big strengths of the east midlands is that it is connected to the rest of the country, and it is essential that those connections continue to improve. The hon. Gentleman will know that a fund was established in the Budget for cities and city regions to improve the connections in and around those cities. That is important, but it is in addition to the importance of connections to the rest of the country, so I will raise his point with the Transport Secretary.

Let me say something about ideas and the importance of innovation to our economy. We can be the world’s most innovative economy, given the strength of our science base and our researchers. Throughout our industries, we have some of the most creative people in the world.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I just want to probe the Secretary of State about what thinking has been going on in government following Bill Gates’s speech in the spring about taxing robots. We only have to go into a high street shop to see that many jobs have been displaced by machines, which are not taxed. If a person was still working there, they would be paying tax to the Exchequer, and that money could help future innovation. Have the Government given any thought to all these labour-saving devices and to getting some revenue from the way in which robots are doing many of the jobs that people used to do?

[Greg Clark]

We need to embrace the technologies of the future. If we are in the lead, we can benefit from being the place that develops, applies and manufactures many of these products. Whenever we have taken the lead in this country, we have reaped the benefits. It is in those areas where we have lost our advantage that we have ended up importing goods and services from around the world. We need to lean into the future and ensure that we are the place in the world where the firms of the future locate to develop and manufacture their products.

--- Later in debate ---

[Greg Clark]

I will take that representation. My hon. Friend is right that the performance of the east midlands has been extremely positive. Some of its institutions—I think of universities in Leicester and Loughborough—are having a huge impact on the local economy. I look forward to visiting Leicestershire again soon to have discussions as part of the plan for local industrial strategies. I mentioned the fund for improving transport connections between city centres and the towns around them, and that is essential investment in the future competitiveness of our economy.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

The Secretary of State is being generous in giving way. How might the industrial strategy develop if we find ourselves with open borders and no border checks, which was talked about as recently as yesterday? If we are to have an open border with the Republic of Ireland, the UK will need an open border with everywhere else, meaning that the UK will not be running any tariffs at all. How will that affect the industrial strategy? Under most favoured nation status, if we have an open border with Ireland, we will have an open border with everywhere else.

[Greg Clark]

I am conscious that many Members want to speak and the hon. Gentleman is tempting me into a discussion that would take more time than I have. However, our future as a successful economy is about trading more with Europe and the rest of the world. That should be free of tariffs and free of friction, and that is what we want to achieve through our negotiations.

None of the investment in and improvement to the productive capacity of the economy would be possible without a fundamentally strong economy. The essential foundation of future prosperity is to be a place in which global investors can have confidence. It is sometimes easy to take for granted the progress that was made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and his predecessor in rescuing the economy from the catastrophic situation in which we found it when the Labour party left office. Britain had its largest deficit as a share of GDP since the second world war. So reckless had the Labour Government been with the public finances that in their last year in office—almost unbelievably—for every £5 of Government spending, £1 had to be borrowed. Unemployment rose by nearly half a million, the welfare bill ballooned and the number of households who had never worked had doubled. If we had continued on that course, Britain’s reputation as a dependable place for global investors to entrust their assets would have been lost, and it would have taken many generations to recover.

As a result of the steady and painstaking work of the British people, however, backed by the leadership of Conservative Members, we have cut the deficit by three quarters at the same time as cutting income tax for 30 million people. Britain has been one of the job creation hotspots of the world, with employment up by 3 million in just seven years and unemployment lower than at any point since 1975. However, just when the deficit is being tamed and we can look forward to falling national debt, which has to be repaid by future generations, the Labour party—I hope it will contradict me—has adopted a platform that is even more extreme than the policies that produced the previous situation. Labour’s proposal is to borrow an extra quarter of a trillion pounds. As if that were not enough, it also wants to increase taxation to what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called the highest peacetime level in the history of this country. That would, as the IFS also said, make the UK a

“less attractive place to invest”.

It is no wonder that the reaction of employers the length and breadth of Britain has been one of alarm. The chief executive of the EEF said that those policies are from a bygone era. Do they have credibility? The answer is clearly no.

Bombardier

Debate between Greg Clark and Angus Brendan MacNeil

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I am glad my hon. Friend asked that question, because, as the whole House knows, the aerospace sector in this country is one of our proudest success stories. It is growing. It is a huge source of exports—over 90% of the product of our aerospace sector is exported. Productivity growth, which is much debated in the House at the moment, is six times the rate in the economy as a whole. A quarter of a million very highly paid jobs are in aerospace, and we are absolutely determined—those colleagues who are familiar with our industrial strategy will see this in advanced manufacturing and in aerospace in particular—to build on those strengths and advance them. That is why the Boeing investment in Sheffield was welcomed, but to see that relationship jeopardised by this complaint is a huge setback and a bitter disappointment.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

I welcome the Secretary of State’s condemnation. What has happened is condemned not just in Northern Ireland, but across these islands, including by the Irish Government, as the Secretary of State said. I hope Bombardier will accept my invitation, as Chair of the International Trade Committee, to help combat this. However, on the wider issue—the World Trade Organisation aspects—is it not concerning that disputes outside the EU, which might be a WTO issue, and where the efficient European Court of Justice will not, and cannot be, used in a post-Brexit situation, the UK may see itself picked off by friend and foe all the more frequently in the future? Surely it has to be a concern to the Secretary of State that interactions with more states will be at WTO level by definition if the UK has changed status.

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the support of the hon. Gentleman. The more we can be absolutely clear that the whole United Kingdom, all parties and both sides of the House share this view that the complaint should be withdrawn and the dispute settled, the better, and that has been emphatically the case here. Again, I make the point that it is clearly in all our interests to have free trade. In a sector where 90% of products are exported, that is obviously the case. But that trade needs to happen in a way that gives us confidence that disputes, which will happen from time to time, are resolved in a fair and objective way. We play by the rules—we always will—and all we want is a system that respects that. We are confident that we will gain from that scrutiny.