Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Matt Western

2nd reading
Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

A number was mentioned earlier in the debate, but I did not catch it. I am sure that the hon. Lady might have that number in mind. It is right that we support industries in this country, because they create employment, generate economic activity and, in turn, pay taxes. I am not ashamed of that, because it is a good thing.

The final reason why I want oil and gas extraction in this country, if we are to use it, is the balance of payments. That used to be a fashionable economic argument back in the day. When I was a teenager, we used to have announcements on the news about the balance of payments month by month. What has happened to that? The balance of payments is every bit as important economically today as it was back in the 1980s. We run a current account deficit in this country of about £150 billion. That is a huge number, and it will be exacerbated if we choose—and it would be a political choice—not to generate and export a product from this economy to a third economy, but instead choose to import one, exacerbating the balance of payments deficit twice over.

For those four reasons, I am wholly in favour of the ambitions behind this short Bill. Climate change will be solved by reducing demand for hydrocarbons, not by reducing supply. We will solve the demand problem by providing cheap alternatives, which the Government are doing. Members who have contributed were quite right to highlight that. We need renewables.

[Matt Western]

I agree with the hon. Member’s point about reducing demand. The great travesty is that we are still seeing houses built today—I am sure he does in his constituency—where the insulation is not at all deep. That is ridiculous, is it not?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I could not agree more. The future homes building regulations, which require a significantly decreased carbon footprint for modern buildings, come into force in 2025. It is deeply frustrating that they were not brought in earlier. The sooner they come in, the better. We also have the challenge of retrofitting insulation in the 28.5 million existing houses in Britain. Some good points have been made by Opposition Members about the need to improve retrofitting, and there is scope for the Government to incentivise further insulation of private houses, to go with the successful scheme in place already for public sector buildings and housing.

We must also increase our wind power. We have an extremely ambitious target of 50 GW by 2030. The current rate is about 17 GW of renewable wind power generation capacity. We must also increase solar and nuclear, including small modular reactors. We need better technology for carbon capture, usage and storage. We need to accelerate our use of electric or hydrogen vehicles—or, frankly, any other kind of technology that solves the problem—and we need to incentivise the market to step into that area.

We need to take a step back and look at buildings. It is about not just about the operating carbon costs of existing infrastructure, which we are focusing on in both commercial buildings and the residential sector; it is also about the embodied carbon in our construction processes, hence my private Member’s Bill on the measurement of embodied carbon in large buildings and developments. About 50% of the carbon associated with building is in its construction, not its operation.

There are areas where the Government are either ahead of the game or moving in the right direction. They have already been successful in reducing demand for hydrocarbons. I do not understand why Labour appears to put virtue signalling before the economic impact and 200,000 local jobs. I support this eminently sensible Bill.

Appointment of Lord Lebedev

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Matt Western

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran). I would dearly love to speak at length about some of the Conservative party’s many friends and donors and those of the Prime Minister, but of course that would be out of scope, Madam Deputy Speaker, so you will be delighted to hear that I will stick to the subject of the debate: the appointment of Lord Lebedev.

“A democratic, liberal nation, strong, healthy and free: I pledge that everything I do in this House will be to defend and further these principles.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 12 May 2021; Vol. 812, c. 63.]

Those were the concluding words of the maiden speech of Lord Lebedev of Hampton in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and of Siberia in the Russian Federation, to give him his full title—a title that sounds as if he may have a foot in both camps. That five-minute maiden speech is the only contribution that he has made in the other place since his appointment in July 2020, almost two years ago. “Everything I do”, he said: nice claim, but—I hate to disappoint—he does not appear to have done anything.

The problem, as I see it, is that Lord Lebedev’s elevation to the other place bears all the hallmarks of an undemocratic, illiberal nation with increasingly weak and unhealthy institutions. We are meant to have processes in place to stop what has happened in this case. As I understand it, ordinarily the House of Lords Appointments Commission vets and approves nominations for life peerages, relying on the security advice provided by the Cabinet Office and the security services. The commission’s recommendations are almost always followed. I say “almost always” because the Prime Minister, in this case, seems to have put his personal interest above the national interest, and may have overruled the advice of the security services in the commission’s recommendations in awarding Evgeny Lebedev a peerage.

[Jerome Mayhew]

Since the allegation appears to be that Lord Lebedev is using his position in the other place as a way of subverting our laws, is it not rather surprising that he has not taken the opportunity over the last two years to exercise that vote even once?

[Matt Western]

Why should he? Why does he need actually to speak in the House of Lords? He has the power, the status and the influence, and, may I say, the protection that that peerage affords him, which is why we are limited in what we can say about him now. He has all the power that he wanted, all the influence he seeks, just by the very nature of that peerage. He need not say a word down the other end, and he probably will not, although we look forward to the moment when he does, and I am sure we will all be in the Chamber listening to him.