Draft Electric Vehicles (Smart Charge Points) Regulations 2021

Debate between Lord Beamish and Mark Pawsey

Wednesday 8th December 2021 General Committees

[Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I have a few general points to make that relate specifically to what the Minister said. The present Government have gone into some type of academic competition to see who can be greener than green, and they have set the ambitious target of 2030 as the date when no non-electric vehicles will be sold. However, let us be realistic; most of our constituents do not buy new cars. They will be reliant on petrol, diesel or hybrid cars for quite some time. Certainly a lot of my constituents, and others in rural communities, rely on heavier vehicles—diesel, mainly—for work, farming, and other things.

I have not yet seen a technology that is going to replace some of those vehicles. We all need to be realistic, and although the Government’s ambition is to be lauded, the reality is that 2030 will not be a sudden cut-off date whereby everything is going to change. That will not be the case—in certain areas, diesel, hybrid, or alternatives such as hydrogen-powered vehicle are going to be the answer rather than electric vehicles.

The Minister talks about the consumer. In certain areas—take North Durham and Easington for example—it may be easy for someone to install a charging point in a leafy, detached or semi-detached house, but in a terraced street in Horden or Craghead, how are we going to install an electric charging point without a succession of cables running across the street to charge people’s cars? I do not think enough thought has gone into this. Many people will have to rely on public charging points rather than installing them in their own homes.

The same applies to inner cities, to people living in blocks of flats, for example. Are we to have cables dangling from a six-floor tower block down to an electric car in the car park? Of course not. If we are to get to a situation where we have only electric vehicles, how are people going to access those charging points? That brings us on to the issue about competition, because those individuals will not have a choice to install a charging point at home and then look for the cheapest tariff. They will be reliant on going to a garage, a local council facility or some other body that sets up charging points. They could be at a disadvantage, because they will not be able to shop around for the cheapest tariff. That needs to be thought about as well. There is not just the added cost, for many of these people, to acquire an electric vehicle, which they may not do for many years. As I have said, many of our constituents do not buy brand-new cars—

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about people—often living in terraced houses—being able to charge their cars. Many of them will be able to charge at work. There are enlightened employers who are providing charging points. I will give as an example Cadent, which is setting up in my constituency a new office development where there will be charging for people at work. There are ways of getting around this issue.

[Mr Jones]

I applaud those employers, but let me examine what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. Let us say that someone lives in Stanley in my constituency, in a terraced street in Craghead, and they work at the local Asda supermarket, for example. Certainly they could drive their car there, but will all employers be queuing up to provide charging points? A lot of charging points would have to be developed. Actually, only certain people will be able to access such provision. Some enlightened employers may well provide charging points, but we need to think about the individuals I am talking about, because there is going to be a poverty trap for some of these individuals, who will not have the choice to go for cheap tariffs or deals on their electricity accounts, because they will not physically be able ever to put in a charging point at home. That needs to be thought about.

Another issue is that local authorities and car parks are putting charging points in car parks, but some of them have cut-off times when those car parks are closed, for perfectly good reasons, so they will not be open to constituents who do not have access to charging points at home. That will be a particular issue, I think, in rural communities.

Local Government Financing

Debate between Lord Beamish and Mark Pawsey

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and to be in the Chamber for the maiden speeches of my hon. Friends the Members for Dudley South (Chris Kelly) and for Wolverhampton South West (Paul Uppal). Their speeches distinguished themselves from those of the Opposition, who seem to be seeking to renew some of the battles of the past 13 years, and seem to have failed to recognise that the world has moved on.

It is appropriate that we are discussing local government funding in the context of the Budget debate of the past few days, which, it is important to remember, was an emergency Budget debate that arose as a consequence of the severity of the economic position in which the country finds itself—even worse than was expected. I want to consider why the local government funding debate is necessary and what other sectors have done already, and I want to put in perspective what local government is being asked to do and how it may do it. It is entirely appropriate that local government should make its contribution to tackling the budget deficit. Labour has left behind one of the largest budget deficits in Europe, and we are borrowing one pound for every four that we spend, increasing our national debt by £3 billion a week. The crisis in the eurozone shows that the consequences of not acting are severe, in terms of higher interest rates, sharper rises in unemployment and potentially even the end of the recovery. Those issues are recognised in the country.

It is now seven days since my right hon. Friend the Chancellor stood at the Dispatch Box and gave his Budget statement. As a new Member, I have had to come to terms with the massive amount of e-mail and letters that Members receive. On the Budget, I have had plenty of correspondence—from think-tanks and lobby groups—but since last Tuesday I have had very little from the electors in my Rugby constituency. The reason is that there was little in the Budget that electors were concerned about or surprised about—despite the protests of Labour Members, who do not want to hear about the true state of the public finances. The people in the country understand and support the measures that we need to take. These measures are necessary as a result of past mistakes, and the coalition Government have been forced to take strong and decisive action to sort out the deficit and ensure that confidence is not lost in UK markets. The public understand that the action being taken is unavoidable and that Britain must build a new economic model founded on the principles of freedom, fairness and responsibility.

The private sector has already borne the brunt of the recession, and it is important that this responsibility is shared by all of us. The private sector endured job losses and business closures during the dying days of the previous Government. Businesses have been forced to make savings, to cut back and to make redundancies, so it is only right that this pain is shared by all, because we are all in it together.[Laughter.]

I ran a business for 25 years, and I know that no matter how tightly run an organisation is, there are always additional cost savings that can be made. Here we are looking at additional cost savings of between 1% and 2%; they are there if people look hard enough. It is interesting that the Local Government Association briefing document issued today makes

“a comprehensive and open offer to Government to work with them to… reform the state to achieve the required savings”.

That shows that there is clear acceptance of the need for savings and a desire to get on with them.

There are many examples of current public sector waste. The Minister told us about some of them earlier when he spoke about tranquillity rooms, cappuccino machines and Pravda-style magazines. An article in The Sunday Times of 13 June showed that local government still “doesn’t get it”, as it is advertising well-paid non-jobs. Brighton and Hove city council is recruiting four new “strategic directors” on £125,000 each; their job is to “look outwards”. An “internal communications change consultant”, the article also mentioned, is being recruited in Sheffield at a cost of between £380 and £400 a day. A “community development co-ordinator” in east London—

[Mr Kevan Jones]

I am fascinated by the hon. Gentleman’s examples, but should he not be telling members of his own party in local government to practise what they preach, as most of the councils concerned are Tory and Liberal Democrat councils?

[Mark Pawsey]

The message is going out loud and clear: this kind of waste cannot go on and should not happen. It is entirely right for the Government to conduct a full review of local government finance and right that that review should restore to our councils a general power of competence. For far too long, councils have been dictated to by central Government. Reference has already been made to the estimate that only 5% of local government spending is controlled by elected councils. That means that of the £7,000 a head spent on local public services, only £350 is under local democratic control.

I was a councillor for five years, and in that time I became increasingly frustrated with Government interference, much of which prevent my colleagues and me from doing our job. It is for that reason that local government has often been described as a delivery arm of central Government. We often took decisions not because they were the right ones for our community, but because the Government had told us that that was what they wanted us to do and they applied pressure through directives, centrally set targets, inspection regimes and the final sanction of taking away grants. It is refreshing for all involved in local government—both officers and councillors—that the coalition Government plans set out to provide councils with the freedom and the resources to concentrate on local priorities and deliver front-line services by stopping the ring-fencing of central Government grants.