Opel/Vauxhall: Sale to PSA Group

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I will work with our colleagues in Wales through the Secretary of State here and the Welsh Assembly Government. I and my Ministers will shortly meet Ministers in Wales to discuss the industrial strategy, and I imagine that Ken Skates and others will want to have those conversations with them.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I commend the Secretary of State for his dialogue with the trade unions and hope he is able to give us a commitment that he will continue that. Interestingly, he does not seem to be answering the questions on Brexit head-on. Many of my constituents work at Vauxhall’s Ellesmere Port plant, and they are very concerned about this. Given the risk that thousands of high-skilled jobs of the future may go, and given the importance of the plant to the region’s economy, what are the Government doing to ensure future EU market access for this industry and other important exporting industries?

[Greg Clark]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s kind words. We have made it very clear that our objectives as we start the negotiations—which obviously have not commenced yet, because we have not triggered article 50 —are about making sure that we can have access to the single market without impediments and without tariffs. But in any case, we are determined that our industry, whether the automotive sector, advanced manufacturing generally or the whole economy, will be competitive. The head of PSA himself said today that Brexit actually offers some opportunities, but the hon. Lady can have my assurance that I will do everything within my power to make sure that the terms of trade that we secure through our negotiations are as advantageous as possible.

Vauxhall/Opel: Proposed Takeover

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend that we have in Vauxhall a very successful firm that is well regarded in the domestic market and across the continent. It is building on the success that is in prospect, but it is important that, through the discussions, that is secured in the future arrangements of the firm.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

Many of the thousands of people employed at Vauxhall Ellesmere Port live in Wirral and they are understandably concerned about the future of their jobs following the announcement of PSA Group’s acquisition of Opel. Some 80% of the cars made at Vauxhall Ellesmere Port are exported directly to EU states, and 75% of the value of each car is imported. The Prime Minister is reported to have received a meeting request from the chief executive of the PSA Group, which Downing Street has said will take place

“in principle, subject to diary availability”.

Will the Secretary of State suggest that the Prime Minister make a space in her diary as a matter of urgency?

[Greg Clark]

I think that the hon. Lady started by saying that the deal has been agreed, so let me first say that the deal has not been done. Secondly, no one could be under any illusions as to the vigour of our response. Of course, the Prime Minister will need to find the time in her diary for a meeting, but we are keen to continue the close contact we have had.

Green Investment Bank

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the increased attractiveness of investment in renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure. Governments in the UK and around the world have helped to facilitate that investment over the years and have seen dramatic falls in the cost of those technologies and the cost of the capital attached to them, making them a more investable proposition. This helps to reinforce our argument that this is the right time to liberate the GIB from state control to enable it to play a bigger part in the market.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The Aldersgate Group has highlighted the fact that the strength of the Green Investment Bank is that it has supported innovative projects throughout the UK that help us not only to tackle climate change but to drive down costs in the NHS and local government through energy efficiency. Will the Government heed the warning of the former Conservative Energy Minister, Lord Barker, that the bank is heading for break-up? Will they halt the sale to ensure that the bank remains a single public institution that is one step ahead of the market in the green projects that it backs?

[Mr Hurd]

Lord Barker is a good friend of mine for whom I have great respect. I would like to reassure him and, I hope, the House that the Government are not being naive. We are very clear about the criteria we have set, and we are in the process of a robust and rigorous evaluation of the proposals against those criteria.

Backbench Business

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) on securing this important debate.

There are two affected Crown post offices in my constituency. Local people have pointed out to me that that is particularly bad news for disabled people and there will be a reduction in post office services in the area. Tens of thousands of pounds have recently been spent on refurbishing the Crouch End post office. There seems to be a distinct lack of logic in ploughing a whole lot of public money into doing up a post office and promptly closing it. In the case of the closure of Muswell Hill Crown post office, there is a further risk to local jobs, because there are another 60 jobs at the Royal Mail sorting office behind the post office. In the London property market, once the doors of a facility like that close, a real estate agent will pop up and sell it either for some sort of housing development or more coffee shops. If there is one thing that Crouch End does not need, it is more coffee shops. We need proper services for local people.

In the various parts of my constituency that have become more populous in a short time, with denser housing developments, we desperately need services such as post offices. A petition has been signed by hundreds of thousands of local people. Will the Minister say whether that petition has been taken into account? I have not met anyone locally who wants to see the doors of the Crown post offices close.

On parliamentary scrutiny, I have been asking for months for some sort of debate. I am pleased that my hon. Friend succeeded in securing this debate, but there has been a lack of debate. I requested a meeting with the Minister, but I was not successful. I also requested a meeting with her predecessor, who sits in the House of Lords, and was again unsuccessful. Will the Minister pledge today to meet those of us who are affected so we can each have a few more minutes to go into detail about this urgent issue?

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I refer Members to the fact that I received tremendous support from the Communication Workers Union during my 2015 general election campaign. Does my hon. Friend agree that as we approach Christmas, the importance of the post offices at the centre of communities is heightened? Although I understand that her constituency is densely populated, that is particularly important in constituencies with rural areas.

[Catherine West]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Regardless of whether they are in rural areas or urban areas, post offices are places where people can meet friendly faces, so they do not necessarily have to do everything over the internet. We all treasure that kind of community service.

Will the Minister also tell us whether the Government’s consultation is genuine? Time and again, we have had an announcement by the Post Office, a rather anodyne meeting and then a sense of resignation—a sense that “We’re just going to close them anyway.” If the consultation were real, we would have a genuine dialogue and a genuine sense that what we as Members of Parliament said was actually going to make a difference. Sadly, there is a fog of resignation over this issue. I fear that that is why many people tell us that they feel disconnected from national politics. They spend hours lining up to see us at surgeries to tell us something and then we do not get a result. It is not through lack of trying. Thousands of petitioners stand outside in the snow, hail and rain, collecting signatures that their MP cannot even get a response to. I am sounding a bit frustrated because that is how we feel—those of us stood outside the post office, Saturday after Saturday, getting signatures for petitions but not getting a response. I want an assurance from the Minister that the voices of Members of Parliament will be heard and that the consultation is not just a sham.

I always want to be a positive Member of Parliament, so I want to give the Minister some ideas. Suggestions were put forward in “Securing the Post Office Network in the Digital Age” in November 2010 to make it the front office for Government and to grow financial services. We know there is a crisis in the general high street banks. After all the banking scandals, people cannot trust whether the bank is on their side, but people do trust the Post Office as an emblem, a community symbol and a friend.

I hope the Government will look again and genuinely consider what we have to say. We are here not because we want to spend more time with each other, but because people want our voices to be heard. Will the Minister give us a reassurance—as a new Minister, there is a new opportunity—that she will listen to us genuinely and give us a positive hearing? People want their Crown post offices, so listen to our voices and think again rather than implementing these foolish and unpopular proposals.

Paris Agreement on Climate Change

Margaret Greenwood Excerpts

Wednesday 7th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on securing this important and most timely debate.

Last September, I met Councillor Miguel Magalang from the Philippines to hear his first-hand experience of the impact of climate change in his country. He was visiting the UK to raise awareness of the impact of the increasingly extreme weather conditions that the Philippines are experiencing. The Philippines are made up of thousands of small islands. He told me that it looks like a tropical paradise, with sandy beaches lapped by turquoise blue waters. However, this beautiful place is suffering from the impact of climate change through increasingly frequent typhoons. His country—his home—is under threat, and people have to live in readiness to follow evacuation procedures. This means uncertainty and instability for everyone, and it has a knock-on effect on the economy, the education of children and the provision of healthcare. In the typhoons of 2012 and 2013, over 8,000 people lost their lives. The message from Councillor Magalang was simple: climate change is here now, not in the future, and we should play our part in tackling it. The UK has responsibilities to other parts of the world, such as the Philippines, as a major emitter. Like other industrialised countries, we clearly bear a strong responsibility for climate change, and we should therefore provide a strong lead in taking action to tackle it.

[Patrick Grady]

I wholeheartedly agree with the points the hon. Lady is making. I have experience of living in Malawi, where people are also being affected first and hardest by climate change, having done the very least in terms of emissions to cause climate change. Does she agree that the concept of climate justice, which has been articulated by Pope Francis and others, is very important to this debate? The Scottish Government have a very innovative climate justice fund, and it would be interesting to see the new Department working closely with DFID to try to imitate it.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Absolutely. Climate justice is very important to this debate.

Last year, I attended the COP21 legislators summit in Paris, which was organised by GLOBE and the French National Assembly. I attended it alongside colleagues from across the House who are also on the Environmental Audit Committee. I particularly thank the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) for his work within the GLOBE organisation.

The summit was attended by over 200 parliamentarians from around the world, from whom we heard, at first hand, accounts of climate change. We heard about how more frequent weather events are threatening the lives of these people, and about the threats to diversity in places such as South Africa and Brazil. We heard from people in India about the impact of the retreat of the Himalayan glaciers on water supplies, and about the threat of increasing sea levels. We also heard from politicians from Nigeria, who described how in the north of that country the desert is moving in and about how Lake Chad, which once seemed to be like an ocean, now appears as a puddle. That has been accompanied by internal migration, delivering an awful lot of upheaval for those people.

We know that climate change is the biggest global challenge that we face. Its impact is clear around the world in increased storms, flooding, droughts and movement of peoples because of lack of resources. We also know that the poorest people on the planet are the most badly affected; as one of the richest nations on earth, we have a real duty to do something about that. The message at the summit could not have been clearer. We must reach our targets on emissions to reduce climate change and must protect fragile ecosystems. Action is needed at local, national and international level.

I was proud to hear British politicians being praised for the lead that our country has taken in tackling climate change. In particular, respect was shown for my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and for Lord Prescott, who was hailed in Paris as the “father of the two degrees” for the part he played in focusing the world’s attention on the significance of the 2° target. Back in the UK, the Home Secretary is to be congratulated on the contribution she made in Paris last year to help bring about the final agreement. It is clear that Britain has the expertise to play an important role in tackling the greatest global challenge the world faces. It is therefore important that we continue to show leadership.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to ending the unabated use of coal in energy generation altogether by 2025 and to restrict its use from 2023. I urge them also to commit to banning the burning of coal underground, an issue I have raised on a number of occasions. I ask them to look very closely at that; it would be particularly welcome in my constituency of Wirral West. I am pleased that the Minister is committed to the ratification of the Paris agreement on climate change. But we must be clear that this Government’s record on taking action to cut carbon emissions in the UK is poor, and the policy direction of the past year is particularly worrying.

Last year, the Government cut feed-in tariffs for solar by 65%. Further attacks on that important industry are imminent through a proposed rise in business rates for businesses and other organisations, including state schools, that have installed solar panels on their roofs. The Government announced plans to privatise the Green Investment Bank, despite its real success in investing in more risky renewable projects. They also ended support for new onshore wind through the renewables obligation a year earlier than expected. In the face of huge public opposition to fracking, they are pressing ahead with encouraging that carbon-hungry technology. All those measures are undermining my confidence that the Government are serious about tackling climate change; I am sure they are undermining the confidence of a lot of other people.

We face the greatest challenge to the future of the planet. The agreement reached in Paris last year was greeted with celebrations right around the world, and rightly so. The Paris climate deal offers the very best chance for ourselves, our children and our future children for a more secure future. Hillary Clinton has said that if she is elected US President in November her Administration will mobilise a global effort, on a scale not seen since the second world war, to tackle climate change. China and the United States have already ratified the treaty. France has completed the domestic legislative process.

Britain must step up to the plate and lay an Order in Council so that Parliament can approve the treaty and send a clear signal to other European states that we still intend to provide a strong international lead on tackling climate change. In addition, the Government must revisit their damaging policies, so we can foster vital green industries, provide confidence to investors and be at the forefront of the green energy revolution that must surely come. There should be absolutely no delay. I urge the Government to take action.