Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 6th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for all his work in getting this Bill into Parliament so that we can deliver the £50 saving to water rate payers in the south-west, because they are a hugely deserving cause, as one would expect me to say.

As other Members have said, although we have only 3% of the country’s population, we have 30% of its beaches. We welcome many holidaymakers to Devon and Cornwall—they are most wonderful places to go to, and I encourage every Member to do that—but of course people from throughout the country use those beaches, so a small share in the cost of cleaning them up and looking after them will be gratefully received, and is necessary and fair. I thank the Chancellor for getting the money through, because we inherited a very difficult financial situation from the previous Government. They had 13 years to sort this out in much better economic times; we have managed to find the money in very difficult economic times, and that is a worthy achievement.

We must look at the profile of the people who are having to pay those bills in Devon and Cornwall. A large percentage of the population are elderly, including a lot of people who have been retired for a long time, and may have retired on good incomes but have found that inflation and other things have taken away their buying power.

[Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the average income per household in my constituency and the wider south-west is about £23,000, which is way below the national average?

[Neil Parish]

I do indeed. We have to look at the income profile of people’s salaries and wages. We rely a great deal on tourism, which, while it is essential for the whole area, is not necessarily the most highly paid industry in the country. It is right to give support to the people paying those bills.

The money that South West Water has made available to clean up the beaches is essential. Whatever the rights and wrongs of water privatisation, we must realise that before the industry was privatised, the infrastructure had not been dealt with. That meant that a huge backlog of work needed to be done on the sewerage works throughout Devon and Cornwall, and the cost of that was bound to impact heavily on water bills. In my constituency of Tiverton and Honiton there is a £2.8 million scheme to improve Cullompton sewerage works, which started last November and is due for completion in June. South West Water has also spent £340,000 on a scheme to enhance Allers water treatment works, and there is another scheme to enhance the Cullompton works. It is key that the company carries on putting the infrastructure in place so that we can get much cleaner beaches. We have beautiful countryside in Devon and Cornwall, but we should not forget that people mainly come for our beaches, so it is absolutely right to keep them clean.

We must consider those who are unable to pay their bills. There is a national cost of over £15 per bill to make up for those who cannot pay. The combination of those who cannot pay and those who will not pay is always the most difficult thing for Governments and companies to deal with.

My hon. Friend the Member for Camborne and Redruth (George Eustice) talked about businesses. The Bill covers not businesses but private households. Businesses need much more competition. I urge the Minister not to let the horses frighten him. At the moment, the companies are saying, “You can’t possibly give us more competition, because that will frighten away investment from the City.” We do not want to frighten away investment, but neither must we be frightened away from looking at where we could create greater competition. In Scotland there is one nationalised company for wholesale water, and retail companies that can compete with one another. With our privatised water companies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, we can look into ways to create more competition and then get the bills down for businesses too. It is essential that businesses, as well as householders, in Devon and Cornwall should benefit. The trouble is that if we spread the money for the £50 reduction across businesses as well, householders would lose a significant amount of it.

We need South West Water to be clear about why it is putting its bills up by another £20 or so. Although that might be justified, we do not want it to eat significantly into the £50 that we have provided to help people with their bills. We must remember that the south-west has been singled out because it has the highest water bills in the country, mainly because of the cleaning up of the sewage works.

The final point that I want to raise is about the London tunnel and the sewerage works in London. Last week I made an intervention that caused one or two long faces among Opposition Members, but I shall repeat the point. One night, when I was travelling back from here on my bicycle towards Chelsea bridge, going into Battersea, there was a low tide and I could smell the sewage being pumped into the River Thames. I question whether that should be happening in 2012. A company, a farmer or anybody else who polluted in that way would be prosecuted. Is there one law for some and another law for others?

It is high time this issue was dealt with. I know that that involves a huge expensive infrastructure project, but in the 21st century it is essential to clean up the sewage that goes into the Thames. Every time there is a tremendous amount of rainfall, the sewage works cannot cope and out goes the sewage into the Thames. The water companies have the right to do that—whereas a business that did it would be prosecuted immediately. I am delighted that this project is to be undertaken. I know that parts of London do not welcome it because of how it will affect them, but for the greater good of the capital and of the Thames, it has to be done.

Water Industry (Financial Assistance) Bill

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 29th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

Does the hon. Lady think that the £50 a year for which the Bill provides until the end of the spending review period is adequate compensation for her constituents? It will undoubtedly be eaten up by the next two years-worth of price increases in cash terms.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that this coalition Government have done more in 13 months than the Labour Government did in 13 years? We have 3% of the population in the south-west and 30% of the beaches, and that is why we have got these extreme costs. This Government have faced up to their responsibilities and delivered real cash to water bill payers, rather than just talking about it like the previous Government.

[Mary Creagh]

I am disappointed at the hon. Gentleman’s tone, because he is ignoring the fact that we commissioned the Walker report when we were in government. He is also ignoring the action we took, not least to prevent customers from being disconnected. I am sure that many of his constituents were affected in the early days of water privatisation when hundreds of thousands of customers were cut off—disconnected—from their water supply for non-payment of bills. We changed that. We changed the law and effectively instigated a right to water, which we think is a basic human right and is required for basic dignity and decency. I am sure that affected many people in the south-west.

The Bill is welcome because it lays down powers exercised by the Secretary of State to provide finance for the huge infrastructure investment that is needed to clean up the Thames, which has had very little investment since the great sewer drilled by Bazalgette 150 years ago. However, there are a number of questions that the Secretary of State must answer. First, why is the Bill so short? We are in a time of drought not seen in this country since 1976, so why is she focusing on the little picture rather than the big picture? Why was the water White Paper that was due in spring 2011 not published until December 2011? Her colleague the Minister with responsibility for water is now promising a draft water Bill this spring, so can she confirm that there will not be a full water Bill to take forward the other measures in Anna Walker’s report in the Queen’s Speech this May—yes or no?

--- Later in debate ---

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and I commend his work in bringing his constituents’ concerns to the Select Committee and continuing to represent them now. Those of us who work in London during the week all wish to see the super-sewer in place, but we understand the length of time that it will take. There has not been an engineering project of that nature since, I think, 1858, and the Committee has no doubt about the impact that the sewer’s construction will have on his constituents and others.

The Committee’s wish, as recorded in our report, is for an amendable motion, and I am delighted that there is support for that. It may be within the gift not of the Minister but of the party managers, and looking further along the Treasury Bench I see how well represented they are today. I am sure that our point will be taken back to the highest possible authorities. I welcome, in passing, the Leader of the House’s commitment to allow more time for this debate.

At the conclusion of her speech, the Secretary of State made some remarks—on which, unfortunately, she would not take any interventions—about the amendment relating to planning, which will be of great interest to the Select Committee and, I am sure, to right hon. and hon. Members who live along the path of the proposed super-sewer. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be able to clarify those remarks.

On the waste water national policy statement, the Committee is pleased that the Government’s response to our report set out the areas where DEFRA has accepted our recommendations and consequently amended the NPS—for example, in line with our recommendation that the inclusion of a project in Ofwat’s asset management plan be removed as a criterion of proof of the need for the project.

[Neil Parish]

It is absolutely right that the planning process be taken into consideration. In my view, the Thames tunnel must go ahead, because when I was returning to Battersea from this House late one evening, cycling along the Embankment, the tide was low, and I could smell the sewage being pumped out into the Thames. [Interruption.] Hon. Members may turn their noses up, but I have smelt it, and we must do something about it.

[Miss McIntosh]

Given what the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr Love) said as well, I do not think that the House is in any doubt about the need for the Thames tunnel super-sewer, but we should not underestimate how long the project will take and its cost. Concerns about rising costs, to which hon. Members alluded, were expressed in the evidence to the Committee.

Food Prices and Food Poverty

Neil Parish Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate, as there is no doubt about the conclusion that we should make—that there is a link between food prices and food poverty. It is apparent that the poorest in society will find high prices difficult, and we only have to look throughout the world to find that. As the population of the world reaches 7 billion, and moves towards 8 billion by 2030, we have a greater need to produce more food, and that is where I charge the previous Government, because for much of their final period in office they did not encourage food production. In fact they said, “We can import as much food as we like”; our home production did not matter.

We therefore need greatly to increase our food production in this country, and as other Members have said, we need to use biotechnology in order to do so and to reduce our use of fertilisers and pesticides. A blight-resistant potato is coming, and it could increase food production while dramatically reducing the environmental consequences of spraying potatoes, so there is much we can do, but we have to go forward and do it.

On the grocery code adjudicator, my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who is no longer in his place, missed the point. If these wonderful supermarkets are not doing anything wrong, they have nothing to fear from the adjudicator. The point of setting up the post of adjudicator is to put him or her in place so that, if there is abuse, it can be looked at. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State wants the role of the adjudicator introduced quickly, so we need to give the legislation parliamentary time. Farmers, growers and many other people in the food chain are often squeezed not only by the big supermarkets but by the big buyers in the chains, and that is why the adjudicator is so necessary.

I therefore very much welcome the debate and what the Government are doing to increase food production and ensure that common agricultural policy reform does not set aside more land and stop food production. There is a moral obligation to produce food not only for this country, but for the rest of the world.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Thank you for your time constraint.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 19th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Paice]

I am certain that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House has heard my hon. Friend’s words. I assure him that I entirely agree with him.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

12. What support she is providing to rural communities to encourage enterprise and growth.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Richard Benyon)]

DEFRA is working with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Communities and Local Government to ensure that measures designed to support business and the economy have a proportionate and positive impact in rural areas. On 29 November last year, the Government announced a strong package of new measures designed to stimulate sustainable growth in the rural economy and to help rural businesses to reach their full potential.

[Neil Parish]

Devon and Somerset are making a bid for £15 million of rural growth network funds. Tourism, farming and business can all come together, along with infrastructure, but it needs to be co-ordinated. I support their bid and would like the Government to consider it sympathetically.

[Richard Benyon]

I am aware that the local enterprise partnership has made a strong bid, but it is one of many—we are excited by the response—and I cannot say at this stage whether I prefer one over another. Nevertheless, I wish them the best of luck in the transparent process of being accepted as one of the pilot schemes.

Fisheries Council

Neil Parish Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I am delighted that we are able to report that there were considerable increases in stocks that will benefit fishing out of the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and that we were able to invoke the Hague preference, which is of particular importance to fishermen in the north-east. We secured increases in whiting, which is of particular interest to his constituents, and I very much hope that we will be able to continue the scientific work that we are doing with fleets based in the north-east on a land-all system so that we can learn what a discard-free fishery means, following it right through the food chain.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I congratulate the Minister on standing up for British fisheries, and compliment him on the deal he got for cod in the western approaches. On the cod recovery plan, he should not have to defend our plan when we are stopping discards. Should we not get the Commission to endorse more of our plans, rather than having to defend them?

[Richard Benyon]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There has been some really good work in this country on reducing the number of discards, which was acknowledged by the Commission, so it was rather perverse that there was the possibility of measures being introduced that could have brought an end to precisely that good work. In his area, for example, Project 50% saw a more than 50% reduction in the number of discards in the beam trawler fleet. That would not have been possible under the proposed reduction in days that we were facing but luckily managed to reverse.

Bovine TB

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Spelman]

Yes, I can give that assurance to the hon. Gentleman. The Minister of State is in regular contact with the Agriculture Minister. We meet regularly at Agriculture and Fisheries Council meetings that I invite the devolved Ministers to attend and at which we have ample opportunity regularly to share our approach to the control of TB. I shall have that opportunity at the Agriculture and Fisheries Council tomorrow.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

May I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, which is absolutely right for the farmers in my constituency whose cattle have suffered from this disease for many years? You have made the right decisions. If you tackle the disease in the wildlife, you stop it reinfecting the cattle every year, which is what has been happening for years. I thank you very much for acting on that. The only way they tackled the disease in New Zealand and Australia was by tackling it in wildlife.

[Mr Speaker]

I am most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s gratitude, but I think he will intend me to redirect it to the Secretary of State.

Welfare of Laying Hens Directive

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is nice to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Amess. I, too, thank the Chair of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), for securing the debate; we all supported her in securing it.

I do not think that the Minister should be in the dock this morning; it should be the European Union and the European Commission. As has been said, directive 1999/74/EC is 12 years old. What has the Commission done about it in the meantime? Last June, Commission officials came to see us in our Select Committee, and we had figures from Spain. There are 42 million hens in Spain, of which 2 million are free range and 40 million are either in enriched or in non-enriched cages; people did not have a clue as to how many hens have been put into enriched cages. How can we be confident that Spain is converting? Will it have one or two poultry houses on each farm that have converted to new enriched cages? In that case, an awful lot of eggs produced in non-enriched cages in other parts of the same farm could find their way on to the market as grade A eggs. There are many reasons for the Commission to get strong.

Spain has a record of non-compliance, especially on welfare standards. When I was in the European Parliament, I chaired an all-party group on animal welfare. When it came to achieving welfare requirements, Spain was always one of the worst for compliance. Basically, the responsibility goes from the national Government to the regional and local governments—people pass it from one to another and wring their hands, and nothing gets done.

The Commission has seen this coming. In our Committee last June, we told it that hens, which will lay for 13 months, were going into non-enriched cages. One does not need to be Einstein to work out that, when 1 January arrives, lots of eggs will still come from non-compliant cages. We want to see action taken on that.

It has cost our industry £25 a bird to convert to enriched cages. Let us not forget—I have said this before—that the poultry industry does not receive any money from either the common agricultural policy or the single farm payment. It has to compete on not only a national stage, but an international stage. This country has a good and highly competitive poultry industry, but the industry cannot stand having many inferior eggs, produced under lower standards, coming into the country. The industry reckons that it costs 11% less to produce in non-enriched cages than in enriched ones. We need to take action.

I commend the Minister for his work with retailers. In the end, whether it is the law or not, we must physically ensure that such eggs do not come in. The best way to do that is to look at what we are eating and where the egg has come from. Not only shelled eggs are imported; we reckon that about half the 18% that we import comes in liquid and powder form. That is the area—where they could well get in—that causes me most concern. By working with retailers, we can stop a lot of that happening.

The Commission has a problem because it has taken no action for so long. At this time of higher food prices, it will be difficult for the Commission to smash 45 million eggs a day. That will not look terribly good to the consumer.

[Glyn Davies (Montgomeryshire) (Con)]

I have huge respect for everything that my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) says on such issues and I sympathise hugely. The issue comes down to whether the UK should take unilateral action on 1 January. I think that the Select Committee would agree on everything else. I am interested to know my hon. Friend’s view on whether the UK should take unilateral action.

[Neil Parish]

I am sure the Minister will cover this matter in his summing up, because it relates to legal advice. As my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton said, one can get two or three lawyers in a room and have two or three opinions. I am interested to hear what the Minister has to say on legality.

I still maintain that we must look at the market; otherwise we will be left with inferior eggs produced under lower welfare standards. From a food point of view, there is probably nothing wrong with the eggs, but they are not compliant. We must ensure that they are driven down in price, so that it is uneconomic for farms to produce them across Europe, and in the end that becomes a matter of the market. If we can drive those prices down, so that those eggs are only worth half a grade A egg, it will not take too long. Farmers may be many things but they usually work out the law of economics, and they will soon find that it is uneconomic to produce those eggs, especially with the high cereal prices at the moment. That must be our main goal. I am happy to slate supermarkets when they do not get it right, but they have got it right in this instance.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful contribution to the debate. Assuming that the Minister will not say that he has found alternative legal advice and that we can have a unilateral ban, does the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) agree that it is right to have a live updated rolling register positively identifying those supermarkets that comply with the Minister’s request and, by implication, identifying those that do not? The only way to do this through a market as opposed to a legal mechanism is to name and shame, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies). Let us recognise the good producers and processors and vilify those who do not maintain the highest standards of animal welfare and British food production.

[Neil Parish]

I could not agree more with the shadow Minister; it is a case of name and shame, and we need to know where the eggs have come from. I have looked at where all the beef, lamb and so on in supermarkets comes from. It would be good to discover not only the method by which the eggs have been produced, but where they have come from. I believe that the British public are more and more interested in where their food comes from and are keen that it is produced not only under higher welfare standards, but in this country. It would be a double-edged sword: we would look at not only non-compliant eggs, but where they were produced. That could be very good.

[Jason McCartney]

I join my hon. Friend in praising my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh) for securing the important debate. I am here because two egg producers from my area got in touch. One has willingly and enthusiastically invested tens of thousands of pounds in new facilities, believing in high welfare standards in the UK. However, I would like to echo the point about the economic argument. At a time when supermarkets are pushing prices down and when people are suffering because of the economy, it is important not to put such producers at an economic disadvantage. We need to support them in any way that we can. I like some of the ideas that we have just heard on naming and shaming and supporting high welfare standards in British eggs.

[Neil Parish]

That anticipates my final point. The industry has to deal across Europe in a single market. The European Commission is not taking the right steps to ensure that that single market works properly; there are inferior eggs on the market, and it is not doing enough about it. I commend the Minister for the agreements that he has made with retailers and supermarkets. If we can work with them to stop as far as possible these eggs coming in and drive down the price of B quality eggs, so that they are uneconomic to produce, it will not take so long for those countries that have not conformed to do so quickly. In the end, we have to ensure that we look after our own highly competitive producers, to ensure that their investment bears fruit and that we have high-quality, good welfare standard eggs, which we can all buy with confidence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

We are progressing the implementation of an ecologically coherent network of marine conservation zones, which have to be sustainable in every sense. That means that they have to be able to withstand any challenge that may be put to them, legal or otherwise, so we need to get more evidence for some of them. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that this Government remain absolutely determined to take this forward, but we need to get it right. If that means we have to take a month or two longer—or six months longer, to be perfectly accurate—that would be a better way than getting it wrong.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

This week has seen the launch of the ecosystems market taskforce. What are the practical implications of that?

[Mrs Spelman]

That is one of the commitments that we gave in the natural environment White Paper. We have asked Ian Cheshire, the chairman of Kingfisher Group, to chair the ecosystems taskforce, together with a number of business leaders and scientists. This is an opportunity to help business in this country to take the chance, with the new green technologies and green growth, to grow our economy into a low-carbon economy, and beyond that, towards all the opportunities that realising the true value of natural capital can provide.

Fisheries

Neil Parish Excerpts

Tuesday 15th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I congratulate hon. Members from all parts of the House who helped to secure this debate, especially my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), who takes a particular interest in fishing.

May I tell the Minister to be careful of the European Commission bearing gifts? He must look that gift horse in the mouth, as he will find that the proposals on devolving powers to regional advisory councils and others are short on detail. When the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs took evidence on this issue, the producer organisations for the south-west were convinced that there were no real powers coming from Brussels, and that things were going the other way. I know that the Minister fights hard for British interests, and I commend him for doing so, but we have to introduce much more local control over fishing so that the fishing industry and people going out to fish have the ownership of conservation measures and are keen to see them work. At the moment that is done far away in Brussels, and if fish are saved in one member state the fishermen there will be convinced that someone else from another member state will come along and take them away. However, there is no proposal to devolve those powers at present.

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point. Does he agree that it is important to include in the balance the needs of recreational fishermen? In my constituency, for generations, people, including me, have enjoyed going out with their fathers and their grandfathers to catch fish to eat at home?

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. A year or two ago I went to Falmouth, where we were trying to secure more help for sea anglers, who play an important part in the fishing industry, not only by catching fish but by bringing people down to Falmouth, the west country and other parts of the United Kingdom, where they stay in hotels and so on. The value of a fish caught by an angler can be a great deal more than that of a fish caught by a professional fisherman. I know that the Minister takes that dimension very seriously.

I want to discuss the change in fishing gear and the 50:50 process in Devon, where discards have been reduced by 50%, which is good news. Until we ban discards and land everything that we catch, how do we know what there is in the seas? Up to 2 million tonnes of fish throughout the European Union are discarded every year, which is a huge waste of resources, and means that we never quite know what the stocks are.

I welcome the Commission’s proposal on landing fish that is not fit for human consumption, suggesting that it should be made into fishmeal to be fed to farmed fish. However, I question its proposal on the landing of fresh fish, which would be kept and distributed to poor people throughout Europe—not that I am against poor people throughout Europe and the UK having fish, but the idea that the Commission will organise that in every port in the EU, especially in the UK, fills me with horror. Some of those proposals need to be considered carefully.

Of course we should ban discards—I know that the Minister has done a great deal of work on this, as have celebrity chefs—but about 70% of the fish landed in Newlyn harbour goes straight in a lorry to Spain, because we do not eat that type of fish. The more fish we can eat in this country, the more we can keep the fish that we land.

We all feel strongly about the issue of the under 10 metre fleet, and the Minister is looking at ways of getting a better share for that fleet, which is essential to the south-west community, including Devon. It is key that those family-run boats have more fish to catch because, in the end, there is a limited amount of fish in the sea, and we must make sure that there are options for that fleet. I look forward to what the Minister can offer us, because in the end, the sea and fish resources have to be shared out between all the fishermen.

Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Neil Parish Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I should like to associate myself with the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) that this should not really be a political subject, but it does tend to become one. I also want to associate myself with the Minister’s comment that the Opposition had shown chutzpah by holding a debate on green leadership and growth. Given that they have decided to do so, however, it is reasonable to examine what has happened over the past decade and a half, and what kind of legacy Ministers have taken over in relation to green issues.

I want to be fair to the Opposition. They have used the word “leadership” a number of times in the debate, and I have been looking for examples of Labour showing leadership in the past 15 years. It has shown it in one area: that of legislation. No one could have passed more legislation on this subject than Labour. The Climate Change Act 2008 places on us a requirement to reduce the total of our carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. That could be broken up in a number of ways, involving, for example, 25 new nuclear power stations—I do not think that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would agree with that—or 40,000 wind turbines. It is a hugely ambitious target. Equally ambitious was the way in which the Labour Government signed up to the EU 20-20-20 directive in 2009.

That was where Labour showed leadership, but, having done that, what did they achieve? Where had they got to by 2010? Labour Members need to understand that we are 25th out of 27 in the EU in terms of renewables, as I pointed out earlier. It is possible that that statistic could be subject to challenge, however, because it was based on provisional figures. It puts us slightly ahead of Luxembourg, but it is possible that we are not. Perhaps we are in fact 26th out of 27. That is the legacy from the last Government that we have had to pick up and run with. That is the starting point.

Even less impressive were the numbers that came out, right at the end of 2010, on the total amount of energy produced in this country from non-fossil fuel sources, by which I mean renewables, hydro and nuclear. It fell by 10%. That was the legacy we were left with. Chutzpah is not even half of it. We now have to pick up from that position.

I do not agree with all aspects of the energy policy of my Front-Bench team. I would like us to go more quickly down the nuclear road, but I agree that at least we have a green policy that can be looked at and criticised and that we can try to improve. I do not think that we had that previously. The green deal is massively important. The Climate Change Act 2008 implies a reduction of our total emissions by 2050—either with or without the economic growth that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion does not want us to have—of around 40% to 50%. The green deal provides the only reasonable way of achieving that. The green investment bank and the energy market changes that we are going to make are hugely important.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making some excellent points. The green investment bank, to the tune of nearly £3 billion, is a great step forward. I also think that the green deal will enable those who have not got their homes insulated with solid wall insulation to get that done under the new scheme. That will help many more people to insulate their homes, which will be good not only for the environment but for the families concerned.

[David Mowat]

I agree.

I did not mention the carbon floor price. Having sat through the debate, it remains unclear to me whether Labour Members support it or not.

All these matters are important, and I am proud that the Government whom I support are trying to get us higher up the league table from 25th or 26th out of 27 within the EU. When the Minister sums up, will he tell us where we hope to get to by the end of this Parliament? If we start at 25th, are we heading for 20th, 15th, 10th, fifth or what? It would be interesting to hear, as we have an awfully long way to go.