Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Alan Brown and Ed Miliband

2nd reading
Tuesday 9th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

The right hon. Member wants to re-litigate the last Labour Government. Let us talk about the future. We want nuclear to move ahead, and actually the Government have had 13 years and failed to do it.

[Alan Brown]

Will the shadow Secretary of State give way?

[Edward Miliband]

No, I will not.

Let us talk about how we can get an energy system that is fit for purpose. Nowhere is that more true than when it comes to the grid, where the delays that have been allowed to build up are a disgrace. For all of the Conservative party’s boasts, this is what Keith Anderson of Scottish Power says about the delays to the grid:

“The wind farms that are coming online today were approved when Gordon Brown was in power—that’s a long time ago and we need to be much faster to move beyond this crisis”.

The new independent system operator is a step forward, but there are questions remaining about whether it goes far enough in its powers, remit and independence.

What the energy system sorely lacks at the moment—this goes to the question that the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) asked the Secretary of State—is a guiding mind. It is about not simply balancing the system day to day and hoping that the market provides—this is the purpose of the regulator—but planning for the future of the system as we transition. This is the point: at the moment, that planning role is a job for everyone—the Energy Department, Ofgem and the network companies—but the ultimate responsibility of nobody. That needs to change with the ISOP so that we auction offshore wind in the right places, we plan and build the grid in the right places and on the right timescale, and we have the right amount of power in the system in the years ahead. For us, that is the purpose of ISOP, and during the Bill’s passage we will test out whether its proposals for ISOP adequately meet that vision.

If the regime is to work—I concur with the interventions on the Secretary of State—we need a price regulator in Ofgem that supports and never stands in the way of change. I hope that the Secretary of State’s failure to say that he would oppose such an amendment is a good sign, but obviously Ofgem should have a formal net zero duty. I think that was recommended by the net zero tsar, the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), and it was rightly inserted by the House of Lords. However—this is boring but very important—we also need to sort out the issues of planning.

The National Infrastructure Commission recently produced an important report about the delays to planning. It said that, in part, that was the fault of Government, who have not updated their energy national policy statements for a decade. It also said that there should be a statutory duty on the Government to review them every five years, and we agree. Here is the other thing that is important: all relevant regulators, including the Planning Inspectorate, should have a net zero duty, because otherwise we will find the system being slowed down and gummed up. Of course, the views of local people are important and must be taken into account, but we must also make progress.

The Bill could achieve those things to speed up the planning process. However, even if we get all the forms of low-carbon power that we need—I think that we should have all of them—and we sort out the grid and planning, there is an obvious question that the Secretary of State did not address. Even if we get all of those renewables and indeed nuclear, the price of electricity is currently tied to the prevailing price of gas. We do need reform of that system. Labour first called for that in January last year, and I say to the Secretary of State that we will be talking about that in the Bill Committee. We believe that there should be a commitment in the Bill to a timetable for that delinking; otherwise, we will get more drift and delay and we will not reap the benefits of the move to zero-carbon power.

On the one hand, we need the drive to zero-carbon power, but we also need a decisive shift away from the high-carbon expensive path—again, that was raised earlier—and unfortunately the Bill does not attempt to make that shift; it is business as usual on fossil fuels.

On coal, the Secretary of State rather dismissed the intervention of the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse). Yes, there has been a good record on coal in the last decade. [Interruption.] He says “Thank you”, and he wants to chunter away, but opening a new coalmine drives a coach and horses through that record. [Interruption.] He says that it does not. We cannot go around the world, as did the former President of COP, the right hon. Member for Reading West (Sir Alok Sharma), telling everybody that they have to power past coal, and then say, “But not us,” because that totally undermines our moral authority. Here is the thing: the steel industry in Britain says it will not use the coking coal, it will not provide the long-term jobs that Cumbria needs and it sends utterly the wrong message on climate. That is why their lordships inserted a provision to ban new coalmines. Labour supports that amendment.

Labour will also table an amendment to ban dangerous, expensive, unpopular fracking. I know that Conservative Members want to say the Truss period was a bad dream—Bobby Ewing in the shower and all that. [Interruption.] I am showing my age, that is true. I am a big “Dallas” fan, actually. Labour will table an amendment on fracking.

We also believe—this is an important point—that the Bill should remove the 2015 duty to extract every last drop, the so-called maximum economic recovery, from the North sea. I can do no better than to quote the net zero tsar, the right hon. Member for Kingswood, praised by the Secretary of State, who did a very serious piece of work—Government Front Benchers are nodding. What he said could not be clearer:

“developing new oil and gas fields is incompatible with limiting warming to 1.5°… There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield.”

Those are not my words, or those of the Liberal Democrats or any other party in this place. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State starts chuntering, but he should talk to his own net zero tsar, who did a brilliant report that he himself praised.

Let me just explain, for the benefit of right hon. and hon. Members, why that is the right position. That approach will have no impact on bringing down bills. How do we know that? Because every previous Energy Minister has said that. Gas and oil are traded on an inter—[Interruption.] Just pipe down for a minute. The price is set on the international market and 80% of our oil is exported. It drives a coach and horses through any possibility of keeping global warming to 1.5°, according to hundreds of leading scientists and the right hon. Member for Kingswood.

Here is the other thing, which is a new part of this. We now know how much the Government are having to shell out to the oil and gas industry to persuade it to make this investment, because it is in the detail of the Budget Red Book: over £11 billion. The current Prime Minister, the previous Chancellor, introduced a windfall tax, but then he introduced an absolutely massive super-deduction—not available now to any other industry, including renewables—of over £11 billion. Massive, massive cost to the taxpayer, no impact on bills, the oil from Rosebank exported, and driving a coach and horses through our climate commitments—no wonder the net zero tsar concluded that it is the wrong policy for Britain. It is. Government Members can carry on pretending that business as usual is consistent with the science and consistent with what we go around the world saying, but it is not and the net zero tsar has rightly said so. Labour will seek to improve the Bill so that it delivers on the zero-carbon sprint we need.

Next, I want to turn to the second part of my remarks —I will try to speed up, Mr Deputy Speaker—on what the Bill can do to ensure the fairness of the transition. We know that the fairness of the transition is essential if we are to take the public with us, and we know there are huge opportunities. I want to come back to the issue of energy efficiency, because Government Members go on and on about their great record on energy efficiency. Here are the facts. In 2010, there were 1.6 million energy efficiency upgrades. In 2022, there were 160,000 equivalent measures. In other words, there were 10 times more when the last Labour Government left office than there are now.

We know why that has happened. The Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), has done many important and learned reports on this question. Massive cuts were imposed on energy efficiency schemes when David Cameron said, “cut the green crap” and the investment has not recovered. That is why the UK Business Council for Sustainable Development says it will take almost 200 years at the current rate to get all homes up to EPC C—200 years. That is not just bad for the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams), who intervened earlier, and the constituents of many others in this House; it also means we import more gas and use more gas supplies. The estimates are that we could cut gas demand by 20% if we got all homes up to EPC C.

Tackling Short-term and Long-term Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Alan Brown and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

No; I will make some progress. The final excuse—[Interruption.] I want to come to this because it is important, and I am perhaps anticipating the Chancellor. The final excuse is that it is somehow anti-business to levy a windfall tax. Let us dispose of that argument, too. I strongly recommend that Members who believe that argument read an article that I have with me—I am happy to put a copy in the Library of the House—by Mr Irwin Stelzer, a long-time confidant of Rupert Murdoch. This is the first time I have quoted him in the House. A few days ago, in an article entitled, “Now is the time for a windfall profits tax”, he wrote:

“People who believe in capitalism believe that private sector companies should be rewarded for taking risks…not be rewarded for happening to be around when some disruption drives up prices, producing windfalls.”

That is the point: these profits are unearned and unexpected, and the British people are paying for that windfall. These companies are profiting not from decisions they have made, risks they have taken or wealth they have created, but from a global spike in prices to which Britain is badly exposed—a spike exacerbated by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

What is the principle that the Government are defending here? What is their hill to die on? Is the principle that they really wish to defend that oil and gas companies should pocket any profits, however bad the geopolitical instability? Is that however large the crisis and however gigantic the windfall, taxation must not change? That proposition was rejected by Margaret Thatcher, Geoffrey Howe and George Osborne—remember him?—all of whom levied windfall taxes. Who else do we see supporting a windfall tax today? I have to say, it is a pretty big tent: John Allan, the guy who runs Tesco; Sharon White, the woman who runs John Lewis; Lord Browne, the guy who used to run BP; and Lord Hague, the guy who used to run the Conservative party—the usual leftie suspects.

The truth is that the Government have run out of excuses and, amid the chaos and confusion about their position, I think a massive U-turn is lumbering slowly over the hill. I say this to the Chancellor: “Swallow your pride and get on with it.” Every day he delays is another day when the British people are denied the help they need. Millions of families are having sleepless nights because the Chancellor will not act. What is he waiting for? As proposed by the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), the Chancellor should come to the House with an emergency Budget that has a windfall tax, gets rid of VAT on energy bills, increases the warm home discount to £400, includes an emergency plan to insulate 2 million homes this year, and cuts business rates.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way on that point?

[Edward Miliband]

I will not for the moment. The Government’s position on the windfall tax is part of a wider problem with this Chancellor and this Government. Just look at the political choices he is making: he leaves non-doms shielding their millions while millions of families and pensioners face a cut in their incomes; he whacks up taxes on tenants and lets landlords off the hook; and he makes young people at work pay more, but those getting money from capital gains pay not a penny extra. Wrong, unfair, unjust, out of touch—that is who he is.

Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax

Debate between Alan Brown and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend has made a powerful point.

Labour has come up with a clear and costed plan. We plan, by levying the windfall tax, to reduce VAT to zero, to increase the warm homes discount from £150 to £400, and to extend it from the 2.2 million families who currently receive it to 9 million. On top of that, we have set aside £600 million to help our businesses out. This is in stark contrast with what is being proposed by the Conservatives—the Government of the day, who, six days before the announcement of the rise in the price cap, seem to have nothing to say. What is their explanation for why they are not acting? It is very hard to find the explanation, although perhaps we will hear one today. The one person who has ventured to provide one is the Education Secretary, who has said:

“A windfall tax on oil and gas companies that are already struggling in the North Sea is never going to cut it.”

Even the oil and gas companies do not describe themselves as struggling. They say that this is a cash machine. I have to ask what planet the Government are living on. Does it not say everything about them that it is the struggles of companies making billions from an expected windfall that stir them, not the struggles of the British people? How dare they leave families in the lurch because of their refusal to stand up to vested interests in the oil and gas sector?

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

In 1998, when Labour was in power, oil prices bottomed out at $12 a barrel. By 2008, the price had risen to nearly $100 a barrel. What did Labour do with that money? It is regrettable that it did not create an oil sovereign fund, as Norway did.

[Edward Miliband]

I am very proud of the investments that the last Labour Government made in our public services.

Household Energy Bills: VAT

Debate between Alan Brown and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 11th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I want to thank all hon. Members who have spoken in this debate. I particularly thank my hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friends the Members for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones), for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley), and my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) for his just-a-minute speech, which was excellent.

There are three questions at the heart of this debate. How did we get here? What short-term action should we take? And, what is the long-term plan to stop it happening again? First, on the crisis, there is no question but that there is a global dimension to this crisis. Many countries are facing strains as a result of what has happened to wholesale energy prices, but there are some undeniable facts about how badly we have been hit. No other country has seen 28 energy companies go under. They are failures that we already know will cost consumers £100 on bills. No other major European country has gas storage equivalent to just 2% of its energy demand. No other country in western Europe performs as badly on fuel poverty and insulation as the UK. These undeniable facts are symptoms of Government failure over the past decade. There were failures of regulation. They were warned repeatedly about the regulation of the sector, and did not act—in fact they loosened regulations. As the recent Citizens Advice report said:

“From 2010 onwards, dozens of companies entered the market with limited checks. Some offered good services to consumers, but others were poorly prepared.”

It went on to say that the regulatory system

“allowed unfit and unsustainable energy companies to trade with little penalty.”

It is consumers and businesses that are paying the price. There were failures of strategic decision-making, too, such as the closure of the Rough storage facility, which my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) warned about when she was Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee.

Let me get to the heart of this debate, and I say this to the anti-net zero tendency in the Conservative party. We can reach two different views. Some Conservative Members say that it is because we have gone too fast on the green transition. I say that they are dead wrong; it is because we have gone too slowly. It is continued dependence on fossil fuels that makes us more vulnerable and less resilient. Let us take energy efficiency. A 2014 study showed that a comprehensive programme of energy efficiency could cut gas imports by a quarter, but what have we seen? We have seen the abolition of the zero carbon home standard, the fiasco of the green deal and the fiasco of the green homes grant. That is why emissions from buildings are now as high today as they were in 2015, and it is not just about energy efficiency. Before this debate, I looked up the number of onshore wind turbines being constructed each year in the past four years—it is because I am a nerd. I will not do a guessing game in the House as I do not have the time. The answer is that just four turbines a year were granted planning permission in the past four years. It makes no sense, because onshore wind is the cheapest power at our disposal—so much for being the Saudi Arabia of wind power; it is just hot air.

I come now to what short-term action should be taken. There is a divide in this House between a party that has some proposals and a party that does not. Fundamentally, that is it. Conservative Members can talk all they like about the Order Paper and all that stuff, but they do not have an answer. We have come forward with an answer. What is the principle of the answer? It is this: we help all families, and we give most to those who need it most. I want to explain this to the House. We have said that we want to increase the warm home discount from £140—£150 from April—to £400. We want not just to increase it, but to extend it from 2.2 million households to 9 million households, or one third of families. That is the right decision to help the poorest people in our society who are going to be so badly hit. But we all face a dilemma, and we need to be honest about this. It is right to help the poorest, but it is not just the poorest who are facing tough times as a result of this crisis; it is those in the middle as well, and the swiftest, most direct way of helping those families is to get rid of VAT on energy bills.

Perhaps I am a bit naive in thinking it surprising that this idea is controversial, because this is a Government whose Prime Minister and Home Secretary, along with 26 Conservative MPs, used to think that it was the bee’s knees. They thought it was a great idea. It was not some random, chance remark made by the Prime Minister; it was a promise made over and over. Given the Prime Minister’s long and distinguished record of integrity, demonstrated again today, surely the British people were entitled to take him at his word when he said that

“we will be able to scrap this unfair and damaging tax”,

and again, just two years ago, when he said:

“Not only will we be able to reduce VAT in the UK, but we will be able to do it in Northern Ireland as well.”

As Conservative Members consider how they will vote in a few minutes’ time, instead of making arguments about the Order Paper, why do they not look at the substance of the motion? Labour Members say, “Let us take action”; their Government have nothing to say. That is the difference, and they should join with us. The problem is not just that the Government have nothing to say. I think we got to the heart of where they really stand on Sunday when we heard what the Education Secretary said when he was sent out to comment. It is not great being a Government Minister going out there at the moment, to be honest; I remember times like that in the Labour Government too. The Education Secretary—I had to double and triple-check this quote—said:

“A windfall tax on oil and gas companies, who are already struggling in the North Sea, is never going to cut it.”

“Already struggling”? As my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West said, the chief executive of BP, Bernard Looney, said that the price rises were a “cash machine” for his business. It is not putting that money into investment; it is putting it into dividend share buy-backs from its shareholders. Who is filling up that cash machine? It is working people. All we are suggesting is something quite simple, which is a one-off windfall tax for a year to get some of that money back and help families right across this country.

Short-term action is essential, but we need long-term action as well. There is a very big difference we could make to families, and that is a national mission to retrofit homes in this country. It is the closest thing there is to a no-brainer with regard to energy policy. We could cut bills by up to £400. We could make ourselves much less dependent on volatile fossil fuels. That is why we put forward a plan for a £6 billion a year retrofit and zero-carbon energy programme to insulate 19 million badly insulated homes. But the Government refuse to act. They offer piecemeal privatised programmes that do not work, and they are still short of their very inadequate manifesto promise on this. We can get a sense of where the Government stand. When they had the fiasco of the green homes grant—I do not blame them for thinking it was not going very well—they did not plough the money saved back into retrofit but simply cut £1.5 billion of investment. We need to go faster on energy efficiency. We need to invest in our ports and grid so that we can meet and exceed 40 GW of offshore wind. We need to end the effective moratorium on onshore wind, embrace tidal power and other forms of renewable energy, drive forward our nuclear programme and invest in clean energy storage.

There needs to be a proper inquiry into how we ended up with the disastrous regulation system under this Government and a root-and-branch reform of that system so that we never again have a situation where so many companies go bust and it is the British people who are left to pay the price, with such a dramatic impact on their bills. I am afraid to say that the culpability lies directly at the Government’s door: they were warned and they did not act.

This debate has been revealing in very many ways.

[Alan Brown]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Edward Miliband]

I will not.

We have a Government who got us into this mess and have no clue how to help the British people out of it. They are paralysed in the face of this cost-of-living crisis. They do not have any answers for the British people, either now or in the future. That is why we are acting. I urge Members from all parties to join us in a few minutes and vote for relief for hard-working families across this country.

United Kingdom Internal Market Bill

Debate between Alan Brown and Ed Miliband

Consideration of Lords amendments & Ping Pong & Ping Pong: House of Commons
Monday 7th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

On that point, the national infrastructure strategy has just been published, and under the heading,

“changing how decisions are taken”,

it says:

“Increasing the UK government’s ability to invest directly in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland through the UK Internal Market Bill”.

Does that not just smack of, “We’ll spend the money and we’ll make the decisions, and it won’t be collaborative at all.”?

[Edward Miliband]

I think there is a very legitimate anxiety, which I hope the Minister will reflect on. Again, it was expressed in the Lords. Yes, the Government were defeated in the Lords—all Governments get defeated in the Lords at some point—but we are talking about unprecedented margins, because of the depth and breadth of concern among their lordships about the Bill, including on devolution. In a sense, because the Bill went through so quickly here, there was less time for us to discuss the devolution issues, and the focus was more on international law, but there is deep concern about this.

It is the same on state aid. We support a UK-wide state aid regime, but once again there was no mechanism in the Bill to engage with the devolved nations on setting out this regime. Again, the best that can be said is that maybe the Government have blundered in; the worst would be that they simply do not believe in giving power away when it comes to it in practice; they believe in holding it here. We cannot overestimate the seriousness of this collection of devolution issues. I believe deeply in the United Kingdom; the way we uphold it is by upholding the settlements of the last 20 years, and recognising that commitment to shared governance, but that is not what this Bill does.