UK City of Culture: Southampton’s Bid

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Caroline Nokes

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to mention the legacy and I was going to move on to that. From Bournemouth and Poole in the west of the region to Portsmouth in the east—and my right hon. Friend has brought in Basingstoke at the north of the region—many areas are seeking to support and partner with the city in making this bid.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

rose—

[Caroline Nokes]

I am tempted to give way to my neighbour in Southampton, Test, who appears to wish to intervene.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the hon. Member for generously giving way again. I rise both to demonstrate the all-party support for this bid and because I want to ask my right hon. Friend—as the right hon. Lady is for this purpose—whether she considers the proud multicultural heritage of Southampton since the 12th century of welcoming different cultures and communities into the city and learning from them and establishing them in the process to be an integral and central part of the city’s bid for city of culture 2025 and why it should win that coveted title?

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my constituency neighbour, and on this occasion hon. Friend, for making that important point and wonder whether he has predicted one of the next chunks of my contribution.

As I have said, we are all celebrating this bid. It is being celebrated by neighbouring authorities and by organisations, business and community groups alike, and an impressive list of ambassadors. It is being supported by the schools, colleges and universities across the region, by the National Oceanography Centre, by our collective museums, art galleries and theatres—which my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) referenced—by the stadiums, parks and sports centres and above all by the people.

Instinctively, when we think of Southampton we think of the Solent and the water, but our bid is not just about boat shows and regattas, brilliant though they are; it is also about the ripple effect of our culture, the tide of Solent water that rises not just once, but twice a day, and carries people with it. There is a tendency to think of people using that tide to leave the city. After all we have a park and a theatre named after the Mayflower, Southampton was where the Titanic set sail on her ill-fated maiden voyage, and it is the cruise capital of the UK, but that tide has, as my constituency neighbour the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) said, also historically brought people to the city. As a result, it has a rich and varied culture, with over 150 languages spoken, with places of worship of every religion we can think of, and an annual peace walk that brings all faiths together. It is a city that celebrates and enjoys difference and diversity while also working hard to bring people together, and of course that is what being the city of culture is all about and can accentuate, widening the reach of that strong maritime history, and enabling the wider region to participate in the legacy this bid seeks to bring.

Cruise Market (Competition)

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Caroline Nokes

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that comment. When I conclude, I will ask the Minister to work with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government on that very subject.

Is the support selective? Does it confer an advantage on specific companies, parts of industries, or on companies in specific regions? Yes, again. No other port operator, whether ABP, Hutchison or the port of Tyne, has received that sort of assistance for their cruise facilities. They have had to invest in their facilities themselves using private capital, just as they should in a free and fair market.

Has competition been distorted or might it be in future? We can fairly safely respond to that one. In requiring Liverpool city council to get state aid clearance from the European Commission prior to commencing turnaround cruises, the Government appear to endorse that view. However, what has happened in Liverpool? It has started anyway. The European Commission states that if that has happened, the Commission must disallow the support unless it is shown to be compatible with the common market.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Would the hon. Lady care to comment on what appear to be further proposals by Liverpool for a permanent terminal by investing £23 million, including a further £10 million of possible public subsidy? I understand that that was not discussed with the Department for Transport when competition was first raised. Does she consider that it indicates a possible permanent arrangement as far as distortion of trade is concerned?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We are not just talking about £21 million of public money, but future moneys, including the £10 million he mentioned, for a permanent turnaround facility that, in my view and that of several other hon. Members across the country, will have a permanent distortion on the cruise market.

To relate some of the history, as the Minister is well aware, the city of Liverpool cruise terminal was built using £19 million of public money on the explicit condition that it would not compete with other ports that had invested their own money to build similar facilities.

Micro-combined Heat and Power

Debate between Alan Whitehead and Caroline Nokes

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that important point, although I am slightly worried that he may have broken into my office and looked at my speech, because I am about to address that precise, important point on this clutch of technologies and their developers.

After the sunny uplands, we have to look at the reality, which is somewhat different. The industry has, on few resources, determinedly placed itself in a position in which it can supply reliable boilers over the next few years to the quantity that I have sketched out, and in so doing substantially reduce the cost differential between micro-CHP and conventional boilers. As my right hon. Friend has mentioned, the UK industry is a world leader on the technologies.

[Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)]

The UK is a world leader in all sorts of microgeneration. Is the hon. Gentleman aware that SEaB Energy on Southampton university’s science park is generating micro-power in shipping containers? That might not be on the domestic scale of boilers, but it is proof that in the UK we are world leaders at coming up with innovative ideas and working out how we can generate power on a small and sustainable scale.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the hon. Lady for making that point. Indeed, the Southampton university science park is the base for leadership of a number of innovations in microtechnology, renewables and wave and tidal power. I am familiar with a number of the developments that are taking place there. It is a good plus for both our constituencies that that science park is producing such good work in the area of microgeneration.

The wider deployment of micro-CHP could, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith) said, be beneficial for UK jobs. My colleague and next-door parliamentary neighbour, the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), has alluded to the fact that micro-CHP is very good for development and technological advances. The problem with our world lead in these technologies is the fact that, in truth, not many boilers have been deployed yet. Indeed, the initial results of the inclusion of micro-CHP boilers with the feed-in tariff programme last year—a pilot of 30,000 micro-CHP boilers was reviewed after the first 12,000 installations—have been less than sweeping, with only about 200 FITs payments taking place so far within that pilot.

However, that has to be set against the background of the very modest FITs payments allowed for micro-CHP: only 10.5p, along with a 3.1p export tariff. The figure of 10.5p is close to the starting marginal cost element considered to be generic for all renewables of 9p. That is the equivalent of support for large wind resources and is way below the 5% or so return on investment that is considered to be the sort of level that will attract investment decisions among householders and small businesses.

Of course, although micro-CHP is energy and climate efficient, it does not qualify for the renewable heat incentive as far as heat production is concerned for the obvious reason that, all other things considered, it is not fuelled by renewable energy. However, of course, it could be supplied in the form of biogas on an off-grid basis. I am not sure whether the Department would, in those circumstances, accept that micro-CHP would qualify both for RHI and FITs, but I imagine that that is a debate for another day. The fact of the matter is that a technology and an industry that can do great things are now waiting. The sector needs the confidence and future intent to enable it to scale up to the levels needed to produce a large intervention in the UK’s boiler landscape at a price that will eventually be at or close to those of more established boiler installations.

In the meantime, the industry needs some assistance in kick-starting—for example, the 30,000 installation pilot limit could be removed, so that there can be investment in a mass rather than a niche future. The allocation of a feed-in tariff of perhaps 15p per kWh would, along with the export tariff, enable a return even on present prices of about 5% to be achieved. I am confident that that allocation would be short-lived, especially if the Minister were to use his powers of persuasion to convince his counterparts in the Department for Communities and Local Government that a revision of part L of the building regulations in a few years’ time is appropriate. At that point, I imagine that no feed-in tariff support would be needed or necessary.

I hope that the Minister will be able to provide me with some positive encouragement for these very modest proposals in respect of micro-CHP, not least because, if he is not able to do so, I will have to come back and say it all over again. He will therefore have the pleasure of going through all this again—by the way, that is not a threat.

I am concerned that, if no early support and encouragement is given to micro-CHP, someone else will take it off our hands and we will not have the presence, the technical imagination and the investment capacity of the hard-won position our industry is now in. That will have gone or withered and we will be playing catch up. We need that support to come now. We are talking about an extremely modest investment by the Government—perhaps 2% of the FITs budget up to 2015, or far less than that if there is some clever management of the FITs budget. That 2% or less would have a potentially enormous payback for householders and Great Britain plc alike.