Energy Prices

Alec Shelbrooke Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Huhne]

Park homes will be eligible for the green deal. We in the ministerial team are very keen to ensure that park homes, which are often the Cinderella of the housing stock, are looked after, and we are trying our best to ensure that they are eligible for the full array of measures that are available elsewhere.

The new energy company obligation, alongside the green deal, will include support not just for solid-wall insulation, which I mentioned to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello), but provide “affordable warmth” to low-income and vulnerable households, through heating and insulation measures. That is the direct replacement for the Warm Front scheme, so the right hon. Lady’s charge that we are the first Government not to pay for help through public expenditure is disingenuous, because there will be help, but it will be delivered in a different way through the ECO subsidy, and with greater targeting and, I believe, greater help.

Those policies will make a difference this winter and next, but, as I said in October when I addressed the House on this topic, we also need to take the right long-term decisions so that energy does not become unaffordable. We must keep the lights on in the cheapest, cleanest way to ensure that households get the best deal in the long term. Over the next 10 years, we need £110 billion of investment in power plants and another £90 billion of investment in energy infrastructure to avoid the risk of blackouts. We must invest now not only to improve our energy efficiency, so that we do not need to produce as much energy to keep warm, but to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels in the long term, so that we do not have to rely on ever-more expensive imports.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

I wonder whether we are in the position we are in today because of the previous Administration’s inability to take the decisions needed to ensure that we had a firm energy future.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

The motion’s opening line states:

“That this House believes that soaring energy bills are driving up inflation”.

No one can argue with that. There has been a massive increase in energy bills, and before we continue with the debate, we should assess the reasons for that. All the independent financial analysts recognise that there has been a double-digit inflationary rise in energy bills, and that has spread to the economy. We live in a dangerous world, where there is much instability. The European Union recently approved sanctions on oil exports from Iran. All that has a knock-on effect on energy prices in this country. It is important, when setting the scene for the debate, to understand why energy prices have increased and that the Government can do something, but not everything.

In the summer I was in the United States when Michele Bachmann amusingly commented that she would reduce the price of fuel back to $2 a gallon. Perhaps that is why she has polled only 5% in the primaries—one simply cannot say, “We’ll reduce it back”: that flies in the face of dealing with the world crisis. There has been discussion for many years—certainly when I was at school, but it is now coming to the fore—about whether we have reached peak oil. Whether we have or not does not matter because the markets believe that we have reached that position.

There has been a 30% increase in energy demand in the recent past. As the Secretary of State pointed out, there are forecasts, but the further into the future they go, the more unreliable they are.

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Yesterday, the Leader of the Opposition said that the previous Administration had not made enough progress, and he was Energy Secretary at the time. Is my hon. Friend as relieved as I am that we now have a ministerial team that is taking action to deliver real change, not only on lowering prices but on securing our energy future?

[Alec Shelbrooke]

I am most grateful for that intervention. Half the problem with such motions is that they ignore the facts that I outlined in my opening remarks and simply state that everything is the fault of the existing Government. Many people feel that the Labour party likes to be in perpetual opposition—my constituents certainly feel that, and I see nothing to disprove the theory. The right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) was very clear about the reforms that she wants to make, so why was she not clear when she was in government only two years ago? Perhaps the comment about window dressing goes a lot further than we thought.

Of course, we are trying to move forward in our proposals for energy consumption in this country, and the Secretary of State is right to say that we have bitten the bullet on how to generate energy. Let us be honest: we are in a coalition and we know that the Liberal Democrats had views on nuclear power. They held a perfectly acceptable view in their manifesto, and I greatly respect the work that the hon. Member for Wells (Tessa Munt) has done throughout her life as a member of CND—they were her beliefs, but we had to move forward.

[Tessa Munt]

They still are my beliefs.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Quite right—the hon. Lady corrects me from a sedentary position. However, we had to bite the bullet and make decisions to secure this country’s energy future. All those things have a knock-on effect. The Labour Government’s dithering, delay and unwillingness to make those decisions because of the fright their Back Benchers gave them have been shown up massively by the two parties that came together to run the country after the mess left by the last lot, with one coalition partner making a decision that it did not want to take, but realising that it was right for the country. That is what is important: what is right for the country.

The right hon. Member for Don Valley said much about the Government cutting the winter fuel allowance for 2 million pensioners; there was a lot of “We told you so.” Later in her speech, however, the right hon. Lady said that the proposed legislation was initiated by the Labour Government and we have picked up on it. She cannot have it both ways. Labour was quite clear in its manifesto and previous decisions that it would do exactly the same thing on the winter fuel allowance. In these austere times, it is the Government who are resisting the populist pressure, coming perhaps from some of the more right-wing media, to means-test the winter fuel allowance, and we are ensuring that it is all there. The tax bribes that Labour was giving out at the last election were seen through, which is why it suffered the worst defeat since 1918.

I have already outlined the need for a coherent policy on energy futures, which will help to bring prices down. The situation with the feed-in tariffs is difficult, but we need to ensure that progress is made. We have done many other things to help people with their pensions, including introducing the triple lock, and ensuring that pensioners this year will receive the highest cash settlement that they have received in the last 100 years—it is huge.

There is every chance that the Opposition motion would lead to more borrowing, less tax, and disaster. When people cannot pay their bills, it is because of the economic incompetence of the Labour party.