Oral Answers to Questions

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Jo Swinson]

The hon. Lady raises two specific issues in her question. Although there is concern about high interest rates, just as when someone hires a car for three days they do not look at the annual cost of doing so, with short-term credit the APR is not necessarily the most relevant statistic. The hon. Lady’s second point was on affordability assessments and the detrimental effect of people being lent money they should not be lent when debt advice would be much more appropriate. That is a significant concern. The Government are considering the OFT’s review and the OFT is already taking action—it has opened formal investigations into several payday lenders. We expect the final report early in the new year and the Government are committed to ensuring that we take action on this issue.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

2. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change on investment in green manufacturing jobs.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

I regularly meet the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to discuss energy and climate change policies, including investment in green manufacturing jobs in the north-east and elsewhere. We are committed to supporting green technologies including offshore wind, for which a sector strategy is to be published in the spring.

[Alex Cunningham]

On Teesside and elsewhere in north-east England we have seen tremendous investment in green industries, but we have also seen billions of pounds-worth of contracts for British offshore wind farms placed abroad in Germany and Holland. I had hoped there would be provisions in the Energy Bill, which had its Second Reading yesterday, to ensure that British firms got British jobs. There are no such provisions. Has the Secretary of State suggested any amendments to the Energy Bill to ensure that we get British jobs?

[Vince Cable]

We are pursuing this not through legislation but through practical action and we are working with the developers’ forum to try to ensure that at least 50% of supply chain work comes back to the UK. We cannot do that unless we have the capacity, which is why we have established the catapult centres in the north-east and Glasgow to develop basic technology as well as the six renewable engineering centres, which will develop our engineering capacity.