Northern Ireland

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I have made it perfectly clear that we are maintaining 3% of EU law in Northern Ireland. This is the bare minimum to maintain Northern Ireland’s access to the single market, which just about every business I have spoken to in Northern Ireland, and that has made representations on this, is delighted to be maintaining. Indeed, I have been lobbied by individual Members from Northern Ireland to maintain access to both the UK market—the fifth largest economy in the world—and the EU market for goods.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I fully support what my right hon. Friend has done here. The Prime Minister and the whole of the Northern Ireland team have done a great job. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Windsor agreement enables a huge opportunity in Northern Ireland not just to be a precious part of our United Kingdom but to be the target of enormous amounts of foreign direct investment because it will have the advantage of being an integral part of the United Kingdom as well as having open access to EU markets?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

We are maintaining that 3% of EU law. My right hon. Friend has helped to answer the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant) posed.

There will be a binding statutory obligation in domestic law on Ministers to pull the brake when a valid notification is provided by 30 MLAs. These regulations will add a new democratic scrutiny schedule to the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to codify the brake in domestic law. The UK Government must—let me repeat that: they must—notify the EU when a valid notification of the brake has been provided by MLAs. This is an important new function for Members of the Assembly, and it is vital that they exercise this new function with the right information and expertise. After consulting with Northern Ireland parties, these regulations provide for a standing committee of the Assembly to properly scrutinise the relevant rules.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 11th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

2. What progress she has made on ensuring that local authorities decide all onshore wind applications.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Andrea Leadsom)]

My hon. Friend has worked incredibly hard to support local communities in having their say on the siting of wind farms. The Department for Communities and Local Government updated planning guidance alongside its written ministerial statement on 18 June 2015, giving local authorities the final say. Now that the Energy Bill has completed its Committee stage, with my hon. Friend’s support, I can tell him that we are making excellent progress on delivering the Government’s manifesto commitment.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the Minister for that answer. Like me, she will know that the Conservative manifesto contained two pledges on onshore wind: one to remove subsidies and the other to change planning guidance. Given the growing concern about amplitude modulation coming from onshore wind turbines, when will planning guidance on that be given to local authorities?

Energy BILL [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is an extraordinary thing to say. The hon. Gentleman’s party is doing everything possible to try to ensure that the Government are not able to improve our own access to home-grown gas. I am glad that his party has come out in favour of supporting the oil and gas sector in the North sea—that is something to be welcomed—but 40% of the UK’s gas supply still comes from the North sea. The hon. Gentleman is right to point out that that is a reducing amount—by 2035 it is expected to be only about 25%. The issue of energy security and where we get our gas supplies is a very important one.

I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that, since it is a global market, supplies as things stand are very good. Our biggest partners are Norway and, for liquid natural gas, the middle east. It is not true to say that we have a big dependency on Russia by any means. Nevertheless, energy policy is vital for this country’s future energy security. Of course, 80% of us in the UK use gas for heating and cooking. Members who are rightly enthusiastic about renewables, as am I, must bear it in mind that this country will continue to need gas for a long time.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

My hon. Friend correctly makes that point. In an earlier intervention, the hon. Member for Norwich South talked about the importance of interconnection to our future energy supply. There would be no supply from our interconnectors to the continent should Gazprom choose not to supply eastern Europe with gas, because all the energy would be sucked back into the continent. Our energy security would diminish because of that, so there are pros and cons to everything, especially if we are trying to take a European view of the whole picture.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about gas energy security. The UK has made great efforts to diversify its sources of imported gas. The UK Energy Research Centre recently recognised that we have significantly diversified the sources and the means of bringing gas into the country. We have liquid natural gas terminals, and we have pipelines, as my hon. Friend mentioned. Each of those sources is important, but support for home-grown gas in the North sea and through other sources is vital.

European Union (Approvals) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That is the purpose behind my amendment. I understand that only once, or possibly twice, has an agreement in general been struck at the Council that something will go through before someone has reopened the debate about how the money should be spent, and the purpose of my amendment is to do that again. We could just veto the money and kill the programme directly, but part of the programme is truly valuable. That is what the European Commission does in many of its budget strands: it connects a small amount for something good and valuable to a big amount for something that is a waste of money that we would not necessarily stand for.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that as there is no such thing as a European citizen but only members of individual EU member states, to have any fund that supports the concept of EU citizenry is absolute nonsense?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It would be a bit of a surprise if I did not agree with my hon. Friend, whose constituency is next door to mine.

I believe that one could honestly make the argument that the programme has failed unbelievably badly. Over the past seven years, a group of organisations has received money from it. The European Movement, which states that its objective is to

“contribute to the establishment of a united, federal Europe”,

was awarded the best part of £1.5 million.

The French think-tank, Notre Europe, the Jacques Delors Institute—I will not go into as much detail on this as I did on Second Reading, as my hon. Friend the Minister is now completely up to speed with how moneys from this budget line are spent—was set up by the former European Commission President and champions his vision of a European Union that is a federation of nation states. Over the last multi-annual financial framework period, it was awarded the best part of £1.87 million from the Europe for Citizens programme. The Brussels-based Union of European Federalists got the best part of £500,000. There are also other organisations that I did not mention last time. There is a wonderful—I say that in a sarcastic tone—French organisation called Confrontations Europe. Its website says:

“On April 2012, Confrontations Europe celebrated its 20 years of existence and dedication to the European ideal…Confrontations Europe has become an important network of citizens and European players, a think tank renowned in Paris and Brussels and an active civil lobby of European general interest to the institutions”—

that is, the European institutions. Everyone here will be pleased to know that the body’s founding chairman, Philippe Herzog, a French former academic and politician, was a member of the French Communist party from 1965 to 1996.

Judiciary and Fundamental Rights

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I will give way to my hon. Friend.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

Specifically in relation to Croatia’s accession to the European Union, does my hon. Friend think that it would have been helpful if the Foreign Affairs Committee had had purview over this matter so that an extra dimension could have been brought into this debate?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is the proposal that I wanted to put to the Minister. The Foreign Affairs Committee might well have had a useful contribution to make to this debate, as might the Justice Committee. Specifically with regard to Croatia’s accession plans, there are issues with the European arrest warrant, human trafficking, organised crime and so on. As has been said, there are concerns over the accession of some European Union states where those problems have been prevalent. It therefore appears that there might be some benefit if, rather than the current situation where the European Scrutiny Committee is allowed to require or request that specialist Select Committees scrutinise particular legislation, there was a more proactive approach to asking specialist Select Committees to look at legislation in cases such as this before they come to the Chamber. I hope that that point can be applied both generally and specifically to this debate.

I will certainly support Croatia’s accession to the European Union, but with the expectation that the Minister will look carefully at whether some assessment by Select Committees in advance of this debate might have given Members more to go on in deciding whether we are taking a risk or not.

Onshore Wind Energy

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I quite agree and that has certainly been explained to me by many councillors in my own district.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way and I congratulate her on securing this debate. The village of Yelvertoft in my constituency has, hanging over its head, the prospect of eight turbines the size of the London Eye being built. Some 72% of the village were against it, including the local council, me, as the MP, and the MEPs. The decision went to appeal. One person from the planning inspectorate turned up for a few days and overturned that decision, which is why these turbines are now being built. That is not localism.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that that is outrageous.

One of the biggest criticisms about the planning system for onshore wind farms is that there is no requirement, at the moment, for the developer to prove that the place is actually windy. You would think, Mr Walker, that before the taxpayer was expected to fork out billions of pounds someone would require the developer to find—as Winnie the Pooh put it—a windy spot. It is a fairly basic requirement. That brings me on to South Northamptonshire, which is not a windy spot—other than my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who, I am told, can be full of wind at times. [Interruption.] Yes, hot air.

Onshore Wind Turbines

Debate between Andrea Leadsom and Chris Heaton-Harris

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am not against renewables at all, but I do think that we should try to encourage local communities to buy into these. At the moment, there are speculative applications. A new type of subsidy farming is going on across the United Kingdom.

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, in our two neighbouring constituencies, the advantage of taxpayer subsidy for these wind farms is encouraging speculative developers to come to not particularly windy places, presumably in the interest of making a few fast pounds on the back of the taxpayer, with no real interest in trying to help the grid and renewables whatever?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I always agree with my hon. Friend and neighbour—I would be foolish not to. Just to prove the point, Northamptonshire is one of the least windy places in the country, and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), there is a wind farm at Burton Wold that is operating at 19% capacity on average. That is not helping us to deal with our carbon problem.