Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Barker]

We are working closely with our colleagues in the Department for Transport because—the hon. Lady is absolutely right—there needs to be a concerted, joined-up strategy if we are to realise the potential of electric vehicles. There will be more details on that, but I assure her that a lot of work is going on in Government and that the Departments are working effectively together.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

The Treasury has resisted the establishment of a public investment bank since the 1930s, so I congratulate my hon. Friends on having achieved that, but it will not be effective until 2015. What can be done to speed up the implementation of the green investment bank?

[Gregory Barker]

The Chancellor announced yesterday that the green investment bank will be up and ready for business in 2012 and will have £2 billion of additional capital. The key is that it will be able to raise funds from 2015 at scale, in the bond market for example, that will allow it to make a meaningful contribution to the billions of pounds that we will need to raise in the second half of the decade to finance the vital renewable energy infrastructure projects.

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[Gregory Barker]

Absolutely not. We have gripped this agenda, as the enthusiasm of the new marine programme energy board made clear when we met in Exeter. I can tell the hon. Lady that we will announce the allocation from the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s budget for supporting low-carbon technologies very shortly, and the results of the review of the renewables obligation that the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), brought forward will also be announced in due course.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

On the idea that there is no public subsidy for new nuclear, the Government will of course effectively have to underwrite new nuclear in respect of events that we all hope will never happen. How is the carbon floor price not effectively a back-door subsidy for new nuclear?

[Chris Huhne]

My hon. Friend should be aware that we are not providing underwriting funds or soft loans. In the United States, for example, the Obama Administration are proceeding with $35 billion of soft loans for the nuclear industry, but we have explicitly said that new nuclear will be built here without public subsidy. We have also said that, as Lord Stern pointed out, climate change is the greatest market failure of all time. We have to offset that market failure with a clear signal to the markets, whether through the emissions trading scheme or the carbon floor price, that low carbon is here to stay and we must accelerate it.