Energy Price Cap

Debate between Anne Main and Greg Clark

Monday 3rd July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

In response to the first part of the hon. Gentleman’s question, I welcome, as he does, the huge progress that has been made not just in the deployment of renewables, but in the cost reductions that we have seen. That process has created jobs across the UK, especially in coastal towns. I had the pleasure of opening the Siemens wind blade factory in Hull, which created 1,000 good jobs. However, he is right that the detriment has been going on too long, which was why the Government asked the CMA to investigate the industry root and branch. It has identified £1.4 billion of detriment, and I have made it absolutely clear that that detriment needs to be returned to the pockets of consumers.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

May I tell the Secretary of State that the latest data show that 2,687 households in my constituency are estimated to be in fuel poverty? That is 6.6% of all households. What more can be done to identify these vulnerable groups and ensure that they have the best advice and information about switching tariffs? The suggestion that people search online is not the way forward. Perhaps it would be more helpful to have a better dialogue between the consumer and the energy provider.

[Greg Clark]

I agree with my hon. Friend. One feature of the energy market is that the poorer someone is, the larger the proportion of their income that they spend on energy. That is why it is imperative that vulnerable consumers should not be required go on the internet every few months to check that their tariff has not defaulted to a much higher one. That was the reason for my letter to Ofgem, and it is why I want its response to be vigorous. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that an aspect of the wider set of policies is to make it easier for consumers to know the price of energy and how much they consume, and smart meters are being introduced to help more people to do that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Anne Main and Greg Clark

Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Yes, I have regular conversations with the Secretary of State. As with other areas of local government responsibility, sometimes its responsibilities cross the lines of departmental boundaries. We make sure, very particularly, that we join that up and reflect in the responsibilities and the funding of local government the full range of its commitments and needs.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Office for National Statistics figures state that 3.3 million extra people will come to our country in the next 15 years. How on earth are we to make sure that there is enough land and that output will be increased enough to support the number of buildings required for that number of immigrants?

Local Government Finance

Debate between Anne Main and Greg Clark

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The right hon. Gentleman must have second sight to know what the impacts will be before he has looked at the figures for those particular authorities. Of course, by prioritising social care we are directing resources to authorities with responsibility for children’s social services as well as adult social services. Compared with what would have happened in the steady state, as it were, authorities such as his own in Newcastle upon Tyne will benefit.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Conservative-led Hertfordshire County Council and St Albans District Council are among the most efficient councils in the country, but they face a large problem in the form of a sinkhole that is costing millions and will be an ongoing event. This is a big deal in St Albans. Will recognition be given to special events, such as the Cumbria floods, that require from councils a significant ongoing commitment to emergency repairs?

[Greg Clark]

I understand that every local authority has unique circumstances and faces unique pressures. Part of the responsibility of local government is to anticipate and prepare for them. In the course of the consultation on the settlement, either I or one of my ministerial colleagues would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to understand the particular circumstances of her council.

Infrastructure

Debate between Anne Main and Greg Clark

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman will know that infrastructure is particularly important to Corby, and the link road that is to be built there is very important to that. He will also know that the increase in youth unemployment of 17% that happened under the Government he supported has contributed to the situation he describes.

Let me address the point of strategic leadership. How can we have long-term leadership and long-term vision for the future of our country, when important economic contributions to success, such as road schemes, are cancelled? That lunacy persisted for years, as our roads became more congested, to the detriment of the environment as well as the economy. It was not until years had passed that that nonsense was recanted by Lord Prescott, the then Deputy Prime Minister, and we decided that, after all, more traffic required more and better roads.

[Mrs Main]

Did the Minister note that the list of needs for strategic infrastructure put forward by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) did not include the requirements of the location? There is no point in our having strategic infrastructure just where there happens to be a need for jobs if it is not where we strategically need to place the infrastructure. That should be crucial to our decision making.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend is right, and what she says makes the point I am making: a long-term strategic view of where we need to invest is crucial. Unfortunately, by the time the then Deputy Prime Minister had decided that we did need to have new roads after all, he had fallen prey to a new fad, regional assemblies—remember them? Having created those unnecessary and unwanted bureaucracies, they needed to be given something to do. What were they given to do? They were given the task of reviewing and prioritising every proposed regional road scheme that had previously been about to proceed. Projects that had been about to commence were delayed for years as regional bureaucrats invented methodologies to reprioritise them. The result was that, 13 years after Labour took office, the A21 road scheme in my constituency and countless other projects around the country languished undelivered.

The Opposition motion talks about dither and delay, which is pretty ripe stuff considering the sorry saga of their roads policy and, for that matter, their stewardship of British energy policy. In July 2009, after 12 years in office, the then Government announced that they expected to have to resort to power cuts in the years ahead. They even published a chart in their strategy for energy predicting an annual shortfall of 3,000 MWh by 2017—a truly shameful and damaging admission for the Government of a developed nation after 12 years in power.

How did things reach that point? As on the economy, when it came to infrastructure, the previous Administration took a typically ostrich-like pose to the challenges of the future. They knew for 12 years that, for example, most of our nuclear power stations and most of our polluting coal-fired power stations would have to close in the decade ahead—indeed, they signed the agreement to close down those power plants—but, unbelievably, by the time they finally made up their mind about nuclear new build, it was already too late to have the new stations up and running before the old ones closed down. How is that for dither and delay? They did not even get around to the long overdue reform of energy markets on which investment in new capacity depends. That surely is something that marks the record of Labour’s first and last Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, whose name escapes me just now.

This Government have recognised the importance of infrastructure to the long-term prosperity of the British economy in a way that Labour never understood. We have published for the first time a national infrastructure plan, comprising £310 billion of investment in the most strategically important projects—keeping in mind the point my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) made about the importance of looking ahead and looking at where those investments are needed—in sectors such as transport, energy and communications in the period to 2015 and beyond. The man who delivered the Olympics in east London with such spectacular success, Lord Deighton, is the Minister in charge of implementing that plan.

Despite inheriting the most disastrous set of public finances that any Government have bequeathed to their successors outside wartime, we are not only investing in infrastructure, but increasing that investment. Public sector infrastructure investment from 2010 to 2012 was £33 billion a year, which is £4 billion more than during the previous Parliament, and as the National Audit Office states in its report, “Planning for economic infrastructure”:

“Future investment is expected to exceed recent levels.”

Last year’s autumn statement included a further £5.5 billion of investment, including £1.5 billion for the strategic road network. That includes upgrades to the M1, the M3, the M6 and the A60 at Immingham; £378 million to upgrade the A1 between Leeming and Barton, as part of a much-needed drive to bring the A1 up to motorway standard between Newcastle and the M25; a new link between the A5 and M1; and dualling of the A30. On 27 of the road and rail schemes announced in the 2011 autumn statement either construction has already started or work is due to begin this year, including on the A453 widening, the A11 Fiveways to Thetford improvement, and the A43 Corby link road, which will be of interest to the hon. Member for Corby (Andy Sawford).

This Government are ushering in the largest programme of investment in the railways since Victorian times, with £9.5 billion of capital investment allocated from 2014 to 2019. That includes £1 billion to electrify the Great Western line between London and south Wales, as the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) will recognise; £500 million for the north-west and trans-Pennine electrification scheme, for which work is already under way; £800 million to electrify the midland main line and increase its speed, which I would have thought the hon. Member for Corby would welcome; and £500 million for the northern hub, which is of benefit to all the cross-Pennine services.

This Government are committed to investing in Britain’s infrastructure for the long term. The first phase of High Speed 1 will be followed by phase 2, which will revolutionise rail travel in Britain, with 211 miles of new track. I am surprised that the Opposition spokesperson, a Leeds MP, did not mention in her speech a project that will link Birmingham to Leeds and Manchester, create five new stations, and cut journey times from Birmingham to Leeds, for example, from two hours to one hour. I should have thought that the hon. Member for Leeds West would mention that. I should have thought that northern MPs would mention the cut in journey times from London to Manchester from two hours eight minutes to one hour eight minutes. The hon. Lady talks about the time it takes to build the track. If we had commenced in 1997, when Labour took power, we could be looking forward to buying our tickets for that railway now.