EU Referendum: Energy and Environment

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Robert Syms

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour has run a superb campaign on fuel poverty. She makes reference to the £1.7 billion that the Competition and Markets Authority report showed UK bill payers were being overcharged—overcharged by quite obscene amounts. It is, of course, right for the Government to come up with clear proposals about how to tackle that abuse, without just saying, as they have to date, that people need to be enabled to switch more easily.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

This is one of the first of our debates to mention the result of the EU referendum. I know that the hon. Gentleman was on the other side of the argument, so it would be useful if he told us whether, when it comes to a vote, he will vote to leave the EU despite his heavy heart or will he vote against the wishes of the British people?

[Barry Gardiner]

I always try to look at the motion in front of me on the Order Paper and make a judgment on it when I see what it says. I have done so for the past 19 and a half years, and I suspect I shall probably do it for the next few years as well.

Even the Government-dominated Select Committee has warned that what it calls the “hiatus” in project developments could threaten the UK’s ability to meet its energy and climate security targets, so when the Department’s own figures show the need for £100 billion of investment by 2020 to make our electricity infrastructure fit for purpose, the Secretary of State really does have to explain where she believes that investment is going to come from, given that investor confidence in her Department is at an all-time low.

Before the Secretary of State does so, however, perhaps she will confirm whether she instructed her Department not to prepare in any way for a leave vote, as the Prime Minister apparently directed. If that is so, can she explain why, because that is what business leaders out there are asking? It seems incomprehensible to them that the Prime Minister took such a gigantic risk with their future—a risk that will increase their cost of capital and the cost of energy to bill payers, both corporate and domestic alike—yet made absolutely no preparations for what might happen when that risk went the wrong way.

The IIGCC—Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change—a group of institutional investors representing over €13 trillion in assets, said in the aftermath of the vote to leave that it had brought

“considerable uncertainty and market turmoil.”

That only goes to prove that the art of litotes is not yet dead!

Finance Bill

Debate between Barry Gardiner and Robert Syms

Monday 2nd July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Barry Gardiner]

I accept your ruling, of course, Mr Deputy Speaker, and you are right. We have strayed wide of the initial focus of the amendment. It was not my intention. All I can say in mitigation is that I was led down the path by the interventions that I took.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

I welcome this debate because the decisions that we take on tax rates are critical. We have had a slightly more general debate than I expected. Opposition Front Benchers particularly presume that the Government can somehow control events. However, there is a big wide world out there and anybody watching television or watching what had happened in the eurozone knows that there is a limit to what any Government can do in the present circumstances, when confidence is low, countries are being bailed out and businesses, even those with money, are not investing as rapidly as one would like. All the Government can do within the global context is try to make the best decisions they can on the information that they have. We have a plan, which I think is a good plan, and by and large we are sticking to it. The deficit has come down by 25%. That is a start and we need to do more.

On the subject of income tax rates, I think we tax people at far too small a salary. We do not increase incentives to work. A key point of the coalition programme is to up the basic allowances to make work pay. We all know—I am sure even the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) knows—that the benefits system can be a big disincentive to people taking jobs. People act rationally, and if they are not going to be much better off or if they are going to lose money, they will not take work. A reform of benefits is needed, with the universal credit coming in, and we have to up the income tax allowances for those at a lower pay level in order to increase incentives for people to take jobs. Hopefully that will get more people into work over a period of time.

All the evidence suggests that work is good for people. It is better for their health, including their mental health, and it is a better way to bring up a family, and of course those in work have a better chance of gaining skills, reskilling and getting on in life. That is the key point about what the coalition Government are trying to do. Therefore, I commend them for what they have done to take many millions of people out of income tax and hope that they continue to make progress in that area so that incentives to work increase over the next few years.