BAME Communities: Stop and Search

Debate between Ben Wallace and Albert Owen

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies]

I appreciate that the Minister is in a difficult position, because he has to defend the remarks on stop-and-search that the Prime Minister made when she was Home Secretary, which are virtually indefensible and which are unravelling, as we speak, on the streets of London. However, it is reported in the newspapers today that the Home Secretary is at the Police Federation conference and will say that he has only been in his job a few weeks and he is not going there to tell the police how to do their job. Yet I get the impression here that the Government are still trying to tell police officers how to do their job. What I want to hear the Minister say today is that we have a great police force, they do a great job, we trust them to get on and do their job, and the Government will support them. Can he bring himself to give that message to our police officers today?

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the Minister responds, I ask him to leave a couple of minutes at the end of the debate for the hon. Member who secured the debate to sum up.

[Mr Wallace]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley attended the debate in the main Chamber on serious and violent crime yesterday. If he had, he would have heard me say, as I also said on the radio yesterday morning, that I believe we have the finest police force and intelligence services in the world. I have absolutely no doubt of that.

However I also know, from my own experience, the tension between a tactical response and a strategic response. Providing such responses is what I have experience of doing in very dangerous conditions, and yes, sometimes I stopped and searched. I stopped and searched and found a grenade; I stopped and searched and found a car full of Semtex, despite the mob that appeared when I did that. But I also know, from when I was an intelligence officer, that if the police either stopped and searched in a heavy-handed manner or did it in an untargeted way, all my sources dried up. And then guess what happened? The IRA made a bomb and killed lots of people.

One response is strategic and one is tactical, and we can all play to the gallery and just play to the tactical side for the daily headline. However, my hon. Friend might want to reflect that my job is to deliver strategic security for this United Kingdom, which means balancing risks. Getting the right stop-and-search, which is intelligence-targeted, without setting communities against each other, will be the best way to deliver a strong, strategic and secure community.

So I am not playing for the Daily Mail headline for my hon. Friend; I am playing making my community safe. That is the reality. The Prime Minister had the wisdom to spot that and we in the Home Office are going to deliver it. We will listen to the Opposition and urge them to support us on some of our intelligence-gathering measures, which may mean their having to balance risks. It is important to do things that way. I am determined to deliver, and we are on the right track. I want to make sure our communities are engaged with that approach.

We all accept that stop-and-search is a tool, and we can use it and use it well. Nevertheless, the best tool is when someone in the community picks up the telephone and speaks to their local police force, and as a result we manage to arrest the people carrying the knives and dealing the drugs before they are on our streets.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to the Minister for leaving time for Naz Shah to wind up the debate.

Low Carbon Energy Generation

Debate between Ben Wallace and Albert Owen

Thursday 26th February 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) (Con)]

I am delighted to serve under your Chairmanship, Mr Brady. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo). I am not sure if this will be the last time we debate and listen to his contributions, but I pay tribute to his work for his constituents and for his party in serving the Government over the years, and to his work for the Committee on Energy and Climate Change.

The Committee has done an amazing job, not only in building the consensus that the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex) mentioned, but in demonstrating to someone like me that people do not have to live in a tepee to be green and do not have to switch off the lights and go backwards. To roll out a proper, successful, renewables-based energy policy, people have not only to understand targets for carbon reduction and the pressure of global warming; they have to understand the real world as it is, including finance, investment, risk and technologies. My hon. Friend has done a tremendous job as Committee Chair in bringing along both sceptic and enthusiast with the policy of renewables, and with an energy policy that has satisfied many of the historical splits across the parties that we have seen over the past 20 or 30 years.

Ministers could do a lot more listening to Select Committees, especially my hon. Friend’s, which has genuinely helped policy makers and has brought together the main parties in reaching a proper, grown-up solution to providing energy security and meeting our carbon reduction targets. My hon. Friend’s Committee marks a refreshing change. Members present will have spent time in other sectors of Government such as the Ministry of Justice, where constant party politicking goes on, or disagreement is often more important than consensus. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend’s work. He will be missed, as will the sensible way the reports have been presented to the Government.

There are only 19 sitting days left in this Parliament. That is a rather scary number for all of us. I noted the kind comments made by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West. I am not sure who will be the Energy Minister in 70 days. He will certainly make a fine Energy Minister—if he is successful. I cannot wish him that success; I would not do that. I would certainly not want Russell Brand or Alex Salmond as Energy Minister. The main parties are all in a good place, engaging in grown-up politics in working towards a proper energy policy. It is important to note that among the most vocal opponents of the Infrastructure Bill was the Scottish National party, whose Members have failed to turn up for today’s debate. They are no doubt posturing on some other subject this week. They are not even here to claim credit for some of the successful CfD contracts that have been offered today. We should not forget that we will only solve Britain’s energy crisis as Britain. We will only keep the lights on as Britain, not as separate countries focusing on what divides us, rather than what unites us.

Today’s debate is timely, because the CfD auction results have just been published. We have offered contracts—they obviously have not been accepted yet—to 27 projects. The good news is that the CfD auction showed that, amongst other things, competition has worked. We have had a good result from our focus on trying to ensure that we provide value for money for the bill payer, and on increasing energy generation. The auction price for solar, for example, was 58% less than the administrative strike price. It was 18% less for offshore wind and 17% less for onshore wind. The value for money that that represents helped lever in £45 billion of investment into the energy market between 2010 and 2013. I am always trying to explain to people in different sectors that there is only so much money in this world chasing only so much investment. We have to make investment attractive to money or it will go elsewhere—not just domestically, but internationally.

Both this Government and the previous Government have done a good job in recognising that we have to create the conditions to get investment into high-risk areas and those with maturing technology. The CfD process has been a real success. Let us remember that the aim is to reduce carbon emissions. The UK will emit 4 million fewer tonnes of CO₂ emissions a year as a result of the auction. No one can say that that is a bad result. It puts us on the right path to meeting our aim of reducing carbon emissions. At the same time, we have shown that, if we seek a stable framework, people want to come forward and share the risk. The overall cost of production will reduce over that period, and I hope that by the end of the first 15 years—or whatever the time scale is—the actual production costs of many of these generators will be even lower. I hope the Government of the day will remain attuned to when a technology moves from “maturing” to “mature”, when they need to incentivise newer technologies further down the path, and when they perhaps need to let go of more mature technologies that have run their course over many years.

I again make the point that 11 of the 27 projects are in Scotland. That is a good news story for Scotland. I pay tribute to Scottish Labour Members who have lobbied hard on behalf of the Scottish renewables industry and their constituents. That would not have happened in such an easy way if we were two separate countries. All our bill payers will be sharing the burden of electricity generation. As the shadow Minister said, when there was not much wind blowing in parts of Scotland or when Scotland had to rely on our market in England, it was just a formality; there was no artificial barrier to that happening. People who are attracted by the Scottish nationalists or the agenda of separation should remember that independence would fundamentally undermine and damage Britain’s ability to provide electricity for all its citizens across all the isles. That needs to be fully taken on board.

Given the competitive drive to reduce the cost or strike price, which has been a good thing, we think the CfD auction will result in average annual savings of £41 per family bill. The hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) is right: I love Anglesey. When we go on holiday there, I can look out the window and see the red light shining on what used to be the Rio Tinto tower. I am happy, as are the Government, to work to ensure that any barriers to biomass are addressed in the next round of CfDs. That could include help to reduce risks for biomass investment. By working together, we can ensure that biomass has a better showing in the next round. Personally, I would like that project to be successful. I know how important energy is to the island of Anglesey and the pragmatic approach it takes. It would be good news for Holyhead if that project were successful. I am always happy to help ensure that biomass is embraced.

On the subject of the capacity market, securing our energy security is incredibly important. It is all very well encouraging generation, but if the lights go out and we have not worked together to ensure that there is always some capacity, that is almost for nothing. The auction for the capacity market recently completed. We secured 49.3 GW at a clearing price of £19.40 per kW for delivery in 2018-19, which is good news. Consumers and the public can be sure that, alongside our commitment to develop renewables, we have also achieved more security and secured more capacity.

I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk is a keen supporter of demand-side response. I asked officials to see an example of DSR, because how we use electricity efficiently and how we reduce demand are as important as how we cater for demand at other times. I urge Members to look at the example of ExCel, the big London exhibition site, which uses Flexitricity and has a genuinely good case model in how it uses diesel generators that switch on and off as demand requires. Flexitricity can control some of the generation remotely, reducing waste on the grid, and I hope to see more of that. The Department and I have certainly heard loud and clear my hon. Friend and his recommendation of and enthusiasm for DSR, which I hope is given a more prominent role in the next few years.

Other Ministers might get home or to their offices to find that the locks have been changed, because this is the second debate I have been at where Members have clearly demanded a future levy control framework and said that it is required. We hear that urgency. It is no comfort, but with only 19 sitting days to go, I anticipate that the Secretary of State will not be revealing that framework any time soon. We will certainly recognise that urgency in the near future. Whoever is in government, we will all be working to ensure that that long-term indication is in place. I hear with open heart and open mind the recommendation for a rolling seven-year framework to ensure that we keep things up to date. In my opinion, that would help to reflect advances in technologies as they develop. If we understand the impact that technologies have as they roll through, we might understand how much influence they will have on levies and everything else.

There is obviously a long list of renewables that we could talk about. The Government have clearly been happy to encourage offshore wind farm developments. We hear the fears about the high strike price and expense of offshore wind, but the CfD auction has shown that the direction is downwards. As the technologies have developed and competition has been brought in, we have started to reduce the offshore price, which I hope in the medium to long term will converge to be not so different from the onshore price, or near enough.

The Government are obviously committed to onshore projects as a way of generating energy. We are at a stage where many of us who see applications in our constituencies should and can say—the Government have shown this with where they have chosen not to support onshore wind farms—that investors should think carefully about whether they bring forward planning applications for a well-sited, well-researched location, or indulge in the speculative, lazy applications that we see in our constituencies. Out of the blue, a speculative application happens, and that is often what upsets and surprises constituents, coming as it does without any indication of logic or anything else. In those cases, the message should be loud and clear: “Do your research and work. Make sure that you are not speculating and trying to garner profit for profit’s sake rather than trying to fit into the community.”

[Sandra Osborne in the Chair]

The biggest drop in price in the CfD auction was solar’s 58% drop. The Government support solar at all levels, including below 5 MW, and with the feed-in tariffs. It has been encouraging to see how the solar industry has been imaginative in finding new sites that get the sun—for example, by renting roofs. The Government are certainly committed in the long term to ensuring that solar is part of the mix. We want it to be successful, and I hope to see more bids in the next CfD round.

[Albert Owen]

Before the Minister moves on from renewable energy, I am not making a partisan point, but does he share my frustration at the lack of development of commercial-scale marine energy? There have been a lot of good demonstrations of it that have not moved forward. What more does he think can be done to make it happen? Everyone agrees on the potential of wave and tidal energy, but it has not increased in scale. Since I have been a Member of this House—I was interested in energy from day one—it has always been three or four years hence, but it has not happened. What can be done so that we can get good commercial projects up and running in order to get the predictable energy supply that we need?

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, because I too remember the grander schemes, such as the Severn barrage and the Wyre barrage in my constituency. They were quite large-scale, ambitious schemes. I checked before I came to the debate, and one of the Department’s priorities is the Swansea lagoon barrage. If we can get that up and running successfully, it is the kind of thing that will quickly trigger a roll-out elsewhere. As he says, wave and tidal energy have been just over the horizon for as long as I have been involved in such issues, but we are getting to a stage where the scale is right and not over-ambitious. From what I can tell, local businesses and people are supportive of the scheme in Swansea, so we should all try to help it to become a reality and sing its praises far and wide, should it be a success.

[Albert Owen]

I fully support the plans for Swansea. In my area, where there is good tidal flow, we have had a demonstration from Marine Current Turbines and Siemens, and we have seen the technology working in Strangford lough. Siemens did not take it to the next stage. The Government have done what they can. There are good renewable obligations and support in Scotland and other places, but schemes have just not gone far enough. I understand what the Minister says about scale, but I am not talking about a large-scale project; it could have developed in sections and become bigger. There is something missing. Will he consider that so that we can move forward with tidal energy?

[Mr Wallace]

I am happy to ask the Department about its observations on why Siemens did not choose to go forward, because we can learn from that. It may have been a commercial decision or there may have been an internal conflict of interest because the company wanted to focus on another technology, but it would be good to find out and move forward.

My constituency borders the two current shale gas sites. I want to put the Government’s position on the record: we are absolutely clear that we are not determined to rush for gas or to throw everything out just to get fracking going. The Government are in favour of fracking, but we want to be its arbitrator. We want to listen to the science behind it. We do not want to be in the pocket of the oil and gas companies or the green movement. The Government’s role is to take a pragmatic approach and ensure that shale gas proceeds, learning from all the experience around the world and from all the environmental studies and impacts that have happened, and use our position to ensure that we set a gold standard. We must move forward where we can, mitigating the effects on local communities through sovereign wealth funds and local community funding, but also through the planning conditions that can be set by mineral rights authorities.

Shale gas will and must be in the mix at some stage. I would rather buy my gas from Britain than from Mr Putin, so if people have objections on human rights grounds, there is one reason. I would rather not compress gas in big ships and take it around the sea if it is possible to get it from Britain. The Government’s position is not simply to progress recklessly on shale gas at any cost. Opponents of shale gas often paint it as if the rush for gas is true, but that is not the case. As we saw recently in the debates on the Infrastructure Bill—the Government accepted Opposition amendments—we will work to ensure that the industry is safe, that constituents are not affected unnecessarily, and that we all benefit from the process.

The last thing mentioned by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West was carbon capture and storage. We cannot avoid the fact that it will be part of an ability in which we must invest, and which we must develop to complement our energy generation over the next 20, 30 or 40 years. We cannot just pretend and have it as a tokenistic thing. It is going to be a fact and we must invest in it. The Government are doing what they can to help investment in the process. As with the barrage and tidal schemes, I look forward to the day when we start the process and get the pipelines and everything else in place. Whoever is in government, it is worth monitoring and investing in carbon capture and storage.

I hope that colleagues have felt that today’s debate has cemented the view that the current energy policy is travelling in the right direction for this country. It is based on reducing carbon emissions, encouraging different technologies and getting value for money for the bill payer. We cannot pretend that those issues are separate; they have to be hand in hand. We have to carry the public with us if we are going to develop energy policy successfully. We should be not pleased, but happy that the CfD auction proved that things are going in the right direction.

The economic benefits are clear. Since 2010, we estimate that more than £30 billion has been invested in electricity generation, principally in renewable technologies. In previous years, it might not have been the case, but that money has gone principally on renewable technologies, and £30 billion does not grow on trees. If we cannot get investment from the markets and the private sector, in the end we will have to get it from the taxpayer. It is a good thing that we have helped to change not only Government policy but investment policy and thinking in this country. As someone who, to some extent, came late to the energy debate, I am grateful for the work of the Select Committee and for its reports. I find them incredibly educational and I know that the Department finds them very useful in helping to create and shape new policy for the years to come.

Before finishing, I repeat my tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk. I thank him for his work with the Select Committee and for his work for the whole House as well.