Cross-Solent Ferries

Debate between Bob Seely and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 26th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Government support for cross-Solent ferry transport.

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Latham.

I will come straight to the point: the relationship between the ferry firms and the people of the Isle of Wight is breaking down. The ferries are a genuine lifeline; we have no choice but to use them. There is no public service obligation. We need to get a better deal. I have produced a study of the ferries, which I think is the first major work on the ferries that has come out of the Island for 40 years. In it, I highlight how we can get a better deal for the ferries, some of the options for the firms and how we can get there.

Time is tight, so I will make as much progress as I can. The Island depends on three private ferry operators: Wightlink, Red Funnel and Hovertravel. Hovertravel is not really part of the picture, but Wightlink and Red Funnel are. Wightlink was privatised in 1984, and Red Funnel has always been in private hands. The firms’ services initially improved throughout the ’80s and ’90s, but they are now worsening, in part because of the private equity-style ownership model. I will return to that, because it is a constant theme.

In 2009, under new Labour, the ferries were given a clean bill of health, and we were told there was open competition between them. That was not true. For passenger services, there are two local monopolies in the west: between Yarmouth and Lymington and between Cowes and Southampton. I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Minister here, as ever. The idea that people will travel 25 miles from Yarmouth to Ryde to cross four miles of water into Portsmouth in order to travel 35 or 40 miles around to Lymington again is nonsense. In Ryde, there is competition of sorts between Hovertravel and Wightlink, although not to the same destination—one goes to Southsea, and one goes to Portsmouth harbour. On the car ferries, there is an effective monopoly in the West Wight, again on the Yarmouth to Lymington route, and a duopoly for the rest of the Island, with Red Funnel pitched slightly below Wightlink’s extortionate prices—but it is not true that there is a free market among Isle of Wight ferries.

Barriers to entry are very high. I am trying to support two potential competitors into the market—a passenger ferry and a potential car ferry—but that is difficult, because the ferry firms also own the ports.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing the debate forward. There is a similar issue back home, except for one difference. We have a ferry that connects Portaferry, in my constituency of Strangford, with the constituency of South Down—with the boundary changes, that will all be mine next time around, if everything goes according to plan. We never privatised the ferries back home; we retained them under the Department for Infrastructure, because we thought that that was the best idea. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that perhaps Government retention would be a better way forward?

[Bob Seely]

It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman. That is absolutely one of the ideas that I will discuss later; I thank him.

What are the problems? First, as I have said, the ferry firms have no legal obligation to meet timetables or standards of service above the minimum levels of safety required in law. The Island’s connectivity is entirely at the discretion of the firms, which are answerable to—and overwhelmingly driven by—the needs of their shareholders. They have no public service obligation and no regulator, and they set their own service standards. The Minister should know that I am having a Bill on a ferries regulator for the United Kingdom written. The ferry firms change their speeds and timetables whenever they want, and they judge their own punctuality rates depending on the service that they want to run, not on the service that we agree they should run.

Secondly, the firm’s corporate structures and incredibly inflated valuations are becoming a critical issue for the Island. I also believe they are bad for the United Kingdom. What do I mean by that? The Solent market has an established model of private-equity style ownership that has several generations of acquisition and sales, and in all that time, debt has gone up. The Island is a captured market: we have no choice but to use the firms. They have reliable high incomes, there are high barriers to market entry and they are highly profitable. That makes them ideal for private equity investment.

Typically, owners purchase the ferry firms with borrowed money. The firms are subsequently restructured to pay interest on that debt. They effectively avoid tax perfectly legally because they pay back their shareholders through loans. We, the users, pay for the owners’ purchase of the firms, and then pay through the nose to pay back interest on those purchases. Returns to shareholders are via loans on the debt. Such private-equity style structures may be common elsewhere, and are sadly used by the water utilities, which are not a great example of them, but those firms have a utilities regulator, whereas the ferry firms that use such structures do not have any regulator to control them or to put limits on debt or limits or demands on service.

The firms have been increasingly overvalued by bankers with a vested interest in ramping up their value. The higher the value of the initial purchase, the greater the debt loaded on to the firm and the greater the need to repay that interest, so the more the Islanders—to put it bluntly—get stuffed by the ferry firms, and the more we have to pay through the nose to pay back the interest on buying the firms in the first place. Manchester United had a similar form of ownership, as do the water utilities, as I said, but the water utilities have a regulator that makes demands on the firms.

For example, for the year ending 2023, Wightlink had tangible assets of £85 million and an operating profit of £15 million. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister has distinguished expertise in matters of transport and will know the operating margins for the rail firms. If we look at the operating margins for the ferries in the last 30 years, we see that in 1990 the margin was 28%; in 1995 it was 19%; in 2000 it was 32%; in 2004 it was 29%; in 2010 it was 20%; and in 2019 it was 25%. Red Funnel’s operating margins over the years went from 15% in 1990, to 21% in 1995 and 24% in 2019. These companies have vast profit margins. Compare that with the operating profit for rail firms, which is perhaps 2%—is it 5% maximum? There is a real ethical problem with the amount of profit that these people are making and the amount of tax they pay on that, which is very low.

Effectively, since the early 2000s—I do not know why we have allowed them to get away with it—the Isle of Wight ferries have been treated as collateral for loans for private equity and for pension funds. Not only that, but there is a web of offshore companies that own both the firms. Wightlink’s parent company, Arca Topco, had borrowings—I find this amount unbelievable—of £261,593,000. A small ferry firm has borrowings or loans outstanding of more than a quarter of a billion. That is a phenomenal amount. Some of that is in terms of investment, but most is debt that has been loaded on to those firms over the years by pension funds and private equity in order to buy the firms.

Arca Topco paid interest totalling £16,825,000. Various bodies that have owned the company or been paid back those loans include Basalt Infrastructure, Fiera Infrastructure and, amazingly, the People’s Bank of China. The People’s Bank of China, an arm of the Chinese Communist party, has owned the company that owned the company that owned Isle of Wight ferry.

I will say one more thing about Wightlink. Wightlink argues that it makes no profit because it uses loans to invest in the company. Although that is not wholly untrue, because it does use some of the loans to buy new things and make investments, it is nothing like enough, on both counts. It is also largely dishonest because those loans are used not to invest in the company but to pay back the massive amounts of debt that are loaded on to the firms, which is why Islanders are being screwed—to put it in the vernacular; I apologise for my bad language—every time they use the firms. That is the problem here.

I personally feel that I have been lied to by both firms about the debt and the ownership structure for too long. Frankly, my tolerance of them is reaching a low point. The firms have become overvalued cash cows. Red Funnel was worth £200 million in 2007; 10 years later, the most recent time it was sold, it was worth £370 million. It is phenomenally overvalued and I suspect it was always going to have trouble paying back the loans based on that overvaluation.

Since covid-19, the passenger market has dropped 30%. So what are the firms doing? They are cutting back their services. I will come back to that in a moment. Effectively, they are overvalued cash cows, and because these cash cows are not delivering, we—the passengers—are being squeezed more. To deliver the returns they need on their inflated valuations, they have cut back services. For any given Monday in February, if we compare 2004 with now, we see that Wightlink reduced the 36 daily sailings from Fishbourne to 18, the 24 daily sailings from Yarmouth to 16, and the 32 daily sailings from Ryde to 18. Wightlink is cutting back significantly on services in order to increase profits. Since 1998, Red Funnel has reduced 33 daily sailings from West Cowes to 22. Although Red Funnel says it has increased daily car ferry sailings from 13 to 14, the number of unrestricted sailings has stayed the same.

Services are also slower. Red Jet used to take 22 minutes; it now takes 28 minutes. That means—the Minister should know this—that it is now a slipped service. Instead of departing every half an hour during peak periods, there is a delay of 10 minutes each time, and that is messing up people’s connectivity with the mainland when they want to get trains or buses to different places. Before 2009, Wightlink FastCat reported a maximum speed of 34 knots; today, it is 26 knots. Late-night services are also being cut. Red Funnel has just cut the late-night service between Cowes and Southampton. To its credit, Wightlink has put one back on, but it was painful to get it to do so.

Next is yield-management pricing, which the Minister will know about, being very expert on these things. We go online, we look for flights to Cairo, Ibiza or Paris, and we get different pricing because that is the way that yield-management pricing schemes work. If we do it in advance, it becomes cheaper, and so on. For air travel that works, but with monopolies it does not. Although the firms say, “We still have starting prices for a family of four with a car for £29,” because of their surge pricing, the amount of tickets in that bracket are tiny, if not non-existent.

There are somewhere between 13 and 15 price brackets. The fact that someone can go online to book a ferry on a bank holiday or in the summer at a weeks’ notice and pay £250 for a return ticket means that there are huge numbers of tickets available at the most expensive, rip-off prices, and virtually none at the cheaper rates. My concern is that this form of surge pricing is hiding significant inflation in the cost of travelling, and it is having a significant effect on our economy.

I will wrap up in the next five to six minutes, so I will really rattle through. Why change now? First, because the firms have old car ferries because they have spent too long paying back shareholders and not enough time investing. If they want green money from the Government, that should come at a price. Secondly, because I and the Scottish councils lobbied for the Islands Forum initiative, and the Government are now looking into connectivity between the mainland and the UK islands.

Thirdly, because during the covid pandemic the ferry companies took money from the Government, because they recognised that the firms ran a lifeline service. Fourthly, because Red Funnel is probably up for sale again, and I am worried that eventually one of these firms will be so overloaded with debt that it falls over.

Fifthly, because there may be an attempt by a local entrepreneur, Nick Wakefield, to introduce a public-service ferry service, which I believe the Government should support because it would help to break the duopoly of Red Funnel and Wightlink and break the monopoly of this corrupted private equity-style investment system.

There are many questions that I want the Department to answer, and I will follow up with letters if I do not get all the answers today. Does the Department for Transport have an opinion on supporting new ferry firms? Does it really believe, given the state of the private equity-style investment, that this is a healthy market and a healthy structure, or one with duopolies and monopolies? There is a rail Bill coming up, which I am sure the Minister knows about. Can we add the Isle of Wight ferries to it as well?

On the sale of Red Funnel, what powers do the Government have to block a sale? What powers do we have to prevent it from selling its third passenger ferry? Red Funnel is running a “comprehensive” service with just two passenger ferries and is even slowing them down to save money. If one or both of those ferries falls over, there will be no service. How do the Government feel about that?

Next, what is my answer? There should be easy multi-link tickets for poorer Islanders; a greater discount for journeys that start on the Island; electronic through-ticketing, which, ridiculously, is something we still do not have; and the ability to book places for passengers, including the elderly or those going for medical treatment. There should also be independent assessment of punctuality and reliability; permanent improvements in late and early passenger services, so that the ferry companies understand that they have a public service obligation; regular services, and not the unacceptable slip service that Red Funnel is running to save money; and a duty to ensure best connectivity with national rail services—I am bored of having to lecture the firms to ensure such connectivity.

There should be stronger sanctions for failures to deliver an agreed standard of service. A couple of weeks ago, the ferry firm did not run the last service, so someone living on the Isle of Wight coming back with his family would have been stuck in a hotel, which would have cost him three hundred quid. Does the Minister think that he should pay, or does he think he should be able to claim the money back from Wightlink or Red Funnel the next time it happens? It is completely unacceptable.

There should also be an accurate understanding of investment levels in recent years; a better deal for young people; better wheelchair and disabled access; more transparency about corporate structures; and some thought given to whether the Isle of Wight should take a seat on the board of the major ferry firms. I am happy to discuss nationalisation, although I cannot see it being on the cards—it has not been under any Government, including Labour Governments, in the past—but what happens when these firms have debts that become unmanageable?

What are the options for getting there? I am having an independent regulator Bill written. Would the Government consider supporting it and installing a regulator, not only for the Solent ferries but for all the national ferry firms? I have had to do a national Bill—I say that for Islanders watching this debate—because if I bring in a Solent Bill alone, I as an MP cannot present it. The parliamentary etiquette is that I can present only a national Bill; therefore, I am presenting a UK ferries regulator Bill, rather than a Bill just for the Solent. That is the first point.

Secondly, would the Government demand the rights to sign off on the firms’ timetables, as they do for rail services? Is there more money for central Government funding for healthcare-related visits to the Island? Might we persuade the companies to enter into voluntary regulation, so that there is a formal process and they have to listen to us more seriously, perhaps with beefed-up powers—maybe legal powers—for our transport infrastructure board to demand better things? I will be writing to the Competition and Markets Authority to see what scope there is, and whether I can request an inquiry into the ferries and, if so, how that could be initiated. Will the Department of Transport support my request?

We cannot go on as we are. Despite some incremental gains over the last two years, we are now reaching a crunch point, where these firms are so overvalued and their shareholders’ demands for returns are so loud, that we simply do not get listened to. It is harming our future, whether it is our tourist bookings, which are down, or the fact that young Islanders cannot go to Southampton in the evening because there is no way back—yes, they can get the car ferry from Portsmouth, but it goes from a different place from where they left.

I thank the Minister for bearing with me. I know that this is not his responsibility per se—the relevant Minister is in the House of Lords, so I am sorry to be unloading on him today—but to sum up, the ferry companies are failing the Island. The private equity model is now breaking down. The disparity between the power of the shareholders and the needs of the Island is becoming too great. The situation is becoming acute. Shareholders are relentlessly prioritised over the needs of the Island. Sailings are fewer, slower and more expensive than they were 20 years ago.

The firms have no obligation to run a service. One of the things that really grips me is that when I say to them, “Shouldn’t you be raising your game?”, their attitude is: “If you complain too loudly, we won’t invest.” It is literally a form of blackmail on a genuine lifeline service—if we dare to criticise them, they might rethink their investment plans. If we criticise them and they say, “Oh, we don’t know if we’re going to invest,” that is reason enough for the Government to give them an enormous kick up the backside. The Government should say, “If that’s the way you play it, we’ll force regulation on you to make sure that you are considerate and thoughtful, and that if you say you’re running a service, then you damn well run a service and don’t just change your timetable when you fancy slowing down your boats to save some money, to pay your shareholders over the needs of the Isle of Wight.”

As you can see, Mrs Latham, this is an issue grips me, because it is harming the people of the Island, and we need change. I am really hoping that the Minister will now work with me, because there is a window of opportunity for change when it comes to green funding for the ferries, to Island connectivity, because of the Islands Forum, and, potentially, to ferries clause in the rail Bill, whether that is voluntary change from the ferries firms or change that we encourage or force on them. It is now time to look again at this issue, because we cannot have another 20 years of this.

Moles and Skin Tags: Testing for Cancer

Debate between Bob Seely and Jim Shannon

Monday 12th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am going to follow up on several of those points, but I am delighted to see that he is one of the many people who have survived a malignant melanoma.

If Zoe’s mole had been diagnosed early—especially at stage 1 or 2, and possibly even at stage 3—she may have well survived. Just before I come to some of those suggestions, I must point out that these melanomas are a specific concern on the Isle of Wight, because we have one of the highest rates of skin cancer.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his assiduous attention to his constituents and to the family who have been bereaved. By his words today, we all recognise that he is deeply concerned and compassionate, and we thank him for that.

May I gently tell the hon. Gentleman—perhaps the Minister might take note of this as well—that in Northern Ireland a new mole mapping and melanoma service has been introduced in my local South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust? It is a nurse-led, two-year pilot project that offers an advanced mole mapping technique for specific patients identified by the clinical team as being at higher risk of developing melanoma skin cancer. I suggest that that should be a standard for everyone not just in my trust area but everywhere else, so that we do not have a postcode lottery. Would the hon. Gentleman be interested in that pilot scheme? If so, maybe the Minister will take note.

[Bob Seely]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for yet another excellent intervention, and I completely agree. In fact, I will come to those points now.

The Isle of Wight is a specific hotspot for skin cancer. I think it has the worst skin cancer rates in the United Kingdom, primarily as a result of certain factors. First, we still have a very white population, and the paler your skin, the more likely you are to develop melanomas. Secondly, we have an ageing population, and melanomas are cumulative. Thirdly, we have a very outdoors lifestyle on the Island, with golf, sailing, a lot of community activity and a lot of gardening. For the Isle of Wight’s retirement community especially, to be out in the sun aged 60 or 70 doing activities such as sailing, which is very harsh on the skin because of the interaction of sun and water, encourages melanomas. Fortunately, we have one of the best dermatology centres in Britain at Newport’s Lighthouse clinic, and I thank its doctors and staff for doing an excellent job. I have been there myself in the past couple of years, and I know what a great job they do.

In the NHS long-term plan, the Government committed that the proportion of cancers diagnosed at stages 1 or 2 will rise from about half to three quarters of all cancer patients, meaning that some 55,000 more people a year should survive cancer for at least five years after diagnosis.

Pilot schemes in various parts of the country are trying to improve the diagnosis of skin cancers and melanomas. One option to improve this still further is what, on the Island, we call Zoe’s law, but it would effectively be a change of practice within the NHS. Eileen, Zoe’s mum, and her family are doing it in memory of Zoe, and it would require all moles and skin tags removed from the body to be tested for melanoma. I am not expecting an off-the-cuff answer from the Minister on this point, but I would very much like her to write to me so that I can pass on her comments to Eileen and the rest of Zoe’s family. If that cannot be done now, I would like to know why not.

I would also like to know what more could be done in future, because thousands of people are needlessly dying every year. Skin cancers kill more slowly than many other cancers and are certainly more treatable than cancers such as lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. Eileen said Zoe thought of everyone before herself. When Zoe was dying, she said, “The most important thing is that other people do not have to go through this”—she left two young kids.

The idea of testing all removed moles and skin tags is potentially very popular, and a petition started by the family has now reached some 35,000 signatures. Tanya Bleiker, the previous president of the British Association of Dermatologists, recommended that all skin lesions, even if removed for cosmetic reasons, as Zoe’s was, should be sent for histopathological testing to confirm that they are benign—the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) also made that recommendation—because they might be deep rooted in the skin. Mr Ashton, one of our consultant dermatologists on the Isle of Wight, explained to me on Friday that innocent-looking moles can sometimes be the most deadly. They might look benign on the surface, but underneath they are malignant and hide melanoma.

I urge the Government to set out further plans on raising awareness of moles, as this is relatively easy to do. If I understand correctly, including this in nurse training and general practitioner training, especially in sunnier parts of the country along the south coast—places like Cornwall, Devon, the Isle of Wight and Hampshire—could be exceptionally valuable.

War in Ukraine: Illicit Finance

Debate between Bob Seely and Jim Shannon

Thursday 17th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Clive Efford (in the Chair)]

I think it was a speech.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Bob Seely]

I give way again.

[Jim Shannon]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing forward this debate; I will speak for a wee minute in support of him. My understanding is that in earlier questions in the Chamber, the Government indicated that they were prepared to look at—I am not sure they committed themselves entirely—not just seizing the goods belonging to Russian oligarchs, but using that money for a purpose. The purpose we all asked for in the Chamber that day was for the money to be given to Ukraine. Would there not be some poetic justice if Russian money was used to directly help the Ukrainians?

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. One of the things we were discussing yesterday was quite how that could happen. The initiative is being led by Bill Browder, who has championed the cause of Sergei Magnitsky ever since he was tortured and murdered 13 years ago yesterday. Ten years ago—a decade ago this month—the late, great John McCain brought in the first Magnitsky laws in the United States, and everyone else across the globe, or at least 35 nations, has followed suit.

The person dealing with this issue in Ukraine is a very powerful Ukrainian politician called Kira Rudik, who was also with us yesterday. She is in London today. She is trying to get a global coalition to do just what we have been discussing. I hope that we will soon have a draft law here that we can send to Government, debate and put down in some form to say, “These are the next steps.”

I pay tribute to Kyle Parker, too, who was also in the discussions we had yesterday. He is great man. A senior congressional staffer—these people have much more power in the US than they tend to in the UK—he wrote the Magnitsky Act and worked with Congressmen and Senators to get it through both Houses in the US system. We should be doing the same here.

Strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs—it is a bit of a mouthful—are effectively the abuse of law by the rich to intimidate journalists, campaigners and others. SLAPPs are absolutely part and parcel of this system. Imagine the great caravan of wealth that flowed from the former Soviet Union to the tax havens of the Caribbean. It needed facilitators, which were the financial services companies, some of which are corrupt German and Scandinavian banks. I think their names are out there: Deutsche Bank, in Estonia, I think, and one or two others.

The system also needed attack dogs to protect the flow of that vast caravan of sometimes criminal wealth, and those were the legal firms. Those lawyers effectively built a business model of legalised intimidation whereby journalists and campaigners can be threatened. If someone in the Soviet Union, or Russia post the collapse of the Soviet Union, wanted to stop a journalist from trying to investigate them, they would ultimately just kill them. In the UK and the west, that is more difficult—not impossible, but it is more difficult to kill people and get away with it.

People are not physically destroyed in this country; instead, the legal system is used to financially destroy them. That has sadly happened to a number of people, including Charlotte Leslie, a former colleague of ours, and the wonderful journalist Catherine Belton. Various campaign groups have also been targeted. Most recently, Chatham House has been a target. Sadly, I understand it has given in to threats and is having to rewrite some of its reports.

This business model was set up to service the needs of the aggressive rich and powerful, including organised criminals and oligarchs, who did not want their affairs investigated. The three methods were the abuse of libel law, the abuse of privacy law—the right to privacy, meaning no one else can look into someone’s affairs—and data protection. The aim in all the cases was to mount up such staggering costs that even a technical victory would destroy the opponent, render them bankrupt or destroy their reputation. If they were a journalist, the aim was to make a newspaper or publishing house invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in defending them against the vast sums that oligarchs were willing to throw at them to make their lives difficult.

A slightly different case is that of the Maltese corruption journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia. It was a great privilege to recently meet her son, who works in the UK media. At the time she was murdered, she was facing 47 libel lawsuits, almost all of which were from UK law firms. That is staggering: before she was physically destroyed, she was being psychologically and financially destroyed.

I have discussed Catherine Belton and the costs of SLAPPs. My final point is that it is extraordinary that, as Spotlight on Corruption and Global Integrity have found, law firms in the UK currently face almost zero risk of criminal prosecution for money laundering, and there is a very limited prospect of their facing any meaningful fines. I was told privately that a number of UK law firms support that criminal money-laundering activity. Yet almost nothing is done, and almost nothing is investigated.

What are the solutions? First, close the loopholes in Companies House. I know that the Government have made strides on that, but there is more to be done. The right hon. Member for Barking is working with a number of Members on both sides of the House to tighten up the regulations. If the Government could be sympathetic, we would be grateful. Secondly, the UK’s economic crime enforcement system remains under-resourced. It needs to be better resourced, so that we can fight the bad guys and girls better.

Thirdly, we need to better supervise the so-called professional enablers, so that they cannot effectively operate outside money laundering regulations. Fourthly, as we tighten up regulations here, we need to expand our UK regulations to British overseas territories. It is absolute nonsense that criminal and organised crime and tax havens benefit people in the Caribbean.

We very much welcome the Ministry of Justice’s response to the call for evidence on SLAPPs and its proposals for legislative reform. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and I—and perhaps others—will present a Bill on SLAPPs, so that a Bill is ready when the Government want to introduce one; we love saving Government time, and increasing the productivity of Government and politicians. We will provide a model for SLAPPs law. It will ensure that SLAPPs are disposed of more quickly in court, that the costs of being attacked by SLAPPs are kept to a minimum, and that the costs for SLAPP filers are higher, which will potentially deter further SLAPPs. There are other measures, but I will not go into them now.

In summary, as a result of the UK’s economic permissiveness, we have for too long become a safe haven for kleptocrats. That has to end. The situation is getting better, but it is a shame that it took a major war in eastern Europe for things to change dramatically. We take pride in the openness and transparency of speech, and in the UK’s open economic system. However, that freedom of speech and open economic system must be better protected. A laissez-faire, criminalised free-for-all is not an open economic system; it is a corruption of that system. We need to clamp down on the sources of illicit finance coming through the UK. I urge the Government to continue reforming Companies House, to resource our enforcement bodies, and to read and take in the many excellent recommendations in the Foreign Affairs Committee’s report.

Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Bob Seely and Jim Shannon

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bob Seely]

The hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly sensible point, but his argument that we can do it all with renewables is a bit of a cop-out. We are not doing so. I want tidal energy for the Solent and for the Isle of Wight as much as he does for the west of Scotland, but the argument that renewables will solve our problems—especially when, as the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) says, there is no wind— is a difficult one to sustain.

Moving back to amendments 1 and 2, it is perfectly sensible for the Government to make the point—the Minister did so when we were in conversation last week, and I thank him for his time—that we need foreign institutional funding, especially from friendly states, such as the United States, Australia, Canada, and the European Union, and a RAB system to make that investment in nuclear, which is expensive and which we need for the long term, but we need to be getting on with it. Having argued against those two amendments, I have to say that we have had two decades of incredibly poor leadership on energy supply. The hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) spoke eloquently about the attractions of the nuclear industry, but, unfortunately, the point she missed out was that nuclear was killed as an investment discussion early on in the new Labour years. Unfortunately, the coalition carried on with that, because, effectively, we were appeasing a rather extreme green lobby in our country. We are coming to this very late. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham said, in a decade’s time, we will lose 12 out of the 13 nuclear reactors that we have. That means that we will go backwards when it comes to producing low-carbon, low-greenhouse-emission energy, even if more renewables come on stream, which I hope they will, so we need to get on with this.

Are we in a perfect position with Chinese funding? No. Do I want to see a Chinese nuclear reactor in this country? Absolutely not. Do I want to see Rolls-Royce nuclear reactors, which I hope will be the Rolls-Royce solution in all senses of the word? Absolutely, and we need to get cracking, because that will lower the price. It is also British technology and we will be keeping those high-quality jobs. We need to get moving. On that principle, I oppose amendments 1 and 2. I am happy with where we are with the Government at the moment, but let us just crack on, get this done, get another Bill for another nuclear plant this side of an election and then get in place the laws and the Bills that we need for modular nuclear to come onstream.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity to do so.

In the past, I have spoken in the Chamber and in smaller debates about nuclear energy and its importance in today’s society. I will put on record once again my support for nuclear energy and for what it can deliver for all of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We need nuclear generating capacity for the United Kingdom, and I believe that this Bill gives the opportunity for that to happen.

The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) put forward a very good case for his proposals in new clause 1 and amendments 6, 9, 8, 7 and 10. I believe that, ultimately, it comes down to whether we support nuclear energy and the benefits that it brings or whether we have some concerns, which, obviously, the hon. Gentleman has.

Nuclear energy in the UK is minimal, with only 13 nuclear reactors and six plants, which are able to supply only about 20% of the UK’s electricity demand. It is worth pointing out that Northern Ireland is the only devolved institution in the UK without a nuclear plant or power station. I note from the papers supplied to us by the Minister that

“For the RAB model and revenue stream measures in Parts 1 and 2, these will extend and apply to England and Wales and Scotland only. This is because the unique energy position of Northern Ireland means they would not benefit from energy produced by nuclear energy generation projects under a RAB model in Great Britain, and so should not be obliged to pay.”

It is clear that the Government have provided protection for us in Northern Ireland. It is also important to remember that in the context of the Government’s levelling up agenda as well as the Bill, the funding is not relative.

Nuclear energy in the UK has not peaked since 1995 and the opening of Sizewell B, the last commissioned plant to be built.

Environment Bill

Debate between Bob Seely and Jim Shannon

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 8th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate, but I will not take too long. I want to ask the Minister a quick question. I am pleased to see what is coming forward in relation to single-use items and the conservation covenants, and I am pleased that those measures have all been passed. However, I still have a concern about the Office for Environmental Protection’s enforcement policy. Lords amendment 31 states:

“The OEP has complete discretion in the carrying out of its functions, including in—

(a) preparing its enforcement policy,

(b) exercising its enforcement functions, and

(c) preparing and publishing its budget.”

That has merit in my eyes, and I would be interested to hear the Government’s rationale as to why they believe it is unnecessary, as I believe that similar amendments were made in relation to Northern Ireland.

I am also gratified to learn that there is now a Government amendment in place for a duty to be enshrined in law to ensure that water companies secure a progressive reduction in the adverse impacts of discharges from storm overflows. That has been lacking for many years, and I have seen the devastating effects of discharge from storm overflows on homes that merit at least this form of protection. For too many years, the water companies have been doing the bare minimum. I seek the Minister’s confirmation that more will be done to ensure that the rivers and waterways around this great United Kingdom are protected, that more will be done than just the bare minimum, and that this will be the beginning of progress. We must all take our obligation to future generations more seriously. I often say, as others do, that we leave our environment for the generations that come after us, and for the sake of my grandchildren—and my great-grandchildren, when that time comes—we must ensure that the water companies step up to their agenda.

[Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I will be as brief as possible, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the Ministers for listening and for moving on this issue, and above all I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne), who was sitting next to me, for his leadership on this issue. I do not think that this could have happened without him. To be blunt, if this amendment is good enough for him, it is good enough for me. He would not support it if it were not strong.

On the Isle of Wight we have some wonderfully clean beaches, but any sewage discharge is unacceptable. In a place that is environmentally sensitive—we are a UNESCO biosphere—and that has so many amenity sites because of so many visitors swimming, having human poo on our beaches is not acceptable. The same applies in the Solent, for sailors, whether they are in the Solent accidentally or deliberately. We need to clean this up.

I also note that I know the Government are somewhat victims of their own success. It is great being lectured by the Opposition, but this groundbreaking Bill is being brought in by the Government side, and we should all be supporting it.

I have two questions for the Minister, who was kind enough to say that she would take them. First, the Government have power to push the water firms to go further, faster. Will she be willing, and will the Secretary of State next to her be willing, to use that power to ensure that the water firms understand the urgency of this situation for our waterways and our beaches?

Secondly, and if I understand it rightly, can the Minister confirm that ecologically sensitive sites and amenity sites, as which the Isle of Wight’s beaches both qualify, will be given priority? I am writing to the water firms about that this evening, but anything the Minister could do to clear that up and to ensure that those amenity and ecologically sensitive sites are prioritised would be very welcome.

Leaving the EU: Integrated Foreign Policy

Debate between Bob Seely and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 30th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Seely]

Thank you for that point, Chair.

A series of major powers will sit alongside the two superpowers: Brazil, Indonesia, economic powerhouses such as Germany and Japan, and former superpowers such as Britain and France. Britain is not a superpower and has not been since the 1950s, but it remains a great power—perhaps the foremost great power. Talk of the UK as medium-sized and middle-ranking is pointlessly deprecating and contributes little to the debate.

What is the state of the world? Conventional wars are generally in decline, and much of humanity enjoys more enriched lives than ever before.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Gentleman has brought a very important issue to Westminster Hall for the half-hour debate. Does he agree that it is important for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to be a member of NATO and to play its part in that excellent organisation when it comes to foreign policy that collectively joins us together to have a global influence?

[Mr Seely]

It is critical. One of the points that I would like to touch on in the debate is the importance of the UK’s engaging multilaterally through not only, hopefully, a leading role in NATO, but a re-energised role in the United Nations. If I have time, I would like to ask the Minister about that.

What is the state of the world? Conventional war is in decline, but the world is becoming a more challenging place. There are new forms of integrated conflict and competition being developed by rivals. The international rules-based system set up since world war two has not broken down, but it is under threat and is being bent in several different directions.

A global Britain implies the use of something that perhaps we have not had enough of in this country—strategy, which is the reconciling of ends, ways and means. For the UK to be better able to achieve its ends, it has to marshal its means and ways—its resources, and how it uses them in the most effective way possible. Hence the need for integration across Government Departments, in a strategy that includes all overseas Government Departments and perhaps sometimes domestic Departments, too.

Russia and China do not have foreign policies that we should copy, but they show the worth of integrating power. Does Britain have what the great 20th-century strategist Basil Liddell Hart would call a “grand strategy”—the combination of the great tools of state power? I would argue that we do not yet have that—the Minister might disagree—but we are working towards it. We do not have it yet because, apart from anything else, although Sir Simon McDonald, the permanent under-secretary at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, pledged to the Foreign Affairs Committee to produce “something” in early 2019, I am not aware that the work has yet been produced. What has happened to the report that was promised to the Foreign Affairs Committee?

The tools of national power and influence exist on a spectrum, ranging from hard power through to soft power. As I have argued, they should not be seen in isolation from each other. British state power sometimes becomes less than the sum of its parts because our overseas engagement has come to be divided between so many competing Departments.

I will now make a point with which some colleagues may disagree. For me, there is no reason why we should not look closely at the Australian and Canadian models, whereby overseas aid and trade Departments are integrated as agencies within the Foreign Office.