Caroline Flint
Main Page: Caroline Flint (Labour - Don Valley)
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that the achievements of the previous administration and cross-party support for the Climate Change Act 2008 underpin the attractiveness of the UK to green investment; notes this Government’s promise to be the greenest Government ever; regrets that under the present Government investment in clean energy, particularly wind power, has declined and the UK has fallen to thirteenth in the world for investment in green growth; further regrets the delays to the Green Investment Bank, the lack of clarity over financing of the Green Deal, the uncertainty surrounding funding for carbon capture and storage, the chaotic mismanagement of the cuts to the feed-in tariff for solar power, and the undermining of zero-carbon homes; further believes that the effect of these policy failures, mixed signals from the Government and open hostility from Government backbench Members to action to cut carbon emissions have exacerbated investor uncertainty, hit small and medium-sized businesses, and reduced the UK’s ability to attract, retain and increase investment; rejects the idea that the transition to a low-carbon economy is a burden and believes it has the potential to be a major source of jobs and growth for the UK; and calls on the Government to bring forward an active industrial strategy for low-carbon growth by providing a stable policy framework to unlock private investment, improving public procurement, developing a low-carbon skills strategy, rebalancing the economy to support growth in the regions and encourage manufacturing, and engaging communities in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment and welcome him to his new position for our first exchange at the Dispatch Box. We would have met sooner, but he chose not to come to the House to defend his Department’s shambolic mismanagement of cuts to the feed-in tariff for solar power, which, according to the Government’s own estimate, will see at least 5,000 people lose their jobs this year. The right hon. Gentleman was missing from the Commons because he was opening the world’s biggest offshore wind farm in Walney, Cumbria, where he said:
“Britain has a lot to be proud of”.
Indeed we do. The North West Evening Mail reported in 2008, under the previous Labour Government, that permission had been granted at Walney,
“helping to give the UK the highest operating offshore wind capacity in the world.”
The legacy of Labour’s active support for renewable energy is taking shape and we share his pride in the foresight of the previous Labour Government.
Nearly 1 million people already work in environmental industries in the UK, with the potential to create 400,000 more jobs. We are concerned that Britain is being left in the doldrums, however. We must get on board or risk missing out on growth, job creation and a revival of Britain’s manufacturing sector. Today, we have an economy without growth, inflation still at 3.6%, unemployment at a 16-year high, borrowing that will be higher every year for the next five years and a Government who are strangling growth and destroying jobs. Where other countries see a market that is already worth more than £3 trillion and opportunities for new industries, new skills, new supply chains and—yes—new energy sources, the Government just see burdens for business and blots on the landscape.
Under Labour, Britain was open for green business. When we left office, the UK was ranked third in the world for investment in green business, investment in alternative energy and clean technology reached £7 billion, energy generated from new renewable sources doubled, the UK’s global lead in offshore wind had been achieved and the Climate Change Act 2008 had been a world first with cross-party support. Even the Prime Minister did his best in opposition to detoxify his party’s brand and establish new green credentials. Who could forget the photo of the Prime Minister hugging a husky—or was it a hoodie? It was probably both, as there was a lot of hugging going on in those days. Who could forget the fanfare that greeted the wind turbine installed on the Prime Minister’s roof—only to be taken down later—or the Prime Minister’s much-heralded pledge that his would be the “greenest Government ever”? Where did it all go wrong?
The Secretary of State is new to his post, but he should know that on this Government’s watch the UK has fallen from third in the world for investment in low-carbon businesses to 13th, behind China, Germany, the United States, Italy, Brazil, Canada, Spain, France, India, Japan and Australia. On his first day, the Secretary of State declared that there would be
“no change in direction or ambition”
but unless our ambition is to fall even further, a change is exactly what we need.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
The right hon. Lady waxes lyrical about the importance of a low-carbon economy, but is it not the case that under the previous Labour Government, emissions barely changed at all and were rising when her party left office? Does not the fact that there are so few Labour Members in the Chamber today show how little commitment her party has to this issue?
Caroline Flint
I am very proud that we not only met our Kyoto target on reducing carbon emissions but exceeded it. I am also proud that we set in train a number of initiatives that the coalition Government have in some ways had the sense to follow. It is a good thing that this country got agreement on our targets for reducing carbon emissions because business investors say it is important for them to know that there is coherence in countries’ party political structures on this matter. It is a shame that the legacy that has made this country a favoured one for investment is now moving away—partly because of the mixed messages coming from Government Front Benchers. For example, what the Secretary of State has to say might be in conflict with what others say and might not tally with what the Chancellor of the Exchequer says at his party conferences or elsewhere.
Caroline Flint
Let me make a little more progress. We know that businesses will not invest, build factories or create jobs until the Government end the dithering, stop shifting the goalposts and get behind the industries of the future.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
On that very point, would my right hon. Friend be interested to know that literally dozens of people in and around Swansea are losing their jobs as a result of the withdrawal of the feed-in tariff? What is more, Tata Steel has just announced an opportunity for people to go home, not work at all and be paid half-pay, simply because of this ridiculous unilateral carbon pricing. On both sides—heavy industry and green energy—uncertainty is leading to less investment and to lay-offs; it is disgusting.
Caroline Flint
As I have said, the Government have confirmed that, based on their own estimates, 5,000 people in the solar industry alone will lose their jobs this year, including constituents in my hon. Friend’s constituency. Last week, business after business lined up to say that billions of pounds-worth of future investment is now on hold because there are serious question marks over the Government’s commitment to wind power. We are on the cusp of a new industrial revolution that is shaking up the old world order. We have to be leaders, not followers, in this revolution. It is about creating a new economy that is cleaner, leaner and more competitive and that provides the energy we need. We all know that the longer we delay action, the costlier it will become to mitigate and adapt to climate change, and the economic opportunities will slip through our fingers.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
Does the right hon. Lady agree that the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is setting an excellent example? He set up the London green fund, from which he has committed £50 million towards the London energy efficiency fund, some 86 buildings have already been refitted and greened and there are another 297 public buildings in the pipeline. All that is going to create about 700 new jobs.
Caroline Flint
Of course, the Mayor is also pushing up the price of public transport, which means that more people might get into their cars. However, there is room for discussion regarding one point that the hon. Lady made. Labour and Conservative local authorities up and down the country have been looking at ways of helping their citizens, particularly those in social housing. That is why it is a crying shame that so many local authorities of all political persuasions have had to cancel or put on the back burner plans to use solar power in their social homes and community buildings; 100,000 social homes are losing out because of this Government’s decisions on solar power.
Caroline Flint
I will give way again shortly.
Whatever one thinks of the British weather, we are not short of wind. Apparently, we are the windiest country in Europe, and we should be a world leader on wind energy, onshore and off, but last year there was a 40% fall in the amount of new wind capacity being brought online, with only one offshore wind farm being completed.
Where we sought to support offshore wind manufacturing by establishing a £60 million fund to attract investment, nearly two years—two years!—after the Government promised to support the scheme, and only after a string of critical press reports, just one project has been awarded funding. Some 98% of that budget, which Labour initiated, remains unspent. As the Select Committee noted in its report, the UK has the best marine energy resource in Europe. It has the potential to supply 20% of current electricity demand and create 10,000 jobs by the end of this decade, but this Government’s decision to close the £50 million marine renewables deployment fund and replace it with a £20 million innovation fund dented confidence and undermined certainty in the business community.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
I have listened carefully to the right hon. Lady’s catalogue of achievements by the previous Government in this area, but can she explain why, given all that, in the last year of the previous Government, we were 25th out of 27 in the EU for use of renewable energy? Furthermore, in 2010, that decreased, which is extraordinary.
Caroline Flint
We doubled renewable energy generation under the Labour Government. We established Britain as a world leader in offshore wind capacity. I think I am right in saying that we were at the top of the league in investment. Was there more to be done? Undoubtedly, but the record that we left is being harmed significantly on a daily basis by the actions of this Government.
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend may be aware that I switched on 30 offshore turbines at North Hoyle off the coast of my constituency about eight or nine years ago. Those were the exact same turbines that the current Prime Minister referred to as “giant bird blenders”. What does she think of the Conservatives’ attitude to offshore wind?
Caroline Flint
Of course, the Conservative attitude to wind, offshore or onshore, has been represented by 101 Conservative MPs who wrote to their Prime Minister complaining about our attempts as a country to utilise that resource that is at our disposal. Unfortunately, the Chancellor of the Exchequer believes that we should not pursue the potential of this new energy revolution faster than Europe—we should go back to the slow lane. In the 1980s wind developers decided that there was insufficient support from the Government of the time—we all know which party that was—and they went elsewhere. That is why Denmark became the world leader in this area and we missed an opportunity.
As a result of those decisions in the 1980s, we have been playing catch-up ever since. We must not destroy the foundations laid in the past five years or so by not making the right decisions now and playing to those who do not understand that the future is a new form of energy and a new way of empowering our citizens to control prices and at the same time have cleaner energy.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
It is entirely the case that not everything done by the Labour Government in this area was ineffective or poor, and I pay tribute to the things that they did. The one thing that they did not wake up to until the very last months of the Labour Administration was the need to do much more for renewable energy. Does the right hon. Lady accept that the figures when Labour left office show that of all the 27 EU countries, the UK was at the top for the amount that it still needed to do in percentage terms to reach its 2020 target of 15%? The UK had 12.8% yet to go, compared with all the other countries, which had made a much more significant change during the period of our Labour Administration.
Caroline Flint
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in acknowledging that the Labour Government achieved a number of important milestones in renewable energy, and showed leadership worldwide in setting climate change targets and targets for the reduction of carbon emissions that were and continue to be challenging. However, I do not accept the woeful description of what we did in government. We doubled renewable energy generation and established Britain as a world leader in offshore wind capacity and in the prototype development of wave and tidal technology, but our achievements are now under threat. As a result of this Government’s mixed messages and failing policies, investment in green growth in the UK is falling. For instance, investment in wind energy fell by 40% in the first year they were in power.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I suggest to my right hon. Friend that for many years there was a consensus across the House that there was no need to invest in renewables because we were self-sufficient in gas and oil. The fact is that no one would have invested when we had such riches off our own shores. We all took time to learn the lessons, but when we did we moved very fast indeed.
Caroline Flint
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for her contribution to that effort. We have to be realistic about the fact that the strategies in this area have been affected by different forms of complacency over many decades on what we could rely on and what was certain in our changing world. Also, importantly, even if we could rely on certain energy sources for a period of time, that would not help us do what we need to do: reduce our carbon emissions. That is why some of the comments from Government Members are so worrying. They could lead people into false arguments about how relying on new ways to access different forms of fossil fuels is somehow the answer. Those sorts of messages are very difficult for investors to understand, because they do not project a sense of moving forward and seem to reflect a view held by some Government Members that, rather than a transition away from fossil fuels, there will be an opportunity around the corner that will allow us to go back to relying on them. We cannot accept that. That is why the Opposition decided to allocate some of our time to debate this and why we will continue to talk about it in future to ensure that we stay on track, because we believe that this opportunity cannot be missed.
Caroline Flint
I will make some progress before giving way again.
In government, we set up a system of feed-in tariffs to support solar and other forms of microgeneration. Within 18 months the solar industry had grown from 3,000 employees in 450 businesses to 25,000 people in nearly 4,000 businesses. Our vision was shared by many other countries; Germany installed half the world’s solar panels and supported 250,000 jobs and Australia could boast at Durban about the completion of 1 million homes with solar PV. What can this Government boast about? Cutting off an industry at its knees put hundreds of businesses at risk, destroyed thousands of jobs—5,000 according to the Government’s own estimate—increased the import of Chinese solar panels and denied millions of households the chance of a little more control over their energy bills. I will not dwell on the catastrophic series of events that have left us where we are. Suffice it to say, even the Energy and Climate Change Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), has stated that
“the damage to both investor confidence and to some consumers could have been avoided.”
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I am listening carefully to the right hon. Lady’s speech—there are a number of Government Members who are. Is she seriously suggesting that she left a feed-in tariffs regime that was fit for purpose and that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), did not have to salvage it from the car crash he found when he took office?
Caroline Flint
Well, it took the Government 18 months to give six weeks’ notice to the industry, but the truth is that Labour always said that this scheme and others that support fledgling sectors need to be reviewed and that prices will change and come down, but not in the way the Secretary of State and his predecessor indicated. It caused mayhem in the system and has left other business investors in green technologies questioning whether they should dip their toe in the water. The fact is that the Minister is now offering pie-in-the-sky predictions of the UK overtaking Germany in solar capacity by 2020. He needs to get real. Just how can he cut support for solar power by 70% in six months and still expect to overtake Germany by the end of the decade?
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
I most certainly have not said that. Would the right hon. Lady care to tell me when I said it and what her source is?
Caroline Flint
When we last discussed the issue, on an urgent question, the hon. Gentleman suggested that we were aiming for something like 22 GW of solar power by 2020, but then again we cannot always take what he says—
Caroline Flint
No, I will not—[Hon. Members: “Ah!”] When I am in the middle of answering one intervention, I think that I should be allowed to complete it before I take another one. I know that the hon. Gentleman gets very excited on these occasions, and that it makes his hair even curlier than it is already, but the truth, I understand, is that today he has already had to revise down some of his statements about the cost of solar. So, again, we will go back and look at the issue, but I am happy to write to him with chapter and verse on some of the things that he has said over the past six months which have been changed on many occasions.
Gregory Barker
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right: I did say that our ambition is now 22 GW of solar energy by 2020. But if she was on top of her brief she would know that there is already 28 GW of installed solar in Germany, so would she like to apologise and retract her statement?
Caroline Flint
If the hon. Gentleman’s ambition is not to be as good as Germany, that is one thing, but one thing is for sure: his efforts over the past six months have certainly not put us in a position to get anywhere near Germany’s aspirations. I should be very interested to see the detailed plan of how he expects us to reach 22 GW, given what he has done to the solar industry in just a short space of time.
Caroline Flint
No, I am going to make a little more progress, if I may.
The future is not just in new sources of energy, but in adapting and transforming existing energy generation. We all know that with carbon capture and storage we are on the verge of developing a hugely valuable and exportable technology, but we know also that that opportunity will not last for ever, and the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) knows that other countries are seeking to develop that technology and that demonstration projects in Canada and Australia are already under way.
I know that the Government have announced a new competition in this sector, but I hope that they take the opportunity to bear down on the projects that we know and understand, because, with a new competition and 20 other projects sitting on a shelf somewhere, we must decide quickly which proposals known to us have the best prospects of success. There is a lot riding on the scheme, as the Minister knows, in this country and in terms of European support, so we all want to begin to develop the technology without further delay.
We know also that new nuclear power stations will need to be built over the next decade. Nuclear is important to us, and Labour understands that. It provides one seventh of the world’s electricity and one third of the European Union’s, and if we do not invest we will only import more French nuclear electricity. With 63 new nuclear power stations under construction worldwide, we have to make sure that we learn in real time the lessons of those overseas projects in order to ensure that the next generation of nuclear power in this country is delivered as efficiently as possible and maximises job opportunities for people in the UK.
Personally, I have found it quite helpful to talk to the people involved in those projects in order to understand what we can learn, and to take some of the risk out of delivering our own capacity more efficiently.
Ben Gummer
The right hon. Lady has spoken much about the previous Government’s record. They had six energy White Papers, of which only the last mentioned nuclear power in any substantive capacity at all, yet she has the front to come to the House and tell Government Members that we should think about nuclear power, when under this Government permission will be granted for new nuclear power stations.
Caroline Flint
I was trying to be helpful in terms of where we are. When we left government, we recognised that we did need to build more nuclear power stations. I am not sure whether all the Conservative party’s coalition partners necessarily accept that. I think that they have an opt-out from any vote on the issue on the Floor of the House.
Caroline Flint
That is correct, I hear from the right hon. Gentleman.
Labour is clear that nuclear has to be part of energy provision. I am merely saying, in a constructive way, that we know from projects overseas that often such projects—63 are under way worldwide—are not delivered on time and come in over budget. We must ensure that not only our civil servants but our industrial partners are seeing what lessons can be learned to avoid our repeating some of the risks that have delayed projects elsewhere. I think that it is helpful to offer that to the debate and to assure the Government of our support for developing energy in this field as part of the diverse mix that we need.
Caroline Flint
I will make a little more progress.
In government, we recognised that at a time when public money is in short supply, a green investment bank could leverage in private investment. That is extremely important to our ambitions for the next level of energy generation that we want our country to achieve. In his autumn statement, the Chancellor boasted that he had funded the first ever green investment bank. Now, however, the Government are set to borrow a staggering £158 billion more than they planned a year ago, and the green investment bank will not have full borrowing powers until 2016 at the earliest. The Government’s claim that the green investment bank is part of a strategy for growth looks somewhat thin—like the rest of the strategy—if it is able to deliver any real investment only at the tail end of this decade.
The green deal is yet another example of a policy that we set in train in government but now appears to be headed for a car crash. Originally, the Government claimed that the scheme would create up to 100,000 insulation jobs by 2015, reaching 14 million homes by 2020 and 26 million homes by 2030. Now, sadly, the jobs forecast has been downgraded by nearly half. Transform UK believes that the green deal will reach only a fifth of the number of households that the Government expect, while the number of those in fuel poverty could reach 9 million by 2016. We still have no detail on the interest rates that will be charged, which is significant for whether anybody will be willing to take up the green deal.
As well as having a coherent strategy to improve the energy efficiency of our existing housing stock, we need new homes to be built to the highest standards. The Government could have ensured that a new gold standard was created with the code for sustainable homes, which I launched as Housing Minister, but they have fudged and watered down the commitment on zero-carbon homes. We should add to that reports that the Government, in the form of the Secretary of State for Education, are planning to undermine the green building code for schools. That worries me because, yet again, the Government’s role in stimulating new building methods and making new markets appears to be overcome by short-termism and lack of vision.
We need an active industrial strategy to bring about the energy industrial revolution. First, to unlock the £200 billion of private investment, we need clear signals and clear intent from the Government, unsullied by the voice of the Chancellor of the Exchequer playing to the gallery at the Tory party conference. Secondly, we need better procurement to ensure that public money is spent in a way that supports the low-carbon economy. Housing benefit is one example of that. In our manifesto, we said that we would consider regulating parts of the private rented sector because of the way it acted, which we felt was inappropriate to its tenants and not a shining example of the best that we could expect in that part of the housing market. Unfortunately, however, the Government have set their face against any regulation of the private rented sector, even though housing benefit is paid towards 40% of private rented tenancies and homes in the private rented sector are the least energy-efficient. I have suggested that we use housing benefit to drive up energy efficiency standards in the private rented sector. That would also create a supply chain for installers delivering the products and small businesses manufacturing them, and it could save tenants as much as £488 a year on their energy bills.
The third part of an active industrial strategy is skills. New industries cannot survive with an ageing work force. I am sure that Ministers are as aware as I am of some of the problems in different parts of the energy sector, including nuclear, in this regard. We hope that the modernisation of our energy infrastructure will happen in the next decade. The people who will do that are already in our education system, and we have to make sure that they are prepared for the future in terms of our energy security.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend makes an important point about the skills that will be necessary for the future. In Hull, where we are hoping to become a renewables hub, we are well aware of the need to take such skills into account in education. Does she think that Ministers in the Department for Education have fully understood the need for their involvement in promoting the skills that we will require?
Caroline Flint
The extent to which Departments are joined up in the endeavour of realising the potential for new energy industries and jobs worries me tremendously. There are opportunities not only in providing cleaner energy, but in manufacturing the infrastructure to make it happen. I have mentioned the contradictions between the Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. I am not convinced that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is on board with everything that DECC wants to do. It is also worrying to hear that the Secretary of State for Education is downgrading the efficiency standards for new school buildings. This is one way in which we can use the muscle of Government procurement to make a difference without spending any more money. There are hundreds of ways in which that can be done.
We need a skills strategy. It is not only the school buildings that are important, but what is taught in our schools and how that links with industry. We must reach young people. However, we must not forget the work force in the existing fossil fuel industries. How can their skills be refreshed and transferred to the new industries as they come online? There must be hope for our young people, but there must also be hope for those in work that even if there are changes in their jobs, new jobs will be available for them and their families.
Fourthly, the Government must help to rebalance our economy. This, too, relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). Britain’s industrial heartlands—places such as the Humber, the north-east and Cumbria—have the business-cluster potential, the skills, the production, the ports and the energy to forge these new industries. We do not want to be a country that just installs products from overseas; we want to manufacture them. In the 1980s, small wind power developers drifted away from the UK due to a lack of support. Britain’s loss was Denmark’s gain and we have been playing catch-up ever since. Of the £1.2 billion cost of constructing the Walney wind farm, 40% went on turbines and parts that were not made in Britain. We have to do more to develop our supply chain and to support manufacturing in this country, rather than in Germany, Denmark and, increasingly, China.
Marine energy is still a nascent technology, but the potential is there. It would be unforgivable if we lost out on the economic benefits in the way that we did with wind energy in the ’80s. DECC and BIS must work together to be market makers and to build confidence in the British supply chain so that overseas energy companies know that there are British manufacturers who can do the job. At the very least, I would like to know, as a member of the public, what proportion of the steel used to produce turbines and other energy infrastructure is made in the UK.
Finally, the Government must empower the public in energy efficiency, and ensure that the public and communities become energy producers as well as consumers. The green deal must be delivered on fair terms to those people. In the Budget, the Government could cut VAT on home improvements, including those that increase energy efficiency, to 5% to give our economy the boost that it needs and to give power to people and communities.
The UK is not short of the capital skills or technology that are needed to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Dame Joan Ruddock
My right hon. Friend, in her excellent speech, has described the Government’s catalogue of disasters in the area of green jobs and growth. Is it any wonder that Friends of the Earth said in its report that it found little or no progress in three quarters of the 77 green policies of this Government that it examined? That is the reality of what this country is facing.
Caroline Flint
That is the reality. That saddens me because the foundations had been laid for a journey on which I believed there was cross-party consensus, which Labour worked hard to achieve in this House. It worries me that we have a Government who are short of a coherent political vision. As a result, we are in danger of missing a golden opportunity, not just to reboot our economy, but to build a more resilient and responsible economy for the future, built on not just sustained but sustainable growth.
If we fail to grasp this opportunity, it will be the public who pay the price through jobs and growth going overseas and through higher energy bills, as we become ever more reliant on volatile fossil fuel prices. UK plc needs an active industrial strategy focused on growth, skilled job creation and a revival of Britain’s manufacturing sector, which can be both clean and green.
Caroline Flint
I will not give way to the right hon. Gentleman, because he was not here for the start of the debate.
Today, we can send out a clear message that a new industrial revolution is upon us and that Britain is determined to lead it. I commend the motion to the House.
The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey)
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) for securing the debate, as it gives me the opportunity to come to the House for the first time as Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. I thank her for her welcome at the start of her remarks. I look forward to our debates, and I hope that despite some of the remarks at the end of her speech, we can have a constructive dialogue that shows the country and the world that there is significant consensus in the UK about the urgent need to tackle climate change. In that way, we can both attract the investment that is needed and continue to lead the international debate that it is crucial to keep winning.
I wish to take this first parliamentary opportunity to reaffirm the coalition’s commitment to being the greenest Government ever. My predecessor had a fantastic record of delivering policies that will protect the environment and consumers while making our energy infrastructure competitive.
Much of what the right hon. Lady said about our record was simply unrecognisable and unrelated to the facts. I was also disappointed to see no mention of consumers or bill payers in the Opposition’s motion. Under the previous Government, the link between energy and climate change and end users was often overlooked, and the link between the economy and our efforts to tackle climate change was not nearly strong enough. The coalition, on the other hand, has been successful in recognising that within our economic priority to foster growth, create jobs and make Britain competitive, we must pay heed to our obligation to tackle climate change while at the same time empowering and supporting consumers.
I want to make it absolutely clear that the energy bills of consumers and businesses will be a priority in my thinking. At the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, I was the Minister responsible for consumer affairs, and I am worried about the impact of high bills on consumers. In a consumer empowerment strategy that I published last April, I talked about empowering consumers through collective purchase and collective switching. One would have thought that the Labour party would have been concerned about those matters in its 13 years in government, but it was not. I say to the right hon. Lady that in our work, including since I have taken office, we are pushing collective purchasing and collective switching, which will empower consumers, make energy markets more competitive and get a better deal for consumers.
Caroline Flint
Have not the Opposition held two debates about energy prices? One was during the energy summit, and unfortunately the Secretary of State’s predecessor did not take the opportunity to talk about collective switching. The Labour party supports collective switching, but also reforming the energy market to make the energy generators put their energy into a pool and open it up to being sold in a transparent way. Will he support us on that?
Mr Davey
I am very grateful when the Labour party raises the matter of energy bills, because my constituents are concerned about their bills. The problem is that the Labour party did not do anything about the matter when it was in government. We are pushing collective switching, which Labour had 13 years to do. Some countries in continental Europe have been experimenting with the idea, but I am afraid her party did nothing.
Mr Davey
I shall make progress and take interventions later.
Since coming to office, the Government have already seen significant new investment in clean energy. Our policies have stimulated new growth, supported new jobs and delivered new capacity. The UK is becoming more attractive to investors. Billions of pounds are being poured into our low-carbon economy, and more and more clean energy is coming on stream. The average annual growth in our low-carbon and environmental goods and services sector is estimated at more than 5% right through to the end of this Parliament, and low-carbon goods and services account for 8.2% of the UK’s GDP—a higher proportion than in Germany.
Since last April, companies have announced plans for £3.8 billion of investment in the UK renewable energy industry, and £600 million has been invested in onshore wind alone. A recent report by Ernst and Young showed that the UK is now the fifth most attractive place to invest in renewable energy—up from sixth last year—and we remain the most attractive place in the world for investment in offshore wind. The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) was telling me that 95% of offshore wind installations occurred off our shores last year.
Caroline Flint
On the Ernst and Young report, is it not the case that the attractiveness of investment in the UK has only returned to the position it was in November 2010? Is not the truth that, since the right hon. Gentleman became a member of the Government, we have gone from third to 13th place worldwide in terms of actual investment in renewables in the UK?
Mr Davey
I think that the right hon. Lady is quoting from the Pew report, but those data were provisional. According to the new data recorded by Bloomberg, investment is twice as much. I am afraid that she needs to do her homework before she comes to the House.
Unlike the right hon. Lady, we have made good progress on the green investment bank. The recruitment of the bank’s chair and senior independent director is under way. [Hon. Members: “Where’s the progress?”] The right hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) need to calm down. If they do, they will hear that 32 bids were submitted to host the bank, which suggests an awful lot of interest and attraction. Those bids have come from right across the country. It is because of such interest that we have allowed extra time to ensure that we make the right decision on the location of the bank. Right hon. and hon. Members seeking to have the bank in their constituency ought to give credit to the Government for taking their representations seriously.