Oral Answers to Questions

Caroline Flint Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Gregory Barker]

It is slightly misleading to talk about 7 million lofts with inadequate loft insulation. They may not have the full amount of insulation, but the amount that they lack varies significantly.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

So it is inadequate.

[Gregory Barker]

So it is inadequate. We now need to move on, not just to simple measures such as loft insulation, but to a much broader holistic approach to home insulation—whole house retrofits. They are more complex and more expensive, but they also cannot be done just with subsidy. The Labour party has to make a choice. Do Labour Members want to force up consumer bills giving ever more subsidy to a small number of people, or do they want to work with us to create a genuine new market where people are incentivised to pay for themselves?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davey]

The fourth carbon budget review is under way. I will not prejudge that, and the hon. Lady should not expect me to do so. I will say that this Government are leading the international climate change debate in Europe. The 2030 energy and climate change targets, which will be discussed at the European Council in March, are critical in tackling climate change. She will know that we have to work internationally to do that. This Government and the UK have been leading that debate.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

May I congratulate the Secretary of State and his wife, Emily, on the birth of their daughter? I commend him for taking paternity leave, although I know only too well that he will never have been far from the duties of his office.

The Secretary of State has criticised his Conservative coalition partners for undermining the consensus on climate change. Given that the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said that people should

“just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries”

and that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) said that he has

“not had time to get into the…climate change debate”,

will the Secretary of State tell us whether it was them that he had in mind? Are his comments not a bit rich, given that he voted against setting a decarbonisation target?

[Mr Davey]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her warm comments about the birth of our daughter. May I report to the House that mother and baby are doing well? It is nice to come back to Parliament for a rest.

When I made those comments, I was not talking about my ministerial colleagues; I was talking about some voices on the Conservative Benches, particularly in the other place, who question the science of climate change, and I think that is very unhelpful. The right hon. Lady talks about a decarbonisation target, but it was this Government who brought forward legislation on a decarbonisation target. The Labour party did not have one in its manifesto and neither did the Green party. We took the policy forward and it is in the Energy Act 2013.

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[Mr Davey]

It would be wrong of me to anticipate what the annual competition assessment will conclude. We provided evidence for that, which was the right thing to do, but it is for that independent competition authority to decide what the problem is—that is why we have asked it to do it. It is doing detailed work, and when it has analysed the problem, it will decide what remedies are required.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State asserted in answer to an oral question on 16 January that Labour’s proposals to introduce a ring fence between generation and supply would cause “real problems” and push up prices. The Procedure Committee has ruled that the Secretary of State should provide me with evidence for that claim by 26 February, which was yesterday. Can he tell me today what the evidence says and whether he will publish it?

[Mr Davey]

First, the annual competition assessment will, of course, look at that issue in detail. As the right hon. Lady will know if she has read the details of Ofgem’s wholesale market reforms, for example, there is a lot of work to suggest that it is not at all clear that vertical integration is bad for consumers; it may be in some cases, but it will not be in others. The theory behind this is pretty clear: vertical integration was adopted so that people could hedge the risks between generation and supply. That can lower the cost of capital and lower prices for consumers.

[Caroline Flint]

The Secretary of State has asserted his own view in the House and in the media before Ofgem has even made its assessment, so I think my question stands. Even Government Members think that the Secretary of State is wrong. The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) wrote on “ConservativeHome” on 18 February that if companies had separate licences for generation and supply, as Labour has proposed, it would

“shine a light in some of the murky areas”

of the energy market. Apart from some of the big six, can the Secretary of State name a single organisation that opposes a ring fence, and will he confirm that he is ruling out the introduction of a ring fence while he is Secretary of State?

[Mr Davey]

No, I will not do that for the simple reason that we have asked the independent competition authorities to look at the evidence. Unlike the right hon. Lady, I am not prejudging the outcome of independent competition regulators. We provide the evidence and we allow independent authorities to make judgments on that. It is quite odd that the Labour party is now turning its back on independent competition authorities.