Solar Power (Feed-in Tariff)
Debate between Caroline Flint and Bob Russell
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House believes that solar power gives families, community organisations and businesses greater control over their energy bills and will help the UK meet its renewable energy targets and reduce carbon emissions; notes that since the creation of the feed-in tariffs scheme under the last administration, introduced with cross-party support, nearly 90,000 solar installations have been completed in the UK and the number of people employed in the solar industry has increased from 3,000 to 25,000; believes that the Government’s cuts to feed-in tariffs go too far, too fast, will hit jobs and growth in the solar industry, undermine confidence in the Green Deal and deter investment in the wider green economy; regrets that the cuts to feed-in tariffs were announced with just six weeks’ notice and come into force before the consultation has even finished; further regrets that the Government’s plans would exclude nearly nine out of ten households from installing solar power under the feed-in tariffs scheme, will disproportionately hit social housing and community projects, and could affect thousands of households which have already installed solar power; and calls on the Government urgently to withdraw the 12 December 2011 deadline and bring forward more measured proposals that guarantee the continued growth of the solar industry, put feed-in tariffs on a sustainable footing and are fair to the public.
Exactly a year ago today, in a speech to the Micropower Council, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), lauded the feed-in tariff scheme. He said:
“The coalition is absolutely committed to FITs…I have been really encouraged by the positive response that the FITs scheme has received since its introduction in April and hope this will continue. It’s still early days but early indications show that the scheme is working well”.
Well, they say a week is a long time in politics, but a year is obviously an eternity. However, at least the Minister is not on his own today, and we are glad to see the Secretary of State in his place. We all remember his famous energy summit, which went so well he decided to do a disappearing act. When his Department announced these cuts to feed-in tariffs, first, it tried to sneak them out in a written statement. Then, when I secured an urgent question, he sent his junior Minister to take the flack instead. Anyone would think he was trying to avoid me, or perhaps the Secretary of State is just very good at not getting caught at the crime scene. Either way, his fingerprints are all over this one.
Although talk of feed-in tariffs might sound technical, their impact could not be more real. Some 25,000 jobs are on the line. Thousands of businesses are at risk and tens of thousands of people who have already installed solar could still lose out. Millions more have been excluded from having solar under the Government’s new rules and have been denied the chance to control their energy bills. That is all because we have a Government who are out of touch, cutting too far and too fast, with no plans for jobs and growth.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Caroline Flint and Bob Russell
Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
This money has been recycled many times over. At the Conservative party conference in October 2008, the Secretary of State promised:
“Under a Conservative Government, the weekly bin collection will be back.”
Since the election, eight Tory councils, including in the Prime Minister’s own constituency, have abandoned weekly bin collections, and the Secretary of State has been forced into a humiliating U-turn. Why can he not deliver on his promises?
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend suggests, from a sedentary position, that that was rubbish, and I cannot disagree with him. We are looking at delivering weekly collections and a financial incentive for providing them, but we had to start from the basis of dealing with the legacy—we had first to remove the Audit Commission and the instructions in the waste and resources action programme suggesting that it was best to close these things down after local elections, and we had to ensure that the fortnightly collections, which the right hon. Lady advocated so strongly when she was Minister for Housing, were also stopped.
Amendment of the Law
Debate between Caroline Flint and Bob Russell(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)
I begin by saying that the violence of a handful of anarchists and attention seekers at the weekend was an absolute disgrace, and I hope that prosecutions will follow. However, I have to add that none of their yobbish and illegal behaviour could detract from the biggest demonstration of British feeling for eight years. People wanted to tell the Government that their cuts are going too far and too fast, and that their lack of plans for jobs and growth just make the pain worse.
Caroline Flint
I will shortly, but I want to make a little progress.
What the Secretary of State’s rhetoric today has revealed is that the Government have no plans for jobs or growth and no plans for the future. If he wants to talk about the economy that they inherited, let me tell him a thing or two about the legacy that we left. They inherited an economy in which growth had returned, inflation was low, unemployment was falling and borrowing was lower than forecast. I am proud to say that Labour increased funding for local authorities, built or refurbished 4,000 schools and 100 new hospitals and left the nation’s public housing stock in better shape than it had been in during our lifetime. If the Secretary of State got out of his office a little more often, he would see that Britain’s major towns and cities had been substantially regenerated.
Even when the worst recession in our lifetime was visited upon our country, bringing half the banks in the UK and Europe to their knees, we still had fewer repossessions, fewer business collapses and a lower rise in unemployment than during the Tory recession of the 1990s. Today we have an economy that is not growing at all and in which inflation is up to 4.4%, unemployment is at a 17-year high and borrowing will be higher this year, next year and in every year for the next five.
Bob Russell
I am glad that my intervention was delayed, because I had not recognised the utopia that the right hon. Lady has just described. Does she accept that the last Government had any responsibility for the financial situation that the UK is now in?
Caroline Flint
We were part of a global crisis that affected countries around Europe and the world, but it is interesting that before the international crisis hit, we had the second lowest debt of any G7 country. We had brought overall public sector net borrowing down, and the now Prime Minister and Chancellor committed themselves to Labour’s spending plans. In 13 years, we created 1.1 million enterprises, and in the past two years, which included our last year in government, the World Bank ranked the UK fourth in the world and first among European countries for the ease of doing business.
Housing Benefit
Debate between Caroline Flint and Bob Russell(14 years ago)
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Caroline Flint
I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will come to that.
Those colleagues—I call them colleagues because the substance of their speeches suggest that they may join us in the Lobby tonight—may be interested to know that the Minister for Housing referred to the Hull city council leader, Carl Minns, who is a Liberal Democrat, as a “motormouth” when he raised concerns about the impact of some of the Government’s policies on people in Hull. Lord Shipley, a former leader of Newcastle city council, said that the private rented sector had been a “cornerstone” in stopping the use of bed and breakfast in Newcastle and that he did
“not wish to return to the days when we did…My concern is that the local housing allowance changes may restrict access to private rented accommodation and therefore limit the capacity of councils generally to resolve future housing need.”
Those thoughts echo many of the comments that have been made.
It is a shame that not one Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government is on the Benches at the end of these proceedings. Clearly, the Minister for Housing does not believe that it is worth while sitting alongside his colleagues from the Department for Work and Pensions to consider how to address reform of housing benefit and housing supply, which many of my hon. Friends and a few hon. Members raised. That is a great shame.
We are not opposed to reform. My right hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire South (Mr Alexander) made that very clear. We are not against caps in the housing benefit system, as long as they do not make people homeless or cost us more in the long run. We do not have an objection to asking younger single adults on housing benefit to live in a shared house or flat, but we must be sure that there is enough supply to accommodate everyone, and to recognise that some single people may have particular needs that require them to be accommodated in a different way. We will look at how non-dependant deductions can be made, provided they do not result in people suddenly finding themselves unable to live in their homes with an elderly relative, for example. We are willing to consider some temporary changes to the uprating of benefits so long as that does not permanently break the link between the rent that people pay and the help that they receive.
We also believe that cutting the local housing allowance to the 30th percentile will have a huge impact, which is not to be desired. About 700,000 of the poorest people, in work and out of work, will be on average at least £9 a week worse off. We recognise the need for reform but, as in other areas, such reform should be staged over a number of years and be more limited.
Bob Russell
During the 13 years of the previous Labour Government, I put forward various proposals to them in more than 50 parliamentary questions. Does the right hon. Lady accept that, had the Government in which she served listened to and acted on those proposals, we would not be in this situation now?