Caroline Lucas
Main Page: Caroline Lucas (Green Party - Brighton, Pavilion)
Caroline Flint
Absolutely. Just as the railways were so important in the 19th century and just as super-highways will be so important, so clean energy is important. It is an energy industrial revolution that we should embrace. I am very pleased to pay tribute to my hon. Friend as well as to my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) for the work that they have done to support the project. The Welsh Assembly and, I should say, the former Member for Swansea East, Siân James, deserve massive credit, as do local councillors who have fought hard for it.
I would, however, tell the Secretary of State in relation to yesterday’s announcement that more steps need to be taken to take us closer to the clean energy and green jobs that we will need. I urge her to have a look at whether the civil servants working with the company can get a bit of a shift on and get some of the documentation into the Commission as soon as possible so that it can start to check it out for state aid. With such projects, to get shovels in the ground—or whatever they will use in the bay—people need to know the timescale so that they do not miss it because of the weather and the seasons. I urge the Department to help make that work happen sooner rather than later.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I welcome this debate. I was delighted to notice earlier today that nine Labour Members of the European Parliament joined the Greens in voting for a Europe-wide moratorium on fracking. Will the right hon. Lady reconsider her and her party’s position on fracking given the importance of what she has just said—that what we do at home sends a really strong signal about the seriousness with which we treat leaving fossil fuels in the ground?
Caroline Flint
As the hon. Lady will know, we have been very clear—we made it very clear at the tail end of the last Parliament—that no fracking should take place unless the safeguards that we set out in amendments in Parliament are in place to allow it to go ahead. She knows as well as I do that 80% of our heating comes from gas, so we have to think about where gas fits into the picture, but fracking has to be done safely. She will also know that I think we should have a review of the possibilities for green gas, because all the evidence shows that that could be a major contributing factor in making sure that we can still heat our homes as we come off fossil fuel gas.
More steps need to be taken to bring us closer to realising clean energy and green jobs, but with yesterday’s announcement the Government are sending out some damaging mixed messages. The Queen’s Speech reiterated their commitment to fighting climate change, but also followed through on their plans to make it more difficult to build onshore wind projects. No one is saying that we should not be sensitive to the best places to put onshore wind farms, but let us be serious: that is not what is going on. As we saw in the last Parliament, we have a Government searching for ways to placate their Back Benchers. The moves currently being briefed out to end the renewables obligation a year early show that the Tories are bad for green business. Investors have been spending money in good faith under an agreed framework. There are nearly 1,000 projects with planning permission. I would like the Secretary of State to clarify whether those 1,000 projects will be affected by the statements we have heard since the general election.
That damages investment not just in onshore wind but in other technologies—it damages confidence that the Government will not withdraw support from them or move the goalposts. Onshore wind is currently the cheapest type of clean energy. The Government’s actions mean that it may cost consumers more in the long term. The truth is onshore wind could be cheaper than new gas generation by 2020.