Cost of Living Crisis: Wales
Debate between Caroline Nokes and Geraint Davies(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)
Order. I gently remind the Member that this is a debate about the cost of living in Wales, not transport.
Geraint Davies
I know that, yes. It is not the Welsh Government’s decision: we do not have the money to do that, and it is not devolved. The Exchequer runs UK plc; we all know that. We do not charge the windfall tax. The Welsh Government are not in a position to introduce a windfall tax or nationalise the oil companies, sadly, although they have done something about rail.
Geraint Davies
I am not talking about raising taxes; I am talking about taking back the money that has been stolen from the travelling public by oil companies. They did nothing to earn that money: it was simply that Putin invaded Ukraine, and they said, “We’ll put the price up, take the money and fill our pockets.” The Government belatedly took a small share of that money, and now they are going to give 90% of it back to drill for more oil, when what they should be doing is investing in scaling up things like organic batteries. Swansea University has identified that the renewable energy from wind farms is only put into the grid at breakfast time and teatime, and is saying, “Let’s use that wind, create hydrogen, and put that hydrogen in the gas grid”—which takes up to 40% of hydrogen, as used to be the case for coal gas. That would reduce the carbon footprint.
Geraint Davies
It is permissible on a Wales-only basis, and that is what Swansea University suggests we do. Obviously, we would have to work in co-operation with the UK Government to do that, but the idea would be to put that gas into the grid, or put the hydrogen into cylinders and send it to Ceredigion in place of the oil, so that people in rural environments would have a lower carbon footprint and a lower energy bill.
Whether it is those innovations or whether it is the tidal lagoon, there is no shortage of ideas; what there is a shortage of is Government focus on greening the economy and powering us up in a sustainable way. Instead, they just go to their mates—the oil barons—who say, “You’ve had to do this windfall tax. Give us 90% back to drill for more oil and destroy the environment.” Look at the temperature outside! It is absolutely disgraceful. The Government would not even help us with the tidal lagoon. That is not going to stop, is it? Of course, they said, “We are not helping.” That does not make any sense, even though it will go on for 100 years. The council and the Welsh Government have had to deal with it on their own.
We need a Government who care about people and stopping them starving. People may have heard of Professor Amartya Sen, a Nobel prize-winning economist who had the joy of teaching me on one occasion. He wrote “Poverty and Famines”, and found that famines were not a function of food shortages, but a function of high prices, low wages and some food logistics. He was not writing about the UK at the time, but that is precisely what we are now finding in the UK. We see pockets of starvation. We should stop that. The Government are empowered to stop it and they should, whether by indexing social security and universal credit, increasing rent, investing in green technologies, or stopping obeying everything the oil barons say. I will leave it there.
Geraint Davies
The Minister’s basic proposition is that this cost of living crisis is some sort of global issue. Will he accept that the issue is about the level of underlying resilience before these global shocks occur? If the rate of growth under the Labour party had continued thereafter, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the average wage would be something like £13,000 better, so we would be in a much better place to take the shocks. Instead, we are impoverished by the Minister’s party.
Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)
Order. I remind hon. Members and the Minister that they should stick to the question.