Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Charles Hendry Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) on a very fine speech, and I also congratulate everyone who has made a maiden speech today. It was a real pleasure to be in my place, especially to hear the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). I always believed that his father would one day look down on us all—I just did not think that it would happen this quickly.

I was concerned when the Secretary of State opened this debate by talking about consensus. I have been involved in the energy industry for almost 40 years, and if we had had some consensus over those decades we might not be in the mess we are in today. How can we have consensus when the Secretary of State opposes nuclear power, and his party is cautious—to put it mildly—on the use of coal? The Liberal Democrats in my area are completely anti-coal, no matter where it comes from or how it is burnt. Some of the partners in the new coalition are climate change deniers, so confusion is more likely than consensus.

Confusion is the last thing that we need in this debate, because we have had far too much delay already—and I blame the previous Government as much as the current one. My Government, in their 13 years, did not do as much as they should have done. In particular, they did not wake up quickly enough to energy security issues and the use of coal, especially coal from the United Kingdom. However, they did wake up to those issues more quickly than the Government before them, who spent 10 years decimating the coal industry in this country, which is an issue not just in the interests of security of supply, but because we were leading the world in clean coal technology. When we closed the coal mines in the 1980s and early 1990s, that clean coal technology went down the drain along with access to some of the most impressive coal reserves to be found anywhere in the world.

The Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change spent the last year and a half going through some of the many issues, and making good progress with little partisanship. However, we must face up to certain problems. For example, there is a huge skills gap across the energy sector, partly as a result of the privatisation of the industry in 1990s, with companies focusing on shareholder profits and driving costs down, not on investing in training and skills. Another question is where the finance will come from. It is estimated that we need £200 billion in 10 years if we are to meet the challenge facing us. If we compare that with the fact that in the past 20 years £100 billion was spent on upgrading the water system, we can see the scale of the challenge.

We have an opportunity to have the most integrated energy system anywhere in the world, with wind, tidal, nuclear, coal and gas—as long as it continues—and we must get to grips with that as a matter of urgency. We must also recognise that the national grid is not fit for purpose. I notice that the coalition’s document talks about building an offshore grid, and I welcome that, but we also need to put right the problems with the onshore grid. We have a regulator that, by its own admission, is not fit for purpose. Thankfully, it began to realise, with its report “Project Discovery” last year, that it was not doing the business—something that we have all known for a long time—and we need to make it do the business.

I intervened on my right hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State to make a point that I have raised several times already and will continue to raise—that this country is importing coal from countries where miners are being killed in their thousands every year. China kills six and Ukraine seven miners for every million tonnes of coal it produces. It is a scandal. If it was young, Asian kids stitching leather footballs, we would refuse to let the produce enter the country, but because it is energy, we close our eyes.

I want to raise another matter with the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change: the increase in fatalities and injuries in the UK. Over the past 10 years, as the number of mines and miners has decreased, major injuries have almost trebled and fatalities have risen fourfold. I hope to take that matter forward with the new Secretary of State and energy Ministers.

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

I would be pleased to receive a delegation from the hon. Gentleman and others similarly concerned about those issues. I take them very seriously indeed, and I will be keen to address them at the earliest possible opportunity.

[Mr Anderson]

I appreciate that. I realise, from the work that the Minister and I did together on the Energy and Climate Change Committee, the genuineness of that offer, and I will certainly pursue it with him, interested colleagues and people in the mining industry.

In the past five years, there has been a huge step change in the north-east in relation to the opportunities and potential for finding a way forward in an economic way using the new green jobs. We have seen the potential of carbon capture and storage, and along with the university of Newcastle upon Tyne we are developing the potential of underground coal gasification to access some of the billions of tonnes of coal that still lie under the North sea. We hope to build wind turbines on the bank of the River Tyne, using the Narec facility in Blyth, which is developing cutting-edge wind turbine technology. The Secretary of State mentioned the development of electric cars by Nissan, and in my constituency, we are developing the infrastructure to charge those cars.

The reality, however, is that all that is being held together by one organisation—the regional development agency—and when we from the north-east say, “Do not do away with the RDA,” we do not say so because we like quangos or because we want to see civil servants kept in jobs; we say it because the RDA works. It has worked in the development of a low-carbon economy, and it is working in trying to make sense of what has happened at Corus. We believe that, if the RDA is removed, it will have a major impact on the economic development of our constituencies and our part of the country. I urge the Secretary of State to argue with the Treasury that the RDA in the north-east is a special case.

In preparing for this discussion, I looked back to the Queen’s Speech in 1979, because, from the commitments in the Conservative party manifesto, it seems that what it suggests is the way forward for the country now is similar to what was suggested in 1979. That Queen’s Speech read:

“My Government will give priority in economic policy…through the pursuit of firm monetary and fiscal policies.…and increase competition by providing offers of sale, including opportunities for employees to participate where appropriate… Members of the House of Commons will be given an opportunity to discuss and amend their procedures, particularly as they relate to their scrutiny of the work of Government… Legislation will be introduced to promote greater efficiency in local government… My Ministers will work to improve the use of resources in the National Health Service and…facilitate the wider use of primary care… Measures will be introduced to…control…immigration… My Ministers will take steps to…reform…the general law.”—[Official Report, 15 May 1979; Vol. 967, c. 48-51.]

There is nothing unusual there. It is what I would expect from a Conservative party trying to get back into power after 13 years in the shadows. However, I did not expect it to be supported in its attempts, unfortunately, by the Liberal Democrats, but it has been. The latter have signed up to a Thatcherite agenda: cuts to welfare; attacks on the public sector; attacks on workers’ terms and conditions; unemployment used as a tool of public policy; attacks on democracy; and attacks on political party funding. We have, indeed, gone back to the future. And what else? There is good news for the bosses: corporation tax cuts; national insurance for employers stopped, but national insurance for employees increased; and a review of the pension age, so that those who have worked all their lives will have to work even longer—it does not matter that they might have started work at 15, because in the near future, they will have to continue until they are 66.

Then there is “freeing up schools”—again, a matter of ideological dogma, with the terms and conditions of teachers and other classroom workers to be put out to the highest bidder—and the privatisation of Royal Mail, with the pensions, pay and jobs in the Royal Mail to be put at risk. Then there is political reform. I was surprised during the election campaign—although I probably should not have been—to hear the Liberal Democrats talking about the link between the trade unions and the labour movement as corrupt. That is an absolute slur on one of the biggest democratic organisations in this country.

The people in Blaydon had a clear choice in the 2010 election, and 7,000 of them made that clear choice when they voted for a gentleman called Glenn Hall, a man who stood firm and true in his beliefs, which were those of the Conservative party. Some 7,000 of my constituents said, “We’ll vote for that,” whereas 61,000 said, “No, we do not want that,” 13,000 of them saying, “We support the Liberal Democrats.” However, they did not support the Liberal Democrats to put the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr Cameron) into No. 10 Downing street. Unfortunately, Members on the Liberal Democrat Benches have let those 13,000 people down, because they have let the Conservatives back in with an agenda that takes us back to where we were 30 years ago, and we are going to end up in the same situation.

The people who voted for the Liberal Democrats in the north-east of England are now seeing the reality of what the Liberal Democrats have done and the mistakes that they have made. People such as me and other Members will ensure that they continue to see those mistakes. The excuse of the Liberal Democrats is: “It’s all about Greece.” Well, there is only one thing that the Liberal Democrats in this House have shown in connection with Greece—and that is that they want to climb the greasy pole.