Energy (oil and gas) profits levy

Debate between Chris Grayling and Stephen Crabb

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, you would never imagine from listening to Labour Members that we had just been through the biggest public health emergency in a century, the biggest European war for three quarters of a century and the biggest energy crisis since the 1970s. That is not a light task for any Government to deal with. Yes, of course, as the Prime Minister said, some mistakes were made in the handling of things back in September, but the reality is that this is a challenge facing Governments across the western world. Despite all the rhetoric that I hear from the Labour party, there is much in this country to feel that we can benefit from—it is not universally a bad news story. None the less, like other countries across the western world, we face enormous challenges in turning things round.

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse) about the need to drive growth. He was absolutely right to look back over the discussions of recent years about inflation and whether it had gone away. A simple lesson of economics is that the moment somebody says that something will never come back is the moment we need to start worrying that it will come straight back. Inflation is here and we have to deal with it. It has been driven by a huge increase in energy costs, the destabilisation caused by the war in Ukraine, the collapse in global supply chains in the wake of the pandemic and the continued lockdowns in China, which have created real issues for businesses here and internationally.

I want to focus on three things. One of them is very much a UK problem, which we have to deal with as a matter of urgency: the number of people who have left our labour force in the past few years. This country is much more seriously affected than other nations. We have to get to grips with the problem. The explanations for it are multifarious—it is not simply about long covid or backlogs in the NHS—but if we do not solve it, it will be a continuing issue.

I call on Conservative Front Benchers to look back at what we did in 2010. As the Labour party has conveniently forgotten, we inherited unemployment at nearly 3 million and rising, and real difficulties in our labour market. The programmes we put in place made a real difference to the long-term unemployed and to people who were sick, off work and claiming employment and support allowance: they helped them, step by step, back into the labour market. Over the years, they made a real difference to the situation that the long-term unemployed in this country face.

The reality is that the longer someone is out of the workplace, the more difficult it is to get back in. People need support and guidance. I was very encouraged by what the Chancellor said about increasing Access to Work coaching, but we need to go much further. We need to learn from what was done in the Work programme and other programmes and look at how we can put support back in place for the long-term unemployed. If we do not do something about it, they will become further and further away from the workforce.

[Stephen Crabb]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point. Does he agree that one of the most worrying aspects of the trend that he highlights is the increase in younger people being signed off as long-term sick, often with mental health issues? They are not being treated effectively by our NHS and are not getting effective employment support either, so they are at the greatest risk of spending the rest of their life cut off from the labour market.

[Chris Grayling]

Absolutely—that is a crucial issue. We need to start working with those people to help them back into a workplace environment. They are better off there: if people are out of work, they tend to have poorer health, live less long and have mental health problems. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right.

We must now put back some of the conditionality that, for understandable reasons, was taken away during the pandemic. There cannot be an expectation that people will simply stay on out-of-work benefits indefinitely. Our welfare state should be a ladder up which people climb, not a place in which people live.

My second point is about energy. There is no doubt that we have to do more to drive energy independence in this country. I have listened to Labour and SNP Members: they seem to think it is better for this country to ship gas all around the world in great tankers, with much higher emissions as a result, than to generate it from the sources available in this country. We need UK gas and we should develop it. The tax measures that have been put in place to encourage investment in the North sea are the right thing to do.

It cannot just be about fossil fuels, however. It is also right to develop nuclear. I completely disagree with the SNP on the issue: renewables are an essential part of our future, but the reality is that the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine. We need a core capacity to generate electricity in this country, and nuclear will be a crucial part of that. We also need to drive more progress on the renewables front. The most obvious missing piece is to ask why we do not have an obligation in this country, as a matter of rule, to put solar panels on the roofs of new houses and commercial buildings. I say to Government Front Benchers that that should be central to our policy. I have supported it for a long time, and I know other Conservative Members support it. We really need to get on with it.

Thirdly, a project that commands support on both sides of the House and that must drive future growth is the expansion of Heathrow airport. When we voted on it in this House four years ago, it had a majority of nearly 300. There was support from Labour and from the SNP—not the party, but individual Members. There was support from Northern Ireland, from Wales and from across England. It is a project that would lead to better regional connectivity, helping the levelling-up agenda, and would strengthen our trade ties around the world. It is essential. It is a project that has somewhat lost its way because of the pandemic’s impact on aviation, and there are clearly issues to address around aviation emissions, but this is not a project that will happen overnight. It will take a decade to bring to fruition, and by the time we get into the 2030s we will have short-haul planes coming on to the market that will be driven by new generation fuels such as hydrogen and sustainable aviation fuel.

We cannot simply say to future generations, “We are going to can this project. We are not going invest in our main gateway to the world; we are going to leave this to one side.” Those on the Labour Benches, the Northern Irish and Scottish Benches and the Conservative Benches all voted for it, and there is a duty on all of us to throw our political weight behind the project to get it back on the agenda and moving forwards. We need to take a symbolic step that would send a message to the world that this country is focused on growth. I say again to those on my Front Bench: please bring the Heathrow expansion project firmly back on to the Government’s agenda. This country needs it. We have needed to take difficult decisions. It has been essential in the short term to take decisions that are going to be difficult and unpopular, but now we have to focus. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor is absolutely right about the Budget in the spring. We need to focus on getting the economy growing again.