British Glass Industry
Conor McGinn Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
I am delighted to have secured this important debate on the British glass industry and I thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and Mr Speaker for facilitating it. Glass is synonymous with St Helens, the town I represent. I am also very pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist) here—she may represent a constituency in the north-east, but she is a St Helens lass through and through, born and bred.
Glass made here in Britain is renowned across the globe and much of our daily lives depends on products that use it. From energy-efficient glazing in our windows to optical technologies that make internet communication and barcode scanning possible, this ever-evolving, innovating industry has—past and present—truly been a catalyst for progress in this country.
We should make no mistake: glass in Britain is giant. With 3.5 million tonnes of glass melted a year, the industry contributes some £1.3 billion to our economy annually. The industry employs 6,000 people directly and supports around 150,000 additional jobs—many located in my region of the north-west—across a diverse, dynamic supply chain. It remains a world leader, with UK manufacturers at the cutting edge of global efforts to develop sustainable glass for use in fields as wide as medicine, navigation, energy and power generation. I will use my remarks to celebrate some of the successes and to highlight, on the industry’s behalf, some of the urgent challenges that it faces.
The rise of glass as a powerhouse is a rich story and one that St Helens and the north of England is fiercely proud to be at the heart of. In 1773, the British Cast Plate Glass Company was established at Ravenhead. In 1826, the St Helens Crown Glass Company was founded by the Pilkington and Greenall families and, in 1845, its name was changed to Pilkington Brothers. Fondly known as Pilks, it remains a byword for excellence and innovation to this day. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Ms Rimmer), on whose behalf I am also speaking, worked for many years at Pilks and feels, like so many families in our town, a very special affinity for and connection to it.
In this country, 2022 marks a milestone year for glass. For one, it is the UN International Year of Glass—a celebration of the essential role of glass in society around the world. Along with other hon. Members, Ministers and industry representatives, I was very proud to celebrate that occasion at a special reception here in Parliament at the end of March. I know that more is planned with the Government and with us in Parliament before the end of the year.
This year also marks the 70th anniversary of the revolutionary float glass process, pioneered by Sir Alastair Pilkington. The method quickly became the worldwide staple for manufacturing high-quality flat glass and remains one of the most important post-war innovations not just in Britain, but globally. If any Member would like to know more about glass, its history and its role in Britain, they can visit the excellent World of Glass in St Helens. We have plans, too, for the historic Cannington Shaw No.7 bottle shop—a place of history for our town and the whole country, which is right at the forefront of what we are doing on regeneration.
The glass industry in Britain today is using that spirit of innovation—that rich heritage and history—to adapt to and shape the modern world and to address the challenges that we face as a country and planet, many of which we heard about in the previous debate. Nowhere is that clearer than in the industry’s imperative to reach net zero carbon emissions. As a product, glass will be critical to the national effort on that, whether we are talking about double or triple glazing for household insulation; glass for use in our solar products; or continuous filament glass fibres used in wind turbine blades and in lightweighting vehicles.
As an industry, too, glass is leading the way, supported by the industry body British Glass, to which I pay tribute for its work, and underpinned by its own ambitious net zero strategy, which was released just a year ago. That work is building on the industry’s recent success in reducing combustion and process emissions and in improving efficiency. Over the past 40 years, the energy efficiency of glass furnaces has increased by 50% and firms have significantly invested in technology to increase efficiency and reduce carbon emissions. Recycling has also been key: each time 1 tonne of glass is recycled, about 580 kg of carbon dioxide is saved through the chain.
Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. On recycling glass, does he agree that the deposit return schemes that are being planned could be problematic for the glass industry if we have such schemes in Wales and Scotland, say, but not in Northern Ireland and England? Does he think that could be a problem for the industry?
Conor McGinn
My hon. Friend demonstrates the unity of purpose and message discipline on the Opposition Benches, because she anticipates the very point that I was just coming to. In 2020, 76% of container glass was recycled, and the industry has set an ambitious target of a 90% glass collection rate by 2030. To help those efforts, British Glass has called for glass bottles to be excluded from the scope of the UK’s deposit return scheme, which my hon. Friend alluded to, and to be collected instead through an improved system of extended producer responsibility.
Independent evidence has shown that kerbside collections are the most effective route to achieving closed-loop bottle-to-bottle recycling in the UK. The sector was pleased by the recent decision to exclude glass from the upcoming England scheme, but the industry remains concerned about the prospect of multiple diverging schemes across the UK, which would increase complexity, cost and confusion for the public and businesses alike. I wonder whether the Minister might address that point and say what work the Government are doing, alongside regional and devolved authorities, to address those concerns.
The challenge of ensuring that glass making can be built on high-value and sustainable zero-carbon products requires new solutions that fuse elements of research, design, collaboration, innovation and partnership between industry, academic life and political leaders. Not for the first time, we in St Helens are leading the way. A beacon for that is the cutting-edge project that we are working on with Glass Futures, Liverpool city region and our partners in industry to deliver a £54 million centre of excellence, in the heart of the town and our borough, for the sustainable manufacture of glass globally.
Having turned the first sod on that project in February, we are already making huge progress on delivering the 165,000 square foot state-of-the art facility, which will be capable of producing up to 30 tonnes of glass a day and will include the world’s first ever openly accessible multi-disciplinary glass-melting factory. It will give researchers and industry leaders from across the world a unique space to collaborate and experiment with different energy sources, including electricity, biofuels and hydrogen, raw materials and other emerging technologies to demonstrate solutions leading to sustainable energy usage in glass making.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. I spoke to him beforehand, Mr Deputy Speaker.
At a time when prices are soaring across the world for deliveries, containers and the movement of products, it is good to hear that St Helens is doing so well. Does the hon. Gentleman feel that now is the time to emphasise the best of British produce and manufacturing? For that to happen, the Government—perhaps particularly the Minister, who is always amenable to such ideas—should be funding the relocation of factories and firms back to our shores, as he refers to. That would give local people jobs and give consumers what they want, which is superior British goods.
Conor McGinn
I entirely agree. When the Labour party is in government, we are committed to putting at the heart of everything we do the idea that we make, we buy and we sell British. That is hugely important to our economy, not just at a national level and not just for asserting our new place in the world, but for bringing jobs to cities, towns and villages across the whole United Kingdom. I know that that is a sentiment that the hon. Gentleman very much shares.
We are very proud that these ambitious efforts locally put St Helens and the Liverpool city region front and centre at the recent COP26 summit in Glasgow, where we showcased the product not only for its environmental benefits but its social and economic ones. The boost that this will bring to St Helens and our wider region is clear, with, initially, 80 new permanent jobs, over 700 apprenticeship hours, and 100 volunteer hours committed to local green projects. In addition, 50% of project spend will be local, alluding to the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and 50% of those working on it will come from our city region. So we are thinking globally and acting locally, benefiting our area and its economy, and the environment.
Our efforts do not stop there because, in August last year, working alongside HyNet North West, we carried out a world-first trial with hydrogen on Pilkington’s famous float line that demonstrated that hydrogen, and other low and no-carbon fuels, could be used to fire a float glass furnace safely and effectively. The industry is ambitious to blaze a trail towards the future and those are just a couple of examples of how it is successfully cutting that path.
However, there are some urgent challenges in the present that risk putting the brakes on that and need to be addressed if the British glass industry is to continue to thrive. First, as the Minister will not be surprised to hear, the issue of spiralling energy costs is of significant concern. Like all other energy-intensive sectors, glass manufacturers have seen energy prices skyrocket at an alarming pace, experiencing gas and electricity costs as high as quadruple and triple their usual amount respectively, with prices remaining volatile. Energy already accounts for about a third of overall glass manufacturing costs, and in some cases production costs are now exceeding the price of goods themselves. Put simply, this is not sustainable and the risk to the financial viability of the sector is grave.
Yet little support has been made available by the Government to help firms crying out for short-term assistance, with, for example, the decision not to include flat or container glass in updated eligibility criteria for the compensation scheme to deal with indirect carbon costs. British Glass, on behalf of the whole industry, has written to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy for clarity on that decision, as the assessment was based on data from 2016 to 2018, which represents a time before significant changes to imports. British Glass believes that the container sector should also be eligible. I ask the Minister to address that—if not today, then to come back to me on it and to look into the response that the Department has given to the industry. The industry is also awaiting the publication of the renewables exemption scheme consultation, which has been delayed. That is hugely important to the glass sector, which believes that increasing the relief from 85% to 100% would help to reduce electricity prices.
Secondly, energy security and supply, in and of itself, is critical. Glass production remains energy intensive and always will. Glass furnaces must fire continuously to make product in order, essentially, for the industry to survive. Indeed, with the UK’s furnace asset value estimated at in excess of £1.4 billion, closures would be devastating for the industry and wider society. Due to the shortage of refractories and workers, it could take over two years to rebuild a furnace if it lost gas supply. Labour Members have called for a £600 million contingency fund that would boost energy-intensive firms in glass, but also steel, manufacturing and other industries at the same time. I urge the Government to look at this again, as they did with our plans for a windfall tax to help domestic customers with energy costs. In the absence of any forthcoming policies of their own, we are always happy to provide some for them to take. Glass manufacturers need to be protected from shortages in fuel, and the industry has called on the Government to help to ensure this, especially over the coming winter, which is predicted to be a real crunch point. The industry strongly encourages the publication of the National Grid’s “Winter Outlook” without delay to help with preparations.
Finally, there is the challenge of competitiveness. The glass industry is recognised as being at risk of carbon leakage, which means that imposing full UK carbon costs could make manufacturing in the UK globally uncompetitive. We already have higher allowance prices than the European Union, for example. I ask the Government to look into that, and to ensure that the industry is able to remain competitive.
Past and present, glass has always been ingrained in the very fabric of our country. It is part of what makes Britain great, especially in proud communities such as mine in St Helens, where it remains a source of—indeed, a catalyst for—jobs, opportunities and economic growth. It is a symbol of this country’s manufacturing excellence and our rich past, and it remains part of the change and progress that we want to see Britain achieving. That is evident in the way in which this ever-evolving industry is using technology to address the defining issues—for instance, the climate emergency—faced by us as a society, and indeed by the world as a whole. We need concerted support from the Government to tackle the huge challenges that the industry faces, while taking the opportunities that are available.
St Helens glass is the best in Britain. British glass is the best in the world. Let us keep it that way, and let us shout it from the rooftops.
The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)
I am grateful to the hon. Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) for securing the debate and for outlining so comprehensively the importance of glass to the UK. I welcome the opportunity to address the priorities and challenges faced by the UK glass sector, and to explain what the Government have done, and will do in the future, to support it. As the Energy Minister, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Department recognises the value of glass manufacturers, and takes their concerns very seriously.
In his excellent speech, the hon. Gentleman pointed out that British-made glass is renowned around the world. I always love a good bit of history, and he took us back to 1773 and the foundation of the British glass industry—indeed, probably the world glass industry—at Ravenhead. Glass has of course been around for centuries, but that was when it was turned into an industry. The hon. Gentleman told us about the 3.5 million tonnes that are produced each year and the 6,000 people employed directly in the industry, but he also talked about the much wider impact of the sector. As a former Exports Minister and a former Investment Minister, I know that it is industries of this kind that will enable global Britain to compete on the world stage and will continue to attract foreign direct investment, which plays such an important role in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Let me now deal with a few of the points that the hon. Gentleman raised. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs leads on glass recycling and direct deposit schemes, but I will pass his comments on. DEFRA has undertaken extensive engagement with the glass sector, and will do so in the future. I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree that the Government want to make recycling as easy and efficient as possible, but we need to ensure that that does not include any perverse incentives, or any element that is likely to damage some of our key industries.
The subject of energy-intensive industries will constitute the main part of my response, but I was pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman report that energy efficiency is up 50% in glass furnaces. That is an encouraging sign as we move towards net zero. Obviously some industries will be harder to decarbonise than others, but it is good to hear that glass has made significant progress in that regard.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned HyNet North West. I was delighted to visit some of the participants in the HyNet North West carbon capture, utilisation and storage cluster last autumn. I circled near the hon. Gentleman’s constituency: I was in Runcorn and Warrington. We are moving forward with HyNet in a very good place.
Conor McGinn
It was remiss of me not to invite the Minister to St Helens, and I apologise for my rudeness. He should not be afraid to visit us, and perhaps he will visit Glass Futures before the project is completed or come when we open it.
Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation
Conor McGinn Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
What a pleasure it is to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Tonia Antoniazzi).
There is much to say about the Budget—unfortunately, very little of it good. It fails on every count to address the fundamental weaknesses and unfairness in our economy and offers no coherent plan to rebuild our country, invest in our communities and allow our citizens to prosper. That is felt acutely in my community by my friends, neighbours and constituents, who faced huge challenges before the pandemic. When I talk about health, educational, social and economic inequalities in St Helens North, I am not talking about a place on a map or about statistics; I am talking about our people and their lives. We know privilege grants to its inheritors a head start—that has always been the way—but should it not be the job of Government to help the rest of us catch up? Why then does it feel as though communities such as mine are not only starting behind, but deliberately being hampered?
In the next two years, the Government are forcing cuts to our local health and social care services of more than £6 million and to our children and young people’s services of almost £8 million. This is happening in a borough where people die younger, leave school with fewer qualifications, are poorer and have worse health. That is not levelling up—it is doubling down. But we are used to it, and, despite it, the past year has shown again what a resilient, caring, innovative and determined community we are. We are ambitious too, for our families and our future.
Sometimes we are even optimistic. Our Labour-run council, under the leadership of David Baines, and alongside partners in business and in the community, has already started to deliver on ambitious plans to quite simply make St Helens borough the best place to live, work and visit in the north-west of England. We do not want the Government to do it for us; we know they cannot, but they can help us to do it for ourselves. We want to do it for ourselves, which is why we needed this Budget to give us a fighting chance to succeed and why it is so frustrating and disappointing that all it has done is give us an even harder race to run.
Future of Coal in the UK
Conor McGinn Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson). I congratulate the hon. Member for North West Durham (Mr Holden) not just on securing the debate but on the work he does for coal and coalfield communities. I am delighted to speak in the debate as chair of the all-party parliamentary group for the coalfield communities.
It is clear that the role of coal in providing our energy in Britain has changed dramatically over the last number of decades. While it has rightly been said that coal usage is necessary in areas such as the steel industry, with coking coal for blast furnaces, coal-fired power stations now account for only 2% of our power. The country now faces the dual challenges of an escalating jobs crisis and the climate emergency, but there is an opportunity for the UK to show decisive leadership and renew its commitment to continuing to diversify energy sources, particularly as we come to next year’s United Nations climate change summit, COP26, which will be vital for driving a global movement towards cleaner fuels and industries.
The Government have announced that the remaining coal power stations will cease operations in the UK by 2025. If that is the case, we need to ensure a just transition for the sector’s workers and ensure that no community or region is ever left behind again in terms of accessing the skills and opportunities needed to thrive in clean industries. We also need to do more to end the billions of pounds in funding given to fossil fuels abroad, which damages our international credibility and makes no sense when we could produce some of them here.
There is a clear way to achieve that. Labour has called for a bold and ambitious green recovery for our country, proudly building the drivers of it right here in Britain, creating hundreds of thousands of jobs, boosting industries, making use of our rich industrial heritage and, in turn, fostering a better quality of life for our constituents. We are living through an age of industrial and economic transition and, as we rightly tackle the challenges, we must not repeat the mistakes that caused such devastation to communities like mine in St Helens and right across the north of England in the 1980s. The legacy of that is not just in economic and societal deprivation but in the illnesses that still scar our people today. Their continuing fight to access rightful support, fair pensions and compensation for former mineworkers and their families has been further compounded by the covid-19 pandemic. I pay tribute to the National Union of Mineworkers for its continuing work on that and draw the Government’s attention to issues around recording deaths during the pandemic to ensure that covid-19 does not mask existing conditions and prevent families of deceased miners receiving the compensation and recognition to which they are entitled.
The history of coal will always be entwined in this country’s industrial tapestry and remains an integral part of the identity of communities like mine in St Helens North, where the pits in Billinge, Parr, Rainford and Haydock helped fire the heavy industries of the UK. As the industry contracted in the second half of the 20th century, Parkside colliery in Newton-le-Willows in my constituency was the last pit in east Lancashire to close.
The report “The State of the Coalfields” last year presented a comprehensive evidence base on the need for ongoing Government intervention in our communities, based on the scale of the challenges that remain. It illustrated, shockingly, that if coalfield communities were a region in their own right—we make up around 5.7 million people—we would be the most deprived region in the UK. We know that life chances across the UK in relation to education, jobs, health and income have all been hit hard over the past decade, but in coalfield areas that has been amplified.
There is a historic debt to coalfield communities for the contribution and the sacrifices they made for the national economy, but also to compensate for the failure to support their post-industrial transition. We have rich histories, but also huge potential. We are proud of our past and ambitious about our future. I believe we can flourish again.
Oral Answers to Questions
Conor McGinn Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Nadhim Zahawi
I am very pleased to hear that the London Electric Vehicle Company had record sales in September. I spoke to the CEO recently and was very impressed with their capability. I understand their sales have grown month on month since April. They have capacity to produce 20,000 vehicles a year and his message to this House when I spoke to him was, “Let’s get Brexit done.”
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
Some London boroughs have hundreds of electric vehicle charging points while whole towns in the north have none, but given the lack of public transport options in places such as St Helens, would it not be economically and environmentally better to invest in places such as mine to get people out of their cars?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise this issue. Our grant scheme and the £400 million charging infrastructure investment fund will see thousands more electric vehicle charging points installed across the whole UK.
Oral Answers to Questions
Conor McGinn Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
Consumers can sign up to long-term financial commitments for broadband, television and mobile phone services by clicking a few buttons online, but to cancel those services they have to fill out arduous forms, make numerous phone calls or even write to the companies involved. Will the Secretary of State look at that anomaly, to ensure fairness, and to provide the same mechanism for getting and stopping?
Budget Resolutions
Conor McGinn Excerpts(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
After eight years of austerity, people in St Helens are today, more than ever, feeling the effects of the swingeing cuts to our schools, our police, our NHS and our local government services. I am afraid to say that nothing announced in this Budget by the Chancellor can undo the impact that those cuts have had on our community and families right across the borough that I represent.
St Helens Council will have lost 71% of its central Government funding by 2020—the equivalent of over £500 for every man, woman and child in our borough. It is just short of two years’ worth of the entire social care budget at a time when almost 5,000 adults in the borough are in need of long-term care and almost 2,000 vulnerable children are in care or need some form of long-term protection. Meanwhile, the number of residents over the age of 90 is set to triple in the next 20 years and the number of those with dementia is set to increase by almost 60% in the next decade.
Unbelievably, the Chancellor said that he was announcing a “funding bonus” for schools to help with the “little extras”. Does he think that teachers and books are “little extras”? Those are what local schools tell me they cannot afford. There have been funding reductions of nearly £400 per pupil in my constituency, equivalent to over 200 teaching posts gone. This Friday, I am attending an emergency meeting at an outstanding primary school to see how we are going to address its deficit of £90,000 this year and £200,000 next year. Listening to those on the Government Benches, it seems that pupils, parents and teachers should be grateful for the £10,000 for the “little extras”.
Although I welcome the Government’s new found interest in renewing our high streets, I will be seeking clarity about how much of that is new money, and how much will be allocated to towns like St Helens and Newton-le-Willows. There must also be clarity from the Government about who is going to pay—it should be Whitehall, not the town hall.
Over the past eight years, the Government have taken billions of pounds from our public services and from the pockets of working people. St Helens and places like it have been disproportionately burdened with those cuts and a reduction in wages and living standards. If the Budget means that even the smallest fraction of some of the money taken is being returned, the Government can rest assured that I will be holding them to account and fighting to make sure that my community gets its fair share.
It is a tough time. There is a lot of uncertainty around Brexit: funding from the European Union has driven regeneration in some of the most deprived communities in Merseyside, but now we face the prospect of north-west economic growth slowing by 12%. In any scenario, my community will be poorer. I want to be clear: I did not come into politics to do anything that would make my constituents poorer, and I am not going to do it now. I accept that we are leaving the European Union, but I do not accept that in doing so we wilfully cause an economic catastrophe that will have a devastating impact on communities and business in the constituency that I represent and cause people who live there untold hardship.
Despite the challenges, we are ambitious. We are home to one of the best and largest chambers of commerce in the country. Our Ambassador programme brings together business leaders from right across the borough. The company Communications Plus in Rainford has won a Queen’s Award for Enterprise. ATG Access, its products made in St Helens, is at this very moment protecting us in this building and protecting many iconic buildings across the world. We have just had an international pharmaceutical company relocate, creating 200 jobs. The Liverpool city region, under Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram, is investing in our infrastructure, with a new station at Newton-le-Willows and new road improvements at Windle Island. In sport, we will be a host venue for the Rugby League world cup. Most excitingly, 25 years after a Tory Government closed Parkside colliery in my constituency, we are on the shortlist to be the UK centre for a world-leading train manufacturer and for it to locate its business here. We are also achieving investment and working hard to be a nationally recognised centre for arts and culture. We have a music board, created by UK Music, to help to enhance the £135 million that music already contributes to our regional economy.
To conclude, the community I represent is resilient. It got through the ravages of deindustrialisation under a previous Tory Government. It will survive austerity and it will get through Brexit. Its civic, community and business leaders are proud of its past and ambitious for its future, but we need and we demand the tools from Government. If we have them, there is no limit to what we can achieve.