Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have the groundbreaking commitment to move from £15 billion to £20 billion a year of investment in public R&D over this comprehensive spending review, the creation of the National Science and Technology Council, the recent launch of our international science partnership fund, the ISPF, which I announced in Japan with a first tranche of £119 million, a series of strategic bilats and multilats, and, of course, our £7 billion ring-fenced for Horizon for three years—if we cannot deploy it through Horizon, we will deploy it in other ways to support UK R&D.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I recently wrote to all the major energy companies to ask about the shameful practice of obtaining warrants to forcibly install prepayment meters. The responses showed a lottery across all the companies, but British Gas told me that 7,500 warrants were obtained in 2020. That jumped to 24,500 last year, and one court in the north of England approved 496 warrants in three minutes. Ofgem has proven incapable of dealing with this scandal; when will the Government act?

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Dan Carden Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes some important points. We can all see from the reports on the negotiations that there was genuine hope we could get to a settlement, and then the Government decided to bring in new conditions at the last minute to make sure that the dispute continued. It is the Government, not the trade unions, who are acting militantly and who do not want to resolve these disputes.

The Government should also reflect on the key workers and other workers who will be affected by this strike action, and who the Secretary of State says are putting lives at risk. Even if they are not a key worker, I am pretty certain that most people, like my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols), have a friend, relative or someone they know who is. We all think they are heroes, and we all know they have their patients, the people they look after and the services they provide at the forefront of their mind.

No one wants to take strike action, least of all the workers who lose a day’s pay. I have long urged Ministers to do their job and resolve the underlying problems, but instead they have presented a Bill that tries to remove hundreds of thousands of workers’ historic right to withdraw their labour.

If the Secretary of State for Transport mandates that 50% of trains need to run on strike days, he knows that Network Rail will mandate that all signal operators need to work, because signals are needed even if just two trains are running. How can the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy say this Bill does not remove their right to strike? I know many Conservative Members will say that they respect, even champion, civil liberties, and I am sure they mean it, but with this Bill they are burning the freedoms for which we fought for centuries and are handing to Ministers unprecedented power over the individuals who are targeted. It is not just wrong in principle; it is unworkable in practice.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I declare my interest as a proud trade unionist. I meet striking workers on an almost weekly basis at the moment, and I know that working people are often targeted by employers during a dispute. This Bill hands employers the right to decide which worker goes to work and which worker can go on strike. Does my right hon. Friend share my concern that this could allow bad bosses to victimise and target workers?

Hospitality Industry: Liverpool

Dan Carden Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the time, at the end of today, to talk a little about the hospitality industry in my home city of Liverpool, in the face of growing challenges.

As the country enjoyed a four-day weekend, Liverpool hosted the Bordeaux wine festival. It was a great success and, thanks to the hard work of many of the city’s great restaurants and eateries, and working with our counter-parts in Bordeaux, the Mayor of Liverpool and the metro Mayor of the city region, we managed a great event that involved many people travelling to the city to enjoy it.

The sector itself has come through the pandemic badly scarred, only to be opening its doors once again to a cost of living crisis and a new set of challenges for survival. I wanted to start this short contribution with reference to one local independent business—one that is part of our national story, part of Walton’s history, and emblematic of the struggle of the local high street today—and that is Byrne’s fish and chip shop in Walton. It opened in 1932. It carried on serving through the second world war. It survived the 1980s slump, the financial crash, and, most recently, covid. But it may not survive the rapid price rises, 10% inflation and the cost of living crisis of 2022. Some of the changes in prices are quite astonishing. Just since December 2021, the price of cooking oil has risen from £9.50 for 12.5 kilos to £25 now. The price of cod was £4 in December 2021, and it is now £5.90. Flour was £16 for 16 kilos, and that has risen to £22. Onions were £6.50 for 25 kilos and are now £14.50.

On top of that, the shop’s energy supplier went bust in November 2021. It was placed on the Government’s preferred supplier rate, which meant that from paying 3p a unit it was paying 11p a unit. A bill that was £400 in November is now more than £900. The staff have been told that they face further significant price rises on all sorts of essentials for a fish and chip shop, including potatoes. Barbs at Byrne’s fish and chips told me that they have tried to keep prices down, but they cannot spread the costs any further. People will not be able to afford to buy their lunch or dinner from the chip shop. I represent one of the most deprived communities in this country. The cost of a fish and chip supper is now £8.30—unaffordable for many of the people who live in the houses in nearby streets. Those working-class people are struggling to afford the basic takeaway food that their grandparents enjoyed.

Such high street businesses, built the hard way with wafer-thin profit margins, that are the backbone of the British economy, are struggling to survive in today’s economy. Throughout the pandemic, local business owners told me about their struggles, and that was when Government support was at its highest. Businesses are now at another critical point, facing existential challenges but with far less Government support. They are worried that they will not be able to keep their businesses afloat. It is as simple as that.

The Queen’s Speech promised nothing to secure the future of the local high street. Kate Nicholls, chief executive officer at UK Hospitality, said that

“the measures in the Queen’s speech will do little to bring immediate relief to the pains that hospitality businesses are feeling in the short term.”

It was just two months ago that pandemic support was stripped away, with businesses negotiating the cliff edge of a withdrawal of support on top of the ongoing price rises and cost of living crises. VAT on hospitality is now back at 20%, having been as low as 5% and then 12.5%. Reliefs for business rates were largely removed. Commercial tenants behind on rent once again face the prospect of eviction, and businesses face paying back pandemic loans.

The national picture is bleak. The hospitality industry was the hardest hit sector in the pandemic. Industry analysis shows that lost sales exceeded £100 billion in the 15 months from April 2020 to June 2021. Nationally, over 600,000 jobs were lost despite furlough, and 9,000 venues across the country closed permanently.

For Liverpool and its city region, the hospitality sector is a bigger contributor to the local economy on average than elsewhere, because we are an exciting visitor destination, as anyone who has visited will attest. The sector accounts for more than 10% of jobs in the city region, and was employing more than 65,000 workers pre-pandemic, but 31,000 of those jobs were lost during the pandemic. In 2020, the almost 8,000 businesses that make up the city region’s visitor economy took a 58% hit to their income.

It is important briefly to put on record the response from Mayor Steve Rotheram, Liverpool’s local authority, Mayor Joanne Anderson and the Government. A city region £40 million emergency fund was established, including £9.5 million for small and micro-businesses, sole traders and the self-employed who were excluded from any Government support. More than 22,000 businesses claimed the small business support grants and the retail, hospitality and leisure grants. Some 1,800 businesses claimed £8.6 million from the local restrictions support grants that were provided to businesses that did not have to close but were severely impacted. Mayor Rotheram launched the £150 million covid recovery fund to ensure that our city region’s recovery got a head start. As we speak, the combined authority is analysing the overall impact of its actions and it will publish its report shortly.

Liverpool’s tourism and hospitality sector is central to both the functioning of the local economy and the employment of its workforce. Pre-covid Liverpool had a hospitality and tourism industry worth almost £5 billion, supporting more than 55,000 jobs in 2019 alone. Some 29,000 people worked in eating and drinking out, adding a substantial £605 million to the local economy. But hospitality venues contribute to more than just the economy: they are part of the very fabric of the communities that they serve, providing hubs in which people socialise, learn and support one another through tough times.

Homebaked in my constituency is a community-owned bakery in the shadow of Anfield’s Kop. The building that it now occupies was initially designated for demolition in an abandoned development scheme, but it was brought back to life by people in Anfield and Everton, who wanted to show that regeneration can come from the ground up, by and for the community. It is a real living wage employer and a Disability Confident employer. The team has grown to 20 staff and provides apprenticeship opportunities for local young people. The bakery supplies at least 20 nursery meals a day to Anfield Children’s Centre and has a partnership with Liverpool homeless football club, supplying pies for its markets. In partnership with the Spirit of Shankly supporters’ union and Vauxhall community law centre, it also hosts weekly drop-in sessions, providing free debt and benefit advice to people in need. If Homebaked, a café, were to close, it would leave a huge hole in the lives of the people who depend on it.

To give one more example, in May I was at the reopening of The Brink café in Parr Street with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Kim Johnson). The Brink is a recovery café. It was the UK’s first dry bar when it opened in 2011 and its model has been replicated across the country. At the reopening, I listened to stories from Caroline and Andy, who spoke of the importance of The Brink to their recovery. In their words, it saved their lives.

The café breaks down the stigma that prevents so many people from asking for help. The Brink has been the start of many people’s recovery as well as a place for ongoing support. The café is not funded through contracts or services. It needs to be a successful business model in itself. As a result of the pandemic, the café was forced to close its doors, leaving Liverpool’s recovery community without a space to socialise and connect with others. Places such as The Brink, Homebaked and other businesses in Liverpool are very anxious about what the future holds across the sector.

The continuing rise in the cost of living effectively lowers people’s incomes and reduces their ability to spend. Inflation has hit its highest level for 40 years. Every pound that people had last year can purchase only 91p-worth of goods today—if there is 9% of inflation. People’s ability to pay for basic goods is set to worsen in the autumn and winter this year, with further price rises coming down the line. It is little wonder that people want to hold on to the little extra money that they have, with the Governor of the Bank of England warning of “apocalyptic” global food price rises.

There is a clear link between the cost of living emergency and the hit to what people call “consumer confidence”. However, in the most deprived areas, in communities such as mine, it is a matter not of confidence, but of survival. When someone is already on the breadline, they simply have nowhere else to go. My constituents are seeing prices going up, their rents going up and their bills going up, while wages and social security payments are being squeezed. I hope that the Minister will not repeat the insulting words of some Government Members—that the worst off should simply buy value brands, learn how to budget or learn how to cook. Only someone completely out of touch with the lives of those living with the reality of poverty could even think that, let alone say it.

When my constituency office team recently visited a local food bank to volunteer, one of my constituents asked for ready-to-eat food not because he could not cook but because he could not pay his energy bill, and without gas or electricity, he could not even boil water for a pot noodle or cook a microwave dinner. There is no solution to the cost of living crisis that would not radically boost the incomes of the least well off. When people have no money in their pockets, they simply cannot spend on the local high street. Local independent businesses, the beating heart of local communities, struggle to survive. People lose their jobs and livelihoods, and we have a downward spiral.

It could be so different. If assisted by the Government, the hospitality sector could revive communities across the country. While the Government still claim that levelling up is their ambition, figures and research from Bloomberg show that many regional inequalities are, in fact, yawning wider, with Liverpool in particular being left behind. The Conservatives claim to be the party of business, and yet calls for greater support from hospitality businesses—the chip shop, the restaurant, the café, the pubs, the bars and the nightclubs—are going unheard at this critical moment. I urge the Minister not to allow Government to rest on their laurels of the emergency support provided during covid. This is a new crisis and it requires new support at, if not higher than, the level that came in the last two years.

The impact of many of those existing measures has since been reduced by the huge increases in business operating costs and prices. Business rate relief was decreased, and the return to 20% VAT meant that businesses could not begin to recoup some of the losses made throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Business rate relief is currently capped at £110,000 a year. The Chancellor announced the cap at last year’s autumn Budget, but economic conditions have changed, and the level of the cap may need to as well. Many businesses are now paying back coronavirus business interruption loans and bounce back loans. Many found that insurance companies would not pay out for losses due to the pandemic, and many venues are having to face up to crippling rent debt accumulated during the pandemic. Is the Minister aware of those challenges? Is there a plan to help?

UKHospitality has called for VAT again to be lowered to 12.5%, a measure that we saw during covid, but this time around we have not heard anything about such measures to protect businesses. A restaurant does not pay VAT on the fresh produce that it buys, so it is in the unusual situation of paying 20% VAT once the food is cooked up and served and yet it has no VAT to claim back at the end of the financial year. The rate on hospitality venues, at 20%, is set far higher than in France, Italy, Ireland and many other EU countries. What more can be done on VAT, especially for local, small, independently owned businesses in the hospitality sector?

More needs to be done on the labour and skills shortages in the sector, too. According to UKHospitality’s workforce strategy, published just last month, vacancies in hospitality stand at 160,000. That chronic labour shortage is crippling some small businesses and limiting the sector’s ability to recover. Many restaurants and bars have been unable to remain open seven days a week. Yes, Brexit has caused many of those problems—or the Government’s failure to prepare for the impact of Brexit on the number of EU workers in the UK hospitality industry has caused them. The ONS says that 100,000 EU nationals left accommodation and food services in the two years to June 2021: the highest figure of any industry. What is the Minister doing to get people into jobs across this sector? We have seen the same problem in the care sector, the NHS and road haulage. Do the Government have anything useful to say to the country’s hospitality sector on this issue?

In fact, the Government continue to place arbitrary limits and bans on employment. In March, at Prime Minister’s questions, I raised the issue of the right to work for asylum seekers. Currently, those seeking asylum are in effect banned from working unless they have been in the country for over a year and can find a job on the increasingly niche shortage occupation list. What justification do the Government have to continue with this harmful ban, especially in the light of such labour shortages? The Government should, as some Conservative Members have broken rank to say, urgently lift the ban.

What work is being done on extending the youth mobility scheme? Extending it is a pragmatic measure recommended by the Migration Advisory Committee to boost economic activity. I am sure the Government will say that their current strategy is about improving the skills of those already in the UK, but they are failing on any reasonable measure of this strategy, too. The numbers of students participating in hospitality courses in schools and colleges continue to decline, so what is the Minister doing to ensure the best possible catering T-levels are available and will he consider a stand-alone hospitality T-level to create the most frictionless pathway between education and hospitality?

UK Hospitality has said that the current apprenticeship levy is inflexible and asked for greater training provision to be given to employers. What is his Department doing to facilitate this?

I believe every job can be a good job where workers are organised in trade unions, trained to the highest standards and rewarded with a fair share of the profits they generate. We do not value hospitality or service sector workers enough in this country. They too often work the longest hours for the lowest pay in insecure jobs. A Government working with the sector could change this for good.

To conclude, restaurants, hotels, cafés and pubs are the lifeblood of our high streets and our communities. In Liverpool, they underpin the whole local economy. The sector pays almost half the city’s business rates, and the reality is that these business are coming out of the frying pan and into the fire. The people whose energy and enthusiasm keep our favourite places alive feel frustrated and ignored by the Government, as apocalyptic price rises and a squeeze on people’s incomes threaten their very existence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Scully]

Overall over that period, the Government provided £408 billion of support, including furlough, grants, loan guarantees, regulatory easements, cuts in VAT and business rates, and a moratorium on commercial rent recovery. That support provided a lifeline for many businesses. We all hoped that once the covid restrictions were lifted and businesses were able to operate more freely, we could look forward to a period of recovery, but as we have heard, an increase in global energy prices and the war in Ukraine has made that recovery even more challenging.

The hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton talked about Byrnes fish and chip shop. I have talked a lot about the headwinds that our economy and our businesses face. Fish and chip shops—real stalwarts of the British hospitality scene—face those headwinds probably more than any hospitality business at the moment, because, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, clearly a lot of vegetable oil and rapeseed oil comes from Ukraine, hence the colours in its flag. A lot of the cod and white fish—I think about 50% or so—that we consume in this country comes from Russian seas. A lot of flour, from wheat, also comes from that part of the world. We are indeed paying the price for freedom. With the headwinds I have talked about, our fight against Russian aggression in Ukraine comes at a cost to our economy. Byrnes, which I think is a fourth generation family-run business, has gone through a lot; I really hope it remains for many generations to come.

I continue to work closely with the sector. I am still listening and representing its interests, and we continue to provide support. The Chancellor obviously needs to strike the right balance between helping businesses and the families that are most in need, while at the same time continuing to restore the public finances to ensure that we have resilience. The hon. Gentleman talked about food banks, families and individuals. Clearly that is why the Chancellor continues to flex and respond, and has announced £37 billion of support to date—it is coming over the next year—to tackle the energy price situation and other pressures on family finances.

In the autumn Budget, the Chancellor announced reforms to the business rates system worth £7 billion over the next five years, including a new temporary relief for retail, hospitality and leisure businesses worth almost £1.7 billion in 2022-23. In the spring statement, the Chancellor cut the cost of employment for half a million small businesses by increasing the employment allowance from £4,000 to £5,000. As a result of that announcement, 670,000 business will not pay national insurance contributions and the health and social care levy at all.

We have introduced legislation to ringfence covid-related rent debt, and to establish a new binding arbitration process to help tenant businesses and their landlords to reach amicable settlements. Our help to grow scheme is supporting businesses to increase productivity, grow their businesses, and access discounted software and free advice.

The Queen’s Speech set out our plans to bring forward legislation to make permanent some of the temporary regulatory easements that we introduced during the pandemic, including pavement licence easements that provide businesses with greater flexibility to trade and help to create the vibrant, bustling outdoor spaces needed to encourage people back to our high streets again, some great examples of which I saw on my visit to Liverpool.

We recognise the impact of rising energy prices on businesses. Both the Government and Ofgem are in regular contact with business groups and suppliers to understand the challenges they face, and explore ways to protect consumers and businesses.

In July last year, we published the first ever hospitality strategy, which set out our ambition for the recovery and future resilience of the sector. We produced that strategy because covid highlighted the fact that hospitality businesses right across the country needed resilience. The sector is characterised by high fixed costs and low margins, so it is not necessarily in a strong position to adapt to new shocks and challenges, including longer-term challenges that businesses face, such as climate change.

We have also established the Hospitality Sector Council, which will oversee the delivery of the strategy. Kate Nicholls, whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned, sits on the council and chairs some of its sub-groups. The council has established thematic working groups to consider issues including access to finance, the role of hospitality in local economies and communities, hospitality careers and skills, environmental sustainability and international trade. The working groups will bring forward recommendations and highlight examples of good practice that will help to provide the best possible trading environment for hospitality businesses and ensure that the sector is fit to face any future challenges head on. The Government will not just be telling hospitality businesses what to do; hospitality businesses and the Government will co-create the solutions.

I mentioned that hospitality has an important role to play in levelling up. More than that, it can have a transformative effect, particularly in deprived areas. It was really interesting to hear about the Homebaked bakery’s initiatives, which sound great—I know that they will play a major role in the area that the hon. Gentleman represents. When I was in Birmingham only a couple of weeks ago, I saw the Digbeth dining club and the Aston Villa Foundation to learn about their great work regenerating the areas of Birmingham in which they operate, using street food as the driver and providing training and qualification for local people who want to start their own street food businesses.

Effectively, that is the blueprint for hospitality-led regeneration, which was one of the commitments in our hospitality strategy. Near the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, Sefton Council is delivering the first pilot in Bootle. When I visited Sefton Council last October, I was excited to hear about its plans to transform the Strand shopping centre, create an incredible events space in the centre of Bootle and deliver training and qualifications for local people so that they can fully contribute to the regeneration of their town.

The hon. Gentleman spoke about qualifications, including T-levels, which cover catering and will play a huge role in the future of hospitality, along with wider training. I visited Hugh Baird College in Bootle, which will support Sefton Council by providing hospitality training, allowing local people to take advantage of the new jobs and businesses that the regeneration project that I outlined will deliver. Given all that, perhaps it is not surprising that I am passionate about the sector.

I spoke about the £37 billion of support that we are providing to individuals, especially the lowest paid and those who are most vulnerable to changes in energy prices and food prices. It is really important that we look to grow the economy overall, ensuring that people can take on more hours and fill the record number of vacancies in our very tight labour market, because that is the best way to face down the cost of living situation.

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman again on securing today’s important debate. Hospitality has always been at the heart of Liverpool, especially over the past few years with the legacy changes since it was the city of culture. I always welcome the opportunity to talk about hospitality, a sector that I am particularly passionate about. It is easy to take hospitality for granted: it is always there in the background, supporting us when we need it, but covid showed us what it would be like to live without it. We missed it; we cannot take it for granted. There are undoubtedly difficult times at the moment, but the creativity and the adaptability—

[Dan Carden]

I am grateful to the Minister for responding to the debate. I want to take the opportunity to emphasise again that the potential short-term impact of spiralling prices and high inflation this year puts many businesses—many restaurants and cafés—at risk of closure. Will he keep his eye on the ball with regard to businesses that are closing and what needs to be done?

[Paul Scully]

Absolutely, I will. We do not want—the Chancellor in his response, from the spring statement to the other changes and the Budget, does not want—to bring in measures that are in themselves inflationary and could add to the problem in the longer term. Clearly, however, we want to make sure that we can always flex to support as many businesses as we can.

During a lot of covid, when we were gripping the economy so hard, insolvencies were at a 40-year low. We will not be able to solve every problem now—the Government never can—but I will absolutely keep my eye on the ball to make sure that, as I say, we work with the sector to co-create those solutions so that we can tackle as many problems and cover as many businesses as we can. The hospitality sector continues to show real creativity and real adaptability, particularly over the past two years, and that gives me the confidence that it will recover and thrive.

Question put and agreed to.

Energy Security Strategy

Dan Carden Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

In partnership with Ofgem, we have discussed trying to secure a much more resilient energy retail market, with financial covenants involving much more financial discipline and financial disclosure, as well as other ways in which we can ensure that what happened last winter does not happen again.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

Some 12,000 households in my constituency rely on prepayment meters. The chief executive of ScottishPower rightly raised that issue with the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee today, saying that it was perverse that those people—often the most vulnerable—can end up paying higher rates than people with direct debit arrangements. Will the Secretary of State take this up with the energy companies, and, if necessary, compel them to ensure that the most vulnerable members of society are not paying the highest prices?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think it was Keith Anderson who spoke to the Committee this morning. I speak to Keith and others in the sector all the time, as does the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands). We will definitely look into this issue, because it seems disproportionate and unfair that people with prepayment meters should be paying so much more than those with direct debits, and we shall be happy to take it up with the leaders in the sector.

Oil and Gas Producers: Windfall Tax

Dan Carden Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

We associate energy poverty with the poorest people and the most deprived communities. Liverpool, Walton is home to many people struggling to afford everyday essentials and wishing their streets and neighbourhoods might see some of the prosperity this Government promise in their empty words.

For the young mum struggling with the top-up payment card in the local shop, trying to keep the lights on and the heating running in her home, that poverty is humiliating, yet the experience of living hand to mouth for energy, and that humiliation, is now spreading across the UK, because the energy market is broken. It is not even really a market but a racket of monopoly suppliers, capped prices and enormous excess profits. Rising energy bills are not an act of God. They are the result of the anarchy of global energy supply and the total mismanagement of Britain’s energy industry by a Tory party that seems to put any interest above the interests of the British people. I support a windfall tax on oil and gas producers to lower bills this year. I listen to my hon. Friends asking Government for an extra £1 billion here or an extra £1 billion there. Now more than ever, the evidence before us—an industry pleading with Government to lift its cap, families pleading with Government to make the cap tighter, and oil and gas producers boasting that their companies are like cash machines—demands a new settlement.

I stood for election pledging to take the whole energy supply industry into public ownership, to set up a national energy agency to own and manage the grid and to put the big six energy suppliers, the only ones likely to survive this crisis, under public control. I believe it is the job of Government to fix the energy crisis, not to prop up the failing energy market.

To manage security of supply when gas is being used as a geopolitical tool is bigger than an economic issue. To decarbonise energy is also bigger than the forces of supply and demand, and to stop energy bills wiping out the income and savings of families up and down the country is a matter of social justice. The market provides no solutions to those problems. The only way to resolve those issues is to have a Government with the will to act and to put the interests of the people we in this House are supposed to represent above the interests of big energy companies and their shareholders. Sadly, that seems a long way off.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change (Greg Hands)]

This has been a useful debate. May I start by paying tribute to those workers who are working hard out there, helping the recovery from Storms Malik and Corrie? As we know, the storms hit Scotland and north-east England very hard. Some 214,000 customers have had power restored, but approximately 10,900, particularly in the north-east of Scotland, were still without power as of 10 o’clock this morning. I spoke to Scottish and Southern Electricity Networks last night and have updated MPs.

As we have heard today, the Government have a wide range of support measures in place to help the most vulnerable households. We have both rebates and energy efficiency measures to help households reduce their energy consumption. To recap, the warm home discount scheme provides support with energy bills through rebates, helping households to stay warm and healthy in winter. The scheme currently provides more than 2 million low-income and vulnerable households with a £140 rebate off their winter energy bills. The Government have already consulted on proposals that would expand the scheme from approximately £350 million in value to £475 million per annum in 2020 prices, which will help it reach 3 million households from winter 2022-23 onwards.

We are of course considering a range of options to address the current challenges further, but we must also be mindful of the wider consequences of any actions that we take. The Government already place additional taxes on the extraction of oil and gas, with companies producing oil and gas from the UK continental shelf subject to headline tax rates on their profits that are currently more that double those paid by other businesses.

[Dan Carden]

While the Minister is on his feet, will he respond to the comment from the head of BP that his company was like a cash machine?

[Greg Hands]

We have ourselves raised more than £375 billion-worth of production taxes. North sea oil and gas have been a big success story for this country, and also for our Exchequer. As a former Treasury Minister, I can repeat that of course all taxes are kept under review by the Treasury, and any changes are considered and announced by the Chancellor.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Local authorities, as my hon. Friend knows, receive funding to support closed businesses through grants of up to £3,000 for each four-week period of closure. In addition, closed businesses can receive up to an extra £9,000 as a one-off payment for the current period of national lockdown. Local authorities, as I am sure he is aware, are also in receipt of discretionary funding, sharing £1.6 billion of the additional restrictions grant.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

British Gas engineers and staff are key workers who, in addition to their responsibilities heating people’s homes, have been delivering food and essentials during the pandemic. Ministers have said that fire and rehire is unacceptable, so will the Secretary of State call on Centrica and Mr O’Shea to stop the bullying tactics of trying to force new contracts on to their workers cutting pay, terms and conditions, and ask them to get round the negotiating table with the union, GMB?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am very pleased to announce that I and my ministerial colleagues have stated again and again that fire and rehire is completely unacceptable. I was in regular contact with British Gas—Centrica, as it is now called—as Energy Minister, and I have impressed upon it the need to engage with its workforce and treat them with utter integrity and fairness.

Climate Change, the Environment and Global Development

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate, although I am surprised that the Secretary of State for International Development is not here, given we were told this would be a DFID debate. It was announced as such in last week’s business statement, but then the business was changed again on Monday. I am glad that the debate itself has not been chopped from the Order Paper, but I am not sure why a Minister from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy opened it. This is a rather chaotic way to deal with such an important issue and a pretty shambolic way to deal with the Prime Minister’s legacy.

It is just two months since Labour secured the support of this House for our becoming the first Parliament in the world to declare a climate emergency. We called then on the Government to commit to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It was a small but important step and a reminder that real change comes from below. What a testament it is to those young activists striking from school and to the extinction rebellion movements that they have changed the tone of debate in this country so irreversibly. What a testament it is to their moral leadership that Secretaries of State and prime ministerial contenders in the Conservative party are now scrambling to demonstrate their green credentials, albeit, I would say, not that convincingly. It is a testament to their activism that a Prime Minister whose first act in office was to shut down the Department for Energy and Climate Change is now trying to make it her last act to create a climate legacy that she desperately hopes she might be remembered for.

That said, sounding the alarm and setting out promises for 30 years away is not enough. Politicians have known about the impact of climate breakdown for decades but have continued to pour billions into fossil fuel industries while offering little more than thoughts and prayers to those in the global south being hit hardest by the consequences.

[Sarah Newton]

I gently say to the hon. Gentleman that he is rather letting down his side of the House. When the Climate Change Act was passed in 2008, a radical consensus had been forged in this House such that this issue was above party politics. Unlike in other countries where climate change is a party political issue, we are united in this House in wanting to tackle it. It is one thing to have a robust debate on the means to the ends, but we are all united around those ends.

[Dan Carden]

The hon. Lady should wait for my full contribution, but there are certainly differences between many Members and the Government, not least around support for fracking and other fossil fuel investments still being supported by the Government.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if there were consensus on the need for us to stop using fossil fuels, the Government could ban fracking exploration tomorrow?

[Dan Carden]

I do agree with the hon. Lady, and that brings me to my next point.

The language that we use in this debate is important, and it is important that we are now calling this climate emergency what it is, but unless we as a House act faster to deliver action, these will be nothing more than warm words. It is clear that we must be far more ambitious about international climate action that serves the interests of the world’s poorest, and not just its elites. We must act now, and go further and faster than ever before.

[Caroline Lucas]

Unfortunately, I am about to lead a debate in Westminster Hall, so I will not hear all of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I apologise for that, but it is an unavoidable clash.

On the issue of international action, does the hon. Gentleman agree that aviation and shipping emissions ought to be included in the Government’s net zero strategy? The Committee on Climate Change has said that they should be included, but we have heard nothing from the Government to suggest that they are going to include them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden]

I am happy to say that the Labour party is committed to exactly that. Dealing with the figures honestly is one of the first actions that we can take.

The shadow Chancellor recently spoke at length about the preparations that Labour is making to roll out a climate emergency programme should there be a general election this autumn. We are working on a range of ambitious new policy proposals that we think will turbo-charge our effort. We want to be as ambitious as possible, and we are looking into how we can bring forward the target date for net zero emissions.

Let us examine the Government’s international actions on fossil fuels, climate finance, and global climate justice. Take the Prosperity Fund, set up by this Government, plagued by scandal, and funded to the tune of £1.2 billion from the aid budget. In October 2018, it was found that 29% of its energy spending was on fossil fuel projects, including projects to expand the oil and gas sectors in Brazil and Mexico and support for fracking in China. Or take CDC Group, which is wholly owned by the Department for International Development: it, too, continues to invest directly in fossil fuels. Then—as has been mentioned—there is UK Export Finance, 97% of whose support for energy in developing countries is going to fossil fuels, with less than 1% going to renewable energy. The Minister was keen to give examples of support for renewables, but the statistics are stark and speak for themselves.

Let us take the Foreign Secretary and Conservative leadership contender. He talks a good game on the climate emergency, but in April this year, during his first official visit to Africa, he announced an agreement that will allow money from UK Export Finance to support the building of offshore oil and gas installations in Senegal by British companies BP and Cairn Energy. Or take the UK’s failure to use its influence in the big multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, to ensure that their investment strategies are aligned to help us hit the Paris agreement’s target.

The Government must do much better on all those fronts. The International Development Committee has called on them to use their influence on the boards of the big multilateral banks to move them away from high carbon investments. Labour is committed to divesting fully our aid budget from the financing of fossil fuel projects, so I ask the Minister whether the Government will back up their warm words with action. They could announce today that they will stop funding fossil fuel expansion overseas, and encourage others to do the same.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I do not know whether my hon. Friend has had a chance to look at the Environmental Audit Committee’s report on UK Export Finance, but does he agree that the Minister’s assertion that we are significantly reducing our investment in fossil fuels through that organisation does not stack up? There does not seem to be any evidence that we have shifted our policy at all.

[Dan Carden]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and the Government need to report back to Parliament on that.

I want to say a few words about climate finance. The signatories to the Paris agreement have committed to finding at least $100 billion just for mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, but even that number is extremely conservative; UN Environment estimates that the real number for mitigation and adaptation alone could in fact be as high as £500 billion by 2050. So why does the UK not have a serious climate finance strategy? In its most recent report in May the International Development Committee called again for one to be given to Parliament, and I urge the Minister today to set out exactly when that will happen.

I turn now to how the UK can tackle the root causes of climate emergency, rather than just manage the decline of our planet. It must not be the role of the British Government and the British taxpayer to throw money at clearing up the mess left behind by the world’s biggest polluters simply so that they can carry on polluting. The truth is that our global economic model is fundamentally broken; it is a system that is driving us towards disaster in the quest to accumulate ever more wealth and extract ever more profit. Unless there is a UK Government who are serious about transitioning away from our current economic model, however ambitious our international action is it will only tackle the symptoms of climate change, never its root causes.

It is a tragedy that those least responsible for the climate crisis will be the first to suffer its consequences. It is not the world’s billionaires who are suffering the worst effects of planetary breakdown, and we should be under no illusions: they are making plans not to fix our economic model, but to escape, survive and ride out the catastrophe.

I want to bring to the House’s attention the writings of the technology writer Douglas Rushkoff, who last year recounted how he was brought in as an expert adviser to a room of billionaires to talk about climate change. He was flabbergasted when, instead of asking him about how to prevent the climate catastrophe or what role they could play, they asked him about how they could insulate themselves from the danger, including, amazingly, the use of disciplinary collars to maintain the loyalty of their private security forces to protect them when society finally broke down and when wages and money no longer held sway. That is quite remarkable.

The time for tinkering around the edges is over. To avert climate catastrophe we must radically restructure our economy here in the UK and globally so that it works for the many, not the few. We should consider this: if global growth continues at 3% each year the global economy will have doubled in size by 2043, and so too will material consumption unless we can de-link it from economic growth. For too long we have ignored the plain fact that we cannot sustain permanent growth on a planet of finite resources. That is exactly why we need the kind of systemic change that our shadow Chancellor has spoken about, and it is why we must use and harness every policy lever available to us and ensure that the state and the private sector invest in the infrastructure to bring about the next green industrial revolution. And that is why we must work with the City to reform and why we must use our influence on the global stage to promote a more democratic global economy.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

As part of the radical agenda that my hon. Friend rightly says is required if we are to deal with the climate emergency, does he share my view that three things in particular are needed: radical decarbonising of our current energy set-up; an acceleration of investment in electric vehicle infrastructure; and a significant increase in tree cover in the UK?

[Dan Carden]

My hon. Friend makes three excellent points, all of which I hope to touch on later.

Under Labour, the Department for International Development will play a crucial role in global climate justice, and two of our five top international development priorities are to catalyse a global ecological transition and to help build a fairer global economy. We are hearing a lot about a global green new deal across countries, and Labour envisages a green industrial revolution right here in the UK, but we must be clear that the ultimate test of any such deal is whether it will solve the climate emergency, deliver decent green jobs, produce a better quality of life and, critically, bring about climate justice for the world’s poorest, because that is exactly what we must bring about.

We are talking about nothing less than a great transition in how we structure our economies and societies, and that is why I want to end on a note of hope. We spend a lot of time talking about the catastrophe that is starting to unfold and the existential threat facing the planet. The vested interests are so strong that we must keep campaigning and fighting and, yes, the media barons are not always on our side on this one. They tell us that anyone who speaks up on the climate emergency is simply insisting that we all have to make terrible personal sacrifices such as cutting our holidays or our use of plastic straws. I understand why the narrative of fear can prevail, but what the climate emergency is really about is pointing the way to the better world that we all want to live in. This is about levelling things up and radically slashing inequality. It is about our children having clean air to breathe and greener public spaces to play in. It is about living on a planet with millions more trees, travelling on better public transport and having meaningful, decent green jobs in democratically owned companies that put people and planet before profit.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) wrote powerfully last week that, on the climate emergency, we need to

“talk about the dream, not just the nightmare.”

We have little more than a decade to save much of our environment as we know it from extinction, but the urgency of that threat has brought ideas to the surface on how we can bring about a sustainable alternative to the economic system that took us to the brink. Labour is preparing itself so that, when in government, we will not only prevent the nightmare but make that dream a reality. We on this side of the House stand ready to collaborate with our international partners and with other parties to do everything in our power and use every lever available to make the global transition to a new, greener and fairer society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Dan Carden.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

T8. Cammell Laird has won £619 million of RAF contracts, but almost 300 of its workforce, some of whom are my constituents, are at risk of redundancy. Will the Secretary of State speak to Defence Ministers to make sure that the Government will step in to fill any gap?

[Richard Harrington]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I have met the chief executive of Cammell Laird, and I am in discussions with the Ministry of Defence and all other interested parties.

Budget Resolutions

Dan Carden Excerpts

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

With the leave of the House, I shall speak instead of the shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), who has been taken ill and is disappointed not to be here today. We wish her a speedy recovery.

Every Opposition Member is disappointed by the Chancellor’s Budget, which can best be described as a “broken promises” Budget, despite the spin that the Secretary of State has tried to place on it. The Prime Minister promised the end of austerity, but the Chancellor was already backtracking within the first few minutes of his speech, simply saying that austerity is “coming to an end” and even that turned out not to be true. Austerity is certainly not over.

The truth is that the small giveaways in this Budget do not begin to even touch the sides of the cuts made since the Government took office. The £1.7 billion promised to universal credit is less than a third of the £7 billion of social security cuts still to come. School funding has been cut by 8%, but there was nothing to fill the gap, and the Chancellor’s idea that schools should be grateful for a one-off payment of £400 million for “little extras” is insulting. Local councils still face a funding gap of £7.8 billion by 2025, and budgets will be cut by a further £1.3 billion next year. How is that the end of austerity? In fact, the Resolution Foundation has predicted that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy will have suffered a real-terms per capita cut of over 50% by 2024.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State just mentioned Liverpool. Since 2010, Liverpool’s local authority budget has been cut by 64%. That is the problem that Liverpool is facing today.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. All our constituents have had to suffer cuts to services, so for the Secretary of State to say that austerity is over is an insult to our intelligence.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate on behalf of my constituents, and I am going to draw on some of the words of one of my greatest constituents, Robert Noonan, better known as Robert Tressell, buried in a pauper’s grave in Rice Lane City Farm in my constituency of Liverpool, Walton. He is the author of that great socialist manuscript “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists”, which tells the story of a group of painters and decorators—as he was himself—struggling to make ends meet in a rigged system. His work has been credited with helping the Labour party win the 1945 post-war election.

This Budget is full of modern-day money tricks, which I will come on to, but the great money trick in “The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists” starts with the characters, painters and decorators working at the turn of the last century discussing the causes of poverty. The painter Frank Owen intervenes. “Money”, he says,

“is the cause of poverty”,

and what follows is a demonstration of “the money trick”, one of the finest passages of comic political prose in English literature.

Owen takes his slices of bread from his lunch basket and asks all the men for their bread, which he places in a heap, saying

“These…represent the raw materials which exist naturally”.

He pulls out some pocket-knives, and says that they are the means of production. Owen says:

“I represent the landlord and capitalist class. That is to say, all these raw materials belong to me... Now you”—

maybe the Members opposite—

“represent the working class: you have nothing.”

But, he goes on, in order to turn his raw materials into something of use, we need work:

“I have invented the Money Trick to make you work for me.”

Owen hands the bread and knives to the men. They cut the bread into blocks, and return them to Owen. The workers receive their wages—of £1. The money they earn is their own, to do with as they like, and the things they produce are now the property of the capitalist class. Owen says of his blocks of bread:

“These blocks represent the necessaries of life. You can’t live without some of these things, but as they belong to me, you will have to buy them from me: my price for these blocks is—one pound each.”

The cycle continues: Owen’s blocks of bread—his profits—pile up, the rich getting richer, while the poor exchange their wages for the necessities of life, all the time staying poor. In Tressell’s masterpiece, the workers are the “philanthropists,” giving the value of their work to the rich who benefit from a rigged system.

Since those words were first written more than 100 years ago, there have been huge steps forward for working-class people and their rights, hard-won by the struggle of trade unions and the Labour movement. But the truth is the same today as it was then, because working people are not responsible for poverty. This is a broken system, that inflicts poverty, inequality and human misery, and it needs reform. We have had the longest squeeze on wages since the Napoleonic wars. Today’s young people are set to be poorer than their parents for the first time in modern history.

This week, we heard the Chancellor come up with some of his own money tricks to mask this Government’s economic failure. He suggested that Labour had caused the global financial crisis. There have always been deficits and borrowing; the Tories ran them for 18 years when they were in government. The 2008 global financial crisis caused a global recession. It was not investment in schools and hospitals that crashed the economy; it was the greed and recklessness of a deregulated financial sector. Let us take another example: the so-called jobs miracle. This involved boasting of record levels of employment while saying nothing about the phenomenon of insecure, low-paid and bogus self-employment. Wages are lower today than they were 10 years ago, and some of my constituents are doing three, four or five of those jobs to make ends meet. Today, the majority of people in poverty in this country are also in work. What an absolute disgrace!

This Government cannot trick their way out of this crisis. Poverty and deprivation can be seen on the streets of Liverpool every single day. Robert Tressell’s novel is full of tragedy and despair, but it also offers a glimmer of hope. In a chapter entitled “The Great Oration”, Tressell describes the creation of a new kind of society: the co-operative commonwealth, based on shared ownership and worker self-management. I think that the shadow Chancellor has read it. That is called socialism, and it is about time we redoubled our efforts to attain it.

Carillion

Dan Carden Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I shall endeavour to be brief, Madam Deputy Speaker, as many of the points about the collapse of Carillion have already been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) and the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin).

Carillion’s headquarters was in Wolverhampton. Of its 18,000 or so UK employees, some 450 were employed in the headquarters, so the city that I represent has a particular interest in the story of the company’s collapse. Six months after the collapse, there are still major questions about corporate governance, audit, ongoing costs, and, perhaps most fundamentally, the policy implications raised by the collapse. I thank both the Work and Pensions Committee and the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee for their joint report, which paints a very stark picture, describing a story of “recklessness, hubris and greed”. On the accounts of the company, it describes them as having

“misrepresented the reality of the business.”

The report sets out how the company collapsed, how the internal checks and balances failed and it makes damning indictments of the company’s leadership and the system of auditing, culminating in the recommendation that the whole audit system be referred to the Competition and Markets Authority.

Others will focus on particular parts of this story, but the part on which I wish to focus is the role of Government and the decisions before Government when a company of this nature is in danger of collapse. I have written to the Minister before about these questions. Carillion is a specific type of company. It was a private company, but it was engaged for much of its activity in the delivery of public services. Therefore, the responsibilities cross both the public and the private sectors. The National Audit Office report on this issue, published last month, says that the company, in its dying days, asked for a loan of £160 million from Government and a deferment in tax payments of £63 million. That is a difficult decision for Government. What do Ministers or officials do when a company comes and asks for such substantial funds? In those circumstances, Ministers and the government machine have to make an assessment between loaning that kind of money and letting the company go under.

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend will know that the National Audit Office report has outlined that, in 2017, Carillion projected a loss of £83 million on the Royal Liverpool University Hospital. Does he know where that projected loss now sits?

[Mr McFadden]

That is a very good question and is exactly the kind of thing that Ministers had to look at when considering this request. In letting the company go under, the Cabinet Office realised that the taxpayer was still on the hook, because at the moment that it decided to say no to the company’s request for the loan, it gave the official receiver £150 million of taxpayers’ money to process the liquidation. Therefore, the taxpayer being on the hook does not stop when the decision is made to allow the company to go under. The taxpayer has been on the hook for the six months of this story, and it does not stop with the money for the official receiver. Public sector bodies are facing a 20% premium for some of the post-liquidation service delivery costs. As my hon. Friend just said, there are three major projects that lie unfinished. There is the Midland Metropolitan Hospital, the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, which he raised earlier this week in Parliament, and the Aberdeen bypass.

One question that I hope the Minister addresses is the one raised by my hon. Friend a moment ago. What will it cost to finish these projects and where will the money come from? The National Audit Office says that these projects face losses respectively of £91 million for the Aberdeen bypass, £83 million for the Royal Liverpool University Hospital, and £48 million for the Midland Metropolitan Hospital. In his winding up, will the Minister confirm how these projects will be finished and how they will be paid for? It was a public policy decision to build a new hospital in Liverpool; it was a public policy decision to build a new hospital in Sandwell; and it was a public policy decision to build a new road in Aberdeen, so whoever is carrying out the project, the public policy responsibility, in the end, still lies with Government. Can the Minister confirm that at the moment of collapse, the Government thought that the cost might not be the £150 million that they set aside, but more than £300 million, as paragraph 13 of the National Audit Office summary suggests?

This not just a story of corporate mismanagement; it raises major public policy questions. What does the Minister think are the lessons for Government decision making about: how procurement happens; whether a contract is to be tendered and how that tendering process is managed; and how they balance the risk of rescue and the cost to the taxpayer when a company engaged in the delivery of public services is in danger of collapse? Those are the fundamental public policy questions raised by this story.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I want to take this opportunity to draw attention to the Royal Liverpool Hospital in the centre of Liverpool, which, given the all the important issues that have been raised in this debate, stands as a monument to the corporate greed that led to the collapse of Carillion. It is a tragic sight and eventuality for the people of Liverpool, who are now kept completely in the dark about what will happen in the future.

The £335 million hospital is 90% complete, but as the NHS searches for a new contractor to take over, we have no timescale for the completion of the site. Building work has stopped altogether, state-of-the-art medical equipment goes to waste in empty wards, and there are questions over whether the building is structurally sound. In recent evidence to a parliamentary joint inquiry, it emerged that there were serious structural issues. Two cracks were discovered in concrete beams at the hospital, and following a review by Carillion, further cracks were discovered in six other beams. Now the private company Arup has been hired to conduct a structural review.

I say to Ministers that we must have transparency about what happens now, in the aftermath of the collapse of Carillion, to such capital projects. It is not good enough to have private meetings from which the public are simply excluded. Yesterday, the Minister told me that public ownership would mean that the taxpayer would shoulder the risk, but surely that is nonsense when we know that the risk is always shouldered by the taxpayer in these cases anyway.

The collapse of Carillion is a watershed moment. In order to truly learn the lessons, we must recognise that it is not good enough to tinker around the edges of a broken system: the task is to replace it altogether. I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor has said that the Royal Liverpool Hospital is

“just another scandalous example of the Government wasting money on failing PFI schemes…The Government should take responsibility and commit to delivering the Royal Liverpool in the public sector.”

Let me finish by pushing the Minister and the Government to show some urgency. Will he tell us publicly what meetings he is holding? Is he meeting the hospital company that is delivering this project? Are Ministers meeting the investors, Legal & General and the European Investment Bank? What do Ministers know about the structural state of the building overall? Are the Government seeking legal advice? For the people of Liverpool, the question is, “Will this hospital ever open?”, and I think they need an answer.