Finance Bill

Debate between David Mowat and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 2nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

A man who has been here all the time.

[David Mowat]

I have, indeed, been here all the time, Mr Deputy Speaker.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked whether the relief will apply to blockbuster successes, such as “Les Misérables”, on which massive amounts of money are made. Indeed, the return on capital for such ventures is far higher than that for contractors in the North sea. Can the Minister give us any assurance that the relief will not be disproportionately skewed towards such companies?

Criminal Justice and Courts Bill

Debate between David Mowat and Lindsay Hoyle

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you could give me some guidance. For the third time in recent weeks a member of the Opposition Front-Bench team has been to my constituency without informing me—today it was the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband); I have told his office that I was going to raise this. Is there anything you can do, notwithstanding his intellectual self-confidence, to help him observe the niceties of behaviour in this House?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

What I can say is that this is obviously not a matter for the Chair as such, but it is on the record. It is the convention for all Members to inform another Member of a visit, and I hope that that takes place in the future.

Clause 19

Secure colleges and other places for detention of young offenders etc

New Nuclear Power

Debate between David Mowat and Lindsay Hoyle

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

I will not give way. The hon. Lady might have wanted to talk about offshore wind. That could be part of the solution. However, these technologies have a lot of ground to make up on price.

Carbon capture and storage has been talked about a little. That is part of the solution. I regret that this country has not moved faster on CCS. One reason for that is that we have over-emphasised renewables because they are subject to an EU directive. Progress on CCS would not have counted towards that directive, even though it would have helped us to decarbonise.

I think that there are problems with the case for nuclear. As I said at the start of my remarks, the problem of waste has not been fixed. It is perfectly legitimate for people to think that that is a reason not to go ahead with new nuclear. However, I believe that the risks from waste are smaller than the risks from global warming and that we therefore need to decarbonise. I say to the Secretary of State that unless nuclear can prove that it has a cheaper strike price than other low-carbon technologies, there will be questions about going ahead with the deal. Although nuclear produces less carbon than renewable technologies—for example, it produces significantly less carbon per kilowatt-hour than solar—there is still the issue of waste. I do not know how the caps that have been put into the deal will work. The hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) made the point that the probability of an accident is never zero. That is true, but it does not mean that we should never do anything.

Of course, nuclear provides base power, whereas renewables are intermittent. Even with the waste issue, I believe that we must move ahead with nuclear as part of the mix in the way that the Government are doing. I wish them luck with the negotiation, although I regret that they are negotiating with only one company. Frankly, the Labour party is the cause of that because it sold off vast tracts of our nuclear industry.

In my last 40 seconds, I will ask some questions of the Secretary of State. As I said, we now produce less carbon than most OECD countries and European countries. The Secretary of State must therefore be circumspect in ensuring that the cost of our electricity supply is competitive and that we do not move ahead a lot more quickly than the rest of Europe. As I said at the beginning in response to the hon. Member for Cheltenham, I do not understand why the contract for difference price for other low-carbon technologies is so much higher than that for nuclear. I will finally just say that—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I call Joan Walley.

Energy Market Reform

Debate between David Mowat and Lindsay Hoyle

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I want to draw attention to a couple of areas where I agree with Opposition Front Benchers. First, it is clear that the best way of making progress is better insulation. The green deal is fundamental to energy policy, and Ministers need to be accountable for making progress with it. It is also true that we need more transparency in the energy market. The hon. Member for Glasgow North East (Mr Bain) noted that there are 430 separate tariffs; that is unacceptable and it needs to be fixed. I understand that it will be fixed by next summer, but I am disappointed that it is taking so long. I also agree with Opposition Members that the market needs new entrants and that the process of new businesses coming in has been too slow.

Where I disagree with Opposition Members is on their lazy assumption that there is a cartel in operation—leaving aside the fact that that is a criminal offence, and that if they have evidence of it they should take it to the police. I intervened on the Secretary of State to point out that in the gas market we are 26th cheapest out of 27 in the European Union. If that is a cartel, it is not a very effective one. The reason we are so cheap has nothing to do with tax. In France and Germany, gas prices are 60% more expensive than ours, but that is a market effect difference not a tax difference. It would be good if we addressed some of that. On electricity, the position is less clear; our prices are not so cheap. Frankly, that has a lot to do with the decisions that we make in this House and the tariffs we impose on the market.

The gas market and the electricity market are two separate markets. We sometimes talk about them as though they are the same, but they are not. There is an issue with off-grid gas, as we have heard from several Members on both sides of the House. In the case of on-grid gas—Members can, by all means, intervene on me if they disagree, but we have had a three-hour debate that has been broadly fact-free—the evidence is that our prices are not more expensive than anywhere else. Other Members have talked about shale gas, and I will not go any further on that, other than to say that this morning, on the Henry hub, US gas prices were one quarter of our gas prices in the European balancing point. That will make a massive difference to the competitiveness of the US economy in a variety of ways. Even if we do not, or cannot, exploit our shale gas to that extent, we need to start to think about the differences in economics that will arise with America.

The three main policy areas in the electricity market are carbon and decarbonisation, which we must achieve, cost, and security. Interestingly, we sometimes assume that we are behind as regards carbon. It is true that we are behind France—with massive amounts of cheap nuclear energy, we use more carbon per head than the French by a long way—but we use a lot less per head than Germany, despite the fact that Germany has four times as much renewable energy as we have, because it continues to burn coal to a massive degree. That is what we need to address in terms of our decarbonisation agenda. The previous Government signed us up for renewables targets that were extremely onerous and will have only a minor impact on the amount of carbon that we use. The country that has reduced its carbon by the most over the past year or so is the United States as it has replaced coal with shale gas.

The big issue is security. Ofgem, which we are giving one of its routine kickings, has said that we will have about 4% surplus electricity capacity by 2015-16. We seem to be in a slow-motion car crash with electricity supply. The likelihood of there not being power cuts by the end of this decade is getting increasingly low. When the House starts to debate that issue, we will begin to make progress on what will really be important. One of the mechanisms by which we can avert this situation is imports. I gently say to the Minister that imports now represent about 10% of electricity in this country. That is a massive policy failure. French nuclear electricity and Dutch electricity is coming to this country, and there are no jobs in that.

I do not have much time to talk about costs. My hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) made several good points about the somewhat hypocritical tone that this House can have in imposing costs that create fuel poverty and then beating up the people we perceive as being responsible for not somehow wishing those costs away. It is right that we—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. We have 15 minutes left and three more speakers. I call Jamie Reed.