Social Care (Liverpool)

Debate between David Mowat and Luciana Berger

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat]

I thought that I had said that I agree with the hon. Lady that it would be wrong to punish those that are doing better. She mentioned that Knowsley is one of the stronger councils in that regard; St Helens is even stronger. It would be completely wrong if that were the basis of the allocation. Frankly, that is not my understanding.

I want to talk a little about what the Government plan to do on social care. Part of that involves recognising the pressures that exist. One thing that we get into quickly in social care discussions is a debate about adult social care and frail people—people on the borderline between being ill and being old. If they are ill, they are in hospital under the NHS, and if they are not, they are old, and care is either means-tested or provided by the council. That is a difficult area.

One third of the pressure on councils such as Liverpool arises not from older people but from people with severe learning difficulties, autism and disabilities more generally. Over the past decade, thankfully, the health inequality from which that cohort suffers has decreased considerably, and the life expectancy of people in those categories has increased. The cost to local authorities is clearly severe. In addition, the Government are determined to press ahead with a programme called Transforming Care, which came out of the Winterbourne View case. Too many people with severe learning difficulties were in institutions and long-term hospitals, with all that goes with that. We are moving them into communities with the help of local authorities. There is a plan to move some 3,000 people out of institutions—places hopefully much better than Winterbourne View—and into care. All of that creates pressures of the sort that we have been hearing about in this debate, but that does not mean that it is not the right thing to do.

[Luciana Berger]

Does the Minister acknowledge that those 3,000-plus people should have been moved a lot sooner? According to various reviews, we should not be in the present situation, with too many people still in that type of accommodation who should not be there.

[David Mowat]

That is a fair challenge. We have a plan, and we are implementing it in that process. Winterbourne View was about seven years ago now. I have met a number of parents of the children affected and there has been a lot of pressure from them to go as far and as fast as we can. I make the point that every one of those facilities is a project of its own in terms of finding other accommodation and putting in place care—sometimes round-the-clock care. To answer the hon. Lady’s question directly, I would like us to go faster, but I think that we are doing as well as could be expected given the starting point. However, it is a fair challenge.

Community Pharmacies

Debate between David Mowat and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

When one takes into account the £112 million that we are spending on getting more pharmacists into GP practices, the right hon. Gentleman’s point is incorrect.

[Luciana Berger]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Mowat]

I will give way to the hon. Lady in a moment.

Finally, I want to talk about the work that we are doing to ensure that everyone in the country has access to a community pharmacy. We have developed a scheme with two components. First, all pharmacies that are more than 1 mile from another pharmacy will be eligible for additional funding, which will almost entirely mitigate the impact of the changes. That component is specifically designed to protect areas where current provision is quite spread out. In total, it will apply to around 1,400 locations—roughly half urban and half rural. Pharmacies that are in the highest 25% by prescription volume, and therefore most profitable, will not be eligible for the scheme. Secondly, there is a near-miss scheme under which pharmacies that are located up to 0.8 miles from each other and in the 20% most deprived areas in the country can apply to be reviewed by NHS England as a special case. The final safeguard is that NHS England has a continuing duty to ensure the adequate provision of services. Its role is to commission a new pharmacy in any area where it believes access is inadequate. That duty will continue.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the Minister for very kindly giving way. Will he correct the record on something? Pharmacies are not all private enterprises. Many co-operatives across our country provide community pharmacies, often in rural and isolated areas. For the purposes of this debate, will he clarify his understanding of the distinction between a community pharmacy and a GP pharmacy? That has not been clear in his remarks so far.

[David Mowat]

The distinction is that a community pharmacy is part of a privately owned business that dispenses and is paid in that way. The ones that we are hiring into GP practices will leverage GP time and do medicine reviews, and I expect them to enable the pharmacy network in an area to work more cohesively. It is a welcome and, frankly, overdue step forward.

Community Pharmacies

Debate between David Mowat and Luciana Berger

Monday 17th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat]

Yes, I will confirm that. I am not in a position to announce today precisely how the access scheme will work, but I agree with my hon. Friend that a central part of it will be to make sure that everybody has a baseline distance to travel to get to a pharmacy and that everybody in the country will be able to access pharmacies within a reasonable time.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

NHS England’s five-year forward view stresses how important prevention is. Community pharmacies, which are anchored in the communities they serve, are vital in keeping people out of their GP surgeries and out of accident and emergency. The Minister talks about distance. What will the distance be? If I reflect on my own constituency, where the millionth signature of the petition was signed, my constituents really value each and every one of our community pharmacies. How many will he be cutting and how far does he expect people to travel to access one?

[David Mowat]

The hon. Lady mentions the five year forward view. If she reads the “General Practice Forward View”, she will see that central to it is the recruitment of 2,000 pharmacists into GP practices across the country by 2020. That is how we will embrace the pharmacy profession and link it much more closely to GPs. I am not in a position, because we have not yet announced it, to discuss in detail today the final form of the access scheme and how it will work. Let us be very clear, however, that we do not expect people to have appreciably more of a journey to any pharmacy. We are talking about tens of metres, if any. The fact is that we will protect the pharmacies that need to be protected, so that everybody in the country has access within a reasonable time.

Climate Change Act

Debate between David Mowat and Luciana Berger

Tuesday 10th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Clark. This has been a very revealing debate on a very important topic. Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) on securing it, although I disagree with everything that he has said this afternoon. I am grateful for the opportunity to place on the record the Opposition’s position.

I am very proud to be speaking today in support of the Climate Change Act 2008, which was seminal legislation. Passing the first legally binding climate change target showed that Britain was serious about tackling one of the greatest challenges if not the greatest challenge that humanity has ever faced. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), I am proud to belong to a party that took action to secure our planet for future generations when we were in government. I am prouder that Parliament passed the Act all but unanimously, with just five Members voting against it. I note that some of those five are in the room with us today. There was a clear cross-party political consensus that something needed to be done and a clear will to get on and do it, so I am saddened by the tone of parts of today’s debate. It reminds me of a film that was released just a few months after the 2008 Act became law. Many people in this room may have seen it. It was called “The Age of Stupid”. The plot is set in 2055 in a world savaged by the effects of global warming. It focuses on a lead character looking back to the beginning of the 21st century and wondering why we did not combat climate change when we had the chance. I am not sure whether the producers are planning a sequel, but at times I have felt as though certain speakers that we have heard today have been auditioning for a starring role. It is very disappointing that the hon. Member for Monmouth, who introduced the debate, is on record as describing the overwhelming scientific evidence and agreement on climate change as “codswallop”.

Let me spell out some basic facts; we have heard them reiterated by some Members taking part in the debate today. One hon. Member talked about an apparent plateau in world temperatures, but he neglected to mention the fact that the 12 warmest years on record have all come in the last 15 years. Since 2000, the UK has experienced its seven warmest years. Our average annual temperature has increased by about 1° Celsius since 1970. Last year, temperatures in some parts of our oceans were the highest ever and Arctic ice retreated to its smallest size on record.

I think that the Met Office is an organisation to be respected and I look at its reports very closely. Its record of global average surface temperature shows an increase of 0.6° C since 1950. I did not have an opportunity to intervene at the time, but there is research, including that published in Nature Geoscience in 2011, that shows that three quarters of the rise in average global temperatures since the 1950s is due to human activity.

A number of hon. Members referred to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is to deliver its fifth assessment report. As my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) said, it is expected to report a 95% probability that the global warming that we have experienced since 1950 is man-made. I agree with my hon. Friend that we should take note of that report. It is compiled by 255 experts from 38 countries. The weight of evidence is extraordinary, so I am disappointed that that has not been reflected in some Members’ contributions this afternoon.

Back in 2008, the year in which the Climate Change Act was passed, the then Leader of the Opposition, who is now the Prime Minister, promised:

“We are not going to drop the environmental agenda in an economic downturn.”

He said that it was

“not ‘green’ or ‘growth’, but both.”

In the same year, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer talked about the “fierce urgency of now” and promised that the Treasury would lead in

“developing the low carbon economy and financing a green recovery.”

I could not agree more with the statements made then by those right hon. Members.

If we fast-forward to now, I regret the fact that the Chancellor is presenting us with a false choice between tackling climate change and growing our economy and that one Energy Minister—not the one in front of us, but the other Minister of State—has described climate change as a matter of “theology”.

I think that we need to deal with some of the risks. The fact is that the impact of climate change is already threatening to put more people in harm’s way up and down our country and across our planet. The Foreign Secretary’s climate adviser has described the security threat alone as being as grave as the threat from terrorism and cyber-attacks.

Let us take one example—flood defences. According to experts at the university of Colorado, sea levels are already rising at more than 3 mm a year. Just last week, a new study by the Met Office—I reinforce the fact that I respect that organisation; I do not think that it is putting out propaganda—showed that climate change exacerbated half the extreme weather events that happened last year. That has huge implications for us here in the UK and particularly for our flood defences. Last year was Britain’s second wettest year on record. Insurers had to pay out on £1.2 billion-worth of claims for flood damage across the country. Currently, 370,000 homes in England and Wales are at significant risk of river or coastal flooding. According to the “UK Climate Change Risk Assessment”, that number could increase fourfold by the 2050s.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Lady’s analysis would be completely correct if, by our reducing our carbon emissions, there would be that effect on our own climate. The difficulty that we have is that the rest of the world does not appear to have the same analysis as she does—at least judged by their actions, if not their words.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. In a moment, I will show that countries across the globe do think that there is a problem and are investing massively—investing more than we are. That is all the more reason for us to come together with other countries at the future Paris COP—the conference of the parties to the UN framework convention on climate change—to secure that global climate change agreement. It is not that we should be doing it in isolation. Of course other countries should be doing it too, but that does not mean that we should not be doing it.

Let us consider what the opportunity is for a low-carbon economy. I am not sure what report the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) was referring to. I referred to the CBI, which has estimated that of the little economic growth that we did have last year, more than one third of it came from green businesses. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North highlighted, the low-carbon sector was responsible for 25% of the growth in our economy last year. The view of the CBI is very clearly articulated. It has said:

“For UK business, climate change is no longer a threat to be feared, but an opportunity to grow the economy and lead the world”.

We know that the competition is fierce. If we take the decisions that we need to now, the UK can still get ahead of the curve. We can create a new kind of economy, create huge numbers of jobs and secure our energy future. But if we do not—if we delay—we risk being left behind. Again, I refer to what other countries are doing. In fact, the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), in his remarks, talked about evidence. In America, the investment has increased by 155%. In China, it is up by 63% and, contrary to the examples put forward—I listened to the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley)—China is also proposing a cap on its carbon emissions for the first time. If we continue to lag behind, we risk becoming more heavily dependent on single imported sources of energy that come at a higher price.

I am conscious that I have only a minute left. Delivering a green economy is about not just seizing opportunities but managing the risks. The hon. Member for East Antrim talked about scare stories. I would ask him to talk to America’s first climate change refugees—the hundreds of people who have been forced to flee the Alaskan village of Kivalina before it disappears underwater.

I shall conclude with this thought. Contrary to what the hon. Member for Monmouth has said, there are countless reasons why it is right, sensible and in our best interests to acknowledge the gravity of climate change and to acknowledge that it is man-made and that we should commit to tackling it sooner rather than later. The Climate Change Act 2008 provides us with a clear framework for doing just that. The Government now need to push on with achieving those targets, not hold back, because a plan is only any use if we keep to it.

Aside from the practical case, something more basic is at stake. I visit many schools in my constituency and have many conversations with children. It is clear that they understand the issue. We have a responsibility to hand over our planet to future generations in the same state in which we found it. There is not only a practical and financial case for action, but a moral case, for our children, our grandchildren and their grandchildren. It would be selfish to do anything else.

UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Debate between David Mowat and Luciana Berger

Thursday 18th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Luciana Berger]

During the Committee’s special evidence sitting following the conference, my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West commented:

“If it was a road map, the car is still on the road”.

There was not the forward movement we hoped for. Only one country—the Dominican Republic—signed up to new carbon emission targets. Although I welcome the fact that four Gulf states made a commitment to submit reduction plans, that has yet to happen. The most important thing was that the conference agreed an extension of the Kyoto protocol and re-established a timetable for agreeing a global deal in 2015.

As to the substance of the report, Labour Front Benchers support many of the Committee’s recommendations. We have supported and will continue to support the Government’s efforts to secure a global, legally binding framework to cut CO₂ emissions. We agree with the Committee and the Government that the UNFCCC is the forum that offers the best opportunity for securing such an agreement, and that there is a need for a single transparent accounting regime, but this is the point at which I want to hold the Government to account.

We also support an EU target of a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2020. Anyone reading the Government’s response to the Committee’s report would be led to believe that the Conservative party supports that as well, yet proposals to introduce a 30% target have come before the EU Parliament twice in the past two years, and have twice been defeated because Conservative MEPs voted against them. I hope that the Minister might share with us his thoughts on why they did that, or, more to the point, why the Prime Minster did not do anything to stop them.

Will the Minister also tell us why this week 21 Conservative MEPs voted against attempts to rescue the EU ETS by back-loading 900 million carbon allowances that were due to be auctioned later this year? That was despite the fact that the Secretary of State told the Select Committee:

“We have the proposal for back-loading on the table. We do not think it is ambitious enough. We think we want to see both back-loading and cancelling, because that could make a significant difference to increasing EU ambition almost in one leap.”

Given that the Secretary of State clearly stated that the Government support back-loading, why did Conservative MEPs actively scupper the proposals?

The UK is responsible for 2% of the world’s carbon emissions. We have a responsibility to reduce them, for all manner of reasons, but on our own we cannot solve the problem of global climate change. Part of the leadership role that we can play in international climate negotiations will be as part of an EU bloc, so why are the Minister and the Prime Minister allowing the UK’s credibility to be undermined by Conservative MEPs? I know from previous exchanges on such matters that the Minister has a habit of dismissing anything that he does not want to hear, or that highlights the shortcomings of the Government, as partisan rhetoric, but it is not partisan to point out that the view of the UK as a climate change leader on the international stage is diminishing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West said during the Committee’s hearing following Doha, the message that he heard from our European partners was that they felt the UK was backing off from the leadership it had shown in the past.

In an ideal world, between now and 2015 the Prime Minster would go around Europe and the rest of the world championing Britain’s low-carbon progress, but we know that he cannot do that. He can try, and I hope he will. He can go to China, the United States and our European neighbours, and I am sure they will listen politely to his spiel about how the Government are the greenest Government ever, and nod as he tells them how personally committed he is to combating climate change. I am equally sure that they will then disregard what he says, because they read newspapers, too, and they know the Government’s record as well as we do. They know that under this Government investment in renewable energy has halved, and that the Prime Minister barely talks about climate change any more—he has not yet attended an international conference on the matter, and cannot get his own MEPs to support an increase in carbon reduction, let alone ask them to do more. No matter what the Prime Minster says, he cannot change the reality.

Things do not have to stay that way, however. The Government should act now to improve their record and give the UK a stronger negotiating position in the run-up to 2015.

[David Mowat]

From the tone of the hon. Lady’s remarks it would seem as if the UK were among the higher producers of carbon in the EU, whereas, according to EU figures, we produce 8.8 tonnes per capita. That is among the lowest in the EU and 30% lower than countries such as Germany, Holland, Ireland and Poland. I find her remarks odd in that context.

[Luciana Berger]

I am not sure how that point relates to mine about our responsibility to continue in our leadership role on the international stage—a role for which, in the past, we have been held in high esteem and taken seriously—and about remarks recorded in the report that show a diminishing in our standing, and therefore our effectiveness, on that international stage. As I said, 2% of global emissions come from the UK. We have a responsibility, domestically, to reduce them, but we cannot solve the problem alone.

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger]

We were the first country to introduce a climate change Act, but other countries, such as Mexico, have followed suit, and many others are considering how to reduce their carbon emissions. I agree with the Chancellor’s comments back in 2007, when he said that investment in low carbon could go hand in hand with growth and support our economy. We have seen global trade in low carbon surpass growth in all other fields. Without domestic investment in low carbon in the UK, our national growth figures last year would have been much worse. I believe the two go hand in hand.

What should the Government do? First, they should back the cross-party amendment proposed by the Chair of the Select Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North, which would put an explicit target for decarbonising the UK energy sector by 2030 in the Energy Bill. That would give businesses the confidence and certainty they are crying out for to invest in low-carbon and renewable generation, and would signal to other nations that we were serious about meeting our climate change targets and moving to a low-carbon economy.

Secondly, the Prime Minister should get a grip on his MEPs and force them to vote in the European Parliament in accordance with the UK Government’s position. That is the only way to regain our lost credibility in the eyes of our EU neighbours. Thirdly, the UK should renew its role as an international political leader on climate change.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Lady refers to lack of credibility with our EU neighbours. I could accept that if our carbon emissions were higher than those of our EU neighbours, but, with the exception of France, they are significantly lower. Surely actions drive the issue, not words.

[Luciana Berger]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I referred first and foremost to the actions of Conservative MEPs in the European Parliament who have twice contradicted and been in conflict with British Government policy. There has been a reduction in our emissions, but we must ensure that we meet our ambitious emissions reduction target in the long term. We have made significant progress in the short term, but we must make significant investment in the short and medium term to ensure that we meet the long-term targets.

This month, Lord Stern, author of the world famous Stern report, said that the only thing missing in the efforts to tackle climate change “is the political will”. There are signs that that is beginning to change. In his second inaugural address, President Obama reaffirmed his commitment to tackling climate change. Even emerging economies such as China—we will discuss this in more detail in our next debate—are making progress.

We must seize this opportunity for our planet and for the jobs and growth that it will create. It is time for Minsters, especially the Prime Minister, to stop talking about showing leadership and get on and do it. I hope the Minister will take note of my suggestions, and I look forward to hearing his explanation of the vote by his party’s MEPs this week.

Energy Prices

Debate between David Mowat and Luciana Berger

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I will speak as briefly as I can about three issues: unconventional gas, fuel poverty, and what we should be doing about the big six—or, perhaps more pertinently, what we should not be doing.

First, I do that think that unconventional gas is a panacea, but the Government need to take it a little more seriously than they have up to now. There has been a lot of discussion about wholesale gas prices rising and getting bigger and bigger, but that is not wholly true. It is true in Europe but it is not true across the world. In the US, the Henry Hub market for wholesale gas is now 50% of the level that it is in Europe. If we were purchasing gas at that price here, we could cut all fuel bills by one third immediately. That has been achieved by a remarkable technical innovation to do with fracturing and horizontal drilling, which is probably the most significant change in the energy industry in the past two decades. It has not happened here yet and there is some way to go before we can say that it will happen here, but both the industry lobby and, frankly, the green lobby are very suspicious of unconventional gas. In my view, that is why the Government need to take it seriously. The US has been able to generate more energy from gas than from coal, and that has a massive impact on its carbon emissions. The quickest way for anybody to reduce carbon emissions is to replace coal with gas as soon as possible. I would like to see that point taken more seriously, and it is not true that gas prices are increasing everywhere worldwide—they are not.

Secondly, we have heard a lot about fuel poverty and there have been some very powerful speeches, particularly from Opposition Members, on this issue. I have heard the figure that 2,700 deaths are the result of fuel poverty each year. That is a terrible statistic and is one that we all need to take seriously.

We missed the opportunity a decade or perhaps two decades ago to embark on a programme of cheap nuclear power in the way that France did, and frankly we are paying the price for that now. However, I believe that both sides of the House voted for the Climate Change Act 2008. It may well be that we need that Act and that it is the only way forward, but we need to be clear about the implications, because whichever way one looks at its requirements, it puts up the cost of energy. That might be right, but putting up the cost of energy in that way increases fuel poverty at the margin, all other things being equal. We talk about CCS, wind power and solar power, all of which cost more than gas and other methods, and it is very important that we fully understand that they do not come cheaply. We need to be very careful, as we legislate more for targets of 80% reductions by a certain date, that we understand what we are doing.

Finally, I want to talk about the big six. As has rightly been said—I heard it said recently—most of those companies are now foreign owned. The other thing about the big six is that we require them to spend £200 billion in our country in the next 15 years. They can choose whether they do that or not, but if they do not, we will face a bigger problem here than fuel poverty: the lights will go out. Coal stations will be coming off stream in the next three or four years and nuclear is coming to the end of its life. We face a very serious issue here in a way that no other country in Europe does and, as far as I can see, the only way we can deal with that is through massive investment—some of which, perhaps unfortunately, is going to have to come from those people, who are, as has rightly been said, a cartel in some ways. I have heard language today about them; indeed, I think I heard an Opposition Member accuse them of criminal behaviour and of being a cartel that had rigged the market and that should be fined 10% of turnover, which would cost them £10 billion. It is a terrible thing to accuse directors of criminal behaviour. We have no evidence of that and it is not true. We have an oligopoly and we have to manage it.

[Luciana Berger]

Four of the big six energy companies have admitted that they had been involved in doorstep selling practices that they have now had to stop because they were wrong. They were mis-selling packages on the doorstep which meant that people were paying more for their energy.