National Arthritis Week

Debate between David Mowat and Philip Boswell

Thursday 20th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. The fourth division of the Liverpool Shipping league is probably a higher division than I played in during my very short football career.

Due to the time, I will not refer to every speech. The Scottish National party spokesman, the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day), talked about what Scotland is doing on managing obesity and chronic pain. I would like to see England learning more lessons from Scotland’s health system; and, I humbly suggest, vice versa—I also include Wales in that. Health is devolved and we are beginning to do things in different ways. Sometimes things will work well, and sometimes things will work less well. One of the highlights of these debates is to hear what happens in other nations, and those remarks are interesting.

The shadow Minister also gave a good speech. She talked about budgets and health spending, particularly public health spending—she has now been able to tell two Health Ministers about that issue—and it is true that the public health budget was cut. The UK spends above the OECD average on health and adult social care, which has not always been the case. We are not the highest spender—we spend 9.9%, but France and Germany probably spend about one percentage point more—but we are above the OECD average. It matters very much how effectively we spend that money. There are always decisions to be made, and those decisions are sometimes difficult.

What are we doing? I will not be able to answer all the points in great detail other than to say that MSK is a priority because it is so important. MSK is one of the national programmes within NHS England, and in 2013 we appointed a clinical director, a gentleman called Peter Kay, who is running a £5 billion programme covering a number of areas and seven strands of work, which I will briefly run through.

First, we need to ensure good awareness of the signs and symptoms of MSK. That is about public health and things such World Arthritis Day and the UK “Share your Everyday” campaign. It is also about the important Public Health England activities that we have heard about. We ran a successful public health campaign on arthritis last year, and we need to maintain that pressure.

Secondly, we need high-quality clinical guidance to diagnose and manage the disease. Thirdly, we need to provide holistic care, support, and planning in partnership with patients. Fourthly, and this is important, we must spread best practice across the NHS—I would go further and talk about spreading best practice across the health systems of all the Administrations within the UK. Fifthly, we have heard a lot today about the benefits of physical activity for MSK patients, notwithstanding some of the issues experienced by the hon. Member for Neath and the right hon. Member for Knowsley. Fitness and exercise are of course a preventive measure for nearly everything, particularly for MSK diseases.

Penultimately, we need to do more to enable people to remain in work and to return to work. Finally, we need to invest in research. Those are the seven streams of activity, and I will talk a little about the one that has been spoken about most this afternoon, which is what we are doing to keep people in work. As I said, the points about DWP and PIP were well made, and I will see that that is reflected to DWP Ministers.

[Philip Boswell]

I am delighted to hear about the open door to Arthritis Research UK, which has been excellent in championing the rights of arthritis sufferers, preventing the onset of arthritis, developing a cure for arthritis and transforming lives. Arthritis Research UK’s work is considerable, and it is worthy of our support. I thank the Minister for his words and his initial actions.

[David Mowat]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those words. It occurs to me that I have to give the hon. Member for Strangford time to say a few words at the end. I will write to Members about the various specifics that have been raised. I will now sit down and allow him half a minute or so. I apologise for there being so little time.

EU Referendum: Energy and Environment

Debate between David Mowat and Philip Boswell

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

It was a pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin- Khan), whose speech was excellent, in both content and delivery. My son is a junior hospital doctor and I know how hard doctors work. We need more scientists and doctors in the House of Commons, so for that reason, too, she is really welcome. I congratulate her.

The implication of the Opposition’s motion is that somehow, by leaving the EU, we will become the dirty man of Europe and that, without the glad hand of European legislation, we will go back to our dirty ways.

I want to talk about climate change police, particularly how far ahead we are of the rest of the EU, and how Europe’s slow pace is causing increasing difficulty for the rest of the world.

People are right that environmental protection and policy is cross-border. We produce 1.3% of global emissions. Since 1990, the UK has decreased its carbon emissions by 28% and the EU has decreased carbon emissions by 21%. That figure includes our contribution of 28%, so the rest of the members have done a bit worse; although that in itself is not a disaster. What is extraordinary is the variability between different countries in Europe on carbon emissions since 1990: Austria has increased emissions by 14%, Ireland by 7% and Poland by 14%; Germany has decreased emissions, but not by anything like as much as we have. It is really quite bizarre.

Quite often, people talk about countries such as China as being the issue when it comes to emissions. However, the reality is that the Chinese are taking the whole issue a great deal more seriously than a number of OECD countries are. China has 40 to 50 nuclear power stations under construction. It increased its proportion of energy from nuclear by 30% last year, and from renewables by 20%. That is a huge effort. The truth is—

[Philip Boswell]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point that China is making commendable progress in respect of nuclear construction. However, is it not also the case that, along with India, it is constructing up to several thousand coal-fired power stations? The argument, as was well put by the Prime Minister of India, Mr Modi, is this: why should we come to the banquet, have only a dessert and be presented with the bill?

[David Mowat]

I have a lot of sympathy for that argument, and that is why we have to cut more slack for these developing countries. I am going to come on to talk about coal, but in November the Secretary of State in this country said that we were going to phase out coal by 2025. The following week, Germany commissioned a brand new lignite-burning power station. That sort of behaviour plays to the point just made by the hon. Member from the Scottish nationalists that it is very hard to lecture the Indians and the Chinese on coal when there are countries in Europe, this year, commissioning brand new coal power stations.

We have talked about how important Paris is. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) made the point that we may well be close to 1.5% anyway—it is a statistical model and it is quite hard to tell. However, the fact is that the INDC that the EU, including the UK, put into the Paris commitment is approximately half as onerous in terms of decarbonisation as that which the Climate Change Act 2008 requires us to do in the UK. We will reduce our emissions by the fifth carbon budget by 57% in 2030. The EU offering was a 40% reduction, which includes the UK’s 57%. We are seeing the result of this already. Last year, carbon emissions across the EU as a whole increased by 0.7%. I accept that that was only one year, and that this is not something to be looked at one year at a time, but 18 of the 28 countries in the EU either had no decrease in emissions or an increase. For completeness, in that same time the UK reduced its emissions by around 3%. Those statistics are from Eurostat.

I want to talk more widely about why it is that the EU has lost its way on climate policy. There is a fixation on coal in the EU. Germany is often regarded as being a leader on renewables, and it is; Germany has far more renewables than we have. However, it also has much higher carbon emissions than we do. The reason for that is the coal that it has: Germany has four times as much coal as the UK, and it is not four times more populous. There are parallels in other countries. Does it matter? Perhaps not, in one sense; someone has to lead, and it is us. However, the DECC website shows that electricity prices in the UK for domestic consumers are something like 50% above the EU mean—our gas prices are not—and our industrial prices are about 80% higher. Why does that matter? I come from a constituency in the north of England, where we still try to manufacture things. It is very hard to talk about rebalancing the economy and the northern powerhouse on the back of differentially high energy prices.

I do not think that the EU has taken the position that it has on purpose. So why is it that the policy objectives of reducing carbon have not been realised? The first error that was made—this is true of a lot of directives—is that there was confusion as to the target. A lot of the early EU directives were about renewables and not decarbonisation, which is a secondary target. The consequence is that CCS, which we have talked about, was not emphasised, gas as a transition fuel was not emphasised and nuclear was not emphasised—the biggest omission of all. Of all EU electricity, 30% comes from nuclear. The fact that, for many countries in the EU, that is not even regarded as part of the solution is quite bizarre.

Two or three hon. Members this afternoon talked about CCS, and I regret that the UK is not pushing ahead with that. However, it really beggars belief to say that that is a European issue when a number of countries in the EU, including Germany, have banned CCS. It is not a question of not developing it; they have banned it.

The other error that the EU has made is to create a general parity between different types of fossil fuels. Coal and gas are very different indeed in terms of their materiality on this. One reason why the UK does a lot better than the EU is the amount of gas that we use and the fact that we have displaced coal with gas. I like to quote this statistic: if the world were to replace all the coal that we currently burn with gas, that would be equivalent to five times, or a factor of 500%, more renewables. To pretend that that is not part of the solution is just plain wrong. One reason that people regard it as not being part of the solution is that the pathway has been mistaken for the objective.

Yes, at some point we need to get to an emissions level below that which is afforded by gas, but the truth is that emissions are cumulative. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said that we may well be close to the 1.5% in terms of particulates and all that goes with them. That is true and it is a cumulative effect. Carbon does not go out of the atmosphere for a very long time. It is not just about pathway. For that reason, gas should have been far more of a factor in this than it has been.

Biomass Energy

Debate between David Mowat and Philip Boswell

Wednesday 24th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Philip Boswell]

That is certainly an option that any sensible leader would consider when thinking about future policy. I agree that it is vital to retain a sensible balance.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned how critical research and development is to the development of the industry. I understand that the Government are doing something about that. Indeed, the UK Government set out policies to support the use of biomass in energy generation in their UK biomass strategy published in 2012, which noted:

“It is widely recognised that bioenergy has an important role to play if the UK is to meet its low carbon objectives by 2050. Excluding biomass from the energy mix would significantly increase the cost of decarbonising our energy system—an increase estimated by recent analysis at £44 billion. As set out in the 2011 UK Renewable Energy Road map, bioenergy is also an important part of the Government’s plans to meet the Renewable Energy Directive objectives in 2020.”

Nevertheless, biomass, like all other proven renewable energy sources, is being neglected for the UK Government’s preferred options of nuclear and unconventional gas, which of course means we will not meet our climate change targets as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008.

[David Mowat]

The hon. Gentleman and his colleague, the hon. Member for Inverclyde, both made the point that Scotland has outperformed many parts of Europe—everyone except Sweden, I think we heard—with its decarbonisation initiatives, yet we also hear that that is a reserved matter, so such policy is for the UK Government. I am interested to understand how in that case the credit for doing so well is due to the Scottish Government, not the UK Government. I would point out, as the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) did, that, of all the devolved Administrations and England, Scotland has the highest percentage of electricity generated from nuclear. It is a long road to replace that.