A Green Industrial Revolution

Gavin Newlands Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

I plan to focus my relatively short remarks on transport as it pertains to the green industrial revolution that is so obviously required. I look forward to taking up my transport brief and working closely with the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), and the Opposition Front-Bench team, and with the relatively new Secretary of State for Transport, who must have the best job in the Cabinet, given that his predecessor set the bar so low that he cannot possibly fail to clear it. [Interruption.] In the repatriation of the Thomas Cook passengers, he managed to book airlines that actually had planes, so already he is one up on his predecessor.

I formally congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill). He may be new to this place but he has been in this game a wee while now, and it showed in an excellent and passionate maiden speech. I also congratulate all other new Members who have made maiden speeches today. It is a tough assignment, but they have all done it with great aplomb. I well remember my maiden speech, with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, when you allowed me some leeway at the end of my speech as I had gone over my time; I am forever grateful to you for not cutting me off before the end of my speech.

I want to comment on an issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) raised in his Front-Bench speech at the start of the debate—the UK Government’s failed green deal scheme. That scheme had laudable aims, but it was badly designed and allowed cowboy companies with criminal intent to drive a coach and horses through the various loopholes in the legislation. As a result, hundreds of my constituents have been defrauded, often for thousands of pounds, by Robert Skillen and his company, HELMS. Unsurprisingly, Skillen liquidated HELMS and emigrated.

The Government must take responsibility for their failed scheme and ensure that our constituents are fully compensated. The members of the green deal all-party parliamentary group and myself, as co-chair, will be renewing our campaign for justice for those affected by HELMS in the coming Session.

[David Linden]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he is doing in the all-party parliamentary group. May I say to the Government, through him, that it would be helpful if the Department for Energy, Business and Industrial Strategy had a more adequate number of staff to work through the backlog of people who are trying to contact BEIS to deal with issues to do with the green deal?

[Gavin Newlands]

I could not agree more. I am seeking a meeting with the new Minister—the previous Minister involved was the then Member for Devizes—to see how the assistance of BEIS has actually helped with the Green Deal Finance Company, because from our viewpoint it does not seem to have helped a whole lot.

For a decade now, the Scottish Government have been pursuing a long-term vision of what Scotland’s economy and society should look like in the decades to come. It is a vision that sees all our electricity needs coming from renewable sources, and the transport system becoming carbon neutral. It is a vision that sees the potential of the natural resources that we have all around us, waiting to be harnessed and used to benefit us all. It is a vision that puts the reindustrialisation of our country at the heart of the strategy, arm in arm with the investment and renewal that has come to the fore over the decade.

My constituency is seeing the fruits of that long-term vision right now. For more than 50 years Renfrew—the largest town in my constituency and my home town—has been without a fixed rail link, and it is the biggest settlement in Scotland that is entirely reliant on buses for public transport. That calamitous mistake from the 1960s is about to be rectified with the beginnings of the Glasgow city region metro, which will start in my constituency at Paisley Gilmour Street, and finally provide the airport with a connection to the rail network.

That project is part of a green industrial revolution, and just as the original industrial revolution had the most expansive rail network in the world at its heart, so must the 21st-century version have transport and connectivity running through it like letters through a stick of rock. Hundreds of people will be employed directly in building the project, and hundreds more will be involved in the supply chains—an economic impact that will go way beyond my constituency and those of my neighbours. Using clean, green, renewable electricity, the new metro will be part of a public transport network that is rapidly being modernised.

Since devolution we have seen the reopening of the Borders railway, and routes from Hamilton to Larkhall, Stirling to Alloa and Airdrie to Bathgate, with only the former line not electrified. Virtually the whole central belt network now runs on electric lines, which contrasts with years of stagnation and neglect. That programme continues, with preparatory work beginning for the entire west of Scotland network to run under the wires, and longer-term goals of electrification north of Perth and the complete decarbonisation of Scotland’s railways within the next 15 years.

Along the A9, the spine of Scotland, work on the first electric highway is under way. Charging points are being installed at a rate of knots, providing the security of energy supply that is vital for the transition from fossil fuel vehicles to electric ones. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun alluded to, in Norway, which has a strong Government plan and the will to make transformational changes, sales of electric vehicles have grown exponentially. Petrol and diesel cars are on their way out—some going for an oil-rich country—and a confident, independent, self-governing country is taking big decisions on the big issues facing our planet. I hope that Scotland will soon join our Nordic friends as part of that club, whatever obstacles the Prime Minister and his Secretary of State think they are putting in our way.

In contrast, the UK Government cannot decide whether they want to make existing fuels cleaner and less polluting, with a decision on E10 petrol still lying in the long grass where it was kicked. Over recent years, those on the Treasury Benches and their Departments have been in a state of complete paralysis. Electrification projects are cancelled on a rolling basis, including in Windermere, on the Nottingham to Sheffield line and in Hull, south-west Wales and Coventry. Towns and cities have yet again been left behind, and jobs and economic growth directly connected to decarbonisation have been lost. Meanwhile, Crossrail spirals out of control and over budget and Crossrail 2 is in the pipeline as if its predecessor never happened. Billions are spent on extension after extension to London’s underground and overground. Why concentrate yet more spending, infrastructure, economic output, resources, and ultimately people in a single city, when we know that a fairer allocation of economic power will result in a better environmental outcome and a less unequal society?

If the UK Government were serious about boosting the economies of the north and south-west England, they would look to Scotland for ideas. Instead, they are presiding over delay and decay. In Tyne and Wear, 40-year-old metro carriages have had their lifespan extended to 2025, while the system awaits new trains, more than a decade after the current ones exceeded their life expectancy. Even when the UK Government finally coughed up for trains that brought to mind modernity and not Methuselah, the then Chancellor handed over only 60% of the costs requested.

In conclusion, if the UK Government want to be serious about a green industrial revolution, the short termism and insular—

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Metropolitanism.

[Gavin Newlands]

What the shadow Secretary of State said—Hansard can ask him later what he said. If the Government want to be serious about the revolution, that short-termism has to stop. Spending seven times more per person on transport investment in London than in north-east England is not the answer to anything. Learn the lessons from Scotland, make decarbonisation a priority, and the economic rewards of the transition can be spread across the UK.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

It is a great pleasure to call, to make her maiden speech, Olivia Blake.