Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we all accept that we would like a transition towards electric cars instead of petrol cars, it will naturally breed a massive increase in the demand for electricity, which will require many more nuclear power stations? The Government do not seem to see further than their nose on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am grateful for the guided tour of Tiverton and Honiton that we have just heard from the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish). I was also grateful to hear the contribution from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), the first Green Member of our House.

I thank the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition for paying tribute in their Queen’s Speech addresses to Jonathan Burgess of 1st Battalion the Royal Welsh from Townhill in my constituency of Swansea West, who lost his life serving and protecting our country in Afghanistan. His family, including his unborn daughter, will know that the recognition of his service will remain on record throughout history in the tributes paid in this place.

This is my first speech as the new MP for Swansea West and I am privileged and proud to be able to pay tribute to my predecessor, the right hon. Alan Williams, in whose distinguished footsteps I follow. He served in this House for some 46 years, for 22 of which he was on the Front Bench, and served in four Departments in a ministerial capacity. I hope that in recognition of his fine service and of the fact that he was the most senior Privy Counsellor to leave in 2010, we will see him rejoin us in the House of Lords. I hope and expect that we all wish him well in achieving that elevation. In his maiden speech, on 2 February 1965, Alan mentioned that Swansea had a radical tradition that, between 1959 and 1964,

“temporarily flirted with the forces of Conservatism.”—[Official Report, 2 February 1965; Vol. 705, c. 949.]

I should say that I am very grateful that after 46 years Swansea did not feel the urge to do so again.

Those who know Swansea West will know that it has a beautiful bay with golden sands that is best admired from the highest elevations of Townhill. It has a bustling city centre and a famous market, and it stretches west to the Mumbles and north into the countryside into Waunarlwydd. It is a community of communities and a warm and friendly city—a city that has certainly benefited from a Labour Government, with thousands more people employed and paying taxes instead of drawing the dole, compared with what we saw in 1997 when millions were affected across Britain. That change has enabled our country to invest in a better health service, police service and schools.

In Swansea, with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, the university, local government, police and defence, nearly 40% of the work force are gainfully employed in public services, and those incomes are feeding into the private sector, small businesses and other businesses in Swansea communities. The choice of whether the deficit reduction should be largely through economic growth, jobs and skills as Labour said during the election or through cuts from the Conservatives and their new-found friends is a big issue for the people of Swansea.

We should remember that the deficit figures in March were £22 billion less than had been projected and predicted just four months earlier in the pre-Budget report. That £22 billion figure shows the massive engine that growth can be in reducing deficits compared with the £6 billion we are about to cut by way of savings. If those cuts and further cuts were to produce a further million unemployed people, that would completely wipe out the £6 billion of savings because of extra costs in dole money and so on. We should also remember that unemployment in February last year was 2.5 million, and that it was predicted at that time that unemployment would rise to 4 million by now. If it were not for the fiscal stimulus co-ordinated by the previous Prime Minister, Barack Obama and other world leaders, we would have been facing probably the worst recession since the 1930s. When we talk about cuts, we need to think very carefully about how quickly and how deeply to make them. The fact that the election was lost by the previous Government does not change the argument and the risks we are playing with.

What we need to do, as we move out of recession, we hope, is to generate a green recovery out of the global downturn. In the past four or five years, I have been leading Wales’s adaptation to climate change in respect of flood-risk management—investing in flood defences for the Welsh Assembly Government through the Environment Agency—so green issues are very close to my heart. I know, as other Members know, that we face a critical time in the world with shrinking land masses caused by rising seas, alongside shifting habitats and with the spiralling global population lifting from something like 6.8 billion to about 9.5 billion by the middle of this century. With less land and more people, there will be food and water shortages and, obviously, there will be issues with migration and possible conflict.

The stakes are very high so we must tackle the emissions issue very quickly. We are fortunate, in a sense, that emissions have fallen due to the downturn. The focus should be on re-engineering markets and behaviour to keep them falling. Part of that is to ensure that the environmental cost of production is properly factored into the price of products that people buy, which currently is not the case. That should also be the case for imports. That might mean that we need to consider emissions tariffs on imports, certainly at the European level, but we must also know that the problem we face in the bigger global picture is that world trade is completely disfigured by agricultural and fossil fuel subsidies of $1 trillion a year.

Those subsidies in essence disable the rural economies of developing countries and worsen the environmental crisis we face. They are part of the resource gluttony of the old world that has led to this twin problem of economic and environmental crises that go hand in hand. Those subsidies need to be challenged and reversed. We need environmental costs factored into prices. We need the environmental benefits from forests and ecosystems that support us to be credited. We need companies and nations in their accounts to measure environmental and social impacts.

People will know—having read, I am sure, “The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity” study—that if we increase the network of global protected areas from about 13% to 15% on land and from 1% to 30% on sea, it would cost us about£45 billion, but it would save us 100 times that value— £4.5 trillion. Meanwhile, the world’s 3,000 biggest companies create damage to the environment worth £2.2 trillion a year, so perhaps they could pay the £45 billion to save the £4.5 trillion. It is up to world leaders and world Governments to get the maths right and to get the subsidies in the right place to help to save the planet. Let us remember that what the words “biodiversity” and “ecosystems” actually mean in the real world is food, fuel, fibre, clean air and fresh water—the stuff of life, and life that needs saving.

We all want clean fuel. We heard earlier about nuclear fuel and clean coal. I also call for international co-operation on green energy, which is crucial. The Desertec project in the Sahara is progressing, and people may know that it connects solar power to a network grid at a place where the sun is probably at its hottest. That could provide 15% of Europe’s future energy needs.

The North sea countries’ offshore grid, which has been established recently, can feed Europe with power matching that previously produced by North sea oil and gas, as estimated by the Offshore Valuation Group. Using information and communications technology to work at home instead of travelling to work around the globe on planes could reduce our emissions by a further 15%. Those opportunities and collective action globally need to be embraced, and alongside that, consumers must be given the choices, prices, information and help to promote sustainability collectively.

In a nutshell, Britain and Europe must take a lead together to secure a sustainable future beyond our shores and to protect and enhance our ecosystem, because it is up to us to shape the future. We share one world, so let us act together for all our tomorrows and put sustainability at the centre of our thinking, not into the bottom drawer until the economy recovers, because then it will be too late.