Environmental Protection and Green Growth

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

We cannot allow all development to be killed off, but I agree that there is no point building and selling homes that are not sustainable, and that will be uninsurable, un-mortgageable and unfit for human habitation if they are hit by successive flood events.

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

With a reduction in the flood defence budget to pre-Pitt levels, does my hon. Friend agree that, in getting the deficit down, there is confusion between revenue spending and capital investment? Surely, capital investment means building up assets to protect people’s homes and businesses, but all the Government are doing is playing Russian roulette with people’s lives and futures.

[Mary Creagh]

That is a very good point, and there is also a direct impact on construction and engineering jobs, which are flatlining. For the record, by the way, may I make it clear that I was not requesting any personal thanks? All thanks should be directed to my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore, who is sitting next to me.

Labour is the party of jobs and growth not just in cities, but in towns and villages throughout this great country of ours. We are standing up for fairness in the countryside, as yesterday’s debate about the Agricultural Wages Board showed.

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

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate as a former chair of Flood Risk Management Wales—for the five years before coming into Parliament, I was charged with adapting Wales’s flood defences to climate change.

The big picture we face is of global climate change giving rise to a reduction in the land mass of the globe, with the population increasing from 6.8 billion to 9.5 billion by 2050, which will mean food and water shortages, migration and conflict. The Kyoto protocol will come to an end in 2012. The Americans seem to want to let it die on the vine, and the Chinese and Indians want to keep it going, but it is incumbent on us to have a strategy that focuses economic growth along a green trajectory.

On that point, some of the Government’s moves are disappointing. They did not support Sheffield Forgemasters, which could have been a global player in nuclear provision, and they did not support Bombardier to get a foothold in exports, which would have given us a green footprint elsewhere while supporting our economy. The big debate in the Chamber is between cuts and growth, and there is a lot of talk about how Labour left the cupboard bare, but we know from the numbers that a third of the deficit was for investment beyond earnings, and that the rest was for the banks. There should be no apology for that, because that is what stimulated growth.

We have now got rid of growth. The Chancellor announced that half a million jobs would be lost, so people in the public services started saving instead of consuming, and people in the private sector stopped recruiting and investing. The deficit is now £46 billion higher than it would originally have been. That is why the Labour party has proposed a five-point plan on VAT, national insurance and so on. The important part of that plan in this debate is investment in capital assets in flood defences.

The devastating floods in 2007 and Lord Pitt were the engine for the new trajectory of investment in flood defences, which would have provided jobs and capital assets—it would not have been money down the drain. That would have encouraged inward investment and protected neighbourhoods, businesses and homes, so I am saddened that it has been reduced by 27%. We are spending £354 million this year, but that will go down to £259 million. Having worked with the Environment Agency, I know that it would have put that money to good use.

Land is an asset not just for carbon capture and generating oxygen but for tourism, but the Government will sell off 15% of our woodland. Sustainable development is the centrepiece, constitutionally, of the Welsh Assembly Government, but it is seen simply as a healthy option in England. If we are to grow our way out of deficit with a green trajectory, we need to look at emerging consumer markets in the developing countries, such as China or India or those in south America, and reconfigure our export offer around green technology. That does not seem to be happening and the Government do not appear to be proactive.

Big companies are developing products. Tata Steel, near my constituency, is developing a new seven-sheet steel that generates its own electricity and heat; and Boeing in north Wales is introducing new carbon planes, which will be 30% more fuel-efficient. The Government must provide an infrastructure and regulatory system that encourages such innovation, not just to take our economy on a green trajectory but to project us into a global leadership role. I do not see that happening.

It is fairly self-evident that global energy costs will continue to escalate, because the rate of economic growth in China, India and south America means that those countries and areas will consume more of it. Those increases in energy prices, although painful, create new and profitable green technologies. The Government should not take such a laissez-faire approach to that. I fear that when, for instance, the Chancellor scoffs at the Deputy Prime Minister’s ambition for an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050, it sends a signal that he does not take green investment seriously. The risk for Britain is that the Tories will blindly stumble over the green shoots that could be the future of jobs and growth in Britain.

Flood Defence Allocations

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I absolutely understand that. The hon. Gentleman can come to meet me if he wishes to hear more details about this. The scheme will cost £250,000 or thereabouts per household it protects. That is an enormous amount of money and I do not deny its importance, particularly to the people of Leeds, but we have to look at it from the perspective of the whole area. If it can unlock regeneration or benefits to that city there might be opportunities under the new payment-for-outcomes scheme.

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

You know, Mr Speaker, that I headed up flood risk management for the Environment Agency Wales between 2005 and 2010, so I appreciate the relationship between climate change and flood risk, which we have seen in New Orleans. What has happened in Queensland, Australia and in England is not a laughing matter. Will Ministers undertake to visit victims and communities who have been devastated by flooding that could have been avoided had the Minister not cut the revised budget for flood defences, which was made after the 2007 floods, and say sorry to them?

[Richard Benyon]

We have visited places that have been flooded since we came into government. The hon. Gentleman must understand that I have waded through houses reeking of sewage and have looked into the eyes of families whose houses have been flooded. He does not have to tell me about the misery that flooding causes those communities—2,500 households in my constituency were flooded in 2007. We understand how important this issue is and he knows that we cannot protect every house. There are 5.2 million houses at risk.

Public Forest Estate (England)

Geraint Davies Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. Perhaps I should have said that the country is on the march.

The Secretary of State did not reckon on the campaigns against these plans, both national and local, which have united people from across the political spectrum. Some 360,000 people have signed the “Save our Forests” petition—the largest public protest since the Government were elected.

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

Does my hon. Friend agree that Lloyd George, who set up the Forestry Commission in the previous Tory-Liberal Government in 1919, would turn in his grave at the thought that this coalition was selling off England’s forests and leaving only Wales and Scotland to manage and own our public land and forests?

[Mary Creagh]

I am sure he would be spinning in his grave.

I turn to the consultation document that the Government published last week. I have read it, unlike many Government Members, and it rewards reading. It raises more questions than it answers. There are a lot of warm words in it about communities instead of the Forestry Commission managing forests, yet on page 33 there is a harsh reality:

“Any sale would be at the open market value”.

Forests currently sell for between £3,000 and £6,000 a hectare. I will give way to any Government Member whose community can afford to compete with the private sector to buy up thousands of acres of woodland. [Hon. Members: “Come on!”] No takers?

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.

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[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.