Graham Stuart
Main Page: Graham Stuart (Conservative - Beverley and Holderness)(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lisa Nandy
I agree with my hon. Friend. I am not one who is keen to cast back into history to appoint blame, but what I will say to him and to the Secretary of State is that a 10-year promise was made not just to industries and companies, but to the communities that stood to benefit and to gain a huge amount from CCS. Given that the Government have announced £250 million of investment in a competition for nuclear small modular reactors, we seem to be creating a complete lack of confidence that any of the other schemes will proceed. Such decisions and the way in which they are taken damage our energy security, not just in the short term but in the long term. We have to give a signal that Britain is open for business, but the Chancellor’s decision has done precisely the opposite.
That brings me to the part of the Bill relating to wind farms. There was once a time when the Prime Minister was so keen on wind turbines that he even put one on the roof of his house. Now his Government are trying to legislate to close a scheme that has successfully driven investment into the cheapest low-carbon energy source available. Wind farms already provide power to more than 8 million homes in Britain, and once again it will be energy bill payers who pay the price for the Government’s short-term decision. The Institute for Public Policy Research has estimated that ruling out onshore wind farms and relying on other low-carbon technologies to achieve our energy targets could increase costs for bill payers to up to £3 billion through to 2030. There will also be a cost to jobs and growth in an important clean-energy industry.
There is one area on which we agree with the Government, and that is that wind farms should not be imposed on communities that do not want them. That is why we support the Government’s proposals to put local authorities in charge of approvals for such projects. Yet the reality is that the Government are using the Bill to try to block wind farms even where they enjoy strong local support, and they are taking powers away from local authorities in relation to other areas.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
I am glad that the Labour party has effected a U-turn, because I argued for years under a Labour Government that imposing wind farms on communities against their will would lead to a backlash and to the project being brought to a halt. That is what has happened, so it is a bit late for the hon. Lady to say that she wants to listen to local communities. If we had listened to local communities all along, we could have had more onshore wind turbines where they were desired, rather than the backlash that has resulted in the current situation.
Lisa Nandy
As the hon. Gentleman often reminded me when I served on his Select Committee, he is always right, and usually long before everybody else. We very much support the right of local communities to decide, but we do not understand why the Government do not. The real-time actions they are taking in this Bill will, in effect, block wind farms where there is strong local support for them. Moreover, the Government are taking exactly the opposite approach to fracking applications and seeking to deny local communities the right to decide what happens in their areas.
Nigel Adams
The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. That is why we need the new stations to be built a bit sooner. If previous Governments had been a bit braver, we might not be in the situation that we are in now.
In the circumstances, is it wise to phase out all the coal in the system before sufficient gas and biomass have been deployed to make up the difference? I ask the Minister to restate the Government’s commitment that coal will be phased out of the system only after sufficient biomass and gas generation have been brought forward to make up the loss.
Graham Stuart
Does my hon. Friend accept that if we are to get the dirtiest of fuels off the grid and clean our atmosphere, we have to state that as an objective, as the Government have rightly done, because only after that signal will the investment come forward to replace it? If it will not definitely be phased out, why will people definitely invest?
Nigel Adams
That is a fair point from my hon. Friend, but we certainly need bridging technologies, because we will have a gap in which we could see days like those we saw in early November.
Graham Stuart
Does the hon. Gentleman agree on these two things: first, that while we are burning oil and gas, it might as well be our own; and, secondly, that saying we are subsidising oil and gas simply because we tax it slightly less is a false narrative?
Callum McCaig
I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. It strikes me that there are certain parallels with the coal conversation moments ago. That situation could come to pass if we do not support the North sea. We need to transition away from oil and gas, but that will take some time given the economics at play. If we are using oil and gas—we will be doing so for the foreseeable future—it might as well be ours. We might as well get the economic benefit of it, and we should certainly use that economic benefit to try to diversify and invest in other areas. The hon. Gentleman made the point on subsidies. The oil and gas sector is taxed very highly, and more highly than any other sector of which I am aware. It is taxed less than it was, but we probably require it to be taxed less if we are to see the benefit of the industry in future.
The OGA is vital to that future and it is hugely important that it is put on a firm footing. It must be given the regulatory powers it requires and the ability to engage fully with industry on access to infrastructure, plans for investment and so on. I very much support the Government in ensuring that the OGA continues to have a laser-like focus on maximising economic recovery, which is fundamental to that purpose. Over the years, there have been umpteen changes to oil and gas. It is in the nature of the industry, with its huge capacity to generate income, that the goalposts have changed substantially during that time, but I plead with all hon. Members not to change the goalposts again. The industry has been working for two years towards proposals on maximising economic recovery, which have universal buy-in and require that the OGA’s focus is not complicated.
Mr Lilley
Indeed, not universally on the Opposition Benches. It puzzles me that the political class is committed to such perverse policies. Then I found a possible hint of an explanation, when someone mentioned to me, Madam Deputy Speaker, a book that I am sure that, like me, you have not read but have heard about called “Forty Shades of Grey”. It is apparently a mildly pornographic—
Mr Lilley
It is apparently “Fifty Shades of Grey”. [Interruption.] Have I any higher bids? I have not read it; I have not even read the title of it. However, the surprising popularity of that book demonstrated that sadomasochism, or the infliction of pain and the submission to pain, are far more widespread tastes than we had previously thought. It seems to me that in the political sphere there is a similar belief that it would be popular to inflict pain or submit to pain by green policies. We might say that what we are suffering from in this country is “Fifty shades of green”.
The trouble is that Members who are committed to this doctrine measure the success of their policies not by what they will achieve, but by what they will cost, and not by how effectively they will reach a given destination, but by how onerous are the burdens they can place on Britain, British households and British business.
That pain is very significant. The Committee on Climate Change worked out the costs of climate change policies in 2014-15, and it came out at about £250 per household. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) may disagree with the Committee on Climate Change, which he helped set up; if so, please intervene—but of course he cannot sustain his position. That figure is set to double by 2020, to double again probably by 2030, and to double again by 2050. That is the direct effect on household budgets both through their energy bills and the cost of more expensive products because energy prices feed through to product costs.
There is also the cost on jobs. We have lost the aluminium industry already, and earlier today we were seeing the serious the impact of job losses in the steel industry. Of course, the basic reason why there are job losses in the steel industry is that there is a worldwide glut of supply, but the reason that falls excessively on this country is that our industrial energy costs are higher than those anywhere else in Europe. That is why we are suffering disproportionately at the moment. I am reliably informed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) that we are importing bricks. I recently had lunch with a businessman who said that 7% of his output comes from the UK but that 28% of his energy costs were in this country.
Mr Lilley
I agree. It was very late in the day when we introduced that system, so at least we incurred the minimum cost of subsidy to achieve the given objective rather than just plucking out a number, which would inevitably have been high, given that civil servants always are rather generous with public money and set targets high, just so that they can say, “Oh look, we have achieved our quantitative solution, even if we have done so at unnecessary expense.”
Graham Stuart
My right hon. Friend is making an entertaining speech. Offshore wind has a price of around £140 per MWh, but the industry expects to bring that down to around £100 by 2020, and by the time we have any nuclear power stations, it is pretty likely that it will be below the cost of nuclear and falling, whereas the cost of nuclear will be fixed for the entire time.
Mr Lilley
My hon. Friend is normally very rational, but on this occasion he is being irrational. He is suggesting we should invest in very expensive and currently inefficient products in the hope that the next generation of such products will be cheaper. However, other people would also be able to invest in those cheaper products and compete with us. If they are going to be cheaper in five years’ time, we should wait five years and do it then.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) and other colleagues who have spoken today. I do not think any more memorable phrase will come into the debate than the “50 shades of green” used by my right hon. Friend. As so often in this area of debate, people dispute the numbers, as he did with his initial “ 40 shades” effort.
The thread of agreement among everyone who has spoken so far, including my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), my right hon. Friend and others, is that if we are setting out to fulfil the requirements of the Climate Change Act, we must do so in the lowest-cost way. My right hon. Friend was right to point out that, given the burden sharing throughout Europe, there is an issue about our taking further steps. Would that simply provide greater slack elsewhere? People may or may not share his scepticism about the whole arena, but none of us would want our making progress to mean that someone else slacks as a result. Therefore, having a joined-up approach is a sensible part of delivering what we all want and doing so at the lowest possible cost, and that is worthy of further investigation.
Where I do not think my right hon. Friend is right is in suggesting that this is purely an exercise in sadomasochism. After all, the Committee on Climate Change’s brief is to fulfil that which was passed in this House, albeit without his support: an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050. If we read the Committee’s fifth carbon report, which was recently published, we see that its whole premise is to try to work out a pathway to get us there at the lowest possible cost. That is one reason why I welcome the reset of the policy by the new Government and our new Ministers. They are not stepping away from the Climate Change Act, although some of my hon. Friends might wish that they were. On the contrary, they are saying that they want to look at how best to make sure we have a policy framework that incentivises activity to meet the outcomes that we all want.
I know from discussions with the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is nodding in my direction, that one renewables issue we face—this picks up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty—is dealing with intermittency. One way of dealing with that is to develop storage. Have we had sufficient investment and created a framework that has incentivised enough focus on storage while we were also incentivising investment in things such as wind? The answer has to be no. We must therefore try to ensure that we get a framework that captures all the elements that we need in order to create a rational response, so that even if my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden does not entirely agree, he can see a more rational thread running through the policy in order that we can deliver.
The Secretary of State played a leading role in the negotiations in Paris, and Britain was at the table, helping to create a more ambitious deal.
David Mowat
My hon. Friend mentions Paris. I wish to understand, perhaps from the perspective of GLOBE—the Global Legislators Organisation—why the EU’s intended nationally determined contribution submitted at Paris implied a degree of reduction in emissions that is half the rate of the UK’s. Why has the EU decided not to follow us with the Climate Change Act, and apparently to be so tight around it? Does it know something that we do not?
Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend often carries around with him the list of the emissions reductions of European countries since 1990. He points out—
Graham Stuart
Indeed, Austria is my hon. Friend’s favourite bête noire. He points out that the contribution of many countries that like to talk about this topic but not deliver on it is pretty woeful, which goes back to my earlier point about the need for a joined-up approach to ensure that we genuinely deliver collectively the outcomes that we desire. Thanks in part to the efforts of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, EU ambitions were raised, but they did not go as far as the UK would have liked. In 2008, with cross-party support, we unilaterally decided on a pathway for this country, which was 80% reductions by 2050.
Dr Daniel Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I agree with much of what my hon. Friend is saying, but does he also agree that where the UK leads, as was outlined by the former Leader of the Opposition, very often other countries in the EU follow? Currently, Sweden is considering implementing its own climate change Act based on UK legislation.
Graham Stuart
My hon. Friend is right, but it is important not to exaggerate that, because it will quite rightly be picked up by colleagues, who will point out that something as all-encompassing, as specific and as road-mapped as our Climate Change Act has probably never been passed in another country in the world, and it is coming up for eight years since that Act was passed into law.
It is worth saying a little on the context, as we are seeing turning points. It is not correct to say that we are solely, in this sadomasochistic way, inflicting pain on ourselves while others entirely deny themselves these pleasures. According to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, last year, despite the fall in oil and gas prices, there was record investment in clean power, with an increase to $329 billion. In other words, the regulatory and legal framework has been set up across the world, and the GLOBE organisation, of which I am chair and in which I declare an interest, has, I hope, played a part in helping to create those frameworks around the world.
Chinese renewables investment last year hit $111 billion, which was an increase of 17%, while the US investment in renewables went up 7.5% to $56 billion. However, to return to the point of my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), Europe saw the lowest level of investment in renewables last year since 2006. Therefore, while we may be delivering, Europe is not entirely doing what one might hope that it would.
On the subject of onshore wind, may I welcome the Government’s commitment to look at the whole system cost of renewables? My understanding is that onshore wind is currently our cheapest renewable, but there are issues around the back-up that is required. What we need to have is an objective assessment of the cost, so that we can make a proper judgment of the benefits of one form of clean energy versus another—for instance against biomass, which my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty was so keen to champion. Until we have that clarity over the real costs, it is hard to create the framework and the incentives that we need to bring on the cleanest possible transformation at the lowest possible cost.
On the issue of zero emissions, I just wanted to follow on from what the right hon. Member for Doncaster North said. He is right. If we are to deliver 2° let alone 1.5°, we will need to move to what sounds like a slightly fantastical idea of zero emissions. If we can entirely decarbonise the power system and then use that power in other systems, we will start to move towards the ability to eradicate most of our carbon. We still need other ways to change our systems—and we have time to develop these—so that any storage we have offsets the emissions that are not avoidable. There will always be emissions in a developed and industrialised world, but what we can do is net that to zero. It is important to make that point in case any people at home think that we are dealing in science fiction rather than reality. Given the progress in technology that we have seen over recent years, it is credible to believe that we can move to zero emissions. If, given modern science, 1.5° will be achieved, such a rate will be necessary.
The Government are doing a reset. By June this year, they will legislate on the fifth carbon budget, which covers the distant years of 2028 to 2032. By the end of the year, they will produce a strategy to deliver that, which is welcome. What we need is something much more coherent than the renewables obligation system. We need something that uses auctions, which delivers, as the Secretary of State has said, a market driving out costs in which the Government are out of the way to the maximum extent that they can be. In the meantime, why are we investing in expensive energies such as offshore wind? It is because they would not be viably invested in otherwise. None the less, that investment is driving the costs down. I say to those who are more sceptical on this matter to look at how prices have come down in solar and in onshore wind and how they are coming down in offshore wind. Whatever the current eddies in investor confidence, going forward with these particular Ministers who are committed both to delivering our climate obligations and to doing so at the lowest cost and in the most coherent manner is exactly the right position for us be in. I am delighted to say that I will be supporting this Bill tonight.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
It is a privilege to take part in this debate and to follow so many incisive contributions.
I welcome this wide-ranging Bill, first, for the support it provides to our oil and gas industry, which is suffering greatly, as many have said, from the fall in global oil prices. As we have heard across the Chamber, Members know well that the industry makes a substantial contribution to our energy security, employment and overall economic wellbeing, so the establishment of a new arm’s length body charged with regulating the sector is an important step in the right direction.
I shall focus my contribution on part 5 of the Bill, which will deliver on our manifesto commitment to end new public subsidies for onshore wind and give local communities the final say on planning applications. I speak as a Member who has joined many communities in my constituency fighting plans for entirely inappropriate wind turbines in Copmanthorpe, Wheldrake, Upper and Nether Poppleton, Murton and Kexby, to name but a few. Every single time it was the developers who were trying to impose their turbines on local communities, who simply did not want them. This was entirely unacceptable and I am pleased that every one of those applications was rejected by the local authority.
We need to end the current system whereby developers pocket the lucrative taxpayer-funded subsidies, and communities are stuck with turbines in their local neighbourhood and suffer the problems that accompany them. It is only right that local communities, not politicians in this Chamber, have the final say over whether planning permission for a new windfarm is granted. I am pleased that the Opposition Front-Bench team has accepted that. Only 18 months ago, the Labour-run council in York was proposing to encircle our great cathedral city with up to 40 wind turbines. Thankfully, the Labour council that instigated this insane project lost office in last year’s local elections. That was only to be expected, given that the common-sense wishes of local residents were completely ignored.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) mentioned, any visitor to the picturesque countryside across north Yorkshire and the neighbouring east riding can appreciate that the area has taken more than its fair share of wind farms. The cruel irony is that ultimately they are being funded, at least in part, by the very local communities that are so deeply opposed to them. As such, I am delighted that the Secretary of State has grasped the nettle and pushed for the early closure of the renewables obligation scheme, an endeavour in which she has the full support of the overwhelming majority of my constituents.
It is a great shame that, when talking about energy, all too often we overlook the energy trilemma: the need to ensure that our energy is affordable, secure and environmentally friendly. All too often we focus on the final consideration—the need to decarbonise—when more needs to be done to push down the cost of household bills and increase capacity. Any Government who pay lip service to our future energy security are playing Russian roulette with our country’s future. We need a balanced energy mix to deliver that security, as Opposition Members have said. Without action, funds for otherwise uneconomic wind turbines are sadly draining resources away from other, less-intrusive forms of renewable energy that could play a key role in our future energy security.
Graham Stuart
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend on the need to give communities the final say on any wind turbines in their area, but does he agree with me that we need to ensure that wind turbines that do have local support are in no way disadvantaged compared with other forms of energy generation, for example if they need to get involved in the CfD mechanism? They must be on a par with other forms of generation, so long as the local community have a say on whether they are built?
Julian Sturdy
I entirely agree with my hon. Friend; it is very important that this is community-led. There are places where there will be community support for onshore wind, and that must be seen through. I would go one step further—this is probably where I disagree with Ministers—because I think that the same should apply to fracking as well.
Offshore wind in the North sea has the potential to generate far more renewable energy than onshore wind farms, and in a way that does not harm our countryside. However, as the Secretary of State mentioned, further investment is needed in other exciting areas of renewable energy generation, so that we can decarbonise our energy network in a way that delivers lower bills and improves energy security. Tidal energy is one of the many types of renewable energy that are yet to be exploited on an industrial scale, as wind and solar energy have been in recent years.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). I am not the expert that he is on these matters. I will focus on the bit of the Bill that is most controversial in this place—the removal of subsidies for the renewables obligation for onshore wind.
I will sketch out my own personal journey on this subject. I was a bit of a “greenie” when I was first elected to the European Parliament back in 1999, and I enjoyed working with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on certain things. It confused the hell out of her, but it did not do me any harm, and we actually had some interesting areas of agreement on policy. In 2001, though, I met a young gentleman called Bjørn Lomborg, and my journey to the light side has continued since then. Between then and 2010, I was interested in energy but did not really pay it much attention. As a Member of the European Parliament there are some big issues to talk about, but one does not look at individual policy areas in the way that one does when one becomes a constituency Member of Parliament representing, as I do, 72,500 people in the beautiful constituency of Daventry.
When I came here, I had one majorly controversial onshore wind farm development in my constituency, and I thought that I would do what everybody else in this place would do. I met the developer and representatives of the industry from the British Wind Energy Association, as it was then, to talk through the problems that my constituents had with their development. When that organisation later morphed into RenewableUK, I still spoke to it about how to include communities in decisions —how to incentivise them to take onshore wind in their area by working with them, perhaps even giving them some sort of rebate on their energy bills, so that they felt they were attached to local energy production for consumption in their areas. I have to say—and I am pretty sure that history will prove me right—that the wind industry decided to ignore all my counsel.
Bringing this forward to the present day, I suggest that how the onshore wind industry has treated communities up and down this country has done untold damage to how people see renewables in total as part of our energy provision. There is history to this that goes back further than the 2015 general election.
Graham Stuart
I am not saying that there is not a moral responsibility on businesses, but they will usually act in the way that they are incentivised to act, and it is up to us to create frameworks that get them to behave in the right way. The previous Labour Government’s refusal to listen on giving a voice to local communities meant that developers felt there was little point in engaging with and listening to the local community and just went to appeal to get the decision overturned. The then Government’s refusal to listen has led to hostility in many communities, including mine, towards the wind industry.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I agree, mostly, with my hon. Friend. That is why I welcome the tone of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) when she said that her party would now recognise the views of local communities on these matters and consider how they could be engaged.
I had to learn this for myself first hand with regard to an onshore wind development in the beautiful village of Kelmarsh—along the A14, just down from the M1 junction —where a number of 126.5-metre turbines are currently being erected. I thought, as my constituents did, that if we formed a good local campaign with everything going for us, we could win the campaign and stop a proposed development being established on what was, in most people’s judgment, an inappropriate site—a grade 1 listed site. That view was borne out by the planning inspector. Because the local council did the right thing and turned the application down, the developer appealed. The gentleman from the planning inspectorate in Bristol came to visit and made a stunning, groundbreaking statement that changed how I dealt with these issues and culminated in the pledge on onshore wind that I am so proud of in the Conservative party manifesto that saw us into government.
The planning inspector said all the things that the local community had been saying about the development being on an inappropriate site and about it being damaging to local communities, and gave a whole host of reasons why he should not approve it, but he then went on to say that national policy trumped all this, and therefore, “You are having this onshore wind development no matter what you would like.”
Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow some very thoughtful contributions. I would like to single out those of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). As Members might expect, I did not agree with everything they said, but they were none the less serious and thoughtful contributions.
When this Bill first came before peers in the other place, it was a rather meagre piece of proposed legislation that focused almost entirely on fossil fuel extraction. It was amended considerably in Committee and, although it is still pretty thin gruel in many respects, at least it now has some regard to the ways in which current industrial activities and investment might be made compatible with a low-carbon energy future.
As has been said, the Bill is mostly concerned with the establishment of the Oil and Gas Authority. How that arrangement adapts to a world of plunging revenues from offshore oil and gas remains to be seen, but there is broad consensus in the House, with notable exceptions, on the need to implement the findings of the Wood review. There is also a robust case, in terms of economics and energy security, for using the resources of the North sea continental shelf to reduce our dependence on foreign imports during the transition to a decarbonised energy system.
It was disappointing that the Secretary of State dug in her heels with regard to carbon capture and storage, because I welcome the amendments that would expand the principal objective of the UK’s maximising economic recovery strategy to incorporate a regard for CCS development. The precise wording of the relevant clauses will need to be revisited in Committee to ensure that the industry has the necessary flexibility and that jobs and investment are protected, but CCS presents a real opportunity for the North sea oil and gas industry to utilise its technical expertise and skills in a way that will give it a sustainable future for decades to come. That opportunity will not be realised, however, unless we get clarity about the Government’s ambitions for CCS and a strategy to achieve those ambitions. At the moment, all we have is muddle.
In 2007, the Prime Minister said in a speech at Chongqing University that a Conservative Government would
“strain every sinew to create viable and affordable”
CCS technology, yet eight years on we have a Conservative Chancellor recklessly cutting the funding allocated to help bring forward commercial-scale CCS just weeks before many companies were expected to submit their bids. The abrupt end to funding support for CCS is not an aberration, but is indicative of this Government’s cavalier approach to the energy sector as a whole. That approach was evident in the most controversial aspect of the Bill that originally came before noble Lords in the other place, namely the decision to close the renewables obligation a year earlier than had originally been legislated for in the Energy Act 2013.
I agree with the point, which many hon. Members have made, about the need for local consent when it comes to onshore wind, but noble Lords removed clause 66 on Report, through an Opposition amendment, and they were right to do so, because the early closure of the RO was yet another example of policy making on the hoof from the Government. The measure’s stated objective was to save customers money, but, as we have heard, in the Government’s own central scenario, in many cases that will mean as little as 30p, and we know that the cost savings are unlikely to materialise, because we are not on course to meet our EU renewables target.
Given the notable lack of progress in decarbonising heat and transport, and of meaningful cross-departmental working to make up lost ground, we will be forced to go further, under the current targets, on renewable electricity. In those circumstances, it is entirely counterproductive to make life more difficult for the cheapest form of renewable energy available. It strikes me that the decision has much more to do with the politics of appeasing Conservative Back Benchers and with the Government’s interpretation of the levy control framework as a fixed-budget envelope—it was never intended to operate in that way. The decision clearly signals that the Government have abandoned their previous commitment to a technology-neutral approach to energy policy at a time when the overriding priority, as hon. Members have said, must be decarbonising at the lowest possible cost.
Despite the nebulous wording of the Government’s manifesto commitment, they clearly feel they have a mandate to reinsert clause 66, or a version of it, in Committee. If they do, as the Minister said they would, I would urge them to reconsider the impact of the RO’s closure on projects that have local consent and in which people have invested in good faith and on smaller generators, and to work to incorporate truly equitable grace periods into the Bill.
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman said that the saving would be very small, but the number of turbines affected would also be extraordinarily small, would it not? Should we not keep this in perspective?
Matthew Pennycook
It might be small, but I hope the hon. Gentleman would agree that projects in which people have invested in good faith and which have local consent should be allowed to proceed, instead of being penalised by the early closure of a scheme that had a fixed end point—2017—in legislation anyway.
The way the Government have handled the matter of the RO has been hugely damaging and undermined the industry’s trust in the Government’s word. Last January, the industry was told that its investments were safe and that no changes to the rules were proposed, but six months later, despite there being no clear signal in the Conservative manifesto, the Government attempted to do just that.
James Heappey (Wells) (Con)
The bishop will be delighted that the Members for Bath and Wells should speak so soon one after the other.
It is an honour to rise to speak in this debate, not least in my capacity as a member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee. The Bill is relatively limited in scope, but the energy challenge faced by the Government generally is significant. For too long, the energy policy of previous Governments has focused exclusively on climate change and not on the cost to consumers and on energy security. I therefore applaud the current Front- Bench team for their work on rebalancing that so that all parts of the energy trilemma receive equal prominence.
As we transition from mostly carbon generation to carbon-free generation, it is important to recognise that, while that is absolutely the target of this Government, we must employ technologies of some sort—gas and biomass seem the most obvious—to bridge the gap until the renewables sector is fully ready to stand alone to meet the needs of this nation. We cannot risk the lights going out by jumping to that too soon. I entirely agree with the Government that coal’s race is run. However, it is important to understand that an enthusiasm for gas generation, biomass and any other bridging technology that we employ is not mutually exclusive from continuing to promote and invest in other renewable technologies that are available.
Much has been made of the reductions in subsidies to the solar industry, but members of the Committee have been struck by the fact that other things hamper the industry just as much, not least the European Union’s insistence that British consumers pay more to Chinese producers of photovoltaic cells for their solar installations, which results in price inflation. There is also an insistence that VAT is charged on solar cells, as if they were a home improvement rather than necessary energy generation. As we have heard, tidal, wave and offshore wind offer opportunities, although there is a clear challenge in making sure that those technologies are cost-effective before they can be employed and charged to the bill payer.
Onshore wind forms a big part of the Bill and I make no apology for having been involved in some successful campaigns to keep wind turbines off the Mendips and the Somerset levels. The Conservative party—now the Government—made a manifesto commitment to deliver a reduction in onshore wind, so I urge the Government to reinstate the original clause 66 so that we in this elected Chamber of Parliament can vote on our manifesto pledge without the intrusion of the Liberal Democrats, who seem to have abandoned this Chamber altogether and are instead using the Lords to do whatever it is that they have left to do.
I encourage my Front-Bench colleagues to be similarly enthusiastic about pushing on with the development of large-scale storage; the digitisation of our energy system, particularly the roll-out of smart meters; and the decarbonisation of the transport system. I think that every member of the Committee has been struck by the collegiate way in which the Secretary of State has dealt with her colleagues in the Department for Transport, even though they might not be running at her desired pace.
The green technology about which I have a reservation is carbon capture and storage. Undoubtedly, the technology is exciting and the Government have invested £130 million in research into it, but the reality is that it is simply too expensive to push on with at present. To require our oil and gas industry to maintain spent wells in the North sea for the purposes of carbon capture and storage would be a wholly unnecessary complication for and, indeed, additional burden on the industry at a time when it is struggling enormously. I therefore hope that clause 8 will be removed.
Ditto clause 80, where the House of Lords has been most unhelpful in adjusting the carbon trading legislation. It would make no sense for us to account for the totality of our carbon emissions when, under the EU trading scheme, anything that we do not use will simply be used by another country. We would make no saving whatsoever in carbon emissions by employing clause 80 as drafted by the other place.
I want to conclude by speaking briefly about security of supply, the reinvigoration of the oil and gas industry in the North sea, which I applaud, and my reservations about the onshore oil and gas industry. Both the Secretary of State and the Minister have been very kind in working with me to deal with the concerns of my constituents and to help me to fully understand what recent legislation will mean for them. There is an inconsistency, however, whereby the localism that we advocate so strongly for wind turbines is not being extended to fracking and gasification, so I hope there might be some scope for incorporating that.
None the less, I think that our push for a fracking industry may be premature, given that there is already a surfeit of liquefied natural gas on the European and Asian markets. A significant amount is also being stored in the United States, which is awaiting the opportunity to export it, and that will serve the European market further. Moreover, the Iranian rapprochement gives an opportunity for even more oil and gas to flow.
Graham Stuart
How does my hon. Friend square his argument? He is in favour of maximising returns from the North sea but cannot see the same argument for maximising gas on land, to keep money here and avoid handing it to a foreign regime.
James Heappey
I square it simply by having a profound concern for how the industry might affect the areas in which it is sited. Some areas will have a geology and a community that support it, and that is for them to determine, but my plea is that Ministers extend to fracking the same localism as we advocate so strongly for wind.
To conclude, the Lords amendments are unhelpful, so I would be grateful if Ministers could strike them out and bring back the original Bill. More than anything, however, it is important that the Bill makes quick progress from here onwards. The delay is causing great uncertainty, which is having an impact, in particular, on our oil and gas industry, which can ill afford it at this moment. If the Government can restore clause 66 and remove clauses 8 and 80, they will have my full support thereafter.
Andrea Leadsom
Well, I don’t know where to start! I completely disagree with the hon. Lady.
We are acting to control the costs of renewable energy by ending new subsidies for onshore wind and providing local people with the final say on new applications. Members who spoke about renewables included my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), who gave us a spanking good speech on the importance of keeping costs lower for consumers, and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who rightly raised the need to deal with intermittency. I can tell him that, since 2012, my Department has invested £18 million in innovative support for energy storage.
The hon. Members for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) again criticised the early closure of onshore wind subsidies. I find it extraordinary that Labour Members seem to equate the deployment of renewables with decarbonisation. That is simply not the case. They fail to recognise that fuel poverty and endless renewables subsidies go hand in hand. They need to recognise that.
Graham Stuart
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) asked where to start. We need to start by getting rid of the most noxious of the current fuels, which is coal. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that if other Governments followed our example in replacing coal with gas and then with other technologies as they develop, it would make a bigger contribution than almost anything else?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are the first developed country to talk about getting rid of coal and moving to gas, which will be the best thing we can do for decarbonisation in the near term.
My hon. Friend the Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) spoke up strongly for the right of communities to decide on the location of wind farms. I want to pay a real personal tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who has done much to support communities and had a big impact on our policy relating to our manifesto commitment on onshore wind. I was glad to hear my hon. Friends the Members for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) and for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall) highlight the plight of the bill payer as a result of the renewables obligation subsidy. On this we have a clear manifesto commitment to get costs down.
The right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) is owed a great deal of gratitude from Members across the Chamber for his personal work and commitment to the climate change agenda. He made a proposal for a zero carbon emissions strategy, with the Climate Change Committee deciding on the appropriate date, but as things stand, we are committed to meeting our legally binding commitments for 2050, and that is where our focus lies. I am sorry to disappoint him on that.
The hon. Members for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) criticised the Government for not being green, but I can tell them that, since 2010, we have reduced the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions by 15%, which is the biggest reduction in a single Parliament. We are over-delivering against our first three carbon budgets, and according to the Climate Action Network, the UK is the second best country in the world for tackling climate change, second only to Denmark. This Government have done so much! My hon. Friends the Members for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and for Bath (Ben Howlett) pointed out that the Opposition did not equate subsidies with fuel poverty, but they need to do so. They need to understand that the more we subsidise technologies, the more we add to fuel poverty.
In finishing, I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), who gave a knowledgeable and supportive speech on the importance of supporting both the OGA and our manifesto commitments. I am grateful to all hon. Members for their contributions, and I commend this Bill to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read a Second time.
Energy Bill [Lords] (Programme)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Energy Bill [Lords]:
Committal
(1) The Bill shall be committed to a Public Bill Committee.
Proceedings in Public Bill Committee
(2) Proceedings in the Public Bill Committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion on Tuesday 9 February 2016.
(3) The Public Bill Committee shall have leave to sit twice on the first day on which it meets.
Proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading
(4) Proceedings on Consideration and proceedings in legislative grand committee shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which proceedings on Consideration are commenced.
(5) Proceedings on Third Reading shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion at the moment of interruption on that day.
(6) Standing Order No. 83B (Programming committees) shall not apply to proceedings on Consideration and up to and including Third Reading.
Other proceedings
(7) Any other proceedings on the Bill (including any proceedings on consideration of any message from the Lords) may be programmed.—(Charlie Elphicke.)
Question agreed to.
Energy Bill [Lords] (Money)
Queen’s recommendation signified.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Energy Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of:
(a) expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by the Secretary of State; and
(b) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable under any other Act out of money so provided.—(Charlie Elphicke..)
Question agreed to.
Energy Bill [Lords] (Ways and Means)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 52(1)(a)),
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Energy Bill [Lords], it is expedient to authorise:
(1) the charging of fees;
(2) the imposition of a levy under the Act;
(3) the imposition of financial penalties under the Act;
(4) the increase of charges in connection with trading schemes; and
(5) the payment of sums into the Consolidated Fund.—(Charlie Elphicke.)
Question agreed to.