Shale Gas Production

Debate between Greg Hands and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I thank my hon. Friend for his engagement, and I know he has a long-standing interest in energy on a number of fronts. I commend him for his continuing interest.

Nothing has changed in Government policy relating to fracking and shale gas. On the international crisis, my hon. Friend says the west is addicted to Russian hydrocarbons, but I would say that the UK is not. Last year we imported 4%, but typically we get less than 3% of our gas from Russia. The figures for oil are higher, but they are nothing like the eyewatering percentages we see among our European friends and partners.

On the holes in Preston New Road, Lancashire, the Oil and Gas Authority—the independent regulator—proactively approached Cuadrilla as recently as this week to ask whether it will apply for an extension. However, Cuadrilla has not made a straightforward application to do so. As with any licensee, Cuadrilla can apply for a straightforward extension from the Oil and Gas Authority if it wants to extend the deadline.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and I met the Oil and Gas Authority today, and it is ready to consider Cuadrilla’s letter and potential application. The Government hope the regulator would consider it favourably.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ashfield (Lee Anderson) on securing this urgent question. He is right to try to smoke out the Government’s position, and it is no wonder he is confused—I think he will remain confused after the Minister’s reply.

Let us be clear that the Government placed a moratorium on fracking because they said it is dangerous and they could not rule out

“unacceptable impacts on the local community.”

The Business Secretary said in 2020 that “fracking is over,” and just a few days ago he wrote

“it would come at a high cost to communities and our precious countryside”.

Yet last Wednesday, just three days later, the same Business Secretary said

“the Government are open to the idea.”—[Official Report, 9 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 355.]

Yesterday, at Chatham House, the Minister ruled it out. The Government are all over the place.

I will ask some questions, because this issue does matter. It is about our energy security, it is about communities that are deeply worried about the impact of fracking, and it is about the climate crisis. Has the Minister or his Department seen any scientific evidence since the 2019 moratorium that suggests fracking might not be dangerous and might be safe? If he does not have any evidence, why is he approaching the Oil and Gas Authority to ask it not to concrete over the wells, which was the original decision? If he does not think fracking is safe, why is he sowing uncertainty in communities across our country? If he does not have any evidence, will he assure the House that no review of fracking—no nods, no winks and no nudges—will be announced in the relaunch of the Government’s energy strategy? Clarity on this matters.

Finally, would it not be the best thing that the Government can do to guarantee energy security—the Minister should be clear about this—to have a green energy sprint by ending the onshore wind moratorium, ending the objection to solar power, embracing tidal power, moving forward with nuclear and having a properly funded national energy efficiency programme?

[Greg Hands]

I am delighted to see the right hon. Gentleman at the Dispatch Box. He says he is confused, but I have been absolutely clear that Government policy is unchanged from the 2019 manifesto. I am not sure what he finds confusing about Government policy being unchanged.

We did not put our 2019 manifesto on an Ed stone, but it is available online for anybody to see the manifesto pledges on which all Conservative Members ran. Government policy is unchanged, with or without an Ed stone. The right hon. Gentleman says we are sowing uncertainty. No, we have given absolute certainty. Government policy is unchanged from the pause announced in December 2019. There is no review. This is a science-led policy, and support from local communities would be needed if there were to be a change.

Finally, we heard about the “green energy sprint”, which is extraordinary. Since the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change in 2010, we have increased the proportion of our electricity generation coming from renewables from 7% to 43%. In any normal terms, that would be a sprint, but it is also a marathon, in the sense that we have done that over 12 years. It has been almost a “sextupling” of the amount of energy coming from our renewables since he was in office. He talks about nuclear, but he will also remember the 1997 Labour manifesto, which said that Labour saw “no economic case” for new nuclear power stations. He has the cheek to come to the Dispatch Box today to urge that we get on with nuclear. The Government are getting on with nuclear and with renewables, doing exactly the green energy sprint that he has suggested.

Storm Arwen: Power Outages

Debate between Greg Hands and Ed Miliband

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I commend my hon. Friend, with whom I spoke on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was a pleasure to visit his constituency. At Ireshopeburn, I saw the generator being connected to the community centre by engineers from across the UK, including from UK Power Networks in south-east England. I saw the relief centre at St John’s Chapel and I was in Eastgate, so I saw things first hand in his constituency.

To answer my hon. Friend’s question about our assessment of the comms, I have already mentioned that the comms from Northern Powergrid were not good enough in those first days. I am sure that that will be part of the review process that the Government will do with Ofgem as part of the response to all these storm events. On Northern Powergrid, we put the experience of many Members of the House and their constituents in those first few days firmly to Mr Jones, and I think that that message landed.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I thank the engineers, the Army, the emergency services and, most of all, local people in affected areas for their heroic response to the crisis. It is totally contemptuous for the Business Secretary to be available for a photo opportunity yesterday but not to be available today to come to the House to account for the Government’s performance. That simply adds insult to injury for communities in the north of England that have been badly let down by the power networks and by central Government in their crisis response and oversight of the system.

I will ask the Minister some questions. Some 10 days into the crisis, why has the Government’s emergency committee Cobra still not met to co-ordinate the response? Over the weekend, a local Conservative councillor in Durham said:

“if this happened in London…or in the south-east, everything would have got thrown at it.”

Are people in the north not entitled to think that he is right and that they have been treated as second-class citizens? Why did it take a week for the Army to be called in when Members on both sides of the House were calling for that at the start of last week? Why are thousands still without power when the Secretary of State told us last Wednesday in the House that people would be reconnected by Friday? Will the Minister now apologise to communities in the north for the Government’s performance?

The Minister said today, as the Secretary of State said yesterday, that he wants to learn lessons, but we have been here before. After the 2013 storms, multiple reports were produced—I have them here for him—that identified problems of communication, the vulnerability of the network and the complacency of the companies. After that event, during which 16,000 people were cut off for 48 hours, customers were told that they could expect to see “significant improvement”. This time, however, the performance has been far worse. Is not the only conclusion that the Government have been asleep at the wheel not just in the last 10 days but for the best part of a decade?

The climate crisis means that we will face many more such events. The Government must get a grip. Instead of a cosy Government-led process, overseen by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and Ofgem, will the Minister now establish what the situation demands—a proper independent inquiry into the performance and failures of power companies, regulators and the Government to ensure that our country and communities are never left that vulnerable again?

[Greg Hands]

Let me deal with each point in turn. It would not be fair to say that yesterday was a photo opportunity. The Secretary of State visited the armed forces, engineers, local residents, the relief centres and so on. It was most definitely not a photo opportunity, but an opportunity, as I discovered in County Durham on Wednesday and in Aberdeenshire on Friday, to thank those who had responded. Engineers had come from Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man to assist and we felt that it was right to go and thank them for their efforts. The Secretary of State is on a call at the moment with the Prime Minister and the head of Northern Powergrid.

On the response, the point here is that the mutual aid system is in place between the distribution network operators. The right hon. Member will know from his time as Secretary of State the importance of the mutual aid system—the NEWSAC, or North East South West Area Consortium, system—whereby different companies across the United Kingdom provide help to each other when a storm comes in. That is why engineers can be deployed right the way across the country. That is the most effective thing, because restoring power involves quite dangerous, health and safety-intensive work to restore overhead power cables, and those are the people one needs to be able to do the job.

The right hon. Member says it took a week to bring in the Army, but it is for the local resilience forum to say what the needs are locally. As soon as the local resilience forum in Aberdeenshire and that in Durham gave us the call, the Army was deployed very quickly indeed. He talks about investment, and I mentioned earlier that £60 billion has been invested in the network over the last eight years.

I learned at first hand on Wednesday in County Durham and on Friday in Aberdeenshire about the particular nature of this storm. There was the unusual wind speed and the fact that, rather than the prevailing south-westerly winds, the wind came in from the north-east, which makes a big difference for the power network. There was also the nature of the icing and the accumulation of icing on cables, which was a particular part of the storm. One of the engineers I spoke to in Durham on Wednesday described how he had experienced this particular set of circumstances only once before in his 35-year career in the industry.

Finally, on climate crisis, the right hon. Member is right: of course, there will be similar events like this and more of these events in the future. That is why we need to do everything we can—for example, with our net zero strategy in October—to make sure this country becomes more resilient to these kinds of events. We are currently doing the joint consultation with Ofgem on the future system operator, and that is exactly the kind of response that we need: a net zero strategy for how we equip the country overall, plus in particular how we make sure that the grid becomes more resilient to these kinds of events in the future.

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[Greg Hands]

I do not think that a public inquiry is the right course. It would inevitably take a long time. It would be better to use the established and effective review mechanism that we already have in place, and I invite the hon. Member and all right hon. and hon. Members to participate in it and give their views. I would say that NEWSAC, the mutual aid scheme, was deployed as soon it practicably could be, actually in advance of the storm coming in. I think that that has worked well. On the role of the Army, it is principally a matter for the local resilience forums to make assessments of the resources they need and then to put in that call. From my experience in Aberdeenshire on Friday, I can tell the House that, when the local resilience forum put in that call, the response was close to immediate.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Can you give me some guidance on the absence of the Secretary of State from this urgent question? Yesterday, he claimed to be getting a grip on this crisis, but today he has run away from answering questions in this House. The truth is that there are very serious issues here, and the Minister has had to come up with a hastily arranged “dog ate my homework” excuse in which he claims that the Secretary of State is on the phone to Northern Powergrid at the moment. He could have been on the phone before this urgent question or after it. This is an insult to the people in the north of England and an insult to this House.

Net Zero Strategy and Heat and Buildings Strategy

Debate between Greg Hands and Ed Miliband

Tuesday 19th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his statement, and send my warmest congratulations—as I have already done directly—to the Secretary of State on the birth of his new baby.

Let me start by saying that it is good that tackling the climate crisis is a shared national objective across the House, and that we want the Government to succeed at COP26 in just ten days’ time. However, there are two central questions about the strategy that has been published today: does it finally close the yawning gap between Government promises and delivery, and will it make the public investment which is essential to ensure that the green transition is fair and creates jobs? I am afraid that the answer to both questions, despite what the Minister said, is no. The plan falls short on delivery, and while there is modest short-term investment, there is nothing like the commitment that we believe is required—and we know why. When asked at the weekend about the Treasury’s approach to these issues, a source from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy said:

“They are not climate change deniers but they are emphasising the short-term risks, rather than long-term needs”.

The Chancellor’s fingerprints are all over these documents, and not in a good way.

We have waited months for the heat and buildings strategy, but it is a massive let-down. We are in the midst of an energy price crisis caused by a decade of inaction. Emissions from buildings are higher than they were in 2015. The biggest single programme that could make a difference is a 10-year house-by-house, street-by-street retrofit plan to cut bills and emissions and ensure energy security. There are 19 million homes below EPC band C, but according to the best estimates of today’s proposals, they will help just a tiny fraction of that number. Indeed, there is not even a replacement for the ill-fated green homes grant for homeowners. Can the Minister explain where the long-term retrofit plan is? Did BEIS argue for it and get turned down by the Treasury, or did he not make the case?

According to the Government’s own target, we need 600,000 homes a year to be installing heat pumps by 2028, but the Government are funding just 30,000 a year, helping just one in 250 households on the gas grid. Why does the Minister’s plan on heat pumps fall so far short of what is required? As for transport, we agree with the transition to electric cars—and I support and welcome the zero emissions mandate—but we need to make it fair to consumers. We should at the very least have had long-term zero-interest loans to cut the costs of purchasing electric cars. What is the plan to make them accessible to all, and not just the richest? Will the Minister tell us that in his reply? On nuclear, I was surprised, given the advance publicity, that the word did not even cross the Minister’s lips. We have seen a decade of inaction and delay on this issue, so can he tell us why there is still no decision on new nuclear?

The failure to invest affects not just whether this transition is fair for consumers but workers in existing industries. Take steel: it will cost £6 billion for the steel industry to get to net zero over the next 15 years. If we want a steel industry—as we do across the House—we will need to share the costs with the private sector. However, there is nothing for steel in this document, and a £250 million clean steel fund some way down the road will not cut it. Can he give us his estimates of the needs of the steel industry and how he thinks they can be met?

The same is true of investing in new industries such as hydrogen. There is a global race in these areas and I am afraid that the UK is not powering ahead but falling behind. Germany is offering €9 billion for a new hydrogen strategy; the UK is offering £240 million, and we are putting off decisions until later in the decade. We see the same pattern across the board, including on land use, industry and transport, and because of this failure to invest, there remains a chasm between promises and delivery.

Finally, it was noticeable that the Minister did not say that the plan would meet the target for the 2035 sixth carbon budget, but surely that is a basic prerequisite of the strategy to 2050. At less than halfway to net zero, do the policies in this document meet the target, or fall short of it? Despite hundreds of pages of plans, strategies and hot air, there is still a chasm between the Government’s rhetoric and the reality? My fear is that the plan will not deliver the fair, prosperous transition that we need and that is equal to the scale of the emergency we face.

[Greg Hands]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his warm words of congratulation to the Secretary of State and for his intention to join us in showing real leadership. I agree with him that this should not be a particularly partisan matter. The UK as a whole country expects to see our politicians working together, particularly in the run-up to our hosting the vital COP26. I will deal with his various points in turn.

On power, it is worth pointing out the success that we have had on renewables. The right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change up to 2010. When he left office, renewables were only about 10% of our power mix; now the figure is around 43%. Offshore wind costs have come down by two thirds. He mentioned nuclear, but I am just about old enough to remember the 1997 new Labour manifesto, which stated that there would be no new nuclear projects. It took Labour 10 years to do anything at all on nuclear.

The right hon. Gentleman called our investment in heat and buildings a modest one, but it is £4 billion. The difference between us is that we want to go with the natural choices that families make and to work with businesses, finding the natural point at which a homeowner needs to replace his or her boiler and to incentivise the take-up of a greener choice. He says that the £450 million investment is somehow inadequate, but I think that it will kick-start demand. Octopus Energy and others have said overnight that they think that they can make heat pumps at an equivalent cost to natural gas boilers by April 2022. I have confidence in the ability of British industry and British energy companies to innovate.

On energy-intensive industries, we have our £350 million industry energy transformation fund and we are speaking continually with the sector. We will keep the House informed on that. On nuclear, I have said that new money has been announced. There is the £120 million future nuclear enabling fund for optionality for future advanced modular reactors. Of course we are sticking to our commitment for a final investment decision on a further nuclear power station to be taken in this Parliament.

On hydrogen, the right hon. Gentleman is right to say that the German Government have done good work, through my good friend Peter Altmaier, the German industry and trade Minister, but the UK also has a world-leading hydrogen strategy, which was launched in August. We are aiming for 5 GW of low-carbon hydrogen generation capacity by the year 2030.

On the right hon. Gentleman’s final comment about 2030, our commitment is unchanged, but let us look at his commitment for a moment. [Hon. Members: “It was 2035.”] His leader, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), backed a 2019 manifesto commitment to go to net zero by 2030. Such a commitment would cripple the hard-won economic growth that we have achieved over the past 30 years through our steady approach of growing the economy and reducing emissions at the same time. Even the GMB has said:

“Nobody thinks 2030 is a remotely achievable deadline.”

The CBI has said that there is no credible plan to achieving net zero by 2030. This Government have the right ambition. This is a transition, and it is full of opportunities for jobs and low and zero carbon growth across the UK. The right hon. Gentleman should be backing it in full in the lead-up to Glasgow.

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[Greg Hands]

Nobody should doubt the Government’s commitment to getting a switch to electric vehicles. I certainly hope that the shadow Secretary of State has been taking an interest in that in recent times—

[Edward Miliband]

indicated assent.