Financial Assistance to Industry

Debate between Greg Smith and Richard Holden

Monday 14th July 2025 General Committees

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Desmond. I begin by drawing the Committee’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I have spoken at length on this subject, in the last Parliament as a member of the Transport Committee and from the then Government Back Benches, and since the last general election as a shadow Minister.

I begin with a simple concept: politicians should never ask someone to do something they are not willing to do themselves. I will put on the record that I am not willing to buy an electric car, and therefore anything that essentially uses taxpayers’ money to produce electric vehicles that so few people in the United Kingdom actually wish to buy—including, it seems from the weekend’s media, the Transport Secretary—is something that we cannot support.

With fleet sales removed, new EV registrations prove that this is just not a technology that people trust, desire or are willing to spend their hard-earned money on. The Conservatives previously pushed the zero-emission vehicle mandate transition date back to 2035, but this Government have brought it forward to 2030. The need for this subsidy––let us call it what it is––is a clear indication that the Government are struggling to persuade consumers to switch to electric vehicles.

That failure stems from two fundamental issues: the high cost of electric cars and their lack of reliability in terms of both range and charging infrastructure. The Government will say, I am sure, that we formerly had a subsidy scheme—and that is true: we did, but it was used to create an EV industry in Britain, supporting it to overcome the barriers of entry into the UK market. When that EV industry was created, we ended the subsidy. But now, to cover their mistakes and the unrealistic nature of their targets, Ministers have been forced into using taxpayers’ money to pay for EV adoption and to mask the consequences of their own policy failures. In effect, taxpayers’ money is being used to subsidise a transition that the public are not willing to make.

We warned the Government that that would be the outcome. However, driven by an ideological approach to net zero, they ignored those warnings. This is yet another example of how the Government’s unrealistic climate targets are contributing to the rising cost of living for ordinary British families. Many other countries have opted for a 2035 target, recognising the economic and logistical challenges of any earlier deadline. In contrast, the UK’s 2030 mandate risks placing an undue financial burden on families here, forcing them to purchase more expensive vehicles while others abroad can wait and benefit from falling prices.

We on the Opposition side believe in a demand-led transition to cleaner vehicles, one that respects consumer choice and understands the whole range of technologies available, following a genuine whole-system analysis—not just the tailpipe. Families should have the freedom to choose whether they want to drive petrol, diesel, hybrid, electric or other new technologies, and to make that transition when the market and infrastructure are ready, and when prices are more affordable.

The Government’s approach has already had real-world consequences. We have seen the closure of Stellantis in Luton, in part due to insufficient demand for electric vehicles. That should serve as a warning.

[Mr Richard Holden (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I should declare that Ford’s UK headquarters is in my constituency. Will my hon. Friend also reflect that there is a real issue here for not just cars, but commercial vehicles? I am thinking particularly of the Transit, Ford’s best-selling international medium-sized van, which is known the world over and is a real staple of the UK. Is it not the case that we need to look at this issue in the round and that, when it is down to tradesmen what they want to buy, they need to be confident and comfortable in purchasing the product? At the moment, that is the only element providing significant profitability for Ford in the UK; removing that and essentially replacing it with a subsidy seems the wrong way around.

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we look at the marketplace out there for both private and commercial vehicles—particularly vans, heavy goods vehicles and larger vehicles—those who have to take a personal financial risk on them are not choosing to do so. Particularly in the HGV sector, they prefer to look at transitional fuels such as hydrotreated vegetable oil to keep their fleets on the road. That choice genuinely cleaner, but does not cost them two, three or maybe even four times the price for the same vehicle in an electric format—which, of course, comes with a lower payload, because the batteries are so heavy that it cannot legally take the same weight of goods.

Those choices that real people in the real world are making should drive what the Government do to ensure that they get the transition to a greener form of transport right, rather than just flogging the dead horse of a failing technology that nobody seems willing to buy unless heavily bribed to do so with their own taxpayers’ money through fleet sales and the like—and, in this case, through this motion that seeks to spend even more of that taxpayers’ money on propping up a product that just does not have the consumer demand underneath it. It is for those reasons that the Conservatives will oppose this motion.

Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Debate between Greg Smith and Richard Holden

Friday 26th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to you on your new role, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), and equally, I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches in this debate. In particular, I join the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) in paying tribute to Craig Mackinlay, who was a superb Member of this House. As he makes his transition from being the bionic MP to being the bionic peer, I think I speak for the whole House in wishing him well.

On today’s subject matter, I want to be clear from the outset that we absolutely have to decarbonise and we absolutely have to defossilise. The challenge laid down to our great innovators and scientific minds is enormous, and those great minds are rising to the challenge, from electricity generation to the fuels of the future. But that is also why I am so frustrated by an approach to cleaner energy and cleaner fuel from Government that always seems to favour the first, but not necessarily the best or most sustainable, solutions for the future.

Let me start with the controversial topic of solar. Since I was first elected in 2019,

the threat of large-scale solar developments has caused significant concern for many of my constituents. Across my constituency and parts of my former constituency now represented by others, field after field and farm after farm have already been blanketed by solar panels, to the detriment of the surrounding community, food security, nature and landscape. Food security is national security, yet before any of us who were elected on 4 July had even sworn in, the new Energy Secretary had signed off 6,000 acres of solar installation, later admitting in his statement a week after that a land use strategy was yet to come. We simply cannot have this language of community consent when the decisions that are taken walk all over the views of the communities so badly affected. Smaller, stand-alone solar is less impactful, quicker and easier to install, does not risk damaging the local infrastructure, and provides an additional, reliable source of income for many struggling farmers.

It is not just the panels that consume vast amounts of our countryside. The infrastructure needed to carry the electricity generated through to the grid swallows up yet more. It is no coincidence that adjacent to the proposed Rosefield site in my constituency a battery storage facility is being put forward. In the ultimate manifestation of the tail wagging the dog, National Grid has come along and proposed another huge land take essentially to rebuild the east Claydon substation next door.

Let that be a warning to any community where solar is coming: it does not end with the panels. Solar has its place, but that is on our rooftops and not our fields. Research by the wonderful charity, Campaign to Protect Rural England, found that there is potential for 117 GW of renewable energy to be generated from rooftops and other existing developed spaces in England. We should be prioritising that, and not losing our agricultural land.

My solution has always been to propose nuclear as the option, and to look at small modular reactors. I have given this statistic in the House before, but I will do so again: we need around 2,000 acres of solar panels to generate enough electricity—on current usage and before everybody has two Teslas on the drive—for 50,000 homes. By contrast, just two football pitches are required for a small modular reactor that will power, again on current usage, 1 million homes. I fail to see how anyone can look at those two competing land uses and choose solar over the small modular reactor. It is simply not a good use of land to turn our farms into solar.

Let me move to another clean energy that I am particularly passionate about, and away from electricity generation to the future of fuel. The United Kingdom is already an international powerhouse in the field of synthetic and sustainable fuel, with companies such as Zero Petroleum innovating right here, and international companies such as P1 Fuels making huge investments in bringing the manufacturing of fossil-free fuel to the United Kingdom. It is a straightforward fact that there are 1.4 billion internal combustion engine vehicles on the road worldwide, and that is before we start counting agricultural and construction vehicles, planes, ships and so on. They are simply not all going to convert to electric, as some argue that they should. Green hydrogen mixed with atmospheric carbon capture makes a wholly man-made liquid hydrocarbon that works in everything we already have. After more than a century’s refinement on those engines, and this clean fuel will just work in them.

[Mr Holden]

On the point about synthetic fuels, is it also the case that for several types of vehicle, such as incredibly heavy vehicles or those that need to travel incredibly long distances, there is no battery option, and synthetic fuel as an alternative is exactly where we need to go?

[Greg Smith]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Certainly for heavier application vehicles, batteries just would not work. I saw a diagram at one of these companies that shows that if we were to try to make a 747 fly on batteries, the batteries would be bigger than the plane. Therefore, that is not a viable option going forward. Synthetic fuels are entirely man-made. There is no need to grow food to burn or recycle old chip fat, or for raw earth mineral mining for batteries; it is just clean synthetics. My ask to the Government, as they look to a clean energy future—that is the right ambition; where we disagree is on how we get there—is that they truly embrace synthetic fuels and make them mainstream. They need to be scaled, and in order to be scaled, manufacturers need confidence that the Government will permit that.

An important point to finish on is that the carbon at tailpipe when these fuels are burned is the same volume that is then recaptured to make the next lot of fuel. They are net zero. It is one volume of carbon in a perpetual circle. I congratulate the Minister on his appointment, and ask him to take the message back to the Department that we need to embrace synthetic fuels as part of the clean energy revolution that he claims at the Dispatch Box to want to see.