Huw Irranca-Davies
Main Page: Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour - Ogmore)
Mr Davey
I certainly do not recognise that description of this Government. It has been commented in one or two places in the press that the one thing to which I have been most committed throughout my political life is environmentalism—my first political activity was in the environmental movement. I can therefore tell the right hon. Lady of my complete commitment to that agenda.
The motion contains some good points. Cross-party support, for example, for the Climate Change Act 2008 makes the UK an attractive place to do clean-energy business—the right hon. Member for Don Valley was gracious enough to admit that the coalition parties supported the Act, which is important. A consensus on many such issues, whether energy infrastructure investment or climate change, is extremely important, because they are about investors investing over decades. If we are to hit our 2050 target, we need to give those investors and the wider economy a lot of confidence.
Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State to his post, in which he has the opportunity to set a new course for the Government. May I suggest constructively that, first, he needs to give certainty to green investors, big and small? The Government have shaken that certainty—he should not listen to his officials. Secondly, he needs to avoid carbon leakage from existing energy-intensive users, whose confidence his predecessor managed to shake. If he can deal with those two things, which have gone deeply downhill in the past two years, he will do this country, green jobs and the green economy a service, in both steel and wind.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. There seems to be a lot of wind in these long interventions from both sides. Can we have shorter interventions? I should say to Front Benchers, and let Back Benchers know, that it looks like we will have to introduce a limit of six minutes because of the amount of time that has been taken.