Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Iain Wright and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 5th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my north-east neighbour, the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), and if I may, I shall reiterate some of what he said.

I agree with both amendments, particularly amendment 12 tabled by my right hon. and hon. Friends. If this country was portrayed as a heat map, with particular emphasis on different components of industry, such as nuclear energy, energy-intensive industries and renewable energies, my constituency would burn the brightest. We on Teesside provide a large part of this country’s energy needs. I have a nuclear power station in my constituency, and just outside there is a gas turbine station and a combined heat and power facility. Petroplus, Europe’s biggest independent refiner and wholesaler of petroleum products, has significant oil and gas refining capabilities in my constituency.

Although we generate a lot of the country’s energy requirements, we use a lot of it too. As the hon. Member for Redcar said, we have significant energy-intensive industries—not just refining but petrochemicals, speciality and fine chemicals, plastics, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. I also have a world-class steel pipe mill in Hartlepool supplying essential components in the supply chain for the oil, gas and chemical industries, although unfortunately the pipe mill has just laid off 90 people. Some 60% of the UK petrochemical industry is based on Teesside, as well as more than one third of our country’s pharmaceutical and chemical industry. The Tees valley has the largest concentration of petrochemical industry anywhere in western Europe, and we have the largest hydrogen network on the continent.

A single venture in Teesside, GrowHow UK, which makes nitrogen fertilizer in my area, uses 1% of the UK’s entire natural gas capacity. About 40,000 people are employed directly in the process industries on Teesside, with a further 250,000 employed indirectly through the supply chain. Energy-intensive industries generate one quarter of my region’s gross domestic product, with about £10 billion of sales. As the hon. Member for Redcar said, the importance of Teesside and these industries to the national economy, let alone the regional economy, cannot be overstated.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), who sits on the Front Bench, I agree with the principle of a carbon floor price. However, given the importance of energy-intensive industries to my area, I remain very concerned that the proposals in the Bill for carbon floor pricing represent a serious threat to UK competitiveness.

[Geraint Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that this carbon floor pricing will, first, run contrary to the strategy of shifting from reliance on banking to manufacturing and a broader base and, secondly, move the production of things such as steel, which is environmentally controlled and relatively clean, from Britain to somewhere such as south America, where the same amount of steel will be produced much less cleanly? The impact will be to harm the environment and the economy, which is ridiculous.

[Mr Wright]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend on both points. We are exporting not just jobs but carbon emissions to elsewhere in the world where there might not be the same high level of regulation on carbon emissions.

The point that I want to emphasise as much as possible is that my area is doing exactly what the Government want it to do—we are rebalancing the economy and have an emphasis on manufacturing and, in particular, export-based industries that can provide wealth and job creation. It seems that we are doing everything right according to the Government, but we are being penalised and not provided with a level playing field.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East and the hon. Member for Redcar quoted the managing director and chief executive officer of Tata Steel’s European operations. I want to be as balanced as I can. He praised the Government’s enterprise zones and stated:

“It is good news that the Tees Valley is to be among the first of the government’s newly created Enterprise Zones, as Tata Steel will remain a major employer in that region”.

To expand on the quotes already given, however, I should add that he went on to state:

“The extension of the Climate Change Agreements and the return of the discount on the Climate Change Levy to 80% will come as modest but welcome relief to Britain’s hard-pressed energy-intensive industries. However, these benefits are likely to be dwarfed by the introduction of the Carbon Floor Price (CFP), which represents a potentially severe blow to the sustainability of UK steelmaking. European steelmakers already face the prospect of deteriorating international competitiveness because of the proposed unilateral imposition by the European Commission of very significantly higher emission costs under Phase 3 of the EU Emissions Trading System. The CFP proposal will impose additional unilateral emission costs specifically on the UK steel industry by seeking to artificially ensure that these costs cannot fall below government-set targets which no other European country will enforce. This is an exceptionally unhelpful and potentially damaging measure.”