Ian Lavery
Main Page: Ian Lavery (Labour - Blyth and Ashington)
Caroline Flint
Absolutely. At the moment we are ranked sixth in the world for green goods and services. Just think how many more jobs we could create if we moved up to third or fourth place. The benefits would not just be at home, because we can export new technologies abroad. One example is carbon capture and storage. Not only can the technology be applied to fossil fuels, but it has industrial applications for our energy-intensive sectors.
We had an awful lot of shilly-shallying in the past five years about support for carbon capture and storage—nobody was quite sure where the money was and what it was being spent on. I ask the Secretary of State whether we will see any cuts in support for CCS in the forthcoming emergency Budget. She will obviously say, “I can’t say, that’s a matter for the Chancellor,” but I really hope that the new DECC team is putting its shoulder to the wheel to ensure that such cuts do not happen. There was too much interference from the Chancellor in the past five years—he did not work for investment and did not support this area of public policy.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
Is it not a shame that although we are now in a position to develop carbon capture and storage, the coalition Government, in their last throes, denied the British deep-mine coal industry the opportunity to prosper by not allowing state aid? We will be developing carbon capture and storage for countries around the globe that import coal, but we will not have the jobs to deal with it.
Caroline Flint
My hon. Friend is right. It was exactly like the coalition Government’s approach to CCS, which I do not think they ever fully embraced. There were delays and delays in the state aid procedure, until it just ran into the election period and was done for. We all heard the comments of the Minister whose former responsibilities straddled DECC and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and we all know now that his warm words counted for absolutely nothing.