Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Ian Swales and John Robertson

Wednesday 25th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman think it right for a Government to take money from a city where a lot is paid in rates—with people from outside the area coming into it—and then spread it around the rest of the country?

[Ian Swales]

Another thing that the Government have done is to move towards localising business rates again. Certainly my part of the world, which had huge industrial sites such as the one I have mentioned, was pretty nonplussed when all that money was collected by a Government in the 1980s, taken to the centre and then doled out in different proportions. We need to move towards more localisation, not least to incentivise councils to drive economic development. I would argue that that has not been happening sufficiently in some parts of the country, and I live in one of them.

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and there is also the issue about where people live, where they work and what services they use. The south-west has a particular issue when its population doubles every summer, because people may not make a contribution through taxes paid directly in the south-west, but they are using services there. There is another whole argument to be had about the location of rates versus how they are collected.

I will not detain the Committee long. The Government are on the right track with corporation tax. Let us put it this way: there is plenty of work for the next Parliament to do, and I shall watch with interest from afar.

Energy Prices

Debate between Ian Swales and John Robertson

Wednesday 18th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)]

In a debate for which we have two and a quarter hours, the Secretary of State has spoken for half an hour. He spent his time attacking what the Labour Government did six years ago. That is outrageous. Once again, we have seen the reinvention of history. The Secretary of State is so out of touch with the people of this country that it is a disgrace that he is still in office. If he had any decency, he would throw the towel in and go and get a job that he can actually do something in.

We are here today to talk about prices and costs. That has nothing to do with the reinvention of history and nothing to do with the previous Government—although the previous Government gave the Secretary of State the job he has today. If it had not been for the previous Government, we would not be talking about energy and climate change. It was the previous Government who set that up with, I have to say, help from Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition at that time. His own party, the Liberals, were against having a balanced energy policy, because they did not like the balance. Let us put everything in perspective: if the Liberals were honourable, they would not take up a post in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, because they were totally against what the Labour party and the Conservative party wanted at the time. Our parties worked together to meet the needs of the nation. It seems now that the agreement we have had over the years has gone out of the window. I blame the Secretary of State for that. Until he came into the job there was still a friendship between the parties to ensure that energy was in place to meet the needs of the nation.

The cost of electricity and gas has gone down. That is a fact, otherwise Ofgem would not be trying to get in touch with all the companies to ask them what they are going to do. We have been in this position before, and companies were fined for not bringing down the price quickly enough. I have a lot of constituents in fuel poverty. The Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales), who asked questions from his party brief, might not have any people in fuel poverty in their constituencies, but I have plenty. I have to support them and look after them, and I want prices down to where they should be. The Minister of State laughs and says we are out of touch. I am sorry Minister of State, but we are so much in touch with the people we represent. It may be time for those on the Government Front Bench to have a reality check.

On prices and the amount of money that has been, shall we say, siphoned off by energy companies, the Secretary of State talks about transparency. There is no transparency in the energy companies. He talks about having a look and seeing where the money goes. The Select Committee has tried that. We asked experts to try to look at the books and understand what energy companies do with their money, but they cannot work it out. At a meeting with EDF yesterday, I told them that until such time as they get their act together and become totally transparent—showing the books for us to be able to read and understand—people will not trust them. Until they do that, we will still be calling for price reductions. To prove that they do not deserve to have their prices reduced, they will have to open the books and make them totally transparent to Parliament. We have to be able to say, “Yes, they are right and they should not have to have a reduction.” They deliberately do not do that. I have to conclude from that that they do not want it to happen and are hiding something. This is for the Government to pursue, but they have not done so.

Ofgem has done a particularly poor job—let us be honest. I agree that it is not as bad as a lot of people think, but, having said that, it has not done a particularly good job. It is so slow at doing things it is not true. Perhaps a stick of dynamite somewhere might be helpful, but I expect that stick of dynamite to come from the Secretary of State—not from me and not from the Opposition, but from the Government. It is time the Secretary of State got his act together and sorted out Ofgem. He still has some time left before the general election. When the Labour party wins the election we will obviously have to sort it out.

Let me give the House an example. A reduction in wholesale prices managed to give the chief executive of Scottish and Southern Energy, Alistair Phillips-Davies a £2.7 million annual salary. That is obscene, and it does not include his bonuses. That is the kind of thing we are subsidising. We are subsidising chief executives receiving lots of money. We are subsidising money being invested who knows where. At one stage, ScottishPower was taking £800 million from Scotland through Spain to the United States. We should not allow that to happen.

If the Secretary of State stands up and has a go at Ofgem, I will be right behind him to help him, but with the best will in the world, he does not seem to be looking after the needs of the nation at this time. I want him to do so—it is important that he looks after the needs of the nation. If that means that energy companies have to tighten their belts, they can join the rest of us doing so Everybody else has to tighten their belt, so why should they not cut back a wee bit on their profits for the needs of the nation, rather than siphoning money away from the UK to Germany, Spain or France? That is not right and I expect our Government to look at it.

The companies have tried to blackmail us. They said that if we freeze energy prices, all hell will be let loose, but then one company said it will freeze its prices. The idea of freezing is to sort the problem out. The idea is not to put prices up or down, but to stop people getting ripped off the way they have been over the years, and to ensure that our Government look after the people who are important.

[Ian Swales]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Robertson]

I am not interested—I have only a few seconds left.

It is important that the Government remember the people who are in fuel poverty instead of attacking people because of policies that happened years ago.