Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Departmental Spending

Jackie Doyle-Price Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)]

We in this House are very good at talking about what is going wrong, and talking this country down, but for many of our workers the last few months of dealing with covid have been business as usual. I thank all those workers who have carried on going to work and serving us in our shops. In particular, I thank my constituents who work in the ports and logistics sector, and who carry on unloading those ships and ensuring that our supermarkets are stocked.

As we move out of this crisis, it is important that we do so in a spirit of ambition and positivity, because that is what will get us through it. It will not be the Government; it will be the energy and commitment of all our entrepreneurs and workers, who will seize those opportunities if we give them leadership and encouragement. As an example, just in the past couple of months we have opened a brand new port facility at Tilbury in my constituency. We have seen the opportunities that will be created by Brexit, and invested in them. We got planning permission one year ago, and one year later a £250 million investment has been made, creating new jobs and taking advantage of those opportunities. Take an example from south Essex’s competitive and entrepreneurial spirit, and we will get out of this. It is the job of Government to ensure that they do not get in the way of that.

I would like to raise two points with the Minister. First, we need to find lots of money to pay for what we have invested to get us out of this crisis, but we must ensure that we continue with a competitive taxation system. BEIS needs to act as that entrepreneurial champion and not be a regulator, and it was with some dismay that I heard that 42 pages of regulation were given to hairdressers to help them reopen. We must do much better than that.

I also wish to associate my voice with those who have already called for the reopening of the beauty industry. It has been disappointing to hear the reaction of fellow Members of Parliament when that issue has been raised in the past. Is that because those business are run by women who employ women? I sincerely hope not, but it certainly looks like that to the public. Beauty is a major industry, and if people want our hotels to reopen and be profitable and sustainable, they must also open their spas. This is not just about nail bars; the beauty industry offers a whole range of treatments. More to the point, with office workers still staying at home, people need a reason to go to the high street and continue that footfall in shops. I encourage the Minister to look favourably on that sector.

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[The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)]

It is a pleasure to respond to this excellent debate, and I commend all hon. Members who have spoken for their thoughtful contributions. In particular, I thank the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) for opening the debate.

I will deal first with the series of questions posed by the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook). His first question was about the energy White Paper, which we fully expect to be published this year. He will understand that after the new Government took office in July last year, we had the summer recess, followed by the Prorogation debate, debates about the election, then the general election, the Budget and then covid. There were substantial reasons—they are regrettable, I accept—why the White Paper was delayed. We fully expect it to be published this autumn.

The hon. Gentleman asked about the decarbonisation of heat. I refer him to the fact that we have a heat in buildings strategy, which will outline the policies clearly and simply. There is certainly a great deal of movement in that area.

The hon. Gentleman said that there are lofty ambitions for day-to-day spending, and suggested that our spending is perhaps more carbon-emitting than it should be. We have actually had great success on the carbon emissions front, particularly in electricity generation. He will know that in 2010, when I entered in the House—he entered in 2015—offshore wind seemed like a fantasy, but in 10 years we have massively ramped up capacity. People say flippantly, “Oh, well, the cost is £39.50 per MWh”—the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) said that—but that did not just happen by accident. It was a serious attempt by a serious Government to construct an auction—a CfD round—and it managed to drive down costs. It was led by policy and evidence. It has been very successful and is admired throughout the world. That is an example of BEIS delivering substantial change and innovation on carbon emissions reduction and the climate change debate.

On the open-cast coal mine that the hon. Member for Greenwich and Woolwich mentioned, that was a difficult question that involved the local community and consideration of the amounts of coal and jobs. He will accept that, as far as the coal ambition is concerned, the initial date for removing coal entirely from the electricity generating network was 2025, but we will deliver it a year in advance. How often is a Government anywhere in the world able to say in a parliamentary assembly such as this, “We are going to do better than our target”? That is another area where he is on very shaky ground.

[Jackie Doyle-Price]

The fact of the matter is that there are industrial processes that still require coal for generation. Is it not better that we mine coal in this country, rather than ship it from Siberia and Australia?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

That may well be the case, but I think taking coal off the electricity generating system—the power generation network—is historically one of the most significant things that this country has done. If we look back in our own lifetimes, we see that coal and industrial questions relating to it were a dominant part of industrial and political debate only 20, 30 or 40 years ago, but in 2024 we hope to remove coal entirely from electricity generation. That is a huge success. We typically do not get the credit we would like in this House, but that is a significant achievement.

I want to talk briefly about some of the broader questions relating to this debate. It would be invidious of me to single out individual speeches, as there were so many good ones, but there are one or two areas where I want to reconfirm Government policy and give a good account of what we have achieved.

Many of the speeches I heard as I sat on the Treasury Bench were understandably focused on the Government’s response to the covid-19 outbreak. At the start of the crisis, the Government made it perfectly clear that we would do whatever it took to support our businesses and economy, and we have substantially delivered on that. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun mentioned the £330 billion commitment from the Treasury and said that it is an example of failure because the amount of debt—the loans that we have given—is a fraction of that, but of course the £330 billion also includes the furlough scheme, which was not in the form of a loan. It was the Government intervening and paying wages. It was a huge intervention, and it had nothing to do with loans. I am sure the hon. Gentleman understands that. This has been a cross-Government effort, and we in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy have played our part in delivering a range of Government-backed finance schemes.

Let me re-enumerate those schemes: the coronavirus business interruption loans scheme, the bounce back loans, the coronavirus large business interruption loan scheme, and the future fund, which is an equity-to-debt scheme. As of this week, £45 billion-worth of loans have been approved through those schemes, backed largely by Government guarantees.