Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 30th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[The First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. I remind Members that if they were here for the openings of both speeches, then yes they can make a speech in Committee, but if they were not they cannot. If they have been here for what I would say is a decent time, then they are by all means able to make interventions.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner). I am a supporter of the Bill. I think it is a good and proportionate Bill, but it is badly written. What the right hon. Lady said about Henry VIII clauses is absolutely spot on. Indeed, should the socialists ever be in government in the future I hope they will remember what she said, because skeleton Bills and Henry VIII clauses are bad parliamentary and constitutional practice.

It seems to me that it is hard to describe the right hon. Lady as having been wrong for tabling amendment 101— I will not vote for her, but I say none the less that she is far from being described as wrong. Clause 3 suggests:

“Regulations under this section may amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation passed…later in the same session of Parliament as this Act.”

On what basis can any Government claim to have the power to amend legislation that has not yet been passed? The only argument for doing so, which no Government would wish to advance, is incompetence. The only way to pass a subsequent Act without amending it before it is passed is if we have not noticed what it was saying in the first place, and I cannot understand why a Government would wish to put such a measure in a Bill. Indeed, I am puzzled as to how clause 3 managed to get through the intergovernmental procedures that take place before legislation is presented to the House. I do not understand how the Parliamentary Business and Legislation Committee managed to approve a Bill with such a wide-ranging Henry VIII clause and which fails to set out in detail what powers the Government actually want.

I will support the Bill because its aim is worthy, but the means of achieving that aim are not properly constitutional. Henry VIII powers, it has been established, should be used exceptionally or when there is no other alternative. During the passage of the Coronavirus Act 2020 it was perfectly reasonable to have Henry VIII powers. Why? Because the Act was brought forward extremely quickly, there was little time to revise it and there was not an enormous amount of time to work out precisely what revisions to existing statute law may be needed. Emergency legislation falls into that category. But this is not emergency legislation; this is a Bill that we in the Conservative party have been cogitating about since at least our last manifesto, if not back to about 2016. I have supported it all the way through. I wanted the Bill to come forward. I think it is the right thing to be doing, but there is no excuse for failing to do it properly.

[John McDonnell]

I think the Conservative party has been contemplating this since the Combination Acts of the 18th century. Anyway, strange alliances have been formed over the years on this issue. If the right hon. Gentleman recalls, an alliance was formed over the Civil Contingencies Bill, and we had a concession from the Government on some of the legislation regarding at least a super-affirmative mechanism that would give the House a bit more influence to amend statutory instruments. Would he be in favour of that?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am slightly more ambitious than the right hon. Gentleman, because I think that, in and of itself, clause 3—I hope Opposition Members will take note of this—is an argument for the existence of the House of Lords. I hope that their lordships will look at the clause and say, “That is simply not something we can pass into law as it is currently phrased.” The Government must accept amendments, and I hope their lordships will vote through amendments that clarify and set out in detail the powers that are desired.

Other than urgency, there are only two reasons for bringing forward extensive Henry VIII powers. One is that the issue is too complicated to determine. That is problematic, because if it is too complicated to determine for primary legislation, how can it be sufficiently set out in secondary legislation? That probably means that the secondary legislation in and of itself will not be well formed. This is where the Government’s interest—the Executive interest—and the legislature’s interest combine, because if the House passes good, well-constructed legislation, it is much less susceptible to judicial review. There is a Treasury Bench interest in good, well-crafted legislation, which, as I have been saying, this Bill is not. That is why the Government should be keen that the House of Lords, in the time available and with the help, I hope, of parliamentary counsel, will be able to specify the powers more closely.

[David Linden]

It is a pleasure to see the right hon. Gentleman back on the Back Benches as part of the awkward squad. Does he agree that part of the reason why we have ended up in this mess is that the Government have rushed the Bill, with a programme motion that allows for only five or six hours on the Floor of the House? They are attempting to ram it through and perhaps intend to use it as a stick or as a carrot to dangle during trade union negotiations. This is not thoughtful legislation; this is being rammed through, isn’t it?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I do not think there is any great need to “ram it through”, as the hon. Gentleman phrases it. The secondary legislation will not be written in time to affect the current set of disputes. Indeed, if the secondary legislation is already written and is in a position to be used, those measures ought to be in the Bill in the first place and there would be absolutely no reason for not having them. It is hard to understand the need to rush this through when, as I said, this Bill has been contemplated for many years, and therefore it ought to have been prepared in detail.

I think that it is helpful to refer to two very good reports from the House of Lords on the subject, “Government by Diktat” and “Democracy Denied?”, both published in November 2021. May I thank the Vote Office for hastily printing them for me? It has to be said that it is much easier to read what was said from sheets of paper than from a small mobile telephone. One of the points they make is:

“It cannot be emphasised strongly enough that the critical problem about relegating significant policy change to secondary legislation is that parliamentary scrutiny of secondary legislation is far less robust than that afforded to primary legislation”.

I remind the Committee that there were recently complaints about the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Primary legislation was specifically excluded for exactly this reason: when I was responsible for that Bill, it seemed to me that if Parliament passes primary legislation, it should not, as a matter of routine, be changed by secondary legislation.

The “Government by Diktat” report goes on to say:

“We are concerned that the underlying challenge to the balance between Parliament and government is not primarily attributable to the impact of ‘exceptional times’ such as Brexit and the pandemic, as the Permanent Secretaries appeared to assert, but is instead the result of a general strategic shift by government.”

It seems to me that this Bill, which has been thought about for so many years, falls into exactly that category.

The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee refers to “skeleton legislation”. This Bill is almost so skeletal that we wonder if bits of the bones were stolen away by wild animals and taken and buried somewhere, as happens with cartoon characters. The DPRRC takes the view that

“skeleton legislation should only be used in the most exceptional circumstances and that, where it is used, a department should always provide a full justification, including an explanation of the nature of those exceptional circumstances”

and

“why no other approach was reasonable to adopt”.

Again, that seems to be absolutely fair and reasonable. If I may quote further:

“Skeleton bills or skeleton clauses, by their very nature, cannot be adequately scrutinised during their passage through Parliament.”

We are trying to scrutinise the Bill and hold the Government to account. I want good legislation. I want legislation that achieves its objective and that clarifies the boundaries of power between the legislature, the King in Parliament and the courts.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a powerful argument, which I think behoves us to ask the question: why are the Government bringing forward legislation prematurely? The purpose may be that they are seeking to raise conflict in relation to the unions and the strikes for a political reason. The Government are in a position to resolve the strikes but are choosing not to do so, and they are now using legislation as a vehicle by which to do so.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I do not want to be disagreeable, but I do not take that view. I think the Bill has been brought forward as it is because, actually, it is easy for Governments to bring forward skeleton legislation. In my view, it exhibits a general trend in a very acute form. The tendency for Governments to do so goes back many years. Thanks to a House of Lords report, I have a quotation from 1929 from Lord Chief Justice Hewart, who was concerned even then about excess powers being taken. But this Bill puts it in such an acute form, because clause 3 is simply so wide ranging.

I think that this is seeking the easy way to legislate. In my experience, parliamentary counsel, who are among the finest civil servants in the country—the work they do is phenomenal—are never defeated by time, but they are sometimes defeated by political instruction. Had they been instructed to draft a Bill that contained the proper details of what is needed, they would have been able to do so.

[Sam Tarry (Ilford South) (Lab)]

I have listened carefully to the right hon. Member’s erudite exposition of the constitutional matters affecting the Bill. I draw his attention to the Minister of State, Department for Transport, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman), who, in recent discussions with the trade unions, made it clear that this was about one thing only—pay—and that the Government would not “capitulate” to the rail trade unions because they would have to give a fair deal to every other sector going on strike, with the latest being the firefighters.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I agree with what the Bill is intended to do. I think that minimum levels of service are perfectly reasonable and not an outrageous thing to ask; they apply to the police and to the armed services. My objection is not to the aim of the Bill; it is merely about the constitutional process.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is right, in response to the comment from the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about strange alliances, that it is the constitutional issues that raise the most significant concerns among Government Members.

In addition to those two reports from the House of Lords, we have the pending review from the Hansard Society on secondary legislation, with its preliminary findings due, I think, on 6 or 7 February. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Bill may be measured against its preliminary recommendations to see how well it fits, given the constitutional issues that he has mentioned?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Bill is, as I said, a particularly extreme example of bad practice with the least possible excuse for it. There are many Bills where we can find some reason why it had to be done in such a way. I sat on Committees looking at Henry VIII powers and trying to stop them, and I often found that, actually, they were needed because that was the only way of doing things. I make no apology for the Energy Prices Act 2022. That was emergency legislation, and it contained lots of powers because energy prices had got so high that something had to be done straight away to save people from financial distress. That was a reasonable balance between the Executive and the legislature, but this Bill is not urgent legislation.

My fear is that, by writing poor legislation, we invite the courts to intervene more. I do not like the fact that, over recent decades, the courts have intervened more in our legislative processes. That undermines the democratic remit that we have to make the laws. However, if that is handed over to secondary legislation, of course the courts will intervene because the level of scrutiny of secondary legislation is so much lower and there is little other protection. So if we take away scrutiny from this House, where else will it go? Then we get judicial review, and then the Executive finds that it cannot carry out its plans for government, so it becomes self-defeating.

[John McDonnell]

I understand and completely follow the logic of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument. I agree with it. However, he is shirking the responsibility of this House by simply passing it to the Lords. In recent months, we have seen the Government withdraw a Bill for further consideration until they got it right. Surely that is the mechanism to get the Bill right; otherwise, we are shirking our responsibility.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, but I think that he attributes to me more influence than I have. My fusillade against clause 3 will not change many votes this evening—including my own, as it happens. Therefore, it will not be the case that the Government will be defeated in the Committee. I think that I went quite a long way in saying that the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne was not wrong on amendment 101; I thought that was pretty generous. However, the right hon. Gentleman is a hard man—he is known as a hard man of the left, and he is a hard man of parliamentary procedure as well.

[Alan Brown]

It is quite impressive that, despite the right hon. Member having been on his feet for 16 minutes telling us how bad the Bill is, he has not convinced himself to vote against it. Is it not the case that he was quite happy to have Henry VIII powers when he was Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but, now that he is a Back Bencher, he is against them and back to respecting parliamentary sovereignty?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman is completely wrong about that. In all the legislation that I was involved with, I pushed against Henry VIII powers on every single occasion and always asked why they were necessary—I merely could not make that particularly public. There is a place for Henry VIII powers—they are not all bad—but those in the Bill go much too far. If he looks at the evidence that I gave from those House of Lords reports, he will see that it was on exactly those lines.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I must give up soon, but first I give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

I appreciate how my right hon. Friend is trying to give helpful pointers to Government Front Benchers about ways in which the Bill could be improved. Does he agree with a point made to me by a regional representative of the TUC: that there is so little detail in the Bill that it gives Ministers too much discretion to decide what constitutes an adequate service level? That needs to be looked at again, especially because, where such legislation applies in European countries, the unions are involved in deciding what the minimum service levels are.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think that the Bill should set out clearly what it is trying to achieve, so I will end with an appeal to the other place: I hope that their lordships will look at clause 3 with extreme care, that they will not be abashed by whatever majority comes from this House with respect to the Bill, and that they will amend the Bill to strengthen it, make it more effective and ensure that it achieves its objectives and sets out, in a good and proper constitutional way, what it is trying to achieve. That would be helpful to the Government, but it would also be good practice.

[Ian Lavery]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I should love to give way to the hon. Gentleman, but lots of people want to speak and I have gone on for too long.

[Alan Brown]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg)—certainly now that he has found his Back-Bench voice again—but it is disappointing that he is still in favour of the Bill even though he says how badly drafted it is. We know how bad a Bill’s concept and drafting are when something like 120 amendments are tabled, spanning 53 pages, yet the Bill itself has only six clauses over seven pages.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens), who is responsible for about a quarter of the entire amendment paper. I am disappointed to see that there is not a single Tory amendment, nor a single Tory MP backing any of the amendments despite how many there are. It is good to hear some critical voices, however, and I hope that at the very least the Minister will listen to the Tory Back-Bench voices telling us how unconstitutional the Bill’s drafting is and the dangers that it will bring.

With only five hours to debate amendments, as my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said, it is clear that the Government are intent on ramming the Bill through with minimum scrutiny but maximum politics as part of the Tory culture war—a culture war that they are now taking to something like 7 million key workers. I hope they get their just reward at the next election from those 7 million voters. Considering that the Tory party accumulated only 14 million votes at the last election, those 7 million key voters could be critical up and down Great Britain.

The Bill is so offensive that there is a moral dilemma involved in tabling amendments to it. How can we improve a Bill that we so fundamentally oppose? For that reason, we tabled amendments to delete each clause. As I have said before, the Under-Secretary of State for Scotland, the hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont), has described the Bill at the Dispatch Box as “anti-strike legislation”. Our amendment 33, which was not selected, would have changed its title to “Anti-Strikes (Forced Working) Bill”, which would have been quite apt.

The Bill presents opportunities for employers to pick on specific individuals and name them as required to break a strike. If those individuals do not comply, they face the ultimate sanction of sacking. Those proposals are not replicated internationally, even in places where, as the Government like to remind us, there is some form of minimum service legislation. The threat of sacking for going on strike is absolutely outrageous, so I certainly support Opposition amendment 1. Although the Minister says that the Bill could not lead to sacking, the overview in the explanatory notes makes it clear that it will remove protections from unfair dismissal for going on strike. That is the key aim of the Bill, as set out in the overview given in the explanatory notes, so the Minister cannot say that the Bill will not lead to the sacking of key workers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alan Brown]

As we have heard, the Government still have not listened, because they would not accept any amendments. The Secretary of State rehashed some of the old arguments: he said the Bill was about health and safety, but he then used the example of teachers. Teachers are not childminders—they are there to provide education —but he is using them as an excuse to allow other people to get to work. He talked about protecting ordinary workers, but what about rewarding the ordinary key workers who are providing vital services, instead of waging a culture war on them?

The Government have not listened to the fact that the ILO does not actually back their legislation. They have ignored the fact that European trade unionists have stated that the UK already has the most draconian strike legislation. They refused to acknowledge the point of my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) that the only other countries in Europe that allow Governments to stipulate minimum service levels and penalise workers by sacking them for not complying are Russia and Hungary. That is the company that the UK Government are looking to keep.

The Government try to tell us that workers such as nurses cannot get sacked, but the explanatory notes say clearly in their overview of the Bill that it will

“restrict the protection of trade unions under the 1992 Act from legal action in respect of strikes relating to certain services and the automatic protection of employees from unfair dismissal”.

That makes it clear that workers can get sacked if they do not comply with the work notices when they are told to work, even if they do not want to and they want to adhere to the strike.

The Government also have not listened to the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), who pointed out how badly written the Bill is and the unlimited powers that it gives to the Government. I note that he is suddenly in favour of the Lords amending legislation, which is a change in tune from recent years, when he was against that. It shows how bad things are when, yet again, we are relying on the unelected Lords to amend the Bill.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I am in favour of their lordships doing their proper job, which is revising legislation to make this legislation, which is very good, perfect—that is what they are there for.

[Alan Brown]

The right hon. Gentleman did not say that when it came to the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 during Brexit.

The Bill allows individual workers and trade unions to be targeted. It is an assault on the devolution settlement. Employment law should have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament but, as I said earlier, Labour opposed it being devolved. Even worse, the powers in the Bill allow the UK Government to amend devolved legislation, which is an assault on the devolved nations. I am disappointed that Labour did not back the SNP amendment, which would also have protected the Welsh Government. I do not know why Labour sat on its hands about that.

The Bill is an assault on devolution, an assault on workers and an assault on trade unions. That is why we oppose it and why we need independence to get away from this institution.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

I always respect my hon. Friend’s opinion, but he is fundamentally mistaken. We have undertaken a considerable amount of consultation with our courts and have worked with them consistently. It is absolutely right that we deliver Brexit by ensuring that laws made here are sovereign over EU laws.

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) is fundamentally wrong. The Bill is providing legal certainty. Rather than having a flow of EU law interpreted according to EU principle, from now on we will have a single set of laws within this country. That must be certainty rather than otherwise.

[Ms Ghani]

Having a single set of laws across the UK will provide far more certainty.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Madders]

If people are going to intervene, they should read the Bill and the amendments, because they would see our suggestion for a deadline. Of course, as everyone else in this Chamber seems to know, we have already left the EU, so this is not about leaving the EU, but about the remaining laws.

The Regulatory Policy Committee has said that setting a deadline is not enough and that a stronger argument is needed for choosing that particular date, and we agree. What is far more convincing than the arbitrary date that we are presented with are the warnings that we have received that there is not sufficient capacity in the civil service for a genuinely effective appraisal of the regulations that the Bill seeks to remove in the timescale allowed. The case for the cliff edge is incredibly weak. The arguments for removing it and putting it on a more realistic footing are much stronger.

The potential for things to be missed is clear. If worse comes to worst and some vital regulation ceases to be law by accident and nobody notices until it is too late, our constituents will rightly ask us, “What on earth were you doing? What were you thinking of?” No wonder the impact assessment on the Bill is silent on the issue of the sunset date.

The Regulatory Policy Committee has made it clear that it believes that the analysis of that sunset date is inadequate. This is a deadline in search of a headline. Presumably, that headline will be, “Free at last”. I would suggest that a more apposite headline might be. “The sun has set on your employment rights, your consumer rights and your environmental protections.” Indeed, the sun has set on parliamentary democracy.

Overall, the Regulatory Policy Committee puts a red rating on the impact assessment of the Bill as not fit for purpose, yet here we are, ploughing on as if it will be all right on the night.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Justin Madders]

I will give way to the architect of the Bill.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that our first legislation on consumer rights was in 1893, some time before the European Union, and that the Act giving paid holidays was 1938, again before the European Union. We have never needed the European Union for worker and consumer rights.

[Justin Madders]

I am sure that those were the glory years—the right hon. Member’s favourite period of time. This is about protecting the rights that we have, and this Bill allows those rights to fall by default if no action is taken. That is why we are so concerned about the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stella Creasy]

I rise to raise amendment 36, tabled in my name and in the name of the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and many other Members across the House.

As far as I can see, there have been three responses to the Bill in Parliament. First, there are those who have not paid attention because—let’s face it—many years on from the Brexit referendum still anything that involves Europe is cold cup of sick territory. That is understandable but not excusable because it means that those people have not woken up to the fact that this is nothing to do with Brexit and everything to do with an audacious ministerial power grab.

The second group are those who have read the Bill and are completely happy with the idea that the Government should just hit delete on all legislation with the word “Europe” in it, with all the confusion, chaos and complications that will cause for our constituents, because it is a price worth paying. That is not understandable, but it is excusable, because they do not see the laws at stake here—they just see the word “Europe”. There is an honesty in being so hellbent on the idea that anything we have ever shared with Europe is bad and it does not matter whether people value it—employment rights, environmental protections, consumer standards, flight safety rules. For them, if the choice is cake or death, it is death every time.

The third group of people are the people I am trying to appeal to today. They know this is not the right way to deal with retained EU law, but they hope that somebody else will step in and sort it out—the Opposition, other MPs, the Lords or perhaps even some divine intervention from the Lord himself. That is not understandable or excusable, because if the Bill goes through unamended it will stop us doing our job and it is our job to speak up for our constituents.

Today’s debate is not about how the Europeans make legislation. We have left the European Union. This debate is about exactly what taking back control meant, and about whether we will be able to speak up for our constituents on the issues that they care about. The emails in our inboxes show that they care. What was promised during the Brexit referendum campaign was not a sovereign Whitehall or taking back control in Downing Street, but that is exactly what the Bill does—and it does it in a way that is beyond parody. Personally, I think that the dashboard was created as a way to keep the then Business Secretary occupied putting random words into it. It is a farce that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) said, we are legislating by website.

It matters that the scope of legislation is correct, which is what amendment 36 would ensure. Let me help Ministers out here, because they do not know how many laws are missing. We have already found many, including the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, the Conservation of Offshore Marine Habitats and Species Regulations 2017, the Marine Strategy Regulations 2010, the Marine Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) Regulations 2007 and the Welfare of Animals (Transport) (England) Order 2006.

In other cases, the dashboard lists regulations that are no longer laws, so some poor civil servant is going through them even though they no longer exist. The Financial Services and Markets Bill seeks to revoke at least four sets of EC regulations that do not appear on the dashboard. Two of the first five statutory instruments that it seeks to revoke are not listed on the dashboard either.

It is estimated that the process will cost the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds, at a time when we are all being told to tighten our belts because of the Government’s mismanagement of the economy. There are 3,500 pieces of legislation involved—that is the estimate, but there could be more, and I suspect that that is why the Minister does not want to be honest with us—in comparison with the 600 that we made during the Brexit process.

The Minister says that the dashboard will be updated, but it will be updated after the point at which we are being asked to approve the process. I will withdraw my amendment if Ministers can just give us a clear number and a clear list of what is in scope. I do not understand why that is an unreasonable proposition. Frankly, Back Benchers of any political party should be worried about the precedent set by legislation that allows the Government to give themselves an enabling power without defining its limitations.

That is before we even get on to who makes the decision about what happens next. Ministers want to tell me that I am scaremongering when I raise concerns about how they will use these powers—they say, “Of course we wouldn’t get rid of these laws.” Well, let us have a look at that scaremongering. I have been tabling parliamentary questions to try to understand what will happen to rights that all our constituents care about, such as paid annual leave, bathing water quality, sharps rules in hospitals, consumer protection from unfair trading, food hygiene and toy safety legislation. Those are surely things that Ministers would want to put beyond reach, so nobody could say that they might be revoked or accidentally lost down the back of the ministerial sofa, along with the 800 sets of regulations that have no ministerial leads and are quite likely to get lost in the process.

The problem I have is that Ministers are clear that there are some regulations that they are going to revoke and some they are going to keep. So they do know what they want to do with the power that Members are going to hand them; they just do not want to be honest about it. Why do they know that they want to keep the regulations on bird flu, but not those on maternity and paternity leave? The Minister ought to talk to her colleague the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries, who wrote back to me clearly saying that the Government were reviewing that.

That is the problem: Conservative Members may trust their Government colleagues to do the right thing, in the same way that they might trust a 17-year-old when they ask for the keys to a Porsche “just to polish it”, but those of us who have been here and seen Governments of different colours, and the temptation that comes with ministerial power, know that the point about taking back control was parliamentary sovereignty. That starts with knowing what we are being asked to hand over: we are being asked to hand over oversight of an unknown number of laws. That is what amendment 36 asks for clarity on.

We also have to hope that our colleagues in the other place will make it clear that we can have influence—and not just in like-it-or-lump-it statutory instrument Committees; don’t kid anybody who has sat on one that they are a good or effective version of parliamentary scrutiny—and that we can speak up for our constituents. It may feel like cold cup of sick territory when we see something with the word “Europe” in it, but with all the rights and regulations up for deletion under the Bill, I promise that our constituents will not forgive us if we do not stand up for parliamentary sovereignty and support amendment 36.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

May I begin by thanking the fantastic Bill team, some of whom may be listening to our proceedings this afternoon? This was an extremely difficult piece of work to pull together. The hard work that they have put in to achieve that in a timely way shows, it has to be said, the British civil service at its best. I am sometimes quite critical of the British civil service, so it is nice to be able to put on record in Hansard my grateful thanks for the deeply impressive work that has been done.

The Bill is being enormously overinterpreted by Opposition Members, and—it has to be said, as my hon. Friend the Minister did—mainly by people who never wanted to leave the European Union anyway. I think the laws of physics are being rewritten by the opponents of Brexit, because as far as I am aware, things do not expand in black holes; that is rather the point of them. Things are sucked in, and even light is trapped by the gravity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Blackford]

I hope the right hon. Gentleman will understand this point. Of course there is a difference: we wish to be back in the European Union as an independent country, but by dint of this Bill we are going to have to introduce legislation to make sure that we remain aligned with the European Union. We have no desire to do that, because we are already closely aligned. These measures are going to be forced on us, against our will, by this Parliament.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. There will be some work for the Scottish Parliament to do to maintain the status quo. That is a policy decision for the Scottish Parliament, resulting from a decision that was taken by the whole United Kingdom. That is how devolution works, and that is a proper and fair working of devolution. That, actually, is what gives the Scottish Parliament the power to do what it wants to do. It flows from our constitutional settlement, and from the overarching decision made by the British people, as one people, to leave the European Union.

I now come to the entirely bogus point about the threat to rights. In his opening speech on Second Reading, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Dean Russell) made it clear, on the Government’s behalf, that the environmental rights would be maintained. The Government have been and are committed to that. But they will maintain them in UK law. We have been able to that before. I believe Henry Brooke was the Home Secretary who introduced the Clean Air Act 1956. The Conservative party has a pretty good record on that. It turns out that the Sale of Goods Act 1893, to which I earlier referred the Minister, was one of the last Acts of Gladstone, so the Liberals should be proud of their history of doing things in a British way rather than needing the European Union to do it. The Conservatives introduced the Holidays with Pay Act 1938—again, the protection of workers’ rights. That is before we go back to Lord Shaftesbury and the Factory Acts. We do not need to go into the mists of time to see that we can do it ourselves.

Finally, I must mention amendment 36. This is the man upon the stair. We all know about the man upon the stair:

“Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away.”

If we do not know what our laws are, how are people supposed to obey them? If the laws are unknown, mystic and possibly imaginary, surely they should not be laws in the first place. They have made the best argument for getting rid of the man upon the stair who was not there in the first place.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I will keep my remarks to the Bill’s impact on laws that fall within the remit of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Government’s dashboard lists only 570 laws that DEFRA identified as within the scope of the Bill. That figure alone would make DEFRA the most heavily impacted Department. However, in Committee it became clear that as many as 1,000 laws may be at risk of being revoked by the Bill’s sunset clause in December.

There are not the resources in DEFRA to enable officials to examine properly each of those laws in turn in the time remaining before the sunset sweeps them away. That is forgetting all the other work on environmental land management, sewage, waste, air quality and our commitments at the nature COP in Montreal. While our nature is depleted further due to the Government’s short-sightedness, we will have a year of navel gazing and the entire Department will be clogged up with months of pointless work reviewing lists of laws that no one wants to drop.

I take umbrage with the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg). There are no guarantees. The Government are not guaranteeing that a single law will be retained in UK law. They should prioritise their environmental commitments in the Environment Act 2021 and the 25-year environment plan, including the actions and policies necessary to deliver nature’s recovery by 2030, as well as the environmental targets, the statutory instrument for which will become law next Monday. Those should be the Department’s priorities.

A definitive list of environmentally important measures does not exist. One could say that the Government have played themselves. It is the same old story, but there is still time to change the ending. We know that the list is even more extensive than the comparable list of retained EU law that provides critical protections for workers’ rights and conditions. The inventory of workers’ rights legislation is shorter and more easily identifiable.

There are important differences between the three domains of rights and protections highlighted by Labour’s amendments, all of which would set us back on the right path and change the ending. The Bill is unnecessary and we need to retain all those regulations and laws as minimum standards in this country. The retained EU environmental laws covered by the Bill include major protections that we rely on for clean air, clean water and safe foods. They provide crucial safeguards for the world’s most nature-depleted nation. Those are not my words but the words of Lord Goldsmith, a Government Minister in the other place.

Under the Bill, critical environmental protections face the prospect of being revoked or replaced by weaker regulations. Those are our real, identifiable concerns. Due to the extremely limited time available to consider and draft workable replacements before the application of the sunset clause, and the lack of parliamentary oversight and public consultation, we must focus on those issues if we want the Government to change the direction of the Bill. The Government have said that they are committed to maintaining environmental protections. The right hon. Member for North East Somerset said that

“the Government is committed to maintain all the environmental protections that currently exist and met a number of the environmental lobby groups to confirm this”.

That quote was from an earlier time but I think he just repeated himself. There is no guarantee—it his just words on the record, and he is no longer a member of the Government.

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[Alex Sobel]

There is a point about REACH—the EU regulation concerning the registration, evaluation, authorisation and restriction of chemicals—which was mentioned in the Bill Committee, but I want to give other Members time to make their speeches, so I will take on the hon. Lady’s points and I am sure others will pick them up later in the debate.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

rose—

[Alex Sobel]

As I have mentioned the right hon. Gentleman twice, I will give way to him.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful. I just want to clarify a point. It is not my word that has any significance in this; it is a Dispatch Box commitment, by which Governments tend to be bound successively. I would point out that, on legislative reform orders, this Government have tended to follow the Dispatch Box commitment given by Paul Goggins when he was a Labour Minister. Dispatch Box commitments are important.

[Alex Sobel]

I look forward to repeating the words of the right hon. Gentleman and the Minister on the Treasury Bench in December this year, to see if that is true. Only time will tell. Maybe my poor level of trust might be wiped away or eroded, but I doubt it.

I will conclude, to give others more time. The Bill as it stands today gives us no protections and is a charter for a bonfire of rights and protections that the public not only hold dear but need in order to breathe clean air, drink clean water and ensure that our countryside is not ravaged by destruction and extraction. That is why I am supporting our Front-Bench Members and the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy).

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[Mr Davis]

If the hon. Lady had given me 30 seconds, I would have made exactly that point. I agree with her. This morning, or last night, we had No. 10 rushing to brief the papers and to write to us saying that the Bill will not remove existing rights and protections, which is plainly not true, and that it will not impinge on environmental rights and so on. That demonstrates what a great hole there is in the middle of this legislation. If those matters were covered in the law, we would not need to have that assurance. All of the non-governmental organisations that are concerned—I do not agree with all of them—would not have had to have their say either.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, because I, too, am very much in favour of parliamentary scrutiny and things being done properly. Everything that is covered by this Bill came in by a secondary measure and therefore it is proportional. Primary legislation is not within the scope of the Bill. If anything that came out of Europe came through in primary legislation, it will have to go through consideration on the Floor of the House. Unless my right hon. Friend is against secondary legislation altogether, I do not quite understand why he finds this Bill so shocking.

[Mr Davis]

I am sorry, but two wrongs do not make a right. The reason why I did not like the European Union was precisely what my right hon. Friend has just described. We had things almost de facto imposed on us. We went down an SI-type route to do things that I thought were important enough to justify discussion on the Floor of the House. The depletion of debate on the Floor of the House, mostly in the years before he came into the House, was one reason I was a Brexiteer.

We have approached this issue in a different way in other respects. Let us imagine that we are talking about 4,000 pieces of law, regulations or whatever. In truth, probably 90% of that may be clunky and may not work very well, but there is one thing in the Bill that I approve of, which is dealing with the superiority of European law—taking those priorities out of it. That is sensible. Once we have dealt with that, things will broadly work and will not justify a rush at this exercise. Let me explain very briefly what I think the consequences of that will be. I said that it is not democratic, but it will also be inefficient and possibly incompetent. I give the House, as a demonstration of this, what we did on 3 March 2020. You may remember, Mr Deputy Speaker, that that was the day that we gave the Government all sorts of powers under the emergency Coronavirus Act 2020. If we look, we can see how many errors were made in governing the country over the next six months, until we corrected that Act. If we do not bring a Minister to that Dispatch Box to justify what they are doing, the quality of the decision goes down, and that is dangerous when we are talking about measures as important as these.

The right approach is the one that we have actually taken in some areas. For example, we are rewriting the General Data Protection Regulation under a digital Bill. We are rewriting Solvency II and other financial measures under primary legislation, and the same is true for some procurement work. We should be doing similar things with some other software elements and biomedical rules. That is the way to do it: pick off the 10% or the 5% that really matter—that make 100% of the difference—and do that properly, on the Floor of the House, and not by remote control on a ministerial diktat in an SI Committee upstairs.

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

First, may I congratulate the Minister for Industry and Investment Security, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani), on her brilliant performance today and on taking on this Bill and driving it through? I will now confess to this House that a year ago, as Leader of the House, I thought it was going to be impossible to get this Bill done, written and ready for Parliament. I know I am not meant to mention people in the Galleries, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I hope you will indulge my saying that some of the Bill team are there and they were fabulous. They made the impossible happen and they deserve great thanks, because this is about restoring British law, with the common law replacing European law.

The Bill is a tidying-up law, but it is of great constitutional importance. It has been sent from this House with technical amendments from the Government but no fundamental amendment. I hope that the other place will note that carefully; the Bill goes with a strong democratic mandate and a wind behind it. It is one of the really important completions of Brexit and the people who oppose it are, in their hearts, the ones who opposed Brexit all along. The Bill is a reclamation of democracy, of parliamentary sovereignty and of our proper law.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I call the SNP spokesman.

Oral Answers to Questions

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

1. What steps he is taking to reduce red tape for small and medium-sized businesses.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

His Majesty’s Government are committed to supporting small and medium-sized enterprises through exemption of new regulations where possible. This exemption was recently extended to businesses with up to 500 employees, potentially reducing red tape and bureaucracy for up to 40,000 more businesses. That means thousands of businesses will not have to comply with forthcoming regulations and, most excitingly of all, it will extricate them from hundreds of EU regulations during the process of review and repeal.

[Danny Kruger]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the support he has given to small businesses across the country in recent weeks. As a west countryman, he will know Wadworth Brewery based in Devizes, an important local employer with more than 150 pubs and probably 1,500 people employed in the brewery and the pubs. I am afraid to say that many of the pubs are in severe financial difficulties, with many saying that things are worse than covid. Does he agree that the very welcome energy relief scheme should be extended and that the Government should give consideration to reviewing business rates and the value added tax regime?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Wadworth is a very well-known west country brewer. I used to live not very far from a tied pub in Wadworth’s capable hands, and it is a distinguished company that serves fine products. However, I must tell my hon. Friend that, while VAT is a matter for the Chancellor, the British Business Bank is offering £12.2 billion of finance to more than 96,000 small and medium-sized businesses. On 20 July my predecessor introduced a new iteration of the recovery loans scheme, which helps smaller businesses to get loans and other kinds of finance up to £2 million per business, and the Government have reversed the national insurance rise, saving small businesses £4,200 on average. The energy bill relief scheme, which ought to get Royal Assent later today, will secure businesses over the winter, and there will be a review; it is one of the most generous schemes in the world and has been copied by foreign Governments.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Businesses in my constituency, including some of the fabulous small breweries, are struggling with the extra paperwork they now have to fill in in order to export to the European Union. The Business Secretary was a great exponent of Brexit, but even he must acknowledge that it is causing a huge burden to businesses and seriously affecting their profitability.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I look forward to the hon. Lady’s supporting the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill, which is coming later today and will get rid of lots and lots of dreadful EU regulations that are such a terrible burden on businesses. Is it not wonderful, Mr Speaker, that our socialist friends at last have this glorious zeal for deregulation? It is something we on the Conservative Benches have supported since the time of Noah.

[Mr Speaker]

We come now to the shadow Minister, Seema Malhotra.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

In recent weeks, having crashed the economy, the Conservatives have increased the barriers facing small firms, with spiralling costs making it harder than ever to do business. Last week, the Federation of Small Businesses reported business confidence falling to its lowest levels since the pandemic. Yet, as almost half of small businesses reported falling revenues this quarter, the Secretary of State spent the weekend saying it was “Boris or bust”. Surely recent Government chaos shows that, for small businesses, it is Labour or bust. If the Secretary of State really wants to reduce the cost of doing business, will he back Labour’s call to raise the small business rate relief threshold for this financial year, saving local firms up to £5,000?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Lady has been in this House long enough to know that rates are a matter for the Chancellor of the Exchequer. She is raising the question at the wrong Question Time. It is worth bearing in mind, with unemployment at its lowest level since 1973, that every single socialist Government, including their brief period in office in 1923, have led to higher unemployment. What are they talking about?

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

2. Whether his Department plans to take steps to support (a) domestic and (b) non-domestic energy customers after March 2023.

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[Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)]

15. Whether his Department plans to take steps to support (a) domestic and (b) non-domestic energy customers after March 2023.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I am proud of the support the Government have provided to energy customers. His Majesty’s Government launched a Treasury-led review into how we support energy bills beyond April next year. The review will result in a new approach that ensures there is enough support for those in need while costing the taxpayer less than planned. The cost has come down significantly because of the fall in gas prices in recent weeks. Any support for non-domestic energy customers will be targeted at those most affected. This new approach will better incentivise energy efficiency.

[Patricia Gibson]

Citizens Advice Scotland has warned that it is already seeing huge demand for advice on the cost of living, energy bills and food insecurity. The uncertainty on the future of the energy price guarantee beyond April is frightening for consumers, not to mention the impact of insecurity faced by business. During the pandemic, the current Prime Minister kept U-turning on furlough extensions at the last minute. Will the Secretary of State offer reassurance and give at least some idea of when a post-April energy price scheme could be established?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Let me offer the reassurance that, if not for the United Kingdom, there would not be this level of support for businesses and individuals in Scotland. Scotland simply would not be able to afford it. It is the strength of the United Kingdom that allows this all-encompassing support to be provided. That is what the Government are doing. The package is one of the most generous that any country in the world has introduced. We are supporting people through the winter, and we will ensure there is focused support for the least well off in future winters.

[Martyn Day]

Just four days ago, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce issued the findings of its latest business survey and, to no surprise, energy costs were the main concern. The Scottish Chambers of Commerce stated:

“The signs of an economic bounce back don’t look promising as more and more firms are telling us that they have been forced to cancel contracts, projects or plans to expand, due to soaring costs and difficulty in hiring people.”

How exactly does having no certainty on energy costs beyond March help those businesses?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Mr Speaker, I assume it is orderly to say that I think the hon. Gentleman lives in a fantasy land. Energy prices varied before this Government came in and will vary in future. What His Majesty’s Government have done is provide enormous support for businesses. I say it again: just think how much worse off businesses would be if they were dependent on an entirely Scottish Administration with no money.

[Martin Docherty-Hughes]

It is good to see the Ministers still in their place for a wee while. Just six days ago, Martin Sartorius, the principal economist at the CBI, said:

“The prospect of household energy bills rising sharply again in April 2023 emphasises the need for Government to set out the details of any future targeted support sooner rather than later”.

The Secretary of State has repeatedly refused to clarify when households will receive clarity. Can I assume that he is also happy to leave businesses in the dark?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman cannot find a stick without picking up the wrong end. It has to be said that this Government acted with the speed of light.

“There was a young lady named Bright

Whose speed was far faster than light;

She set out one day

In a relative way

And returned on the previous night.”

We have returned on the previous night with a package that will receive Royal Assent today. The package has been worked out and thought through, with its budget provided, within a few weeks. We have some time between now and 1 April to establish what the scheme will be in future.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Government’s energy support measures, but my right hon. Friend will know that in rural areas, in Cumbria and in his constituency, many households and businesses are off-grid, relying on heating oil, liquified petroleum gas, biomass and so on. The measures do need bolstering, so will he reassure me and my constituents that the Government will keep this under review, and will support households and businesses that are off-grid?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am entirely in agreement with my hon. Friend; this is an important part of the overall scheme. The £100 payment to domestic users who are off-grid is based on the rise in the heating oil price against the price of gas, to ensure that people are dealt with fairly. It is important that that is also done for businesses. The issue with the business scheme, which we are developing and will have developed shortly, is ensuring that it is not open to gaming, because we have to use taxpayers’ money wisely. However, there is support and there will be support, and my right hon. Friend the Chancellor is fully behind that.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

I welcome the £400 energy bill discount that is going out to most households across the country in the UK. Some park homes, such as those in Deanland Wood Park in my constituency, are not on the domestic supply, but equivalent support has been promised for them. They mainly have elderly residents, so will the Secretary of State outline the timescale and process as to how they will receive that money?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

It is important that we support everybody who needs the support, and people in park homes are in a situation of which we are well aware. It is a question of working out how to get the support directly through to them, but I assure my hon. Friend that that is being worked upon.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend outline to the House what role his Department will have, if any, in advising on and assisting with the Treasury-led review on the energy price guarantee during April?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think the answer is in the name of the Department, which is the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: any policy relating to energy is one the Department has a role in.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the SNP spokesperson, Stephen Flynn.

[Stephen Flynn (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

As we have just heard, the CBI, the Scottish Chambers of Commerce and Citizens Advice Scotland have all expressed profound concern about the lack of certainty coming from the Government on their energy price strategy. But let us not stop there, because Age Scotland has produced a report in the past couple of days outlining that four in 10 older people in Scotland are now living in fuel poverty. Indeed, one of the respondents stated:

“The cost of living means I had to cut back on food shopping, and often go weeks with no food. It’s making me unwell.”

How does the right hon. Gentleman expect people to survive this winter?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. Everyone in this House is concerned about their constituents, the least well-off constituents, which is why such a big package of support has been put together—not just the price cap, which for the average household would be £2,500, converted into units of electricity, but the additional support given for the least well-off. So there is a further £400 that everybody is getting and £800 that is available to people on certain benefits. He is right to raise the issue of their difficulties, and I always admire the work done by Citizens Advice, which receives a portion of its funding from BEIS and rightly so. As constituency MPs, we all know what a useful organisation it is. The whole purpose of this package is to support the least well-off and give them certainty over the winter. He does not help by creating fear and uncertainty.

[Stephen Flynn]

As ever, the Secretary of State is living on a different planet. The energy price guarantee, to which he refers, is of course a unit price cap, not a usage price cap. That means that average bills in Scotland are not going to be £2,500; they are going to be £3,300 and in rural areas they are going to top £4,000. That is despite the fact that Scotland produces six times more gas than we consume and that almost all of our electricity comes from low-carbon sources. On Westminster’s watch, Scotland is energy-rich but fuel-poor. Is it not the case that at this moment the solution to Scotland’s problems does not rest with his party and his incoming Government? Indeed, it does not rest with this Parliament at all, does it?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There is a certain eccentricity in the Scottish nationalists’ boasting of the amount of oil and gas they get when they have been opposing efforts to increase the licensing round. They really cannot have it both ways. They have this fantasy approach to politics where they spend money that they have not got, they rely on the UK taxpayer to support them and then they complain that it is all the fault of Westminster. I am afraid that without Westminster the hon. Gentleman and his merry band would be bankrupt.

[Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)]

3. What support his Department plans to provide to businesses with increased energy costs after April 2023.

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[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to support households with energy bills over winter 2022-23.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

We are providing a £400 discount through the energy bills support scheme over this winter, as well as the energy price guarantee, which will support millions of households and businesses with rising energy costs, and we will continue to do so from now until April next year. That is on top of a further £800 in one-off support provided to 8 million of the most vulnerable households to help with the cost of living, and of course pensioner households can receive £300.

[Elliot Colburn]

The cost of living, and especially energy, is of great concern to my Carshalton and Wallington constituents. I welcome the Government’s action on energy bills, but I know from talking to many of my residents while out delivering my cost of living advice guide that, apart from the energy price guarantee, they are sometimes unaware of the additional support they may be entitled to, including from their energy provider and the Department for Work and Pensions, or the Government support provided through local councils. Will my right hon. Friend outline what steps he is taking to ensure that people are aware of all avenues of support that are available to them?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is quite right to raise this. Full details of the help available to consumers can be found on the Government’s Help for Households website, which people can get to from the gov.uk website. That covers my Department’s extensive energy support package and the additional help available, including through the Department for Work and Pensions, such as income support. In addition to the Help for Households site, we are communicating information on the support available to help with energy bills through suppliers, consumer groups and charities—and, it has to be said, through first-class MPs running events in their constituencies, who ensure that this happens—as well as through the media and

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

When Chancellor, our new Prime Minister spent precious months dragging his heels on energy efficiency, and now our fourth Chancellor this year scrambles with a Treasury-led review of the issue. We do not need more reviews to conclude that a paltry £1 billion extension to the energy company obligation falls far short of what is needed. Will the Secretary of State accept that to keep the UK’s homes warm and bills affordable for the long term, we need at the very least a further emergency investment of £3.6 billion over the rest of this Parliament, to kick-start the hugely needed nationwide home insulation programme that people are calling for?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There are focused and targeted schemes to help with energy insulation. The hon. Lady pooh-poohs £1 billion, but £1 billion is serious money, and it is going to help the households in the greatest need. A lot of work is being done with social housing landlords, but there are things people can do that lower the cost of their energy without causing any lack of warmth, such as turning down the boiler flow temperature, which almost all households can do. That will be a saving for them on the cost of energy and will make their heating more affordable; it will save energy but also reduce bills.

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

8. What recent discussions he has had with Cabinet colleagues on the potential contribution of his Department to reducing poverty in deprived communities.

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[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

The Department’s work is at the vanguard of this Government’s mission to go for growth. A secure supply of affordable energy is the foundation for economic prosperity. The energy price guarantee is bringing down bills for households, ensuring that Britain’s most vulnerable can stay warm this winter, and our energy bill relief scheme is cutting costs for schools, hospitals and businesses. We are stepping in to support consumers now, but we are focused on British energy security both for this winter and the future. We continue to work closely with Ofgem, National Grid and our international partners to secure our energy supply. That will be a challenge this winter, particularly if we have a cold winter, and is a matter of concern. The energy supply taskforce has been negotiating to help with that.

We will ensure that everything is done to provide long-term green growth, with new industries, new skills and new jobs. We are cutting red tape to help existing businesses, particularly small and medium-sized ones, saving thousands of pounds for tens of thousands of companies. This is a central Government Department.

[Michael Fabricant]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer. He will know that the west midlands is a major centre—if not the major centre—for car manufacturing. What discussions has he had with the Mayor of the West Midlands, who is a keen proponent for a gigafactory to assist electric car manufacture based in Coventry?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I was actually in Coventry last week because it is a centre for battery technology development, and my hon. Friend knows very well that Andy Street is one of the most effective campaigning advocates for the west midlands. What is needed is for companies to indicate that they want to invest in gigafactories, and the Government stand ready to support as much as we can.

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Government’s economic crisis is now being paid for by every household and business in this country, but the Government’s failure goes well beyond the pantomime of the last few weeks. Twelve years of Conservative Government have given us the lowest rate of business investment in the G7, and that is with the lowest headline rate of corporation tax. So why does the Business Secretary believe the Conservative party has been so consistently unable to provide a platform for the UK’s fantastic businesses to invest in throughout the last 12 years?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

What we have seen is the lowest level of unemployment in this country since 1973. That is real people and real jobs, and employment is the best route out of poverty. We have seen the most enormous advance in clean energy, with more offshore wind than any other country in the world. We have ensured that, during this difficult winter, we were one of the first countries to come forward with a comprehensive package to protect both domestic and non-domestic users to ensure that the economy could thrive. The hon. Gentleman complains that everything that has gone wrong is the fault of the Government. He seems to have forgotten about Ukraine and covid. Perhaps he should read the newspapers occasionally.

[Mr Speaker]

I think you have forgotten that topicals have to be short and sweet.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

That was an interesting answer on the 12 years of failure—it was perhaps an answer to a question, but not the one I asked. Our wonderful businesses want to expand, invest and grow, but they cannot do that with so much uncertainty hanging over the country. The Conservative party cannot be the solution to that instability because it is the cause of it. Will the Business Secretary give us his honest view and tell us whether he still holds the view he has expressed before—that what we should have, following a change of Prime Minister, is a general election?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Pots and kettles, Mr Speaker—that was neither short nor sweet. The greatest uncertainty of all is having socialists in office because the socialists ruin economies wherever they go. They create desolation, chaos and high taxes. As I said before, every socialist Government have left office with higher unemployment, including the short-lived one of 1923.

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

I thank the BEIS ministerial team for the investment of £10.65 million in the Centre for Process Innovation at Darlington, which is leading the way in ribonucleic acid technology. May I invite the Minister to visit that fantastic facility in Darlington on our amazing mile of opportunity?

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

T2. This afternoon the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill will be debated, and hard-working workers in my Liverpool, Riverside constituency are very concerned that workers’ rights and protections will be scrapped. Can the Minister confirm today whether his Government are intending to remove the 48-hour working week, minimum rest periods, parental and annual paid leave, and other hard-won employee rights—yes or no?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The UK is not dependent on the EU for its rights. We had better workers’ rights before we joined. We had longer periods for maternity leave, even while we were a member of the European Union. We are continuing to safeguard the rights of workers in this country in a proper way. We do not need to be told to do so by foreign Governments.

[Mary Robinson (Cheadle) (Con)]

Whether it is grooming gangs, hospital deaths or economic crime, it is often a whistleblower who highlights the criminal activity and wrongdoing. They then often rely on the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, which is not fit for purpose, to protect them. Will the Minister meet me to discuss the manifesto of the all-party group for whistleblowing, and its recommendations to repeal PIDA and bring in an office of the whistleblower?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

One of the things that we are doing in the Bill that is receiving Royal Assent pretty much as we speak, is ensuring that there are powers to deal with any inefficiencies in the market. I am very concerned that the wholesale price cuts provided by the taxpayer feed through to the retail market, and there are powers in the Bill to ensure that that happens.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to support UK forestry production, which supports companies such as Egger in my constituency, and that the best way to do that is to ensure a minimum of 1% forestry planting on public sector land?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Forestry is not one of the Department’s many responsibilities, but I will certainly take up my hon. Friend’s excellent point with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

[Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

T5. Postal workers at the depots in Forest Hill and Anerley in my constituency do a brilliant job, but they have faced weakening pay and conditions and now their jobs are under threat as Royal Mail looks to cut 10,000 positions. During a cost of living crisis, how can the Government allow that company to turn its back on hard-working staff? How is reducing the workforce compatible with maintaining the universal service obligation?

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[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

The previous Secretary of State admitted that he had ignored looking at a price mechanism for pump storage hydro because he viewed it as a Scottish technology. It is actually a vital form of energy storage going forward, so can I get a commitment today on a timescale for BEIS officials to speak to SSE about a pricing mechanism for generating electricity at Coire Glas?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman is an effective campaigner for pump hydro storage and it is important to look at that. We are looking at all possibilities for maximising renewable energy.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Today’s news that an additional 10,000 people every single month are now on pre-payment meters, bringing the total to 7.5 million, is deeply troubling, not least as they are paying up to 27% more for their energy. What steps will the Secretary of State take to ensure that there is poverty alleviation on energy for the very poorest?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

As I have said already, schemes are in place to support people during the winter. There is £800 available that has already been announced. There is the £400 that everybody will get. I also went through the additional schemes that are available to support people. I absolutely recognise—the hon. Lady is right to raise this on behalf of her constituents—that the price rises are difficult and worrying for people. That is why such a wide package of support has been brought forward.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

May I say what a pleasure it is that normal service can be resumed, and that I am now able to speak slightly more freely than I may have done when I sat in a different place? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on his particularly brilliant speech. I think it was particularly brilliant because I was involved in writing it; I may therefore be a rather prejudiced audience, but I thought it was delivered with panache and verve. He took so many interventions and put the case brilliantly.

I know that it is not orderly to mention people in the Galleries, but I do not know whether the officials’ Box counts for that purpose. Nevertheless, I would like to thank the officials who have been involved with the Bill. They have done a terrific amount of work to get it ready in a short time. I confess to the House that when I was Leader of the House, I thought that getting the Bill ready for Second Reading by this date would not be possible, but the work that has been done is absolutely terrific. Let me reassure those who may think that I have sometimes criticised the civil service that in this instance it is worthy of paeans of praise.

The Bill is of fundamental constitutional importance because it removes the supremacy of EU law. We have heard arguments about certainty. Certainty, certainty—everyone always wants certainty. In an uncertain world, I am not sure that certainty is ever possible, but in a legal context the Bill provides more certainty than the alternative, which would be to retain two different legal systems in these islands of ours that would apply in different circumstances. I know that we have Scottish law, English and Welsh law and Northern Ireland law, but we would have a separate law applying differently in each of those three jurisdictions. We are now removing that, so the law made and voted for by people in this country will be the supreme law. That is surely right.

The issue of supremacy is of constitutional importance. Anybody who opposes the removal of the supremacy of EU law is fighting the Brexit battle over again, saying, “We didn’t really leave after all. We’d like to pretend we’re still there. Isn’t it nice to allow this alien law to continue to tell us what we ought to do?” No, it would not be nice to do that. Let us clarify the law. Let us get as close to certainty as humanly possible, so that we have a sensible, intelligent and well-formulated statute book.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

For some of us, the point is not the constitutional argument about which laws should be sovereign, which we may well happily accept, but the practical issue of how we convert literally hundreds of laws, for DEFRA and so on, within the timescale imagined. Does my right hon. Friend understand the severe doubts that many people have about the practicality of what is on offer?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am afraid that my hon. Friend has never liked the decision to leave the European Union, and everything he says must be taken in that context. Otherwise, he would not have intervened—

[Richard Graham]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am not giving way again. Otherwise, my hon. Friend would not have intervened at this stage, because I was setting out the issue of supremacy before coming to the crucial point about why the Bill is now necessary and how it works in practice.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I give way to my right hon. Friend.

[Richard Graham]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

I appreciate the sensitivities. The hon. Gentleman knows that the content of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech is not a matter for the Chair, and not one on which I will comment, but he has made his point.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I now give way to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom).

[Dame Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for all the work that he has done. I was actually hoping to clarify the point that our hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) was making. Having myself held the role of Leader of the House during that attempt to leave the EU between 2017 and 2019, I recall that the House was able to get through some 800 or 900 pieces of secondary legislation. In my opinion, it is very much within the realms of possibility that this amount of legislation can and will be dealt with by the House very successfully.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend, who has made an excellent point. The ability of the House to get through its business is exceptionally good, and it is able to do so in an orderly way, as my right hon. Friend showed in dealing with the no-deal Brexit legislation.

[Patrick Grady]

Given his commitment to scrutiny by the House, the right hon. Gentleman, who said that he was involved in drafting of the Bill, must have had sight of the draft programme motion as well. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which created retained EU law, was given eight days of scrutiny on the Floor of the House in Committee, and two days on Report. Does he really think that the time the Government are providing for scrutiny of this Bill is sufficient?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

There is always a discussion to be had about whether a few days in a Committee of the whole House or upstairs in Committee provides better scrutiny. People sometimes reach different conclusions on that, but there will be a proper opportunity for a Committee stage upstairs, and I think that is perfectly reasonable.

I want to go back to the fundamental point about the supremacy issue. Let me reiterate that anyone who opposes the Bill is in fact re-fighting the Brexit battle.

[John Redwood]

I thank my right hon. Friend for all the great work that has been done on the draft legislation. Does he not find it an odd paradox, or contradiction, that many Opposition Members come to this place apparently to form laws but do not believe we can ever make a law that is good, and we need to rely on EU law in so many areas where I think we can actually do better?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who is wise, as always. But it is even odder than that, because there is this very strange view that laws that came in without any scrutiny at all—regulations of the EU that became our law automatically—cannot be removed without primary legislation. That is just bizarre.

The laws with which we are dealing came in under section 2(2) of the European Communities Act. Either they came in with minimum scrutiny but could not be amended or changed, or they came in with no scrutiny at all. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) disagrees with me on this, but we are not using this procedure to repeal Acts of Parliament. Even though these measures have the effect of introducing EU law, an Act of Parliament has had full scrutiny in the House, and to be repealed it deserves full scrutiny to be taken away. That is the correct constitutional procedure.

[Stella Creasy]

Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that some of us may be a little bit sceptical about the definition of democratic engagement that he has just set out? He is arguing that, for example, taking away laws that require cosmetics not to contain cancer-causing chemicals or laws on illegal trading—as well as maternity rights and TUPE—is a matter that does not require the scrutiny of the House, but only that of statutory instrument Committees. If he had been so wedded to restoring democracy, might he not have at least written the affirmative resolution procedure into these statutory instruments? Why he is taking back control, not for this House and the great democratic institutions—and he is now joining us on the Back Benches—but to No. 10?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I do not accept that construction of what is actually happening. The House will have the ability to focus on issues on which it thinks the Government are going in the wrong direction. Let me pick at random one of the retained EU laws that may be reformed or become redundant:

“a common methodology for the calculation of annual sales of portable batteries and accumulators to end-users”.

Does the hon. Lady really think that deserves primary legislation—a count of batteries? That is what is in the 2,400 statutory instruments on the dashboard, and, as has been pointed out, that is not necessarily the full list.

There are all sorts of minor and unimportant things that need to be dealt with. As for those that are of major significance, it was said clearly at the Dispatch Box that environmental protections would be maintained. That is fundamentally important. It is a commitment from His Majesty’s Government to this House. The Bill will allow those protections to become UK law—which I use as shorthand to cover the three different types of law in the United Kingdom—to ensure that they can be enforced logically and sensibly by our courts in accordance with our legal maxims. That must be a right and certain means of proceeding.

It is interesting that people, having been told this, are still opposing the Bill. I come back to the conclusion that those who are opposing it actually do not like Brexit altogether.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am grateful for the chance to put a question to the right hon. Gentleman. I was going to welcome him to his position, but I did not want to seem ironic. He says that we can take a guarantee from the Dispatch Box. Even the Conservative party’s manifesto commitments no longer hold: we have seen that. How can we take the word of Ministers when even manifesto commitments no longer bind this Government?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman knows that Dispatch Box commitments have a very high standing in our political system. As Leader of the House, I was concerned that we were not using legislative reform orders as comprehensively as the legislation seemed to imply. In fact, the reason for that was a Dispatch Box commitment given by Paul Goggins, in the last Labour Government, during the passage of the Bill that limited the application of LROs to non-controversial issues. Dispatch Box commitments are actually a fundamental part of the way in which our discussion works, as the hon. Gentleman knows only too well.

[Sammy Wilson]

The right hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. This is an issue of the supremacy of this Parliament, and this law will enforce, and reinforce, the point that when we left the EU we made Parliament sovereign. Does the right hon. Gentleman accept, however, that the Bill will also highlight the fact that Parliament is not sovereign across the United Kingdom? Some of this cannot apply to Northern Ireland, where EU law past and future will still apply. If anything, the Bill could drive a greater wedge between Northern Ireland, constitutionally, and the rest of the United Kingdom.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am certainly concerned about that. In the last couple of days I had to sign off a couple of explanatory memorandums covering law that was going to come into Northern Ireland from the European Union. That is an unsatisfactory constitutional situation, which is why I am so supportive of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill that is in the other place today. That is something we must push forward with, to ensure that we have a unified legal system across the whole of the United Kingdom.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

The Bill creates several new powers that will not require UK Government Ministers to seek consent from the devolved Administrations, essentially retaining power over areas within devolved competence. Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise the impact of this Bill on the devolution settlement?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Scottish Parliament has been reluctant to give legislative consent motions to any Brexit-related legislation because of the politics of the SNP. That is a view that it has taken because it wanted to remain in the European Union—as the SNP, to its credit, argues for firmly and clearly on these Benches. The SNP is rather clearer about this state of affairs than the socialist friends we have in here who like to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds. That inevitably means that, in my discussions with the devolved Administrations, there has not necessarily been a meeting of minds with the Scottish Parliament. But that is to be expected. This Bill in fact returns powers to the devolved Parliaments, because it gives them the authority to reform and repeal EU law too. They will be the decision makers over those areas that are devolved, so we are increasing devolution.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

The right hon. Gentleman will of course accept that the Welsh Government have similar concerns to those of the Scottish Government. The Welsh Government are run by the Labour party, which is a Unionist party. Indeed, the Counsel General of the Welsh Government, Mick Antoniw, has said:

“As currently drafted, this legislation could see UK Government Ministers given unfettered authority to legislate in devolved areas.”

These concerns are being expressed not just on the nationalist Benches but among Unionist colleagues.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I know from my previous experience that His Majesty’s Government will observe the Sewel convention in relation to this. There may be occasions on which, for simplicity, the devolved authorities want the Westminster Parliament to move ahead with something on which everybody agrees, but what is devolved is devolved and the devolved Administrations will have the right to pursue it.

This Bill is not only one of constitutional importance that will get our statute book tidied up but one of massive opportunity. It presents an opportunity, not necessarily to do any one big individual thing—like the Financial Services and Markets Bill, which can change Solvency II involving billions of pounds for the economy—but to go through every single individual issue in detail, one by one, so that we can see, bit by bit, those rules that have made our businesses less competitive, those regulations that have put our businesses under more pressure and those intrusions that have made people’s lives less easy. We will be able to sweep those away, and we will be doing so in a proper constitutional process.

[Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend previously served on the European Scrutiny Committee, as I still do. Does he recall the inches-thick paperwork that used to land in front of us on a regular basis? Despite the pleadings of the Chairman, my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), that legislation never had any debate, and even if it had, there was little to nothing we could do about it. This is the true victory and the Brexit dividend that we can now face.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The ports directive was debated and debated, and opposed on both sides of the House, but it went through anyway. There was absolutely nothing we could do. This is why I challenge Opposition Members who say that this is not proper scrutiny. Why did they not object to the section 2(2) power? Why were they not joining my hon. Friend the Member for Stone on the European Scrutiny Committee to ask, week in and week out, why these laws were going through without anybody being able to gainsay them and why parliamentary sovereignty was not being upheld? We are restoring parliamentary sovereignty by ensuring that there is a parliamentary process, that Parliament will have its say and that we will have our own law for our own country.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman will not be surprised to know that I agree with the core of his speech about returning supremacy to British law and getting rid of EU supremacy. The way in which statutory instruments and the negative procedure have been used in this House has not always been satisfactory. For instance, covid regulations, past the time they had been implemented, were brought into operation and were inappropriate in many cases. I could give many other examples. As somebody who campaigned to leave the EU and is glad to get back control of our laws, I am disappointed that the process will not see full transparency of debate, because our regulations and laws are better when they are transparent and when different people can bounce their ideas off each other. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with me?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We must not have such long interventions.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. The scrutiny of statutory instruments in this House is not all that it should be. I actually think that the other place does it better. I think there are too many statutory instrument Committees that look at things for two minutes before they all go home, but that is an issue we must face as a House to decide how we want to improve it.

My final point is that those who oppose the Bill seem to think that British politics and the British electorate count for nothing. They stand up and say that we will have no employment law protections—practically arguing that we will be sending children up chimneys. Do they think the British voter was born yesterday? Do they really think the British electorate and the British people will accept or vote for a party that takes away the protections they already have and enjoy? Are they unaware of the fact that our maternity leave protections antedate the European Union’s regulations, and have always gone further than those regulations?

What sort of a country do opponents of the Bill think we are? Why do they have no confidence in our democracy? Do they think that right hon. and hon. Members on this side, when standing on a parliamentary platform and going before our constituents, will say that we are going to have a burning of everything they like? Of course we are not. We will stand up for people’s rights, we will stand up for people’s dignity and we will stand up for the rule of law. Most of all, we will stand up for that fundamental right, that overarching right, that right on which all our constitutional freedoms are built and on which all human rights depend—the right of the ballot box.

Business Update

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2022 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

This statement will be made at a later date.

[HCWS338]

Subsidy Control Regime

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2022 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I am announcing today, 20 October 2022, that the Government intend to bring the Subsidy Control Act fully into force on 4 January 2023.

The Act provides the framework for a new, United Kingdom-wide subsidy control regime. This regime will enable public authorities, including devolved Administrations and local authorities, to deliver subsidies that are tailored to local needs. This Government are determined to seize the opportunities arising from Brexit. We are no longer bound by the EU’s bureaucratic and prescriptive state aid regime.

The Subsidy Control (Subsidies and Schemes of Interest or Particular Interest) Regulations 2022, which I have laid in draft before both Houses today, will define which kinds of subsidies and schemes should be referred to the new subsidy advice unit, or SAU, within the Competition and Markets Authority. Additional scrutiny of the public authority’s assessment is sensible, given that these will typically be the types of subsidies that have the greater potential to lead to negative effects on domestic competition and investment and/or international trade and investment.

The Government have consulted, earlier this year, on their proposed approach to subsidies and schemes of interest and of particular interest, and on the terms of the draft statutory guidance. The draft regulations that have been laid today, and the forthcoming guidance, are the fruit of careful reflection on consultation responses, the large majority of which were offered in an open and constructive spirit. I thank all respondents to both consultations.

Further regulations will also be laid during the autumn. These will concern the Competition and Markets Authority’s information-gathering powers in support of its subsidy control functions; the information requirements that public authorities must publish on our publicly available subsidy transparency database; and the gross cash equivalent rules for valuing subsidies in a consistent and comparable way, no matter in which form they are given.

The Government also intend that all four statutory instruments will be brought into force ready for the new regime to operate from 4 January.

More broadly, I wish to highlight some of the other positive features of the subsidy control regime that the Act establishes, and the work my officials are doing to implement it.

During the passage of the Act, Ministers were clear that improvements would be made to the functionality of the transparency database. Improvements have already been made, and a further programme of enhancements will be completed before the Act comes into force, to make the database even more transparent and easier for public authorities to use.

The Government are drawing up clear statutory guidance to expand upon and explain the intention behind the provisions included in the Act, among other supplementary guides and educational aides. This will help public authorities to understand the obligations placed on them by the new legislation and design better and less distortive subsidies.

The Government will also hold a series of in-person and online events in November to inform public authorities of the requirements under the new regime.

The Government will make three streamlined routes for when the Subsidy Control Act fully enters into force. These are subsidy schemes that will be open to all public authorities, who can use them to give certain categories of subsidies even more quickly and easily, and without the need to assess them against the subsidy control regime’s principles.

Next year, 2023, will mark the beginning of a new era for subsidy control in the United Kingdom. The Subsidy Control Act strikes a sensible balance between allowing public authorities greater freedom to grant subsidies for useful social and economic purposes, while protecting the interests of taxpayers by means of proportionate rules and reviews.

[HCWS333]

Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “Government” to end and insert

“to consult to ensure there is a robust system of local consent, and clear advice on seismic limits and safety, before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas may take place; and believes that such consultation must consider how the views of regional mayors, local authorities and parishes should be reflected as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected.”

I thank the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) for raising this important topic. I recognise that many Members and their constituents have concerns about shale gas, and that is why we will consult on the system of local consent and provide clear advice on seismicity and safety before any hydraulic fracturing for shale gas takes place.

[Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton) (Con)]

I am sorry to intervene so soon on my right hon. Friend’s speech, and I am grateful to him for giving way. He will be aware of deep concerns in Sussex about fracking, and they are concerns that I share, not least because our 2019 manifesto said:

“We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it”

is safe, which I do not think it does. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that, in the Government’s consultation paper he has just referred to on local consent, they will include an option for local referenda arranged by local authorities and overseen by the Electoral Commission?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My right hon. Friend has pre-empted a couple of paragraphs of my speech, because I was going to say that the consultation should consider the use of local referendums. I think that is one of the ways in which local consent could be indicated.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Not at the moment.

We want to ensure that the consultation considers the views of regional Mayors and local authorities, as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected. I also want it to consider the views of MPs, as well as the use of local referendums, as I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb). We will consult on the mechanism, but I can assure the House that any process of evidencing local support must be independent rather than directly by the companies themselves, and if evidence of appropriate local support for any development is insufficient, that development should not proceed. Local communities will have a veto, so I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) that if the people in his constituency do not want fracking, they will not have it.

[Simon Hoare]

Could my right hon. Friend confirm, for clarity’s sake, that the moratorium will remain in place while the process of consultation is agreed and that it will remain in place until it is approved by a positive vote in this place following a debate on the Floor of the House? Can he also confirm that the Government will indeed press their amendment today to a Division, if time allows and such circumstances are created?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I would like to make it absolutely clear that we need local consent before anything happens.

[Christian Wakeford]

Will the Secretary of State give way on that point?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

No.

Let me be clear to my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) that once the consultation on the mechanism for ascertaining a community’s view has been completed, the results will be brought to the House for approval, which I think he was also asking. If the House does not approve, fracking could not go ahead. Even if the House were to approve a mechanism, local communities would still have to consent in accordance with the mechanism. I reiterate: local communities will have a veto.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I want to take the Secretary of State back to the word “unless” in our manifesto, where we said that we would not support fracking

“unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.”

Will he confirm that the sense of that word is that we would need, at very least, a new rapid evidence review about safety? Will he commit to that and to the manifesto on which he and I were elected?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I think his suggestion to have a rapid review of the evidence is eminently sensible.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

rose—

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

How can I not give way to my neighbour from Somerset?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank my right hon. Friend for graciously giving way. He might want to clarify that this debate is a bit of a game, and is not exactly about fracking. If we are talking about fracking, scientific evidence and data is so critical—it is everything we base our policies on. Does he agree that the data should not just be about seismic activity, and that the effect on water will be critical? I do not just mean water that is put down the drilling space; I mean the effect on hydrology in future years. It is critical that the Government are seen to be serious about the scientific evidence on this.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend on both counts. She is right to say that trying to take control of the Order Paper is parliamentary interweaving rather than the substance of the debate. To take control of the Order Paper, people need to have won a majority in the election. That is how our system works The experience that we had in 2017 to 2019 proved how bad it is for Parliament when the Order Paper is messed around with, so I think that part of it is bad.

On the point regarding water, my hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. That is one of the keys to how things could be done safely, and we must be certain that the water used on site, and water that may be near sites, is safe.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I think my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) wanted to intervene, and I will happily give way to him.

[Steve Brine]

That is very kind of the Secretary of State. I am not concerned about the threat that local consent will go the wrong way in my constituency, because I do not believe for a minute that my constituents would give consent to fracking in our area. The shadow Secretary of State took an intervention about the Planning Inspectorate, and the Secretary of State said that local people will have a veto over that issue. Will he be clear that the Planning Inspectorate will not have a veto over local people?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Let me be absolutely clear: local communities will have a veto. If fracking does not get local consent—what form that local consent must take will be consulted on, and it could be, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked, by local referendum. That is what the consultation will be about. If local consent is withheld, that is a veto and it will not be overruled by national Government.

[Simon Hoare]

In fairness, the Secretary of State is trying to address the serious concern that he knows exists on these Benches, and many of us are grateful to him for that. I think he said this in response to my earlier intervention, but I would like him to clarify this point. When he brings back the local consent process, the tick-box programme, if the House votes against it, the moratorium on fracking by its very definition will remain in place. Will he confirm that point for absolute clarity, and say that today is not the end of the matter?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is right to say that today is not the end of the matter. If the House were not to accept the local consent mechanism, there would be no ability for local communities to give consent, and that would mean a veto were in place.

[Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. Is the neatest way of assessing local consent to take away the right of appeal to a planning inspector in these matters, so that the decision of the local planning authority is deemed the expression of local consent and is the final decision?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. That is absolutely the purpose of the consultation—to see what form local consent ought to take

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is absolutely true that the motion tabled by the Opposition does not reflect what was in our manifesto. It calls on the Government to introduce a ban on hydraulic fracking—followed by the three and a half pages of procedural stuff, which is what the motion is really about—whereas our manifesto said that we would introduce “a moratorium”.

In the Secretary of State’s letter to us, he says:

“With time, we will gain more understanding of how we can best develop this potentially very substantial UK asset.”

May I put it to him that, with time, we will gain more understanding of whether we should develop this potential asset? Would he accept that?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We are not pre-empting local consent in the letter that I sent out, so he is right.

I think that the time has come for me to return to my text—at least, for a moment or two. I do understand, as we have discussed, the concerns that people have about the safety of hydraulic fracturing. The excellent report by the Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering from 2012 suggests that shale gas extraction can be managed safely and effectively in the United Kingdom owing to our high regulatory standards and many decades’ experience of extracting oil and gas both on and offshore. I return to the quotation from the right hon. Member for Doncaster North. As was reported in Wales Online on 25 September 2013, he said:

“Of course, there could be a role for it if it can meet safety concerns and the needs of local residents”.

So he should vote against his own motion, because he accepted that there should be a role for it.

The Government are absolutely determined to build our energy security. At a time when energy costs are a worry for many, I can say that we are starting from a tolerably good place. The United Kingdom is blessed with a healthy mix of different sources of energy, including a strong wind resource, one of the few significant oil and gas reserves in Europe, several gas import terminals and a well-managed electricity network. We have also made strong progress in building new renewable electricity generation such as offshore wind and plan to accelerate that further while also developing new nuclear capacity.

However, we cannot escape the fact that we are a nation with a structural reliance on gas. Even though we will be reducing our reliance on gas on the way to net zero—indeed, we may be using just a quarter of the gas that we use now by 2050—gas will remain the essential transition fuel.

Gas may have been out of sight and out of mind for some years. Perhaps we were not sufficiently prepared. However, we must not take our local gas supplies for granted. This year, the energy world changed. Putin’s war against Ukraine and the weaponising of gas supply to Europe has cut off a major source of supply to the European markets that we are connected to and ignited a global rush for gas resources. So while there is no immediate threat to UK supply, we cannot let our domestic production fade away and end up ever-more reliant on imports. No responsible Government would gamble with the gas supply. That is why, in the near term, our priority is keeping our domestic production online. The North Sea Transition Authority has launched the 33rd oil and gas licensing round, which is expected to deliver more than 100 new licences and put more UK gas on the grid. That is why we are discussing making the most of our shale gas resources.

[Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)]

I always try to be helpful. The way out of the dilemma, if you like, is green hydrogen. I repeat what I said some days ago in this place: there are advanced plans in my constituency and the north of Scotland to generate 50 MW of energy, and that will shortly go up to 300 MW. Again, I invite His Majesty’s Government to come and see our plans. It would be helpful to all concerned.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is indeed helpful. Green hydrogen is one of the most exciting technologies, and I am very enthusiastic about the opportunities there.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the Secretary of State share my bemusement at some of the arguments? We know that we will need gas and that we will spend billions of pounds importing it from regimes that we cannot depend upon, and we know that we have gas in the north of England that could generate thousands of jobs and give us the security of our own supply. What is not to like about that?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who puts his thoughts with classic cogency.

[Caroline Lucas]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Not at the moment.

The Government remain committed to net zero by 2050. It is how we reach that without putting our energy security at risk.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Secretary of State give way on that point?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman always wants to intervene on every point. He always says, “On this point” so it is hard to believe it really is on this point.

It makes no sense to become more reliant on shale gas produced overseas. Indeed, the Committee on Climate Change’s analysis notes that while current evidence on the emissions footprint of UK shale gas and liquefied gas imports is not yet definitive, available estimates indicate that emissions from those imports could be higher than those that would arise from commercial UK shale gas production by between 2 and 63 grams of carbon dioxide per kWh of gas consumed. Using our own resources is therefore more environmentally friendly and will help us to get to net zero.

[Sir Robert Goodwill]

My right hon. Friend is making some very valid points. It is about not just domestic gas supplies and electricity production, but the chemical industry, and most importantly, the fertiliser industry. One of our plants has already shut down and the others are switching from natural gas from UK sources to ammonia from the United States, whose cheap shale gas enables that industry to keep going. If we cannot produce our own fertiliser, food production in this country is under great threat.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who puts it very clearly. Using our own resources is environmentally friendly, but we have to make sure there is popular consent for it. I feel that the British public would not welcome the disruption and shortages that would be caused by Labour’s policy of taking gas out of the network by 2030.

[Mike Amesbury (Weaver Vale) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way. He is being so generous in giving way to people, particularly those on his own side. In my constituency, and in the constituencies of Ellesmere Port and Neston, and Chester, we had a public inquiry only recently, costing hundreds of thousands of pounds, and our communities rejected shale extraction. That is local consent. Why do we again have to jump through hoops and go through the same process?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The hon. Gentleman should be supporting what I am saying. He shows the value of local consent. The reality is that it will not always be given, and I am very well aware of that.

Let me move on to seismic limits. We have been clear that any future exploration or development of shale gas will need to meet rigorous safety and environmental standards. Drawing on lessons from around the world, we will make sure hydraulic fracturing for shale gas is done safely. Last month, the British Geological Survey published its report. This is a really important way of looking at what the seismic experience has been and comparing it with other forms of production, both of energy and other forms of manufacturing industry. The report makes it clear that forecasting the occurrence of felt seismic events remains a scientific challenge for the geoscience community. However, it also makes clear that to improve our understanding, we need more exploratory sites to gather the necessary data. We think this is a sensible thing to look at and that it would be unwise not to look at it, but it must have community support.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am almost coming to an end and lots of people want to speak. I have taken a vast number of interventions, including three from the Opposition, but I will give way to the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he seriously consider two aspects of fracking? First, it is unsafe in a country like the United Kingdom, which has a very small landmass and a large population. It might be safe somewhere with thousands and thousands of miles of barren land, but not in a country like ours. Secondly, does he really want to see applications for disgusting hydraulic fracturing across our beautiful country?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, who is always a great contributor to this House. She is right to raise the issue of safety, which will be fundamental to any proposal for the extraction of shale gas.

The world has changed and our energy policy needs to recognise this. This Government will make the difficult but necessary decisions to secure the nation’s energy supply. Exploring our potentially substantial shale gas reserves is potentially an important part of that. But this must not be looked at in isolation, which is why we are exploring all avenues available to us, including solar, wind and nuclear, but we cannot ignore the importance of local gas production. However, let me reiterate the commitment—I reiterate this particularly to my hon. and right hon. Friends—that there is an absolute local consent lock. Any process to determine local consent must be run independently, and this House will vote on any scheme that we bring forward.

Energy Prices Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am glad that the House has agreed to the amended allocation of time motion—otherwise, I would have been in danger of filibustering my own motion. I am sure that hon. Members across the House agree with me about the urgency of this legislation. Nevertheless, I thank hon. Members for the speed with which the Bill is being considered. In particular, I thank Members of His Majesty’s official Opposition, and especially the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), for their constructive engagement.

The world is facing a global energy crisis, which has been exacerbated by Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. The soaring cost of energy means that families and businesses across the United Kingdom are facing rising energy bills this winter. On 8 September, the Prime Minister announced an unprecedented package of assistance, which will support households, businesses, charities and public sector organisations across the UK with the increasing cost of energy. This decisive action will help deal with the rising cost of energy while reducing inflation and supporting economic growth. The Bill puts the assistance announced by the Prime Minister on a secure legislative footing. The legislation is crucial to providing immediate support to people and businesses.

The domestic scheme, the energy price guarantee that was announced, is already up and running. The Bill prioritises the legislative underpinnings of that scheme. The energy price guarantee will provide support to the end of March 2023 that will be equivalent to an annual bill of £2,500 for the typical household. The average unit price for dual-fuel customers on standard variable tariffs subject to Ofgem’s price cap paying by direct debit will be limited to 34p per kWh for electricity and 10.3p per kWh for gas, inclusive of VAT, from 1 October. It is important to emphasise that per-unit use.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (Ind)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that, in constituencies such as mine, a large number of homes are off the gas grid. The Government have come up with an alternative fuel payment of about £100 for those homes, but oil prices have nearly doubled. I know that changes to the whole policy have been announced by the Chancellor today, but will he commit to equivalent support for those off the gas grid?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I will come to that, but the intention is that the support should be equivalent to that for people on the grid.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Talking about an average household bill of £2,500, the Prime Minister said that the measures would stop people paying £6,000 on average, but the explanatory notes to the Bill estimate that the measures will save people from bills reaching £4,200. Given that the support will end in April, what can people who, after April, will not be receiving any support expect to pay for an average household bill?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The Bill is setting the immediate support, which will run until April. The Government are reviewing how to ensure that support is more targeted in future, but there is no question that there will be support, and the Bill provides the powers for that. It is important to emphasise that bills will still depend on usage. That is why I am grateful for the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), who has emphasised the advantages of a prudent use of energy benefiting all users.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State talks about energy usage and families not having bills of more than £2,500, but bills for large families with high usage will be far, far more. How can families have certainty? If the Government will not have a communications campaign on reducing energy usage—they have said that they are against that on principle—how do we get that message across to people up and down the country?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

What we are doing is making it clear that it will depend on usage and that the figures are average figures. The £2,500, therefore, is for an average family and, obviously, not necessarily for all families. Larger families will have particular pressures, but I am coming on to the other support that remains which will help families. The price per unit of electricity and gas is part of the package, but it is of course combined, and we recognise the difficulties that families and businesses will face with higher prices.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the Secretary of State for bringing forward the proposals he is outlining. I am very concerned for those I refer to as the working poor, and I know the Secretary of State is as well. With the cumulative money that people have to pay, the working poor, in my opinion, seem to be the ones who are losing out. Can he give us some reassurance that that will not be the case?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes, I think I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance he is asking for. That is why the scheme is as broad as it is. The effect of the price rises we were in danger of seeing was so great that it would have affected people who were not on benefits. They would have found that they were in fuel poverty without this assistance. That is why it is so encompassing. The support is being provided at the point in the year when 60% of consumption takes place.

The energy price guarantee comes in addition to the £400 of support provided by the energy bills support scheme for Great Britain, announced earlier this year.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I see the right hon. Gentleman is about to intervene. I will just say one thing, because I am coming on to a point about Northern Ireland on the energy bills support scheme. It will be extended to Northern Ireland to provide domestic consumers with the equivalent level of support being provided to households in Great Britain. This is very much a Unionist package.

[Sammy Wilson]

First of all, I give our thanks to the Secretary of State for the diligent way he has sought to address the problems in Northern Ireland. He points out that the package is coming at the point of the year where energy consumption is at its highest. In Northern Ireland, because of the difficulties of one electricity company, it may well be that the whole scheme will be held up until it is ready to give a discount on bills. Can he give us an assurance that, since 60% of consumers are with companies that could do it tomorrow, there will be no delay in waiting for the slowest to catch up before the benefits are made available?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The point of the Bill is to bring in support from 1 October. It has already been done in GB for domestic users and it will be retrospective for Northern Ireland. That is what the Bill is trying to achieve.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The way out of this problem is far more domestic capacity, so that there is a bigger supply in due course. That requires investment. Can my right hon. Friend reassure us that although there will be temporary subsidies, price controls and surrogate windfall taxes, sufficient incentives and signals will be sent to industry that we really do need the investment and that it will be worthwhile?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Yes, indeed. This is a temporary measure. The legislation runs out; there are various sunset clauses that will affect it. We need more of our own supply. Some will be renewable, and some will be oil and gas. We need to ensure that cheap energy flows in this country for the good of the economy.

The legislation will enable the Government to provide support to consumers across the UK who are not on the main gas grid. This will benefit consumers who use alternative fuels to heat their homes, such as heating oil, as well as those who live on heat networks. Eligible households will receive a £100 payment this winter through alternative fuel payment powers, which are introduced under the Bill. The Government will be setting out the support available for non-domestic consumers on the same basis.

The important point on the £100 payment is that it is designed with reference to changes in the price of heating oil from September 2021 to September 2022 and aims to provide support which is equivalent to that received by people who heat their homes using mains gas. I know right hon. and hon. Members are interested in how those figures have been calculated, so I will place more information in the House of Commons Library detailing the basis of our calculation.

In addition, measures in the Bill will extend the energy bills support scheme to UK households that would otherwise miss out on the automatic £400 payment as they do not have a domestic electricity contract. That may be because they receive their energy through an intermediary with a commercial connection, or because they are otherwise off the electricity grid. The Bill will also ensure that in cases where intermediaries receive support from the schemes, they are required to pass it on to the end users as appropriate.

For example, the legislation will provide powers so that landlords are required to pass on support to tenants. His Majesty’s Government are taking action to provide equivalent support to heat network customers. This includes measures that will ensure heat network suppliers pass on the support they receive to their customers. In addition, the Bill provides for the appointment of an alternative dispute resolution body, which will handle complaints raised by consumers against their heat network if it has not passed through the benefit.

Let me turn to non-domestic schemes. As well as helping households, the Government are taking action to provide support to businesses, charities and public sector organisations through the energy bill relief scheme. We will provide support to non-domestic consumers as soon as possible to help businesses and other organisations with their energy bills this winter. The Bill is vital for the implementation of the scheme, which will provide a price reduction to ensure businesses are protected from excessively high bills. Initially, the price reduction will run for six months, covering energy use from 1 October. After three months, the Government will publish a review, which will consider how best to offer further support. It will focus in particular on non-domestic energy users who are most at risk to energy price increases. Additional support for those deemed eligible will begin immediately after the initial six-month support scheme.

In addition to those unprecedented support schemes, the Bill will contain measures that will allow us to protect consumers from paying excessively high prices for low-carbon electricity. The provisions will limit the effect of soaring global gas prices by breaking the link between gas prices and lower cost renewables. This will help to ease the pressure on consumer bills in the short term, while ensuring energy firms are not unduly gaining from the energy crisis. In addition, the Bill will enable the Government to offer a contract for difference to existing generators not already covered by the Government’s contract for difference scheme. This voluntary contract would grant generators longer-term revenue certainty and safeguard consumers from further price rises.

Taken as a whole, the Bill will ensure that families, businesses, charities, schools, hospitals, care homes and all users of energy, receive the urgent support they require owing to the rising costs of global energy prices. In addition, the legislation takes important steps to decouple the link between high gas and electricity prices, which will ensure consumers pay a fair price for their energy. I hope that Members, right hon. and hon. Members alike, will agree that this is a vital and timely piece of legislation.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am within a moment of finishing, and I had better finish because time is so short.

This is a crucial package of measures that meets the challenges posed by sky-high global energy prices and Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine. Without the launch of the schemes I have outlined, many individuals and businesses would be left facing growing financial turmoil in the face of increasing energy costs. Now is the time to act and the Bill delivers the support that is required. I therefore commend the Bill to the House

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will try to be as brief as I can to let as many people as possible speak in this debate.

Let me start by saying that Labour called for support for families and businesses in August through an energy price freeze, so we will support the passage of the Bill. I thank the Secretary of State for the conversations we have had on the Bill. This is an incredibly serious issue for families and businesses across the country.

I have to say, before I get into the detail, what a shambles this Government are. We are debating what they describe as their landmark Bill for a two-year price guarantee. It was published only last Wednesday and it has already been shredded by the Chancellor this morning. Last Wednesday, Members were in the House for Prime Minister’s questions. The Prime Minister went on and on about her decisive action of a two-year guarantee. She even derided the Opposition’s approach of a six-month freeze, seeking to spread to fear about what would happen in March, and now the Government have adopted our proposal. Never mind a vision; never mind a plan for the years ahead—this Government cannot even give us a plan for the coming week. They are truly in office but not in power. This matters, because families and businesses need to be able to plan.

I want to talk about the substantive action in the Bill and the way that the revenue to pay for it is raised, because there are important issues for the House. On the substantive action, there is a contrast with our six-month package. That was a real freeze, not a rise in bills, and £129 for millions of families across the country is significant. That even takes account of the £400. I worry about off-grid households, which we will talk about in Committee. I understand the basis of the Secretary of State’s argument. Our costed package provided £1,000 to help off-grid households. The Bill provides just a tenth of the support, and even with the Government’s measures, the University of York estimates that more than 10 million families will be in fuel poverty, so we will want to debate those issues during the Bill’s passage.

I will focus my remarks on the second set of issues relating to the way that funding for the Bill is provided, which is important. Our argument five weeks ago, when the Government announced their energy price guarantee, was that they should do everything they could to find some of the money for this intervention from the energy companies that are making enormous profits. Anyone who heard the Business Secretary’s dulcet tones on the radio last week will have heard him say that there is no windfall tax in the Bill. The right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) described it as a “surrogate windfall tax”, which is a new invention. However, page 3 of the Bill’s explanatory notes states:

“The Bill aims to do the following…Require certain generators currently receiving supernormal revenues to make a payment to a third party…for purposes of lowering the cost of electricity for consumers, or to meet expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State”.

Payments on the basis of windfalls received to lower the cost of electricity for consumers, or to meet expenditure incurred by the Secretary of State—it sounds like a windfall tax. It works like a windfall tax. It talks like a windfall tax. It is a windfall tax.

I want to hear during this debate that the Government will definitely use the powers to have a windfall tax that are in clause 16. That matters, because while we set out a clear plan for a windfall tax, the truth is that the Government, having resisted a windfall tax tooth and nail, have now taken the broadest and most ill-defined powers imaginable. Companies and the public have no idea from the Bill about the size of the levy, how much it will raise and how there will be fairness with the fossil fuel windfall tax that the previous Chancellor announced —to remind the House, that was four Chancellors ago, in May this year.

We will probe two issues that go to the question of whether we will raise sufficient resources from the windfall tax, or “surrogate windfall tax”, in the Bill. First, according to their press release, the Government will start the windfall tax on electricity generators only in 2023. Those months of delay matter, because it will mean billions in extraordinary profits being left—[Interruption.] I do not know why the Secretary of State is shaking his head. This is a very important point: that will leave billions of pounds of extraordinary profits with the companies, and it means that the British people will be forced to foot billions more of the bill for energy price support. If having a windfall tax is the right thing to do, why not have it from the date of the intervention in September? I am very happy to give way to the right hon. Gentleman so he can explain why he is not doing that.

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am very happy to explain. The right hon. Gentleman knows perfectly well that the energy companies have sold their electricity forward, and therefore the profit is not accruing on the prices at which they have sold it forward.

[Edward Miliband]

That would mean that there are no windfalls, so why is the Secretary of State having a special payment made by the energy companies anyway? That makes no sense at all. We will definitely want to probe that during the debate. How can it possibly all have been sold forward, as he says? So he is saying that the energy companies are currently making no windfalls. That does rather prompt the question: why are they going to have to make special payments, if it has all been sold forward and they are making no windfall profits?

Secondly, I want to talk about the question of the level playing field in what is happening to the fossil fuel companies and to the electricity generators. The previous Chancellor but one—I think that is right—introduced a super-deduction for fossil fuel companies as part of his windfall tax. That means that for every pound invested in oil and gas and fracking, companies get 91p back. But to be clear: that is not available to renewables, nuclear or other zero-carbon technology. That is an absurd tilting of the playing field towards fossil fuels and against investments in cheap, home-grown, clean power, and that is absolutely indefensible. It will not reduce bills. We will want to use the Bill as best we can, given the constraints of its scope, to debate the merits of that provision. I urge the House to support attempts to eliminate that preposterous loophole.

In the time I have left, let me deal with the wider questions about the Bill. We will continue to be in this position unless we learn the proper lessons from this crisis. Those lessons are not some extreme fringe idea that fracking, which will not lower bills, is somehow the answer to the problems that we face. The answer is a clean sprint for clean energy—for solar, wind, nuclear as part of that and energy efficiency all together.

The other day, the Secretary of State wrote an article in The Guardian, in which he said, “Dear Guardian reader”:

“I can assure Guardian readers that I am not a ‘green energy sceptic’.”

Let him prove it. He is for fracking, which will not lower bills and is dangerous. His colleague, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, is seeking to block solar energy worth 34 GW—the equivalent of 10 nuclear power stations. That is not some whim of the DEFRA Secretary, but an instruction from the Prime Minister, who said that she does not like the look of solar panels. If the Business Secretary wants to convince people that he understands the stakes and what is necessary to get out of this crisis, he needs to make a proper sprint for green energy.

The other thing that the Business Secretary needs to do—we will again discuss this during the passage of the Bill, and I think he may agree with this—is set a timetable for the proper de-linking of electricity and gas prices. We suggest that we should set a two-year timetable in the Bill for that to happen.

Let me end by saying that the Bill is necessary, because we need support to be put on the statute book, but the truth about the Government is that they are lurching from U-turn to U-turn, and they cannot provide the country with the strategic direction that it needs to get out of the crisis. The truth is that, day by day, they are showing that they are out of ideas, out of time, and now, in the national interest, they should be out of power, too.

Energy Prices Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 17th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I merely thank everyone in all parts of the House for their participation: the official Opposition, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and, of course, Conservative Members. The support from Northern Ireland is particularly welcome, as the Bill was essentially required for Northern Ireland. I thank the House for its kindness and expedition in completing all stages of the Bill so swiftly.

Boston Alternative Energy Facility: Deadline for Planning Decision

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Thursday 13th October 2022 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg)]

This statement concerns an application for development consent made under the Planning Act 2008 by Alternative Use Boston Projects Ltd for the construction and operation of an energy from waste facility at Boston in Lincolnshire.

Under section 107(1) of the Planning Act 2008, the Secretary of State must make a decision on an application within three months of the receipt of the examining authority’s report unless exercising the power under section 107(3) of the Act to set a new deadline. Where a new deadline is set, the Secretary of State must make a statement to Parliament to announce it. The current statutory deadline for the decision on the Boston alternative energy facility application was 7 October 2022.

I have decided to set a new deadline of no later than 10 January 2023 for deciding this application. This is to ensure there is sufficient time to allow for further consultation on the proposal.

The decision to set the new deadline for this application is without prejudice to the decision on whether to grant or refuse development consent.

[HCWS323]