Carbon Emissions (Buildings) Bill

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Dehenna Davison

Friday 25th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who I know is incredibly passionate about construction, building and all things planning and will continue to help champion the agenda in the coming months and years.

I think many in industry would agree that, as hon. Members across the House have highlighted, one of the biggest challenges in tackling embodied carbon right now is a lack of data, because consideration of embodied carbon is relatively new compared with operational carbon for both industry and Government. Without enough information at product and building level, industry cannot make decisions about design and construction, and the Government cannot establish the right benchmarks or targets, either.

[Jerome Mayhew]

It is generous of the Minister to give way. Given that data is what the Government need, does she not agree that the format of the Bill, which is to report now—deliver data—and decide later, in 2027, serves the purpose of providing the data that the Government need so they can make an informed decision as part of the Bill?

[Dehenna Davison]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his contribution. I know that was the intent of the design of the Bill—we have discussed that before today. The important thing to note is that we will be consulting not just on how we reduce embodied carbon but on how specifically we go about gathering that data, because that data collection will be so important in ensuring that we can decarbonise embodied carbon. I hope he will appreciate that that is one of the reasons why we are keen to consult before we take any further action.

I want to quickly highlight some of the contributions made by hon. Members across the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) raised some fantastic points about broader decarbonisation and asked some questions about decarbonisation within existing housing stock. I know that we are pressed for time, so I will write to him with some further details on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) was absolutely right to highlight that the Government are on the side of those who want to decarbonise. For all the rhetoric, this Conservative Government’s action on decarbonisation has been exemplary, and some of the small examples highlighted by hon. Members during this short debate have really shown that. I note that he mentioned the ever-famous “Stop the Stink” campaign, about which he is so passionate, and it would be remiss of me not to mention his incredible campaigning on that.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Holly Mumby-Croft) talked about the planning framework as being incredibly important on the decarbonisation agenda. She is absolutely right, and I congratulate her and North Lincolnshire Council on their brilliant progress on that. It would be remiss of me not to thank her for her stellar work in championing the British steel industry and, in particular, the steelworks in Scunthorpe in her own constituency, on which she has been and is an incredibly passionate campaigner.

I will conclude, in the hope that others may make a brief contribution, and in the hope that my short speech has explained some of the system’s complexity and why the Government cannot support the Bill today, even though we empathise with the sentiments and ambition underpinning it. We are concerned that passing such legislation now could bounce the industry into making changes for which it is not fully prepared. In the current context, at a time when the SMEs that depend on this industry are struggling and facing a hard time, the industry may not be able to afford these changes. We do not want to run the risk of negatively affecting the industry and the market in ways that we do not intend, which is why consulting seems like the most practical and sensible solution.

I reiterate my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Broadland for all his dedicated work in introducing this Bill. Again, I make it crystal clear that the Government’s opposition to the Bill is in no way a dismissal of the seriousness of the issue or of our commitment to tackling it. Officials in my Department are working with many of the supporters of this Bill to carry on the essential work of measuring and reducing embodied carbon in construction.

Together, I believe we can adopt the right approach that lets industry and markets properly prepare for change, while not letting up in our fight to tackle carbon emissions, to win the race to net zero and to build the cleaner, greener homes and buildings this country needs.

Private International Law (Implementation of Agreements) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jerome Mayhew and Dehenna Davison

Committee stage & 3rd reading & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee stage: House of Commons & Committee: 1st sitting & Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 6th October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew (Broadland) (Con)]

I cannot match the technical analysis of my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill), but I hope I can bring to today’s deliberations some practical experience of the implications of new clauses 2 and 5.

The honouring of agreements has been at the heart of international trade since such trade began, but it is worth remembering that Governments have not always supported international trade. If we look back at the approach of our Government and other Governments in Europe from the 16th and 17th centuries, and even well into the 18th century, we see that we operated mercantilist policies that actively prevented international trade. Such trade was discouraged to protect domestic manufacturing. Policies such as high border tariffs were implemented, and there were even export bans on tools that could be used to improve manufacturing in third countries. Many arcane rules and requirements to use local suppliers and local trades were implemented to make it harder to undertake international trade.

There was also no support for the legal enforcement of contracts. Consequently, businesses had to make their own arrangements, which were founded primarily on personal trust and the reputation of organisations and families. I have some personal experience: I was once recruited by my brother to work in his company, eventually as the managing director. His rationale was that he had no idea whether I was competent at anything but did know that I was unlikely to steal from him. I will leave it to other people to decide whether that was ultimately good for the economy of that business. On an international basis, that approach has been disastrous: throughout the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries there was a general stultification of growth.

I am delighted to say that it was the United Kingdom that led the world away from narrow protectionism and towards free trade. That great man Adam Smith led the charge. He destroyed the argument for protectionism, demonstrating the desirability of imports—they are more efficiently produced and therefore cheaper—and stating that exports were merely the necessary cost of acquiring them. It was through this place that we led the way in the repeal of protectionist laws: first, with the Reciprocity of Duties Act back in 1823, and then much more famously with the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. What was the result? We see it if we look around us today: the explosion of world trade.

PIL agreements have been crucial to the modern support of international trade. They bring legal certainty, deal with conflicts of jurisdiction and allow for judgments to be enforced internationally. The Bill helps to achieve those aims, particularly as we transition from EU membership into the big wide world. That transition period, to which I shall come back later in my speech, is relevant because of the time constraints that it imposes on Her Majesty’s Government.

I want to return to my first-hand experience of the impact of PIL agreements. I was the managing director of a UK-based SME that was entrepreneurial in its outlook, and we were doing pretty well in the UK, so naturally I looked to international markets as a means for expansion. In my time, I negotiated joint ventures in Russia, the United States of America, Australia and South Africa, as well as undertaking preliminary discussions in a number of other jurisdictions. It was noticeable that the only two joint ventures that we progressed to fruition were those in the United States of America and Australia, and the fundamental reasons that I felt unable to progress further in those other jurisdictions were the fears over the enforceability of contracts, particularly in relation to intellectual property, and the fears over the effectiveness of the rule of law in those jurisdictions. PIL agreements affect countless such economic decisions all around the world and in this country every day, so we must not underestimate their importance for economic decisions just like the ones that I took.

There is an urgent need for more PIL agreements, particularly as we move out of the transition period. They are an integral part of our pivot towards global Britain, and there should be no unnecessary delay in the Government’s ability not only to negotiate such agreements but to bring them into force. International enforceability is key to trade growth and to London remaining the centre of dispute resolution around the world. It is also key to the continued dominance of English and Welsh law, and it is worth reminding ourselves that that law is dominant because it is predictable in its interpretation and its enforceability. That is a key advantage for this jurisdiction.

I understand well the concerns that have been raised by old clause 2 and new clause 5. As a Back Bencher, I stand here to defend the rights of Parliament, but it is also right that I should do that with a sense of proportion. PIL agreements are significant—I have done my best to explain how significant they have been to international commerce—but they are fundamentally uncontroversial. They are not major treaties in the sense of Maastricht, which was mentioned by a previous speaker, and we need to have some practical considerations weighing on our mind as we decide whether we should implement new clause 5.

The transition period is a time when we should be lifting our eyes to the wider horizons of international trade, and that is going to mean many more PIL agreements. As my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) highlighted, the Government’s agility, and their ability to strike while the iron is hot to take advantage of this brave new world into which we are entering, are material practical considerations. We also have the legislative timetable to consider. It is already clogged up with covid-related delays, and to require multiple Acts of Parliament to be progressed through that clogged-up timetable in order to progress time-sensitive and time-critical agreements would be disproportionate. It would create negative delay for the Government’s domestic agenda as they seek to progress this stodge, and delay for the implementation of the agreements themselves.

As a businessman and as a Back Bencher defending the rights of this Parliament, I operate with that sense of proportion, and my conclusion is that it would not be proportionate to prevent the Government from using secondary legislation in this manner. Consequently, I support the Government’s new clause 5 and I am against new clause 2.

[Dehenna Davison (Bishop Auckland) (Con)]

I rise today not as a lawyer, surprisingly—like many right hon. and hon. Members across the House—but merely as someone who has taken an interest in the Bill because I want the best for my constituents. I often joke that I am bilingual, because I can speak standard English and northerner, but I do not speak legalese, so Members may have to forgive me for a bit of plain speaking on this one.

New clause 5, which has been the subject of much discussion, effectively sets out the procedure by which international agreements on legal disputes are brought into UK law. The new clause would allow Ministers to implement treaties via an affirmative statutory instrument, rather than going through the full primary legislative process.