Joan Walley
Main Page: Joan Walley (Labour - Stoke-on-Trent North)
Barry Gardiner
I agree that it is important to address the question of what the costs to British industry and British consumers will be. As the hon. Gentleman will accept, the independent Committee on Climate Change has already addressed that question, and, indeed, its remarks and recommendations were based precisely on its assessment of the likely costs and benefits and the signals that currently exist in the market; but he has made a fair point. We certainly need to ask what signals exist, and what effect either costs or benefits are likely to have on our national well-being.
It is heartening to know that the Government want to hear what the Committee on Climate Change wants to say in three years’ time. Perhaps they will now extend that courtesy further by not just hearing but listening to what the committee is saying today.
The other argument that the Government Whips have deployed against the amendments is that sector-specific targets without road maps are meaningless. That is, to a degree, relevant to the point made by the hon. Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride). This is not only about the targets; it is also about the road maps relating to the implementation of those targets, and that, of course, is precisely why we have a levy control framework. It is also why the EMR report of the Committee on Climate Change calls on the Government to extend to 2030 funding allocated to support the development of less mature technologies under the framework, to present
“options to support mobilisation of new sources of finance, including roles for the Green Investment Bank and Infrastructure UK”,
and to publish in the EMR delivery plan
“the amount of capacity that the Government intends to contract”
over the next period.
The final argument that we have heard from Ministers is that they do not wish to sacrifice jobs and growth for the sake of the environment. That is the most fallacious argument of all. It was dealt with very well in some of the pre-Committee hearings. Andrew Buglass from the Royal Bank of Scotland told the Energy Bill Committee that there is a cliff edge and that cliff edge is making it very difficult for supply chain investors to invest in the UK. Overcoming the insecurity created by the 2020 cliff edge does not require more public money or even the promise of more money. It requires coherence in the form of a 2030 target that proves to industry that the demand for low-carbon energy will continue to rise beyond 2020.
The shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Tom Greatrex), has previously quoted comments made by Mr Buglass in an Energy Bill Committee sitting, observing that Mr Buglass stated that a 2030 target
“is absolutely critical from the conversations I have with potential supply-chain investors because they quite rightly point out that it is very difficult for them to take investment to their board if they really only have visibility on three or four years-worth of work.”––[Official Report, Energy Public Bill Committee, 15 January 2013; c. 51, Q154.]
We must put that target in place if we are to incentivise potential investors and achieve the investment in low-carbon industry that we need.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
I support the decarbonisation target. Does my hon. Friend agree that this issue is not just about what DECC is doing, but what the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is doing? There are many investors looking to invest in constituencies across the country, but they will not make that investment if the uncertainty arising from the Government’s current position persists. It is therefore vital that we get some kind of assessment of where that investment can go, because that will help to create the green jobs that we all want.
Barry Gardiner
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the great mistakes this Government have made on energy policy is to confine it simply to energy itself, and not to consider it in the wider context of British industry. That is why I am delighted that the new Minister for Energy, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), has a spanning brief over the two Departments. I hope he will be able to bring that to bear, because we must see how our energy policy is related to our exports. Unfortunately, last night the Government did not accept the amendments on carbon capture and storage, but we must understand that the growth of CCS as a new technology in this country will impact not only on our own energy policy here in the UK, but much more widely in terms of the exports and the impact we can make on climate change across the globe and in countries such as China and India, which will be using coal for the next 30 or 40 years. That is the true prize. Our own energy consumption and our own emissions are small compared with those of the rest of the world, but the impact that our industrial policy can make is enormous. That is why we have to integrate energy and business, as my hon. Friend says.
Potential investors in the UK have a policy risk concern; they are concerned about what the future shape of our energy policy might be. Siemens told us if we wait until 2016 to set a decarbonisation target for 2030, it and many of its competitors are likely to delay or cancel planned investment in the UK. The Energy Secretary is shaking his head. I know he is not shaking his head to indicate he disagrees that that is what Siemens said, as he has read the Hansard Committee reports and he knows that is precisely what it said. He may disagree with those comments, but that is what industry is telling us, and we ignore what it is saying at our peril.