Draft Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) (Extension to Maritime Activities) Order 2026

Joe Robertson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2026 General Committees

[Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Jeremy. I associate myself with all the wide-ranging arguments made by my hon. Friend the shadow Minister about this piece of legislation, but I wish to focus on something more specific: the impact on ferries and the cost of travelling to UK islands.

The Government know that this legislation will increase the cost of travel to islands. They know it will have an adverse impact on UK islands, which is why they exempted travel to Scottish islands from this punitive levy. What they have not done is extend that exemption to all UK islands, which means my constituents on the Isle of Wight now face additional cost in getting to and from home. There is no way to travel to the Isle of Wight other than by ferry. There is no other way of getting goods to the Isle of Wight, and when I say goods, I do not just mean things like building materials. I mean bread, butter, eggs—our supermarkets are stocked with produce that comes across only by ferry because there is noother way to get anything to or from the Isle of Wight.

Just last year, in response to a question from me, the Prime Minister said from the Dispatch Box that he knows that Isle of Wight ferries have not been good enough—that is in the context of price and frequency. Indeed, the maritime Minister has set up a series of meetings, led by an independent chair, to explore ways to improve travel to the Isle of Wight, including its cost. Yet at the same time the Government are increasing the cost of travel to the island.

We start from a position of disadvantage compared with Scottish islands. Our ferries are already more expensive than those that serve the Scottish islands. Our ferries do not have public subsidy, unlike those to the Scottish islands, and they are not ultimately publicly owned. In fact, they are owned by private equity interests, which fill the coffers of pension funds overseas. They are entirely unregulated, and Isle of Wight residents are entirely at their mercy, but while we seek support from the Government to ensure that the companies give us a fairer deal, the Government make our travel more expensive. I am not asking for anything special, or a special Isle of Wight exemption; I am asking for the exemption that the Government already give dozens of islands to include the island of which I represent a part.

No impact assessment had been done on the effects on the economy of my constituency, or of other islands that are not covered by the exemption, but the Government do accept that this measure will increase costs. They have access to a report by the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods, which is general and not in direct relation to this order, and which ranked my constituency the second in England for having the most people in left-behind neighbourhoods—that is, second bottom on the pile.

That ICON report is not some unusual or niche interest piece that has been put together; the Government themselves said they would base the delivery of their five missions on it. How has the ETS legislation fallen out of their five missions? Surely, the entire delivery of the Government’s programme is based on their five missions, yet they have set aside and ignored the report that they said they would rely on. Again, I am not making a parochial argument, representing some small, faraway place in the United Kingdom. I am basing my argument on the Independent Commission on Neighbour-hoods report that the Government say they are using and relying on to deliver a fair programme of government.

The UK Chamber of Shipping has said that, given what has happened in Europe, the cost of tickets could go up by around 15%. Ultimately, global warming will not be solved by making it more expensive to travel to the Isle of Wight, or to any other island in the United Kingdom. I urge the Government to think again, and extend their exemption to all UK islands.

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[Chris McDonald]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his service in the Royal Navy, and I am happy to withdraw that remark. Perhaps there was an oversight on his part in relation to that particular issue. I absolutely do withdraw that remark.

On the shadow Minister’s comment about the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man is a Crown dependency, as I am sure he knows, so it is not covered by the scheme. He mentioned the Isles of Scilly. The vessels to the Isles of Scilly are not covered by the scheme either, because they are below 5,000 gross tonnage.

The shadow Minister also mentioned the Isle of Wight, and I want to respond to the comments from the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East. I looked very carefully at the issues around the Isle of Wight before we tabled this statutory instrument, because those were a significant concern for me as well, and I am happy to offer some additional information now. I am grateful to my colleague my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley), who requested a meeting with me before this statutory instrument was laid. I was happy to have that conversation with him, and I offer that courtesy to the hon. Member for Isle of Wight East as well, if he would like to have such a meeting after this debate.

Perhaps I can in some way put the hon. Gentleman’s mind at rest. First, regarding the situation on the Isle of Wight versus the ferry operators in Scotland, one of the key considerations for us was that the population on the islands in Scotland is considerably lower than that of the Isle of Wight. There is also no competition generally between the ferry operators, but there are there are a number of routes operating to the Isle of Wight, as the hon. Gentleman will know very well. The scheme will affect only two vessels, from one operator, on the Isle of Wight: one is a diesel vessel and one is a hybrid vessel. Clearly, the impact of the scheme will be felt more on the diesel vessel than the hybrid vessel, and that is because of the 5,000 gross tonnage limit. I am sure that I am not telling the hon. Gentleman anything that he does not know, but I want to be clear that we have thought very carefully about this.

The hon. Gentleman and a number of Members mentioned the opportunity for decarbonisation. In my opening remarks, I mentioned a number of ways that that could be done, including more fuel-efficient operating practices and various other things. We have set aside £448 million of Government funding to support that, which was announced previously. If the hon. Gentleman would like to meet with me to go through more of that in detail and represent the views of his constituents, I would be happy to do that.

[Joe Robertson]

I welcome the offer to meet, and I wish to take the Minister up on it. As he will know, the hybrid vessel he refers to that travels across the Solent has electric capability, but it cannot be used because there is no grid capacity at Portsmouth. The Solent is one of the busiest shipping areas in Europe and the vast majority of pollution will be from large container ships going in and out of Southampton—and, of course, the Royal Navy operates out of Portsmouth. Putting any cost on a boat travelling to the Isle of Wight to allow to people to go to and from home fails to meet any sort of reasonableness test, but I thank the Minister for the offer of a meeting.

[Chris McDonald]

I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments. Perhaps we can go through some of the assessments of the impact of cost inflation in more detail when we meet. Our modelling shows that that could largely be eaten up by normal inflation and normal operating practices, but there are decisions there for the operators to take into account. The hon. Gentleman made some pertinent points about the operators, and we can discuss those in more detail. He also mentioned international shipping through the Solent. Clearly, international shipping is not covered currently by this measure, but it is covered in the EU ETS.

Finally, I come to the points raised by the right hon. Member for East Antrim and the hon. and learned Member for North Antrim. The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim might be surprised to know that there are actually quite a number of things on which we agree, and one of them, for certain, is that the United Kingdom must be the United Kingdom of equals. I am quite clear about that.

I wanted to clear up a couple of points about the situation with Northern Ireland. The 50% reduction that applies to Northern Ireland is there to create parity between vessels that operate between Great Britain and Northern Ireland and those that operate between Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland. If we had not offered the 50% reduction, Northern Ireland would be disadvantaged in that way, and I want to be clear about why that is.