Energy Security
Joe Robertson Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
The security and price of energy affect every household, individual and business in every constituency, up and down the country. It is a matter that concerns everyone. That is why, when the Secretary of State was in opposition, he promised during the last election to cut household energy bills by £300. Instead, in government, he has presided over a £200 increase in those bills. That is his record as he sets his sights on his next job, the job he so desperately craves: replacing the Prime Minister. He is also the Secretary of State who has set up GB Energy, which will not produce any energy, will cost taxpayers £8 billion and, as its own chief executive says, will take something like 20 years to employ just 1,000 people. There is nothing in the King’s Speech that will secure the country’s energy supply, bring down energy costs or create the jobs and investment that the Government have promised.
As we have heard from Members across this House, there is a consensus—there is unity. We all want to decarbonise energy use, but Conservative Members will not support doing so at the expense of families, households and individuals, particularly those who are hard up and least able to pay. This is not a binary choice, where we are either pro-decarbonisation or against it; we can be for it, yet understand that the security of energy supply and household energy bills must come first. What country in the world would run headlong into an ideological experiment for the sake of it, leaving hard-up citizens behind? No country in the world. This country should not, and this Government should not either.
Jonathan Davies (Mid Derbyshire) (Lab)
Many of these problems have been put in the “too difficult” box for too long; they are long term and difficult to fix. Does the hon. Member at least acknowledge that the Government’s investment through the national wealth fund of £600 million into small modular reactors is a real step forward and will bring people’s bills down in the long term?
Joe Robertson
I accept that there are some difficult questions in and around this whole area of debate. The truth remains that no Government have done more to decarbonise the economy and to bring forward green technology than the last Conservative Government, but we would not do that at the expense of hard-working families. The bonkers green tax agenda that this Government are peddling is harming the debate on decarbonising the economy. I will give an example of that.
Ms Billington
I am comfortable with accepting that there has been a growing consensus about decarbonising our energy system over a period of time, starting with the Climate Change Act 2008, which only a handful of Conservative MPs voted against. However, I am puzzled that hon. Member thinks that the last Tory Government did that without any burden on the taxpayer or on bills, when the so-called energy savings package that Liz Truss put in place cost £44 billion and has left this country in profound debt.
Joe Robertson
I acknowledge that the last Government made mistakes—I do not have a problem with that—but that is not an excuse for the hon. Lady’s Government to do even worse for hard-up working families.
Bonkers green taxes harm the debate, and I will give this House an example. UK emissions trading scheme levies on the maritime sector are levied on ferry companies. My constituents on the Isle of Wight rely on those ferry companies to access things that everyone else takes for granted: health, education, jobs and seeing friends and family. Next month, someone can travel across the Solent to the Isle of Wight, taking their car on one return trip, for £511. That is for a five-mile return crossing.
The Government, instead of helping us—they say they will help, and I am still holding out hope that they will—will in July levy a carbon emission tax on the Fishbourne to Portsmouth route that the ferry company cannot avoid. It cannot decarbonise its ferries and go electric, because there is no grid charging capacity in Portsmouth harbour. There is no grid charging capacity in Southampton either. These are not strange little harbours—they are the naval base of the United Kingdom and one of the biggest export container ports respectively—yet there is not the grid capacity to charge an Isle of Wight ferry. The ferries will pay, however, and guess what: they have passed on that charge to consumers and my constituents.
Ms Billington
Specifically on the Southampton point, it was under the Tory Government that the Labour-run Southampton council wanted to clean up and install that grid connection to be able to decarbonise shipping in that port and specifically to tackle air quality in that city. The Tories had 14 years, and they did nothing.
Joe Robertson
I gently say to the hon. Lady that the reason her Government are in such a mess and polling at under 20% is that she and her colleagues think that the universal excuse for her Government’s inaction is to blame a previous Government. She won that argument at the last election, and since then her Government have done nothing. Southampton will have that grid-charging capacity for boats in the mid-2030s, yet the Government are bringing in a charge in July this year. Do you know what the irony is, Madam Deputy Speaker? One of those ferries has batteries on board. It is a hybrid boat that can use batteries to cross the Solent and not burn fossil fuels, but it is being charged because it cannot use its batteries, because it has nowhere to plug into. The EU is bringing in that charge and ringfencing the money it receives from its emissions trading system to invest in grid capacity in ports—but not the UK Government; they are taking the money, shoving it into the Treasury and making no promises about investing in grid capacity. That is not the last Government; it is this Government.
I say to those on the Government Front Bench that these bonkers green levies make no sense, harm ordinary people and undermine the entire case for their green agenda.
Budget Resolutions
Joe Robertson Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
Average households will be £850 worse off by 2029-30, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. That is a consequence of this Budget, with the highest taxes in history, growth down, borrowing up and inflation up. In fact, the Government have missed their inflation target every single month they have been in office, with no projections that they will hit it any time soon. That target is 2%. The last time we hit 2% was in July 2024, when this Government took office. That is the result of a nightmare sequel to a horrendous original. We have had two Budgets, back to back, making people poorer, with more tax for more welfare.
It did not have to be this way; the Chancellor had choices. Instead of raising tax again—this time by £26 billion, with 43 different taxes—she could have cut the size of the civil service back to where it was in 2016. She would have saved £8 billion. She could have taken welfare spending back to where it was just before the pandemic. She would have saved £23 billion. She would have had the money she needed to not raise taxes, with some left over to cut them instead.
Dr Scott Arthur (Edinburgh South West) (Lab)
It would be interesting to talk through the implications of such a drastic cut to welfare in one single Budget, and what that would mean for people in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, particularly the young people with children who will be lifted out of poverty by this Budget.
Joe Robertson
It is one single Budget with a plan over five years, as the hon. Gentleman well knows. The best way to lift all families out of poverty and to stop them slipping into poverty is to grow jobs and grow the economy so that we have more money to spend on public services.
We know that the Government wanted to cut welfare. Indeed, they tried to cut welfare spending just a few months ago, but they were held to ransom by their Back Benchers and watered down their plans. Instead of coming back with a properly costed, reformed proposal, we have a £5 billion cash grab. They have given up on tackling the welfare bill altogether. We have more tax for more welfare.
Most people on welfare do not want to be there if they have a choice, but the key word is choice. The Government have to give them choice, by allowing businesses to employ people and by increasing job opportunities, not decreasing them. What happened to the party of a hand up, not a handout? Until Labour rediscovers the central role of businesses in employing hard-working families and in growing the economy, so that we can invest more in public services through growth, people will remain on welfare and our economy will remain sluggish.
I will finish by saying something on transport costs, particularly as the Secretary of State for Transport is in her place. Although I do not agree with her reforms to rail and buses, I share the sentiment behind them: that we should be putting passengers above profit. I continue to ask that she does that not just for rail and buses, but for communities all over the United Kingdom that rely on ferries. While she is freezing the cost of rail, my constituents are paying more and more in ferry fares, because we have providers that are controlled by private equity companies that are unregulated and unlicensed. I know that she would not accept that for any other community across the UK. Of course, I do not hold the Secretary of State responsible for that—it is not a situation that she created—but she is in the wonderful position of being able to do something about it, and I urge her to do so.
I thank the maritime Minister, the hon. Member for Selby (Keir Mather), for the talks that he has had with me and my neighbour, the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley). I look forward to continuing those conversations because, quite frankly, with private equity trading one of the ferry companies in the past few days, those companies are not going to make the changes that we deserve without the Government stepping in.
Marine Renewables Industry
Joe Robertson Excerpts(1 year, 4 months ago)
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Perran Moon (Camborne and Redruth) (Lab)
Meur ras, Ms Jardine. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, and I welcome you to your place. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this debate. Given the importance of the debate, it is again disappointing to see that so few Members from His Majesty’s official Opposition are here to contribute. But I am encouraged that so many Members from the Celtic nations of the United Kingdom are represented today.
Support for the marine renewables industry demonstrates not just awareness of our developing energy system up to 2030, but foresight into how we achieve energy security in the long term. Julian Leslie, the chief engineer at the National Energy System Operator—the body responsible for advising the Government on their clean power strategy—has described the 2030 clean power target as reaching the base camp of Mount Everest. He describes the next stage, decarbonising heat and wider industry on the way to 2050, as climbing to the mountain’s peak. What that means is that the next generation of technologies, such as tidal stream and wave energy, will need to develop and proliferate deployment at scale as our economy becomes increasingly reliant on electricity.
According to the Government’s “Clean Power 2030” plan, marine renewables—tidal stream, in particular—will be an incredibly useful source of energy that, as has been mentioned, can be deployed without correlation to other energy sources, therefore acting as a predictable component of our clean energy infrastructure.
Joe Robertson (Isle of Wight East) (Con)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this important debate. The hon. Member for Camborne and Redruth (Perran Moon) refers to rolling the technologies out at scale. The only eligible English project that has the marine lease, environmental licence and network connection offer is in my constituency, on the Isle of Wight. Does he agree that local communities must benefit directly from projects in their areas—through direct jobs, obviously, but also through other indirect benefits?