Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Consideration of Lords message
Wednesday 18th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Let us remind ourselves what Lords amendment 247B is about. Within 18 months of the Act being passed, the Secretary of State would be required to carry out a consultation and publish a report on the barriers preventing the development of community energy schemes. It would also require the Government to respond and bring forward proposals to remove the barriers preventing the development of community energy schemes within six months of the consultation closing. That is the bare minimum that the Government could do. It would at least move the issue forward, and yet the Government still put forward a motion to disagree with it.

The Government say that they have already committed to consult on the barriers to local supply, but we still have not been given a date when that will actually happen. The Lords amendment would stop the Government’s current policy of dither and delay and require them to get on with taking community energy schemes forward.

Ultimately, the Government should not need to consult, because they are already well aware of what barriers face the sector; Community Energy England has told them repeatedly over the last five years. It is really disappointing, because there is even an all-party parliamentary group for community energy. Officials have engaged with the APPG, yet nothing has happened because the Government, despite warm words, are not really committed to community energy.

In 2021, the Environmental Audit Committee published a series of recommendations to encourage community energy. The only recommendation taken forward so far is the community energy fund, and even that does not yet have a launch date. I hope that the Minister will tell me when the launch date will be. When will we see the fund for community energy?

We are in the middle of an energy crisis. Bills have skyrocketed. Access to cheap, clean, home-produced energy has never been more vital. We need to secure our energy supply, protect consumers and reach net zero. As we have always said in the debate about reaching net zero, we need to take people with us. That is not about delaying targets, as the Government have just done, but about encouraging people to walk the difficult journey to net zero. Community energy does exactly that. Why are the Government not supporting it with all their might? Why are the Government not even supporting the Lords amendment? It is the bare minimum.

Community energy has the potential to power 2.2 million homes and save 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions every year. All it needs is a Government who give it the support that it deserves. I have seen at first hand the benefits that community energy can bring. In my Bath constituency, Bath and West Community Energy has installed enough renewables to power 4,500 homes. It has invested the money that it has earned back into my local community, donating nearly £330,000 to support environmental and fuel poverty schemes. That is what community energy can do. What is there not to support? Why are the Government not committed to doing all that they can to ensure that community energy projects can be delivered?

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Wera Hobhouse]

Unfortunately, the Government are unwilling to see the potential of community energy. Community energy schemes currently generate just 0.5% of the UK’s electricity. That is because—we know all this; we have said it many times—the financial, technical and operational requirements involved in becoming a licensed supplier put initial costs at more than £1 million. That is a massive risk for any new start-up or small scheme. Any community energy projects such as the one in Bath can exist only because it has reached a certain size. That is one of the problems.

The Government are aware of that fact, but voted to remove Lords amendments to rectify it. The Government need to start matching their supportive words about community energy with action. The most effective step that they could take would be to enable local supply and remove the regulatory barriers that prevent community energy schemes from selling their power to local customers. That could include a community right to connect to the grid ahead of commercial projects that deliver little or no social and community benefit. I am sure that I have answered the question that the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) was about to ask.

Community energy schemes are ready to provide clean, green energy that helps local communities. They are not asking for a huge amount of public money, just for the Government to stop blocking the system. In this time of energy uncertainty, having a reliable local supplier can only be positive. I fully support Lords amendment 274B to hold the Government’s feet to the fire on community energy. I urge everyone in this House to do the same.

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for contributing to this afternoon’s debate. I will first respond to some of the comments made by my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan). I know that he does not like it very much, and would like it if it were not the case, but he is absolutely wrong and I have to correct him: this is not the English Government; this is the British Government. We are the Government of the entire United Kingdom—a United Kingdom of which Scotland remains a part and, if the opinion polls are anything to go by, will continue to remain a part of for quite some time.

The hon. Member has an obsession with decrying the nuclear industry as something that the Tories alone are obsessed with. Tell that to the Governments of France, Sweden, Finland, Italy, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Canada, the United States of America and more, who are reinvesting and restarting their own civil nuclear industry, as is the Labour Welsh Government, who are very much in favour of further investment in, and development of, nuclear. He raised the lack of funding for community energy projects; £10 million over two years is an incredibly generous offer. That is alongside other UK growth funding such as the UK shared prosperity fund, which community energy groups can access by working in partnership with their local authorities.

The hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) asked when the community energy fund will be launched. It will be launched as soon as possible. We are aiming to launch applications to the fund as soon as we physically can.

My opposite number, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), is right that we have had a productive and constructive relationship when it comes to discussion of the Bill. The 72 hours that we spent together in Committee were beneficial to everybody’s health, I am sure, and to the development of Government policy on this matter. We have come some way from where we were when we started discussing how we would support community energy. He rightly praised the role that the sector has played during the passage of the Bill. The community energy sector has been incredibly receptive to our commitment to a consultation and to the £10 million fund.

UK Automotive Industry

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Monday 18th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I rise to urge the Government to be careful about rushing to close our factories making diesel and petrol cars before we have established the electrical revolution and are confident that we have created the capacity and the extra jobs in the alternative power system that the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) is so passionately recommending. I would ask the Labour Opposition, who seem even keener to close our petrol and diesel capacity more quickly, to consider why Germany, with a far larger automotive industry than our own, has decided with the EU to delay the ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles to 2035 rather than 2030, and also why Germany thinks it needs to make provision for the possibility that it can make cars that work on synthetic fuels or some derivative of hydrogen as an alternative to the battery system as a way of getting to a low carbon output. Germany might not be wrong. I think that we will discover as a country that it is much easier to close factories and terminate the production of petrol and diesel cars than it is to get those much-wanted electrical factories into operation, with all the supply chain that that requires.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman not making an important admission that although the EU has delayed ending the manufacture of combustion engines, there are important exemptions in that those cars should be run only on synthetic fuels and sustainable fuels?

[John Redwood]

I have said that the EU was keen to explore the synthetic fuel opportunity. In the meantime, it is not recommending the closure of traditional vehicle factories at pace. Indeed, the EU has recently required of its member states that they should not only speed up the roll-out of electrical charging points—which will clearly be needed if people are to buy more electric cars—but roll out the provision of hydrogen refuelling places, not synthetic fuels. It is probably easier to deal with synthetic fuels, because a good synthetic fuel that is liquid at normal temperatures can be used in the usual distribution system, using the sunk assets that already exist in the petrol and diesel system. Indeed, one of the ways to introduce synthetic fuels more easily would be to gradually increase the proportion of synthetic fuel mixed into traditional fuels, as we have with E10 petrol and as is being talked about for sustainable aviation fuels, where there are target percentages for the introduction of lower carbon ingredients in the fuels.

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey). I echo him in urging the Government to stick to the 2030 target—a point that I will make in my speech.

The climate emergency will not go away. Surface transport is responsible for nearly a third of the UK’s carbon emissions, and more than half of surface transport emissions come from private cars and taxis. The electric vehicle transition is therefore vital. The 2030 target to end the sale of new petrol and diesel vehicles is an important tool to bring us towards decarbonisation. It gives the industry the certainty for which it so often asks, and it has worked: sales of EVs in the UK are exceeding expectations, according to Chris Stark of the Climate Change Committee. That gives us confidence that the 2030 target is achievable, proving all the naysayers wrong. Reports suggest, however, that the Government have been tempted to cut the “green crap” and that they will water down this important target. The permanent fear that the UK Government will go back on their word weakens our automotive industry. A tough target is better than persistent U-turns.

We Liberal Democrats have consistently encouraged the automotive industry to embrace the future and to transition from petrol and diesel to electric cars. We need a Government who are equally committed and who will not be derailed by their Back Benchers. I am very pleased that BMW will build the new electric Mini in Oxford; it is a significant investment that demonstrates the economic opportunities. I am even more excited that Somerset will host a new gigafactory for battery production. Those are important milestones on which we must build.

We now need a longer-term strategy to truly grow the industry. Transport & Environment UK is worried about how much of the more than £800 million in the automotive transformation fund has been spent. It is concerned that wider investment cannot be maintained without expensive subsidies. Uncertainty around the zero-emission vehicle mandate and the lack of an overall industrial strategy add to those concerns.

The Government have a poor track record when it comes to building electric vehicle supply chains. The collapse of Britishvolt was a staggering blow. When he was Chancellor, the Prime Minister said that Britishvolt

“will produce enough batteries for over 300,000 electric vehicles each year”.

Now Britishvolt will produce none. Mistakes were made at the company, but was there really nothing that the Government could have done to prevent the loss of such an important business?

If we are to build an EV industry in the UK, we must ensure that there is enough demand. The Government must support manufacturers as global players. As we have heard, a clause in the UK Government’s Brexit deal means that at the end of this year, British-made EVs will face tariffs of up to 22% when exporting to the EU if they do not contain 40% local content. That puts UK manufacturers at a huge disadvantage. I would like to know what the Government, rather than overblowing the perceived Brexit benefits, are actually doing about an acute issue that is putting the future of motor manufacturing in the UK at great risk.

Although the sales targets for commercial EVs are very encouraging, private uptake of EVs is proving more difficult. We have heard many of the reasons for that, but the main barrier for potential private buyers, apart from cost, remains charging anxiety. So far, EVs are not a realistic option for householders who cannot park or charge their cars outside or near their homes. In last year’s EV infrastructure strategy, the Government made no firm commitment that infrastructure roll-out would rise in line with EV market uptake. Recent Government statistics show that only 19% of all chargers are rapid chargers. That is a problem for long-distance travel: people cannot be expected to wait for hours to charge their car when they are on the go.

We Liberal Democrats would invest urgently to speed up the installation of rapid charging points throughout the country. Rapid chargers must be installed where people will use them. Motorway service stations must therefore be the No. 1 priority, but we must consider other locations, too.

[John Redwood]

Is the hon. Lady also worried that there is a lack of cable capacity under our streets and of grid capacity to get the power to those fast chargers? How long will that take to resolve and how will that be done?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns, which is why we consistently make the case for upgrading the grid. That is one of the most important things for getting to net zero in the UK, not just for vehicle charging, but for the roll-out of all the electric infrastructure we need for our many renewable energy installations. I share his concern, but the solution is not to stop the roll-out of electric vehicles; it is to improve the grid and get things sped up as quickly as possible.

If, for example, electric charge points are installed in places where non-electric vehicles park, such as in lamp posts or bollards, valuable charging space will be lost. We Liberal Democrats would give grants to parish and town councils to install charging facilities where they will actually be used—for instance, at village and community halls.

It is important that the Government do not stop the incentives for EV uptake. They must stop penalising people who cannot charge their EVs at home. Drivers currently pay 20% value added tax to use a public charge point, compared with 5% VAT for home charging. That unjustifiable discrepancy must end and the VAT rate for all electric vehicle charges must be equalised at 5%.

Electric vehicles will drive us down the road to net zero. Infrastructure and incentives will be vital. What we need is a Government who are willing to fuel this transition, rather than being content to trundle along in the slow lane.

Energy Security Strategy

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) on securing the debate.

Energy security is as important as ever in the face of the climate emergency and the need to get to net zero, but also in the light of more recent events, which have seen energy prices and household energy bills soar. There is some good news: the less we depend on fossil fuels, the better for the climate and household bills. It would therefore be completely wrong of the Government to go back to more fossil fuel exploration. Instead, an even more ambitious plan for the roll-out of renewables is the right way forward.

The opportunities are fantastic and plentiful. I have mentioned just one, which is floating offshore wind. I believe that Britain could be a true global leader in this field, and the Minister will find in me a passionate and true supporter of all efforts to help the development of floating offshore wind in this country. There are fantastic opportunities, and we need to help develop them. There are some barriers as well, but the opportunities are amazing, and Britain could truly be a leader and an exporter of renewable energy.

[John Redwood]

Perhaps the hon. Lady will answer what the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) did not: what would the back-up arrangements be? We have had quite a number of days this summer when wind has generated only 2% of our energy, and we have been using coal as back-up. What is the back-up, and is that not part of the cost of wind?

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the right hon. Member for his intervention, because it goes to the core of the argument. There are already models, and they have been around for some time. The idea of having a baseload is old-fashioned thinking, and I am grateful to the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston) for mentioning community energy. We need much smaller devolved energy supply and production, rather than massive, centralised providers, and the idea of a baseload is becoming more and more obsolete. Indeed, if we had floating offshore wind, whereby the generation of electricity takes place far out in the sea rather than on the shallow seabed, there would be enough energy to meet Britain’s demands.

I believe in going even further and exporting renewable energy. If we do not do it in Britain, other European countries will come forward. I do not know whether the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) has been to briefings on floating offshore wind, but it is fascinating to see the enormous amount of energy that such installations can produce. If we do not take the opportunity, the technology will be used by other countries and they will become the leaders in that technology instead. I say to the Minister that I am a passionate and true supporter of any Government efforts to support floating offshore wind. It is a new technology, but it is very encouraging and interesting.

Home installations should have been a key part of the Government’s energy security strategy, but they were not. Instead, the energy efficiency of our homes is among the worst in Europe, and the Government are leaving people to suffer with high bills and heating costs. Meanwhile, the Government have failed to invest in more renewables, particularly onshore wind, but as I have just mentioned, I believe that they should be seriously looking at offshore wind and floating offshore wind. They have instead committed to eight new nuclear power stations, and the Minister is aware of my well-known objection to that. The Government have not reversed the effective ban on onshore wind, and the new nuclear power stations will add £96 a year to people’s energy bills.

We have already discussed how expensive nuclear-powered energy is compared with renewables. EDF previously estimated that the cost of funding the Sizewell C nuclear power plant in Suffolk will add up to £12 a year to household energy bills for every family in the country at its peak. The Government have confirmed that each new nuclear power plant will add around £1 per month to energy bills during construction. There are just over 26 million households in England, Wales and Scotland, meaning a bill of £2.6 billion a year is set to land on households because of the Government’s failure to plan ahead and invest more in renewables years ago. This comes as the energy price cap has risen by just under £700 on average, with further increases expected in the autumn.

The Government recently passed a new law that will allow them to add levies to energy bills to fund new nuclear plants. It is madness, as I keep saying. The Liberal Democrats attempted to exempt at least the most vulnerable from the additional levies, but the Government rejected that proposal. Investing in renewables instead would come at a fraction of the cost currently set aside for nuclear.

There is huge potential for more community-scale renewable energy, which has been mentioned today, and I ask the Minister to respond on that point. We need more community energy and, as has been said, more than 300 MPs are behind it.

The biggest advantage of community energy is in bringing people behind the need to get to net zero. We are going to face many disruptions in order to get to net zero by 2050, and bringing people on board will be the most important thing we can do. Community energy is the best place to drive the movement to get people behind net zero. We have already heard about the difficulties, but nothing is beyond us if we really have the political will to achieve it. My ask of the Minister is to respond positively on how we can remove the existing barriers for community energy.

The measures necessary to tackle climate change will take a big effort and cause a lot of disruption. The Government must acknowledge that there will be disruption, but community energy is one way of making sure that people are fully behind it.

In the past decade, community energy has seen little to no growth. The Environmental Audit Committee has noted that, between 2020 and 2021, community energy increased by a meagre 31 MW, less than 0.5% of total UK electricity generation. An enabling mechanism would not only protect families from soaring energy bill costs, but benefit the economy through job creation. It is clear that it would open a stream of jobs and economic wealth. For example, the 2020 community energy groups across the UK have more than 3,000 volunteers and almost 500 full-time staff. It is estimated that a twentyfold increase would create almost 60,000 skilled jobs, and that is at the lower end of the forecast.

Will the Government include in the upcoming energy security Bill an enabling mechanism, such as that proposed by the Local Electricity Bill, to protect individuals, families and the environment at such an essential time? As we have already heard, there is much support for such a measure. I hope the Minister will focus on answering that question.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I welcome any measure to buttress our energy security. Ministers are right to be alert to the difficulties we face. I am concerned about this decade. Once again in this debate, we have heard many ideas about nuclear, wind and solar—new technologies that may make a great contribution in the next decade—but our task today is to reinforce all the things that the Minister is doing to keep our lights on for the next three or four years. Our more immediate task is to see what contribution the United Kingdom can make to getting Russian gas and oil out of the European system. We need to make our contribution, providing more of that supply from our domestic sources as part of our war effort. We need our people, who want to keep the lights on and the boilers running, to feel secure that we will make our contribution in case Russia turns the taps off.

[Wera Hobhouse]

It is simply not true that renewable energy projects will take until next decade to be developed. In fact, many of them are waiting; it is just that they cannot be connected to the grid. Can the right hon. Gentleman correct what he has just said about renewable energy projects?

[John Redwood]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady, and other Members who have made similar contributions, do not understand that I am dealing with the problem of intermittency. In order for all the extra wind they want to be useful, there needs to be a way of timesharing the wind power. We already have days on which wind and solar together produce less than 10% of our electricity, and most of our constituents are not using electricity to drive or to heat their homes, so that is a very small proportion of our total energy.

The vision of wind requires mass battery storage—we seem to be years away from the technology and the investment required to do that—and/or conversion to hydrogen. Green hydrogen would be a perfectly good answer, but again, we are years away from the investment, the practicalities and the commercial projects that could turn that wind energy into hydrogen. My constituents would love it if they could get hydrogen today. They do not want to have to rip out their gas boiler; they would quite like to be able to route more hydrogen through the existing gas boiler and make their contribution to the green revolution.

However, MPs have to be realistic. Our prime duty is to ensure that our constituents can live in relative prosperity, keep the lights on and have access to decent energy for their requirements. At the moment, most of our constituents get to work and to the shops using a diesel or petrol van or car; most heat their homes and water with a gas, oil or coal boiler. Very few use electric technology for that. If there was the great popular electrical revolution that they have bought into, and they could suddenly afford the electrical products and liked them, we would have a huge problem, because we would be chronically short of electricity generating capacity.

The true electrical revolution on the scale that the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) would like would require an enormous investment in new electrical capacity. If everybody went home tonight and plugged in their car, which uses more electricity than the rest of the home, and heated their homes using electricity, there would need to be a big increase in capacity. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shaking her head. She wants to get real! Does she really want to cut off her constituents because she so hates them using gas?

[Wera Hobhouse]

This is about choices. We cannot forever get stuck in the past, as we have just heard. We need to look forward to the future. Investment in renewables is the only way I can see as the right way forward. Yes, that needs adaptation; yes, that needs our constituents to come along. However, it is a necessity. We cannot bury our heads in the sand.

[John Redwood]

Once again, the hon. Lady is in denial. She will not answer the intermittency problem. Does she ever look at the hourly and daily statistics on the grid to see, quite often, how little of our power is renewable-generated? That is because of physics and weather. We have to find technological answers to that. Now, there are technological answers, but at the moment they are not being adopted. They are not commercial and they have not been trialled properly; there may be safety issues and all sorts of things.

Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

Yes. I fear I may be wandering a little from the actual Bill, Mr Deputy Speaker, but given the general context of energy shortage and the crucial role that gas has been playing in recent months in generating electricity, because we are short of nuclear power and short of wind power when the wind does not blow, I would strongly recommend that we get on with exploiting our own gas reserves. That is greener and cheaper than relying on gas being brought halfway round the world in a liquefied natural gas tanker or on Mr Putin’s gas routed via the continent. That is probably an argument for another day, but I am grateful to the Deputy Speaker for allowing me to answer my hon. Friend’s very good point.

In conclusion, I would like the Minister to set out a little bit more of the context of when nuclear might start contributing to our electricity demand and need, and how he sees the balance of that developing between small nuclear being rolled out at greater scale and the one or two large nuclear projects that might still be around. Also, given the hugely radical electrical revolution that the Government wish to encourage, with switching home heating from predominantly gas to electricity and switching much transport from predominantly diesel and petrol to electricity, we are going to need a massive expansion of total capacity. Would he agree, however, that we are starting from a position where we do not have enough capacity for our current levels of demand and where the nuclear element of that capacity will contract quite a lot over this decade?

[Wera Hobhouse]

As a lifelong anti-nuclear power campaigner, I could not fail to speak in this debate or to represent the views of the many Bath constituents who have written to me over the last weeks and months about voting and speaking against this Bill. We need to get to net zero by 2050 at the latest, but do we need nuclear power to get there, and is nuclear energy a fair deal for our consumers? While nuclear power is not a carbon fuel, it is enormously expensive, costing twice as much as generation from renewables. In answer to the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood), I believe that we just need to roll out renewable energy. We have the capacity. Britain is a country surrounded by sea, and there is a lot of wind further out. Projects such as floating wind are out there—I speak to that industry a lot. If only the Government had the political will to make that renewable energy revolution happen.

[John Redwood]

What difference would it have made if we had had double our wind capacity in recent weeks when it was supplying only 2% of our total electricity because there was no wind?

--- Later in debate ---

[Wera Hobhouse]

As I said, there is the potential for offshore wind, particularly further out where the wind blows all the time—the right hon. Member needs only to talk to the industry about that—if only the Government were prepared to invest much more in that and not just rely on the small projects that we currently have.

Yes, we doubled our offshore wind capacity thanks to the Liberal Democrats in government—some time ago now—but there is still no level playing field for the renewable energy sector. We speak of this again and again. If only the Government were prepared to set a regulatory level playing field, we could see a lot more renewable energy to cover our energy costs.

Let me repeat that while nuclear power is not a carbon fuel, it is enormously expensive, costing twice as much as generation from renewables, and in the end that cost will fall on the consumer. We have seen the disasters of that in recent weeks. Quite apart from the long-term costs of decommissioning, disposal and storage of waste, nuclear is an unusual technology that sees costs rise instead of fall over time. In other words, it has a high need for Government subsidy.

The Government say that the Bill is about saving consumers money by removing barriers to private investment in the nuclear sector, but that is misleading. Their proposed regulated asset base funding model provides no protection for consumers; instead, evidence shows that costs under this model for abandoned nuclear power stations have still been passed on to consumers.

Let us look at what happened in the United States, where a version of the regulated asset base model—early cost recovery—was introduced more than 10 years ago. As in Britain, ECR was sold to policy makers as a way of lowering the cost of capital, thereby making nuclear power more competitive with other sources of generation. However, the lower capital cost was not a true saving. The nuclear renaissance’s 2009 peak consisted of applications to build 31 units pending at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Of those, 29 have been cancelled, and despite expenditure exceeding $20 billion, no new US nuclear plants have gone into service. In South Carolina, ratepayers are having to pay $2.3 billion for a cancelled nuclear plant. While US electricity customers are exposed to paying more than $10 billion for cancelled nuclear plants and another $13.5 billion in cost overruns, no reactors have come online as a result of the US shift to early cost recovery. Florida and South Carolina have repealed the laws allowing early cost recovery, and no states have enacted such laws in the last decade, so why on earth are the Tory Government introducing a failed financial model from the US?

In contrast, the cost of renewables is falling globally. Renewables are significantly undercutting fossil fuels as the cheapest form of energy as the cost of renewable technologies falls. According to the International Energy Agency, the world’s best solar power schemes offer the “cheapest…electricity in history.”

[John Redwood]

rose—

[Wera Hobhouse]

I will not give way again.

Renewable energy is the future, and we in the UK are ideally placed to take advantage of the wind and wave power all around us. When UK tidal wave projects were cancelled in the past, that was always on a cost basis. Why do we not look at those projects again? They are truly renewable and truly the future. We could be an exporter of renewables. Onshore wind is now the cheapest form of electricity generation in the UK—

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

I wish the Secretary of State, the Minister and the Bill every success. I think we might call this Secretary of State brave, because experience tells us that it is extremely difficult to land one of these really big projects and keep it to time and budget, and it is extremely difficult to get agreement to cheaper power. I am delighted that Ministers are motivated by the wish to have both more reliable generating capacity and more affordable power. Those are two excellent objectives of energy policy.

However, I fear that what I have learned from this debate, and from previous debates like it, are these things. First, we are going to have less nuclear power in 2030 than we have today, whatever Ministers do—they are prisoners of their inheritance. Secondly, it will be difficult signing up big projects in particular, or getting smaller projects that are available and working in good time so that there is more nuclear, rather than less, in the decade that follows, and it will be difficult securing that at prices that customers think are good.

In the meantime, we have the problem that, on a typical day, we are already 10% import dependent for our electricity—I think it should all be generated in the UK—and that we are very dependent on the sun shining and the wind blowing, but the wind not blowing too much. When those things did not happen towards the end of last year, we had to reopen three old coal plants. People would rather not have to burn coal, but coal stations were reliable and actually worked when the wind did not blow and the sun did not shine. If the plan is to close them down and make them unavailable in future before we have anything else as a good stand-by, we will be trying the patience of the international community and trying our own luck rather too far.

I urge the Secretary of State, on the back of this Bill, to consider ways of increasing reliable power for this coming decade—the decade that we are living in and that we will be battling over in immediate elections to come—because that is what will matter to our voters. We should have in mind security of supply, availability of supply and affordability as the crucial things that we need to take care of so that we do not have a self-imposed energy crisis. Linking us into the European system is not a secure thing to do, because those countries are chronically short of reliable green power. Poland and Germany are in the middle of trying to phase out coal and lignite. Germany is in the middle of phasing out nuclear altogether. France needs to think about replacements for its ageing nuclear fleet and it is chronically short of gas, which is a sensible transition fuel, so it needs to rely on Putin and Russia.

[Wera Hobhouse]

We talk again and again in this House about Britain being a global leader. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that Britain could be a global leader in renewable energy? We are not making the most of the areas in which we could be a global leader, which are renewable energy from tidal, wave and offshore and onshore wind power.

[John Redwood]

I would be delighted to see a mixture of renewables, so that the reliability issue is taken care of. The problem with wind is that it is erratic. In the industrial revolution, people tended to prefer water power over wind power because it was a bit more reliable. The hon. Lady must understand that, like me, she is answerable to constituents who will expect the lights to stay on throughout this decade and will expect electricity and gas and other main energy sources to be affordable and available. The danger is that, if we do not do more to expand our capacity of the transition fuels as well as working on improving and increasing renewables, we will not be able to guarantee the crucial features of a good energy policy: availability and affordability. So, yes, fine to the Bill, but it is about the 2030s. We need also to think about the 2020s.

Budget Resolutions

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

Yes, indeed. I hope that the public sector, as well as the private sector, takes that fully on board, because the Government and local government, with representations and leadership from a range of parties in this House, have a great opportunity to do more to promote, encourage and mentor. As the Chancellor has indicated, we are going to face a major revolution in robots, artificial intelligence and all kinds of applications of the digital economy. Great digital companies are making huge changes that have a big knock-on effect for more traditional businesses. We need to put all our weight behind a Government who wish to understand that revolution and try to ensure that more people are winners from it by changing jobs and developing new skills so that their careers can respond to the huge changes under way.

Quite rightly, a focus of attention for the public sector—in this Budget as in any other—is whether there will be enough money to do a decent job for public services. I, like any Labour MP, want to ensure that my local schools have enough money to pay good teachers and to have enough of them, and that my local hospital and surgeries have enough financial support to do a good job. I see from this Budget that there is a £6 billion overall fiscal relaxation in 2018-19 and a £10 billion relaxation in 2019-20, mainly on the spending side. I am quite sure, from what the Chancellor said, that as some relaxation of pay agreements occurs, money will come forward to meet those bills. It is important that when pay deals are reached, the health service, schools or whoever have the money to be able to meet those requirements. A modest fiscal relaxation like that is eminently affordable.

The current levels of debt or deficit are not alarming. I am pleased that the Government think that the level of debt as a percentage of GDP will come down very shortly, but we need to take into account the fact that the state now owns quite a lot of the debt itself. That makes a bit of difference. The United States of America is now embarking on a programme of cancelling and reducing the debts because it controls both sides of the balance sheet through the Federal Reserve Board.

I want to concentrate a little more on house building and housing. I am pleased that the Government are to have a speedy—and, I hope, thorough—investigation into the issue of how existing planning permissions can be better used and can translate into more homes more quickly. That is very much an issue in the Wokingham borough part of my constituency, where the borough has issued around 11,000 planning permissions for individual homes—more than enough, one would think, to allow the fast build rate required under the agreements in the local plans. There has been considerable delay, however, in bringing forward some of those houses. There is also a wish by others to try to get planning permissions elsewhere and to build outside the areas where the plan would prefer the building to take place. There is a lot to be said for concentrating the areas of building, because then the moneys can be applied in a planned and predictable way to the surgeries, primary schools and extra road capacity that are needed, whereas if inspectors grant permissions in a variety of different places around the borough on account of a slow build rate, far more capital will be required to keep up with the demands, because distance would become an issue for people needing to get to those facilities.

Looking at the national picture on house building, I welcome the idea that we should be able to have five new garden cities. The garden town movement was a fine one, many years ago, and there were some great successes with new towns and new cities in our country. I am not going to start choosing places where the new ones should go, because none of them will be in my constituency as we already have an awful lot of house building and development going on.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

From what I heard earlier, the Chancellor never mentioned homes for social rent. Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that he, too, did not hear them mentioned?

[John Redwood]

I think that the hon. Lady is wrong; I think he did mention them. That is certainly part of the Government’s plan. It is clearly a comprehensive housing plan that involves homes for rent and homes for purchase.

I would like to see new settlements where a suitable location can be found, and I am pleased to hear that there is already some agreement on the university arc from Cambridge through to Oxford via Milton Keynes, where there are all sorts of exciting opportunities. One of the really good things about the UK economy now is the momentum that is clearly gathering pace in technology investment and technology business set-ups. It is obviously easier to create those opportunities close to the great centres of learning where there is an extremely good workforce to recruit and there may well be entrepreneurs as well. It is excellent that we reinforce success, and I see that part of the country as a major area for development.

I agree with my hon. Friends who have said, in relation to the housing issue, that it is important to promote home ownership. There is clearly a great yearning for more home ownership, and it is one of the big social problems of our day that many people under the age of 35 are unable to afford their first home. I welcome anything that can make the gap a little more bridgeable, and it is excellent that we will be getting rid of stamp duty for most first-time buyers.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[John Redwood]

No, I am not going to take any interventions. I am conscious that we have very little time, and I want other colleagues to be able to speak in this debate.

We have been unable all the time we have been in the EU to have our own migration policy or to decide who we wish to welcome into our country. We cannot have our own fishing policy and we cannot have our own farming policy. We have moved into massive deficits on both fishing and on farming, whereas we used to have a good trading surplus on fish before we joined the European Economic Community and we used to produce most of the temperate food we needed before the common agricultural policy started to bite.

The British people decided in their wisdom that we should take back control, and we will take back control by the passage of this very important piece of legislation. Above all, clause 1 will take back that control. The great news for colleagues on both sides of the House who had different views on whether we should leave or remain is that their genuine passion for democracy, which many on both sides of the argument have expressed today, can be satisfied by agreeing to clause 1, which repeals the original Act. Once that has happened and the repeal has taken place, this Parliament will once again listen to the wishes of the British people and be able to change VAT, our fishing policy, our agricultural policy, our borders policy and our welfare policies in the ways we wish.

Exiting the EU: Sectoral Impact Assessments

Debate between John Redwood and Wera Hobhouse

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Redwood]

Then there is another one that the Opposition are constantly telling us about, which is that there will be lorries queuing all the way back from Dover. I am not quite sure how that would work because it would mean that they were queuing in the sea. But of course, given modern, electronic frontiers, there is absolutely no reason why there should be huge queues.

[Wera Hobhouse]

rose—

[Angus Brendan MacNeil]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[John Redwood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: it is always doom and gloom. It is always about what can go wrong.

[Wera Hobhouse]

rose—

[Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)]

rose—