Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Sixteenth sitting)

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Olivia Blake

Committee stage
Tuesday 27th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Olivia Blake]

It has been an interesting discussion. “Maximum economic recovery” might sound like three benign words, but they could be a toxic combination. If we are not careful, they could be rephrased as “maximum economic crisis”. The climate catastrophe that will unfold if we do not cap global warming at 1.5°, and maintain that on average over 20 years, will be incredibly tough for any Government and for everyone internationally. Some reports suggest that if we wait 10 years, it will not take 1% of GDP to tackle the climate emergency; that will jump staggeringly. About 8% of GDP expenditure will have to go on resilience alone, and dealing with the consequences of the climate catastrophe. The cost of changing to a green energy system in that same decade would double as well. It is really important that we understand what that means.

I say “toxic combination”, but there is also the very real and significant risk of stranded assets. The financial sector, the insurance industry and pension funds are all very aware of the issue, and we see that in how they are changing the way that they invest in projects, and the divestment policies of many of the institutions in this space. Nature published an article in 2022 stating that 60% of oil and gas and 90% of known coal should remain in the ground if we are to get to 1.5°C, but the issue of stranded assets is a reality. We cannot have our cake and eat it; we cannot inhale our cake quicker and hope for the best. Every drop of oil and gas and every lump of coal that we burn contributes to the Anthropocene we are seeing. We have decisions that we can take, and we know that those decisions have an impact.

Stranded assets are really important in this debate. A report in 2022 suggested that the oil, gas and fossil fuel industry had £1.4 trillion of stranded assets. That means that there will be a cliff edge for jobs. There will be assets that people can no longer use or get value from. It will mean that we have barrels of oil, gas and coal that we cannot use, because—a very senior scientist makes this argument in the report—the world will have moved on. We hope that the world will move on as a result of the Bill; if we do not scale up net zero measures, UK households could be spending £500 a year on foreign gas, rather than saving £1,500-odd through a move to renewables and energy efficiency policies, and retrofitting.

This is an incredibly important point. We cannot just hope that things will get better, and squeezing every last drop out of the North sea is not compatible with our aim of 1.5°. We cannot set a date for getting to net zero, but then produce as much carbon and other greenhouse emissions as we like and hope for the best. There must be carbon budgeting, as we all know. We have had all this conversation about a just transition, yet we are giving massive tax breaks. For example, if Rosebank goes ahead, it will receive a tax break of £3.75 billion for something that may soon become a stranded asset.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I will be brief. Will she share the definition of a stranded asset? Some oil and gas extraction areas have enormous potential for carbon capture and storage; it will be a matter of pushing stuff down a pipe, rather than pulling stuff out of it. Has any of that been taken into account in her slightly apocalyptic analysis of what we can do in the North sea and other areas?

[Olivia Blake]

It is apocalyptic because going above 1.5°C will be catastrophic.

[Katherine Fletcher]

We are talking about a transition.

[Olivia Blake]

I absolutely agree that it needs to be a transition; that is exactly my point. In the scenario we are discussing,

“Fossil fuel resources that cannot be burned and fossil fuel infrastructure (e.g. pipelines, power plants) that is no longer used may end up as a liability before the end of its anticipated economic lifetime.”

The assets are not being valued at their value over their lifetime; it is that simple. Say we give a value to an asset for its lifetime—25, 50, 100 years or whatever. Its lifetime will fall short of that period, and there will be catastrophic consequences for the financial and economic world; things will go into freefall. This is about economic risk, not just what we have, where. It is that fundamental. That understanding is missing from a lot of this debate, but financial services, pension funds and the insurance industry are all saying that they are very aware of the issue.

[Katherine Fletcher]

The hon. Lady has just read quite a detailed definition of a stranded asset, which included fossil fuel reserves remaining under the ocean, if I heard her correctly.

[Olivia Blake]

We would have to leave them there, but figures for them would be baked into the economic analysis and the business planning for those sites. That is why there is a financial risk; financial plans will come into play that will be unrealistic and unmeetable. That is why the assets will become stranded assets; it had been planned that they would produce a profit over a period, but we will not get to that time because of the situation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Katherine Fletcher]

If I understand the hon. Lady correctly, she is worrying about a figure of £1.5 billion in stranded assets, which includes fossil fuels that are left under the ground. That does not take into account the fact that the assets could be repurchased for an energy transition. Would she agree that there is perhaps more analysis to do?

[Olivia Blake]

To be clear, it is not £1.3 billion; it is £1.4 trillion, and that is why this is significant. I am not the only one worried about this—so are financial institutions around the globe. This massive financial risk could spin us into financial crisis if we are not careful. This is not just a climate catastrophe; it is an economic situation that we need to monitor, and we need to ensure that we do not have a cliff edge that lands us in a spiral that we cannot get out of. That is why a transition is so important, and why we need development of industry in the North sea, but cannot rely on our valuations of assets at the moment.

We need to take into consideration changes in the use of oil and gas, so that we can reach 1.5°C. We cannot deal with those two issues in isolation. As much as that would please everyone at the moment and allow them to make a quick buck, it is economically illiterate to think that we can continue as we are. That is a big problem. There are huge opportunities for Government, and I welcome a lot of the things in the Bill that will help to unlock them.

At household level, the move to renewables would significantly benefit people. Renewables are three times cheaper than oil and gas-related heating and electricity. A record number of households are suffering from energy insecurity. It is important that we look at the issue in the round. We cannot just say, “We need this” or “We need that,” and expect it to add up. If the financial sector gets scared, and much suggests that it is, it will look to invest in other places. If insurance companies say, “We are not going to insure these facilities because there is such an economic risk to us,” we are in trouble. If pension funds flee from the sector, we are in trouble. Our financial sector is incredibly important in this area, and those in it are saying loud and clear, “Governments are behind us, and we need them to catch up.” This tiny phrase, “Maximum economic recovery”, and what it asks for, could lead to the cliff edge that we have all been saying that we do not want. That is why this is so important.

Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Olivia Blake

Committee stage
Tuesday 13th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Olivia Blake]

Those are the exact problems. In recent years a number of Government schemes have either failed because they have not had the workforce to deliver them, or experienced challenges because people have been drawn into other roles, particularly in the building sector and in relation to cladding issues and so on. That is exactly why the Opposition would be very pleased if the clause were protected. We need that action plan. Delivery is only worth something when it happens. We cannot just have targets that we repeatedly continue to miss. It would be exceedingly challenging to argue to the public that we should not prioritise getting their bills down by £1,000 a year or come up with an action plan to deliver that.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

Yes, the British public would experience significant benefits through bill reductions as a result of insulating their homes, but who is the hon. Lady suggesting should pay for the intervention that would produce that benefit? It would be a significant scheme, especially given that 30% of the housing stock is really old. Who would foot that bill?

[Olivia Blake]

Moving away from this Bill, Labour has a fully costed plan for achieving that and it is targeted at the 19 million homes.

Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Olivia Blake

Committee stage
Thursday 8th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Katherine Fletcher]

Thank you, Ms Nokes, and I apologise for not prosecuting my arguments procedurally in the correct way earlier. I want to respond to what the hon. Member for Southampton, Test has said. I completely accept that he has tabled his new clause in the spirit of public safety, but I do think that this is an area that could be better understood by the public. I gently suggest to him that there might be a slight misapprehension in some of the material that he just quoted from.

What the hon. Gentleman was describing was neutrons degrading a physical structure, as a by-product of the plasma. There is an analogy here: it is almost like it getting shot at or water going through a concrete structure and then causing rust and degrading the steel within it. That is not necessarily the creation of a nuclear radioactive source; that is something being peppered with neutrons. And that is why it is not a commercially viable facility at the moment—because there are still things to be worked out, not least how we ensure that we do not build a very expensive thing that, by its own nature, then degrades over time and use. But that is not the same as creating a radioactive source.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned deuterium and tritium, which are different types of naturally occurring hydrogen elements. Tritium sounds, to my ear, almost like something that the Terminator would be using to do something particularly exciting. In fact, it is only a hydrogen that occurs in nature and that has a single proton and two neutrons within the nucleus, so it is a bit bigger and heavier than is typical. What that means is that it is a little more unstable. The natural half-life of tritium is 12 years, whereas the nuclear regulations that the hon. Gentleman seeks to apply or partially apply in this instance are designed to deal with things that have half-lives of thousands of years. Someone will tell me that I have this wrong, but with uranium-238 we are talking about very different orders of magnitude—

[Olivia Blake]

I am a biomedical scientist by background, so I come to this with a medical perspective. The issue with tritium is that it produces beta waves, which are a more damaging form of radiation to human tissues—only in a minor way, as it has a score of 1 compared with 20 for alpha waves, but there is an underlying risk. Exposure of the workforce to that level continuously could put DNA stability at risk, because it is an ionising form of radiation. If there is a problem—containment is always a big challenge that gets raised by scientists—hopefully we will overcome it, but it is right to have the protections, particularly for the workforce. That is why I welcome new clause 51.

[Katherine Fletcher]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Of course beta radiation is produced when a nucleus is separated, when the neutrons in tritium move away. For me, it is a question of proportionality and risk. At the moment, there is no viable commercial solution, so there is not a workforce but a research community, which is publicly and privately funded. On that becoming a workforce solution, I agree with her that ensuring that people are safe at work is vital but, should this come about, the Health and Safety Executive will not leave it unmonitored. However, new clause 51 is not about workplace safety; it is about putting something that is fundamentally not nuclear fission, as opposed to nuclear fusion, into a set of regulations designed to deal with such things.

I wondered about the criteria, given that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam mentioned radioactivity occurring in the fusion environment. What percentage of Cornwall, with its radon gas, might be caught up in the thresholds? I will be interested to pursue on Report what we are actually talking about. As a scientist, the hon. Lady knows that 100 is very different from 1, even though 1 poses some risk.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southampton, Test for tabling the new clause, but given the opportunity for clean, net zero energy—which really could be the panacea for the world, as tree-huggers like me would say—in the UK we should look to tread lightly, but carefully, with any regulation of an industry that has such a level of potential and to which the UK has contributed so much already. He mentioned torus structures, but those are only one of a series of different potential generational tools—torus might be the research tool, not the commercial tool, so his concerns could disappear with a completely different production facility, perhaps based on electromagnetic rather than physical containment.

With regret, because I understand the genuine and heartfelt nature of the hon. Gentleman’s new clause, I think it is important that we do not stifle a nascent industry with regulation. I will therefore support the Government’s position.

LGBT History Month

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Olivia Blake

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Olivia Blake]

That is an absolute travesty—we should sort that out.

My hon. Friend has led the way through such tricky times and through such prejudice. She has been a champion and was the visibility that we needed through my childhood and that of many others. That was really courageous. I was seven in 1997. I came out at 14 and went back in the closet. “Gay” was the biggest insult that could be said in the playground, and “lesbo” was used as well. It was not a safe space to come out, so I went back into the closet until my early 20s, when I went to university and had the freedom to be who I truly am.

As a bi woman, it is interesting to see and hear even Members of this House trying to erase my identity on radio programmes such as “Woman’s Hour”, accusing people who happen to be bisexual, who fall in love with someone of the same gender and who happen to have that happiness recognised in a marriage, of cosplaying. I am not cosplaying. I am bisexual. I have loved men, I have loved women and I think that should be celebrated.

This is a debate about love. It is also a debate about hate—they are two sides of the same coin when it comes to the LGBTQ+ community. We will always have to resist, and it is that resistance that allows children, young people, older people and people going into care homes in their 70s to be out and proud. It is a constant battle and, as many have said, we must be vigilant.

We could all do with remembering that it is not just in other countries that people are losing their lives to prejudice, whether through lynching—unfortunately, that happens in some countries—or regressive laws. Society continues to peddle hate, to peddle fear and to tell people, “Hate yourself. Do not love yourself. You are not valid. You are not welcome in our society. You should change and hide yourself to be in our society.”

In 2021, Just Like Us, the LGBT+ young people’s charity, surveyed 2,934 pupils aged 11 to 18. More than 1,000—1,140—pupils identified as LGBT+. It found that 68% of LGBT+ young people had experienced suicidal thoughts, compared with 29% of young people who were not LGBT+. For lesbians, it was 74% and for transgender, 77%. They were most likely to experience suicidal thoughts and feelings. Nearly a third of LGBT young people have self-harmed, compared with only 9% of non-LGBT young people. Of the black LGBT young people surveyed, 89% had experienced suicidal thoughts and feelings, compared with 67% of the wider LGBT+ young people surveyed. Those statistics should absolutely shame us. I think that we can sometimes feel that we have reached equality and that we can be who we want to be, but those statistics paint another picture. That is why it is so important that we can talk about LGBT+ experiences in our schools and colleges.

When I did sex education at school, someone rolled out the VCR—that is showing my age. For kids watching at home, that was a tape that we put in a machine to play a video. We were separated from the boys in our class and put in a hall. Someone had started their period, so it was felt that we needed to know about what being a woman was and what being a woman meant. The video had this poor actress on an escalator. She got on, and the video said, “Being a woman: there are ups”—the woman went up the escalator—“and there are downs”, and she went down the escalator. That sticks with me and is the only thing that I remember about the video, because the rest of it was not relevant to me and my identity. It was very prescriptive. It was all about, “This is what happens to make a baby. There you go—job’s a good’un. Don’t do it before you’re ready”. Obviously there was no mention of condoms, because that would be ridiculous. That was of its time in the ’90s and the early ’00s. Section 28 was still in force and there were whisperings about which teachers might be gay, but they were not able to talk to us about it. They could not say, “Yes, I am, and I am proud of it.” That was really harmful.

People make assumptions about sexuality and what it means. People—even within our community—still see bisexual people as a threat to lesbian or gay areas. We are told, “Pick a side.” We are considered hyper-sexualised, not real and living in a fantasy land. That is absolutely not the truth for every member of every category in LGBTQ.

Some people may say, “Why does that acronym keep on getting bigger and longer? Why is it growing?” I am glad that it is growing, and I hope that in 50 years’ time when openly gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, queer and non-binary people and whoever else stand up here, they can look back, quote our speeches from today and say, “How horrifying that in 2023 politicians were standing up and saying this.” I hope they challenge us and that we continue to develop our understanding, acceptance and tolerance of people.

We need to recognise that, behind every LGBTQ+ person, there is a family. I am pleased that that family is now mostly made up of relatives: the people who have brought that person up, loved them and supported them. However, there is still a family around every LGBTQ+ person, and they might not be people they are related to, because there are still young people who have to flee from prejudice in their own homes. At 16, 17 or 18, they still have to leave home and leave the people who are meant to love and protect them to get to a place of safety and escape persecution and conversion therapy. As has been said, that is torture.

I wonder how the many of us in this House who are parents, aunts, uncles or grandparents of trans children must feel having to tolerate the discussion of how there are failings in the way we love our family members, how we are creating a threat to society and how we are allowing our medically ill loved ones to act in a way they should not. I just think it is absolutely abhorrent. Actually, I say to anyone who is supporting a trans young person—or anyone who is trans themselves, or non-binary, lesbian or gay—“You’re welcome, and please continue to stand in solidarity with the person you love, whether that is through a relationship or as a relative or a friend.”

Love is so, so important—it feeds each of us, and it is as important as water and food to the human condition—and the dehumanising nature of the debates we have seen over recent years has led me to be very concerned about where we are at the moment. We have heard far too often even our children being painted as predators, perverts and somehow a danger to others for just being who they are. However, this debate reminds us that LGBTQ+ people are everywhere, and have been throughout our history, as was eloquently put across by the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn).

The whole idea of being in the closet hinges on the mismatch between someone’s internal emotional life and how they appear to other people, and the mismatch can often be dramatic. Being in the closet is something I have experienced, and it is horrible—not being able to be your true self is really difficult. For some bisexual people, being in a heterosexual relationship is enough for people to say they are not really bisexual—that can be both ways, with people saying either, “They’re actually a lesbian” or “They’re actually straight”—or even that they are appropriating gay culture. It is a denial of their internal emotional life: a “prove it” culture that colludes with the worst kind of homophobia to say, “If you’re not going to be gay in the way we say you should be gay, get back in the closet.” At its worst, it stops many from ever coming out at all. This does not only happen to people in the B category of LGBTQ+. The tension between the internal experience of what and who you are and the way the world expects you to be is rife across the whole spectrum of the Pride progress flag: “Be gay, but not like that; be lesbian, but not like that; be—especially—trans, but not like that”.

I know some people find the word “queer” difficult. It rakes up old or maybe even recent memories of being abused, just as “gay” and “lesbian” were used against us in the playground. I realise the pain and hurt that that word may make people feel, but there is something about it that flips the “but not like that” attitude. Queer culture exists, and we live messy lives, feel messy feelings and express ourselves in numerous and various ways—exciting ways—in great spaces that are the most welcoming I know. For those who use the word, queerness celebrates the way that people’s experiences of themselves do not ever quite fit with the labels and stereotypes. I celebrate that, because stereotypes can be toxic, as we have heard with the risk of suicide for younger LGBTQ+ people.

That is especially so when we look at public policy. Look at the way we treat LGBTQ+ asylum seekers. We changed the law about the evidence that they need to provide to claim asylum for being LGBTQ+ to the satisfaction of the people making judgments on their sexuality, but border officials may have no experience, lived experience, understanding or, for that matter, even training about what being LGBTQ+ is. People have often been hiding their entire life for fear of persecution just for who they are. It could even be that the way they express their sexuality—for example, the language they use to talk about it—is specific to their culture, and is not even recognised in the interview room. Their future wellbeing is held to ransom by the extent to which they conform to the received stereotypes of the interviewer.

The debate on trans rights is similar. Trans people are caught in the crossfire of being expected to conform to gender stereotypes by medical professionals and policy makers, but when they do, they are told that they are just replicating and internalising damaging gendered expectations and are therefore anti-feminist. Non- binary people do not even fit into that framework of understanding, and they are not even acknowledged as existing. Well, I see you: I see non-binary people and I recognise non-binary people. Their experience is absolutely valid and is beautiful. I am so proud that we are getting to a point where we can get outside these boxes.

This approach to the public discussion of LGBTQ+ people must end. Instead, we should respect and take seriously the actual lived experience of all LGBTQ+ people, not dismiss them as illegitimate, appropriationative —that is not a word; well, it is now—or suspicious. That means taking the Government’s consultation on the Gender Recognition Act 2004 seriously, and listening to the people who go through the process of getting a gender recognition certificate. Their testimony is harrowing. They talk about being dehumanised and humiliated for simply trying to get the world to acknowledge their existence and who they are. That process must be transformed, and it needs to be de-medicalised. We need to get rid of the medieval spousal permission rules, of course, but that cannot be all we do. We must end all aspects of the process that reinforce the outdated and old-fashioned expectations of how men and women should behave.

It also means brushing up on the law. The Equality Act 2010 is a beautiful piece of legislation that allows people to stand with pride, dignity, respect and honesty and makes me proud to be a Labour MP. It has been a huge leap forward in fighting discrimination and tackling bigotry, allowing young people now to come out proudly to communities and be accepted for who they are.

The term “gender recognition certificate” appears once in that Act, in a point about getting married. GRCs are not related to how the Act defines a transgender person or what it says about trans people’s access to single-sex services. Today in the UK, we do not need a GRC to access a public toilet, changing room or any other single-sex service, just as we do not need our birth certificate to access them either. It is a red herring to say that we cannot have GRA reform because of the Equality Act. The only way the two are related is that both are about making life better for people who are marginalised and discriminated against. They are a way of recognising as a state that people exist, rather than pushing them back into a Narnia-like wardrobe that will have endless people in it if we continue down this road of trying to deny their existence.

We are not going anywhere as the LGBT+ community. We are proud, we are here and we are staying. For years, we have been told to get back in the closet because we are troublesome, we are perverts, we are a risk to children and we are somehow troublesome to society, rather than just enjoying our lives and loving who we can in a legitimate way. While the history of LGBTQ+ people in the UK shows that we have come a long way, the fact that our existence continues to be challenged within those stereotypes is a shame.

[Katherine Fletcher (South Ribble) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Member’s speech. She touched on how our community has always been around and we are not going anywhere, but I would like to pay tribute to the people whose views have changed, even since my childhood in the ’80s—the people who go to Pride, celebrate it and recognise us as part of the community. It is important when we debate matters in this House that we do not leave children, or people who are starting to work out what they are in life, thinking that the world is really different from how it is. The vast majority of heterosexual people, frankly, could not give two hoots and would quite enjoy a nice party. I want to add that balance to her serious point. Does she agree?

[Olivia Blake]

Absolutely. As I have said throughout my speech, I do not think prejudice is defined by one part of this. We are learning collectively, and I am happy for people to make mistakes, get language wrong and learn, but I want people to be on the right side of history on this. We know that people in this House and the other place have said horrific things about gay people in the past, but they have been on that journey, and I welcome that allyship. I married a straight man—a heterosexual man—and I welcome that allyship, but we need to recognise where we are at the moment and the dangers we are facing as a broader community.

We need to take pride in ourselves. We need to be at those Pride marches. We need to be the ones who are educating. We need to be the pioneers. We need to be the ones who are saying, “Love is love. Hate is hate”, and calling that out and spotting that difference. Through the determination of our continued struggle, we continue to tackle stereotypes that are just as harmful for heterosexual men as they are for gay men. A lot of people like to talk about toxic masculinity, but there are lots of different stereotypes that are harmful.

Everyone is an individual. Everyone’s individual love and individual identity is valid, wonderful and beautiful to me, and is why humanity is so exciting. It is so great to represent communities with all of that in. It is the fantasticness of being human. We need to stop dehumanising people and recognise that humanity is fantastic, and that has to include every part of the LGBTQ+ community.

Doncaster Sheffield Airport

Debate between Katherine Fletcher and Olivia Blake

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Katherine Fletcher]

Belfast City airport is, I believe, the George Best international airport, and as a committed Manchester United fan, it would be an honour to fly into it. I am happy to write to the hon. Member with those answers when that is possible.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

To be honest, I am disappointed with some of the comments that have been made across the House. It is on us all to work together to find a solution to this situation. Investors have cited Government inaction as a core reason why they might not be confident in investing. What do the Government think about that? Do they agree that Government action or inaction will have consequences for whether the airport will stay open?

[Katherine Fletcher]

Government action, the action of local authorities and the action of local leaders are important. I would be happy to hear of any specific actions that the hon. Lady would like us to take to help two commercial businesses in a negotiation. If she wants to pass that to me, I will make sure that the aviation Minister is aware of it.