Finance (No. 2) Bill

Kirsty Blackman Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

On investment in renewables, does my right hon. Friend feel, as I do, that the Government are missing out on an opportunity? This is the opportunity to capitalise on the move towards a just transition to renewable energy, and the Government are putting down exactly the wrong markers. When we want to build up investor confidence and the industry and to take advantage of it, the UK Government are choosing not to give confidence to those who are keen to invest.

[Stewart Hosie]

This is absolutely the opportunity to invest properly, to deliver the just transition that we all speak about and want to see, and to protect the jobs, abilities and skills of the hundreds of thousands of people in the oil and gas sector across the UK as they transition into renewables, so that Scotland is no longer the oil and gas capital of Europe but becomes the Saudi Arabia of renewables—what a thing we could achieve. However, some of the decisions that are being taken, including the obsession with nuclear and the reduction in funding for real green renewables, are deeply problematic.

I also want to address the lack of action on, and support for, trade. The OBR said that while it is true that

“additional trade with other countries could offset some of the decline in trade with the EU, none of the agreements concluded to date are of a sufficient scale to have a material impact on our forecast. The Government’s own estimate of the economic impact of the free-trade agreement with Australia, the first to be concluded with a country that does not have a similar arrangement with the EU, is that it would raise total UK exports by 0.4 per cent, imports by 0.4 per cent and the level of GDP by only 0.1 per cent over 15 years.”

As an aside, if this is the much-vaunted benefit of Brexit, it is very, very thin. What that means is that the OBR estimates the economic impact of the free trade agreement with Australia, for example, will raise the level of GDP by 0.1% over the next 15 years, while estimating that Brexit will cause a drop in GDP of 4%.

With families still burdened by high inflation, and also feeling the pinch from rising mortgage and rental costs; with energy costs still way higher than they should be; with the long-term problems of the economy, particularly poor productivity, inadequately addressed; and with the self-inflicted economic harm of Brexit hampering trade and GDP growth, I am afraid that this Budget and this Finance Bill simply are not enough.