UK Steel Production: Greensill Capital

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Lilian Greenwood

Thursday 25th March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab) [V]]

Investing in transport infrastructure such as the full HS2 route and a rolling programme of rail electrification is an excellent way to boost economic recovery and put the UK on the path to net zero, but the Government will be wasting a huge opportunity to safeguard and grow jobs in our steel industry if they do not use public procurement to support it. Will the Secretary of State commit to setting targets for UK steel content in contracts for major public works, and if not, why not?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

The hon. Lady will know, as I have said at the Dispatch Box today, that we have a taskforce in BEIS chaired by my noble Friend Lord Grimstone. This is absolutely something that we are looking into, given the huge need we have and the huge demand for steel products in our infrastructure plans.

Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port and Battery Manufacturing Strategy

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Lilian Greenwood

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend raises a crucial point. Clearly, without a successful roll-out of charging points we will struggle to meet the targets we have set ourselves. We have committed £90 million already to facilitate the roll-out of larger-scale charge point infrastructure projects across England for local areas, and we will continue to support that. I would be very happy to have a conversation with him about how we can best do that.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab) [V]]

The Chair of the Select Committee on Science and Technology could not have been clearer: for the British car industry to succeed in the growing electric vehicle market, protecting thousands of jobs, including here in the midlands, we must have UK gigafactories manufacturing electric batteries by the time the rules of origin change. How many UK gigafactories will we have by 2024? What specific steps is the Secretary of State taking to secure them?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As the hon. Lady will have seen from these questions, we are looking at a number of sites. We are absolutely committed to having at least one gigafactory site, if not more—I think we need more than one—before the next election. I could not be clearer about our commitment to the transition and ultimately to reaching net zero by 2050.

National Policy Statement: Airports

Debate between Kwasi Kwarteng and Lilian Greenwood

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Lilian Greenwood]

I confirm that that is the Secretary of State’s view, and I will come on to my concerns about that approach in due course.

On protections for communities, we recommended that compensation be independently assessed and reviewed once the full impacts were known. The Government did not accept this recommendation. On protection for passengers, we recommended a condition of approval in the NPS that passenger charges be held flat in real terms unless not doing so was in their interests. The Government did not accept this recommendation.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

No. I am conscious of time.

The Committee did not make a specific recommendation on carbon emissions, but the NPS scheme must be compatible with our climate change obligations. As others have already said, this remains very uncertain. The Government have told us that our recommendations will be dealt with during the development consent order process, in consultation with communities and other stakeholders, but our recommendations were made on the basis that there were not enough safeguards in the DCO process to ensure that high-level policy objectives on noise, air quality, surface access, regional connectivity and costs could be achieved.

The third objective of the Committee’s recommendations was to limit the risk of legal challenge, yet not providing fundamentally important information on possible environmental, health and community impacts seems to be a point on which a judicial review may be focused. Baroness Sugg told us recently that making the meaningful changes to the NPS we sought would add a six to nine-month delay to the process. Given the potential scale of the impacts of this scheme and the decades it has taken to get to this point, a few extra months may seem an appropriate price to pay, especially given the Government’s self-imposed delays since the Airports Commission reported in July 2015.

This is a vital decision about our national infrastructure. Additional runway capacity must be delivered. I do not doubt the Government’s intent, but rather their ability to deliver. Some of my Select Committee colleagues will accept the Government’s assurances, but I intend to be guided by the evidence. I have no doubt that the Government intended their air quality plans to ensure compliance with legal standards, but three times the courts rejected them. I am certain that the Department for Transport intended to electrify 850 miles of railway and to introduce new rail timetables successfully but, as we know, the reality has sometimes fallen short of the ambition. This NPS leaves too many risks: the risk of a successful legal challenge; the risk of harming communities; the risk of rising charges; and the risk of a failure to deliver new domestic connections. If a substantial proportion of the Committee’s recommendations had been incorporated, I would have felt able to vote for the motion. I wish that I could do so but, without them, I am afraid that I cannot.