Batteries for Electric Vehicle Manufacturing

Debate between Liam Byrne and Matt Western

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne]

I am grateful for that question. Although I do not have the specific details of the opportunities in the constituency of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the spirit of the Committee’s report is that we need to be using industrial policy to do three things: to de-risk supply chains, to decarbonise, and to decentralise the sources of economic growth. That is why we are so clear about the need for the Government to designate strategically critical sites for gigafactories in the future. As to quite how many we need, the Minister and I may have different views, but we know how much capacity we need, and that can perhaps be delivered by between five and eight gigafactories, depending on how much each factory can produce. But the broad point is that we cannot be producing batteries simply for the automotive industry; we need a wide range of applications for them in the future.

Once we have designated the sites, we need to think about how industrial policy helps to unlock the wide range of policy levers that any place will need. That includes access to low-cost electricity, skills, and incentives and subsidies to get factories built in the first place. Of course, we then need the trading arrangements, so that people can export and we can ensure that the export of EV batteries is a real growth sector for our economy. The point the hon. Member for Strangford made is therefore absolutely the right one, and we have sought to provide the checklist of things he needs to be asking of Ministers.

[Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)]

I thank the Chair and the Select Committee for putting together such a comprehensive and valuable report. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on electric vehicles and the all-party parliamentary motor group, I agree with him: my frustration is that we find ourselves behind our major competitors—China, the US, Japan, Germany, France and many others—in our capacity to manufacture battery units for electric vehicles and other uses.

That is frustrating because, from what I sense from the report and more widely, we have an energy advantage in the UK—indeed, we should have a huge energy advantage over other nations. In my constituency, National Grid reminds me of what we can do by bringing green energy to this country through the interconnectors. We also have organisations such as Warwick Manufacturing Group, which is at the forefront of the development of new battery units. We have two great advantages, but because of what the Chair of the Select Committee describes as a lack of industrial strategy, we are way off the pace.

I have a couple of points on skills—not just on the manufacturing side, but in terms of what we will need up and down the country in our franchise dealer network and other vehicle marketing sites. In terms of what we need to do on infrastructure for the consumer—

[Matt Western]

I apologise, Mr Hollobone. My question is about infrastructure for consumers. Also, I hear that Europe will perhaps grant us a three-year extension on the issue of rules of origin, which would be advantageous. Does my right hon. Friend know any more about that? And what is his estimation of how long it will take the UK to catch up with our major competitors, such as Germany and France?

[Liam Byrne]

I commend my hon. Friend’s work; his leadership of the all-party parliamentary group on electric vehicles and the all-party parliamentary motor group has been so important in ensuring that we in Parliament can benefit from informed debate.

We are two to three years behind our European competition, and we therefore have to move quickly to catch up. The lack of certainty has damaged confidence—moving the goalposts on phasing out petrol engines, for example, has hurt confidence. Ultimately, despite the public investment that needs to go into building things such as gigafactories, the investment overwhelmingly comes from the private sector, and when we damage confidence, we damage the speed of that private investment. I am afraid that the Committee came to the conclusion that the lack of an industrial policy has hampered our ability to secure the needed investment.

It is not too late to catch up. There is a real risk that we cannot win a subsidy race with the United States, or indeed Europe, so we will need a smart policy framework—the seven things I set out. They include devolved funding on skills and guarantees around infrastructure and low-cost energy access. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there is a niche—in the global market, it is a huge niche—for the UK to provide, build and sell batteries built with low-carbon energy and with the highest levels of integrity right through the supply chain. That is a big opportunity for the UK, which we should be seizing with both hands.

Local Housing Allowance and Homelessness

Debate between Liam Byrne and Matt Western

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Liam Byrne]

We do not know, because obviously there is not a safeguarding adult review for everyone who dies. There should be a safeguarding adult review for everyone who dies, because my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall made a sensible but crucial point: that local housing allowance is absolutely part of this crisis. He is absolutely right. The average LHA in Birmingham, which is £132 a week, covers only two thirds of the cost of a median home in our city. However, it would be delusional to pretend, as our current Mayor has tried to do, that local housing allowance is somehow the nub of the changes we need to make.

The truth is that to fund tax cuts for the lucky, this Government have reduced social insurance for the unlucky to a clutch of shreds and patches. This Government have now cut back so hard that social insurance in this country is now in systems failure. I know the Minister will say that it was a hard choice, but the truth is that it was the wrong choice. The tax cuts that have been handed out to British corporates now total £110 billion. Overwhelmingly, that money has either gone back to shareholders or is lodged in those corporates’ bank accounts. It was the wrong choice, because rather than strengthen the hand that helps, this Government chose to feather the nests of those who already had plenty.

I will illustrate the systems failure that we now face. From all my interviews with homeless citizens in Birmingham through the long nights, what has become clear is that three systems are needed: a benefits system, a health system and a housing system. All three are now in crisis. Mental health caseloads in our region are now rising four times faster than funding. Addiction services in our region have been cut back by between 12% and 20%. The University of Birmingham has concluded that the health services provided to homeless people are now so bad that those people are actually being denied access to basic health services. Housing benefit hands cash to the landlords of houses in multiple occupation in a way that is completely unregulated, with no obligation on them to provide much-needed counselling or support. There is no regulation of private landlords worthy of its name, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said, the conditions that we now contend with are absolutely disgraceful.

We are building affordable homes in our region so slowly that it will take us until the 2050s to clear the council waiting lists across the region, which now number well over 50,000. Just to add insult to injury, although the Government promised £211 million to build new homes, according to parliamentary questions they have handed out only £2 million. That means that £209 million is left in the Treasury when we have people dying on the streets of our city.

[Matt Western]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful and important speech. Does he agree that there are two issues: that the Government are hiding behind statistics about housebuilding that are inflated through permitted development rights and in other ways, and that we are seeing an increase in HMOs? The provision is completely inappropriate for the housing and social needs in our communities.

[Liam Byrne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are hiding behind definitions of “affordable housing” that are frankly meaningless in the real world. What we need to be doing is building houses for social rent—what used to be called council houses. Let us again build council houses that communities can be proud of.

This systems failure is now killing people, as should be obvious to all of us in this House. I pay tribute to the incredible coalition of kindness in my city that is trying to turn the tide, particularly Councillor Sharon Thompson, who knows a thing or two about homelessness, Jean Templeton, who is chairing the Mayor’s taskforce, and the 14 or 15 different outreach groups that make sure that the homeless people in our city are not actually starving on the streets. However, what those people need is a Government who are on their side, and are prepared to make sure that the Mayor does not spend £1 million on secret consultants, but puts that money into ensuring that there are more emergency shelter places than there are rough sleepers.

We need a hard duty on all public services to act together and collaborate to prevent homelessness from happening in the first place. We need a region-wide private landlord licensing scheme. We need to expand accommodation in refuges. We need a universal offer on all public services for vulnerable people. We need to double the pace of council house building. We need to end the Vagrancy Act 1824 and reintroduce housing benefit for the under-25s. We need to end the lunacy of the “no recourse to public funds” rule, and we need an urgent review of the exempt accommodation rules.

George Dawson, the founder of the civic gospel in our city—the precursor of municipal socialism—once asked his congregation,

“Are you prepared to vindicate the enormous wealth of some men, side by side with the extreme poverty?”

I am not prepared to live in a city where we have cranes in the sky, but homeless people dying in the doorways. We need an emergency response to this moral emergency, and I hope the Minister will drive it through with today’s new Prime Minister.