Green Economy

Lindsay Hoyle Excerpts

Thursday 28th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I am going to have to introduce a time limit, but let us see how we go. If Members try not to use this much time, I shall start off the limit at eight minutes, but I may have to reduce it. How is that?

[Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys), who serves with distinction on the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, on bringing the debate to the Commons this afternoon, and I note that the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Miss Smith), is in her place, because if we really are going to make progress on this most important issue, we will do so only if the Treasury puts the whole issue at the core of its policy making.

It has always seemed to me perverse that we have a Green Book that is anything but green, so the time has come to ensure that the Treasury’s guidance on the national infrastructure programme, in particular, guarantees that every single policy is appraised and joined-up in taking further forward the agenda of securing more renewable energy and more energy efficiency.

I shall try very much to comply with the limit on speakers—

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The limit is eight minutes, and we will not go beyond that, so if we can please keep to it that will be much more helpful. I do not want to have to use a big stick, as I want to get everybody in.

[Joan Walley]

I, too, want everybody in the Chamber to get into the debate.

Let me bring to the attention of the House the two reports that the Environmental Audit Committee has produced, and which for the benefit of Members we have tagged on the Order Paper: the Committee’s twelfth report on “A Green Economy” and its sixth report on “Budget 2011 and Environmental Taxes”, which shows how we have examined the Treasury’s role in the matter.

We intended the two reports to be a starting point and an overarching basis on which the discussions that now need to take place throughout business, local government, the private sector and international development might be brought together, so that our policies—including what we do, and how we keep scrutinising what happens, in Parliament—can be tied to that agenda. We found that two years after making the commitment to increase the proportion of tax revenues accounted for by environmental taxes, the Government still have no strategy for achieving this commitment. In addition, they have not published their definition of an environmental tax. In our further follow-up inquiries, we will do what we can to obtain that definition and to scrutinise what is happening so that we get some real progress.

A further relevant aspect is the Rio+20 summit that took place last week. Its outcome was extremely disappointing given the lack of a highly ambitious outcome and follow-up action plan. However, all the different parties who were there, from business people, to legislators, to parliamentarians, to members of civil society were in absolute agreement that if the high-level leaders cannot come up with significant outcomes, everybody else has to raise their game. So it is with our Parliaments. I urge the Economic Secretary to demonstrate that she understands this issue by saying what she is doing through Treasury policy and in making sure in Cabinet meetings that there is a joined-up approach towards environmental taxes.

I want to raise issues relating to my own constituency, because we will not deal with this situation nationally or internationally unless we can deal with it locally as well. It is a matter of great concern to me that a large number of people in Stoke-on-Trent are living in fuel poverty. Indeed, of the 40,678 households in Stoke-on-Trent North, 10,120 are in fuel poverty, which is absolutely outrageous. It is a rate of 24.9%, which compares with the UK average of 18.6%—and even that is shocking. If ever there was a reason we should be getting support from the Treasury to address these environmental issues, it is that. We have a commitment to eliminate fuel poverty by 2016, and we will not achieve that unless we scale up everything that is done and look at how revenues can be reinvested so that whole communities see the importance of moving towards the renewables future that is so urgently needed.

I say this as someone who represents a constituency where the industrial revolution started because of our reliance on carbon.