Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will hold discussions with representatives of Ford UK on that company meeting 50 per cent of the tax deductions from redundancy payments to workers at Ford Bridgend; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Andrew Stephenson - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)
The terms of the separation packages for Ford Bridgend Engine plant workers have only recently been communicated by the company.
Ford has indicated that they will seek to avoid compulsory redundancies. They have also stated that they will be offering generous voluntary redundancy packages and options for redeployment.
United Kingdom Government and Welsh Government are working together to support Ford workers and the local community.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 8 April 2019 to Question 239920, when his Department plans to publish its response to the consultation on proposed changes to the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Department will publish its response to the 2016 consultation in due course.
This is a complex issue and it is absolutely vital that the Government gets this right: we are committed to reviewing these regulations to ensure that the highest levels of fire safety are maintained while minimising risks to health and the environment.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, when his Department plans to publish its response to the consultation on updating the Furniture and Furnishings (Fire) (Safety) Regulations 1988; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The Department will publish its response to the consultation in due course.
This will take account of the responses received from the consultation, the views of experts from across government including the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Public Health England, the Food Standards Agency and the Fire Services, as well as a range of evidence from external sources such as academic papers.
The Government considers the safety of consumers to be a priority, and consumers should have confidence that the products in their homes are produced to rigorous safety requirements.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he has taken steps to support the Green Alliance’s Community Energy Manifesto; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Claire Perry
I am really impressed by the work community groups up and down the United Kingdom are already doing to help their wider communities decarbonise and get involved in this transition.
In the Clean Growth Strategy, I announced the creation of a Local Energy Contact Group and a Local Energy Programme. The Contact group made up of communities, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships and provides local insight for policy teams across BEIS.
The Local Energy Programme has funded Local Energy Strategies in every Local Enterprise Partnership. These strategies will feed into the newly developed Local Energy Hubs, also funded by BEIS to create capacity and capability to help Local Authorities deliver low carbon energy projects at scale.
I have brought the Rural Community Energy Fund into my department to allow it to integrate better with the other work we are doing on heat and local ownership. Together with the Local Energy Programme, that will be almost £20m committed by this Government to support local energy in the last three years. Alongside this we have launched Prospering from the Energy Revolution, a £100m innovation fund designed to support local areas demonstrate future integrated energy systems.
This funding will unlock commercial investment in our local energy system and following a successful national Local Green finance event in Leeds in January, we will be supporting five regional events this summer to bring investors and local projects together.
The Government has a clear vision for an energy system which fairly rewards flexibility for the value it provides to the system.
We have set out in our The Smart Systems & Flexibility Plan, and in the Progress Update in October 2018, a number of actions to open up markets to distribution-connected flexibility, including community energy groups. We are also consulting on a range of changes to the energy market which offer communities a chance to have their say, and ensuring consumers are at the heart of the future energy system.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, pursuant to the Answer of 24 January 2019 to Question 210560, when his Department will publish its review of the provisions for parents of premature babies and sick babies; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Kelly Tolhurst
The review of provisions for parents of premature, sick and multiple babies is being carried out by officials in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to enable them to provide advice to Ministers. We have no plans to publish this advice but I look forward to discussing the conclusions we reach with interested parties in due course.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he plans to increase subsidies for (a) wind, (b) solar and (c) wave/tidal power under the Levy Control Framework.
Answered by Claire Perry
The Government is committed to keeping energy costs as low as possible. The Levy Control Framework will not be renewed (as a budgetary framework) after it expires in 2020/21. It will be replaced by the Control for Low Carbon Levies (“the Control”), which was announced at the Autumn Budget in 2017. The Control covers all existing and new low carbon electricity levies and will monitor the total cost of these schemes. In order to protect consumers, the government will not introduce new low carbon electricity levies until the burden of such costs is falling. On the basis of the current forecast, this means that there will be no new low carbon electricity levies until 2025. All existing contracts and commitments will be respected, including up to £557 million for further Contracts for Difference. The Control does not rule out future support for any technology.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the effect of removing the export tariff on the number of solar installations.
Answered by Claire Perry
As part of the consultation published in July on our proposal to close the Feed-in Tariff export tariff from 1 April 2019, we included an impact assessment:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/feed-in-tariffs-scheme.
We are currently considering the responses to this and will publish a government response in due course. This will include an updated impact assessment.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps he is taking to work with his counterparts from other countries to ensure that global temperatures do not exceed 1.5 degrees C.
Answered by Claire Perry
One hundred and eighty one of the 197 parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have now ratified the Paris Agreement, and I am proud that the UK is one of them. The UK is fully committed to working with other countries to achieve the Paris Agreement goals including limiting global average temperature increase to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit warming to 1.5°C. We are actively involved in the UNFCCC negotiations and are fully committed to finalising the rulebook that will underpin the Paris Agreement at COP24 this December. We drive the work of several progressive groups, comprising developed and developing countries, such as the High Ambition Coalition. We are one of the largest contributors of international climate finance, helping developing countries mitigate and adapt to climate change through coalitions and partnerships, and we will spend at least £5.8bn on this between 2016 and 2020. Additionally, we are promoting global alliances to encourage clean growth, such as the Powering Past Coal Alliance, to reduce emissions from the most polluting fuel, which I launched last year, and which now has over 70 members. We are also working to build on the progress made at the UK Zero Emission Vehicle (ZEV) Summit, hosted by the Prime Minister in September 2018, to help the development of the ZEV market around the world and tackle carbon emissions. The UK is also showing leadership through domestic action, between 1990 and 2017 we have reduced our emissions by 43% whilst growing our economy by 71%, demonstrating that it is possible to grow your economy while reducing emissions.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he will enable (a) onshore wind and (b) solar technologies to compete in the Contract for Difference mechanism.
Answered by Claire Perry
No decisions have been taken on future Contract for Difference allocation rounds for established technologies.
Asked by: Madeleine Moon (Labour - Bridgend)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, how many members of staff have left his Department since 1 January 2015; and how many of those members of staff were nationals of non-UK EU countries.
Answered by Margot James
Since April 1 2017, when data is available for BEIS, 280 members of staff have left the Department. The nationalities of staff that leave is not collated and to do so would incur disproportionate costs.