Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury and I are engaged with all the regulators, particularly the Prudential Regulation Authority, and we will be absolutely committed to getting to the bottom of what has happened, particularly in the long-dated gilt market, which has been over-levered in the past few weeks.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

T9. The Chancellor has said that he will set out a fully costed plan to get debt falling as a proportion of GDP, and he has confirmed at the Dispatch Box that that will be done in just under three weeks’ time. This morning’s Institute for Fiscal Studies report suggested that in order to do so, there will need to be fiscal tightening of around £62 billion over the next four years. Does the Chancellor agree with that analysis? If, as I suspect is the case, he does not, will he set out why not?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As I have said repeatedly, I am not going to prejudge what is in the medium-term fiscal plan, which will be fully scrutinised not only by the OBR but, I am sure, by my right hon. Friend. I do not think that it is right for me to prejudge or anticipate those measures today.

Gas Prices and Energy Suppliers

Debate between Mark Harper and Kwasi Kwarteng

Thursday 23rd September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Obviously, as usual, the right hon. Gentleman raises a number of issues. We have not been complacent. The whole point about the supplier of last resort process, which was interrogated last year, is that it is an organised, well-established process that can allow existing strong companies to absorb customers and failure. [Interruption.] If he would desist from chuntering from a sedentary position, he might actually hear my answer.

I remember the letter last year. We interrogated, all through the covid process, the systems we had in place. During that period, the supplier of last resort was found to work. So far this year, it has been found to work, so I am not going to try to talk ourselves into exacerbating the crisis.

With regard to the special administration regime, that is something that is in place. Thankfully, we have not had to use that, but the right hon. Gentleman knows as well as many people in this House that it is there should the case arise.

With respect to universal credit, I will say what I said earlier in the week. That is a matter across Government in terms of budgetary responsibility. There will be a Budget at the end of October and there will be plenty of time to discuss that then.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

May I press the Business Secretary a little on the Government assumptions on pricing? In his evidence to the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee yesterday, the head of Ofgem appeared to suggest that he expected these high prices to continue for some time. I accept that the Government do not have a crystal ball, but in making policy choices the Government must be making some assumptions about what they think is the most likely path for prices. Can the Business Secretary set those out for the House please?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As I have said repeatedly, I do not have a crystal ball, as my right hon. Friend has suggested, and I do not make predictions about the price but clearly, we prepare for every eventuality. The biggest help for consumers and customers at this current time is the energy price cap, which I have repeatedly stated is staying in place.

UK Gas Market

Debate between Mark Harper and Kwasi Kwarteng

Monday 20th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

As I said to one of the hon. Lady’s colleagues, I am not here to re-fight the 2016 battle of Brexit; it should be accepted, in her case with good grace. We have moved on from the Brexit debate, and I am extremely focused on ensuring security of supply and ensuring that vulnerable customers are protected from undue increases in the price of gas.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

May I just take the Secretary of State back to his statement, where he said he is going to be making a joint statement with Ofgem this afternoon? Assuming that that has in it some announcements that he has not covered in his statement just now, may I ask for an assurance as to when he is going to come to the House to update us? Perhaps Mr Speaker could arrange for that statement to take place tonight at 10 pm, so that we can question the Secretary of State. I ask that because, as he will know, 15% of energy consumers are off the gas grid, with a bigger proportion in constituencies such as mine. They do not benefit from the price cap, so will he set out at the Dispatch Box for those local consumers of mine in the Forest of Dean how he is going to be helping them with this very significant rise in gas prices?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I cannot make any assurances of that kind to my right hon. Friend. As a former Chief Whip, he knows the practices of this House very well. In fact, I seem to recall that in those coalition days we frequently made statements, not necessarily on the Floor of this House. I would be very happy to update him. I do not think—[Interruption.] I have a different memory of it, but we can discuss that later. I would be happy to talk to him about the measures that are being put forward; it is an Ofgem-led thing, but it is also something the Government have worked on—this has been done together.

10-point Plan: Six Months On

Debate between Mark Harper and Kwasi Kwarteng

Tuesday 18th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has brought that question up. He will know that I speak regularly to my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and the Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), about investment in Northern Ireland, particularly in relation to net zero. The hon. Gentleman will know about the offshore wind opportunities in Northern Ireland, I am particularly excited about the opportunities for hydrogen, and he will also know about the operation of Wrightbus and its efforts to bring hydrogen into the transportation system. There are exciting opportunities for Northern Ireland in relation to the net zero 10-point plan and I would be happy to discuss them with the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I listened carefully to what the Secretary of State said about the paper he is going to produce this year on heating buildings and about point 2 of the plan, on the hydrogen strategy. Will he make sure that the plan properly recognises that significant numbers of homes, including in my constituency of Forest of Dean, are not on the gas grid, and that we need solutions that work for the people who live in them so that they can have what they want, which is greener heating for their homes that is affordable and deliverable on the necessary timescale?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My right hon. Friend will know that in the United Kingdom we have an extremely diverse range of buildings and dwellings, which means that a one-size-fits-all policy just does not work for energy in the UK. There are lots of ways in which we can decarbonise buildings, which is exactly what will be spelled out in the heat and building strategy and—to a lesser degree, but more focused on hydrogen—in the hydrogen strategy. I would be happy to discuss with my right hon. Friend what we are doing to ensure that his constituents who are off the grid can get cheap, affordable green energy.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Kwasi Kwarteng

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 1st December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

First, I should declare an interest—although it is not strictly an interest—as the Minister who took through the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011. I feel some obligation to defend the very sensible proposals and arrangements that Parliament legislated for in that Act, as they are under attack from what are, I must say, some of the most ridiculous arguments I have ever heard—and I will come on to that last one.

I do, however, thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for the opportunity to debate these issues again. I am afraid that one or two of my hon. Friends in this House are also slightly anorakish on this subject. [Interruption.] One or two of them are waving at me. I, too, always enjoy the opportunity to talk about these important constitutional matters.

First, I will deal head-on with some of the arguments the hon. Gentleman made, and there are a couple of other things I want to say before I turn to the Bill before us. The hon. Gentleman talked about trust in politics. That is indeed very important, but I should share with the House a point that arose when we first discussed and legislated for these proposals. I hope colleagues do not find this too devastating, but when we announced to the public that one of our key proposals was to reduce the number of Members of Parliament from 650 to 600, although I know we would all like to think that the people of the UK were distraught that there were going to be 50 fewer of us, for quite a time it was the single most popular coalition Government policy.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I hate to rain on my right hon. Friend’s parade, but if we had a proposal to abolish Parliament entirely, that would also be particularly popular, would it not?

[Mr Harper]

I would not go quite as far as that, as there is a serious point about representation, but the public were certainly not devastated by the idea of a modest reduction in the size of the House. The other place is, I think, the second largest legislative Chamber in the world after the Chinese National People’s Congress, and this lower House of Parliament is one of the largest lower Houses, and I thought that our modest proposal to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600 was a perfectly sensible step forward.

The explanatory notes to the Bill were prepared by the Public Bill Office on behalf of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton, so I do not know whether the following point was put in by that office or by him. We have made the case that reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600 saves some £13 million per year, which is £66 million over the course of a Parliament. That might be modest in terms of our overall spending, but I think the general public would think that saving £60 million that we could then spend on important public priorities like the national health service was quite important. Interestingly, the explanatory notes talk about the broader context and suggest that there will be a reduction in the cost of politics—the hon. Gentleman alluded to this —associated with the 73 MEPs who will disappear when we leave the European Union. In our debates in this House on Brexit—I promise colleagues I will digress on this only briefly, as we have plenty more days to come over the coming weeks—when we make assertions about what we thought the referendum result meant, colleagues often say, “Well, that wasn’t on the ballot paper.” I am sorry that we did not think about this at the time, but if we had said to voters that when we leave the EU we will not have the 73 MEPs and said at the same time that we were going to use that as a cunning plan to reinstate the 50 MPs going in the law as legislated for, many voters might have thought twice. I am only sorry that I did not think of making that argument in the referendum campaign, given that I was on the remain side of the argument, as we might have had a little more success. I do not think that is a sensible argument, however.

I say to the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton—I may have misheard, but I think the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) agreed with him on this—that just because there are no MEPs in place it does not mean that suddenly a lot of extra work will come to this House. There are quite a lot of things that the EU does, and that MEPs spend all their time addressing, that actually would be better just not done at all. We can make sensible judgments in this House about what we want the Government and Parliament to focus on, and picking up every single thing that MEPs do is not very sensible.