Mark Lazarowicz
Main Page: Mark Lazarowicz (Labour (Co-op) - Edinburgh North and Leith)
Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)
In the past, the industries in my county and constituency were farming, coal—based on the Point of Ayr pit, which the Conservatives closed, at the cost of 1,000 jobs—and seaside towns, which have had 40 years of steady decline. The jobs in my area are now increasingly in the renewable energy sector. One of the great stimulators of that process was introduced by Labour in the late 1990s, when my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Mr Hain), the then Secretary of State for Wales, allowed my county of Denbighshire and the neighbouring county of Conwy to come in on the objective 1 bid. As a result, £124 million was invested in Denbighshire over a seven-year period. The pièce de résistance—the best project we had—was a £17 million research and incubation centre, the OpTIC centre in St Asaph.
That centre will create 100 new opto-electronic companies over the next 10 years. It is based in the north Wales area—the third biggest for opto-electronics in the world. We build to our success in Wales, and we have had excellent success in renewable energy. Dyesol, a small two-man company, relocated from Australia to the OpTIC centre in St Asaph, and it is now working on organic photovoltaic paint that can produce electricity. It is working with Corus, down the road in Shotton, so that when that company produces its sheet steel, with the paint by Dyesol, electricity will be automatically created. The OpTIC centre is also working on fusion powers. There are two ways to fuse atoms and create power, one of which is by magnets and the other is by lasers. That work is being conducted in my constituency and I am very proud of the centre.
The OpTIC centre also contains the Centre for Solar Energy Research, which represents the future for jobs and growth, which lies in investment in research and development. Three weeks ago, I addressed the solar photovoltaic supply chain conference at the OpTIC centre, where I encountered very disappointed people—my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) met a similar delegation last week. I spoke to dozens of people who were disappointed about what has happened on the feed-in tariff.
The OpTIC centre was founded by a great man, Dave Rimmer, who had a vision for the area, and he got the funds together to get the centre up and running. Glyndwr university has taken it over and runs it in conjunction with Cambridge university, Cranfield university and University college London. For the future of renewables and low-carbon technology in our country, we need to look to top-flight universities to co-operate with practitioners in the provinces; we need to put the theory and the practice together.
In the OpTIC centre in St Asaph, we have a Welsh solution to a British problem. The centre has been acknowledged: Rhodri Morgan, the then First Minister of Wales, visited it on the same day as the then Labour Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change—now Labour’s leader—addressed a conference there; and the current Prime Minister has also visited. So we have a prestigious centre in St Asaph, and the British Government should look to it as a means of spreading best practice around the whole UK.
My area does not just contain the OpTIC centre, because it also has the Sharp factory in Wrexham, the biggest solar panel factory in western Europe. It undertook its future budgeting on the basis of the plans the Labour Government gave it for feed-in tariffs. The company recruited its people and set its plans in motion, only to have the rug pulled from beneath it. It was one of the companies in north Wales that were upset by the proposed changes to the feed-in tariff. These companies need certainty, not uncertainty.
Let me now discuss wind power. As I have said before, I turned on 30 turbines off the coast of north Wales. I do not think that it is any relation, Mr Deputy Speaker, but these turbines were at North Hoyle. The then Secretary of State for Wales, my right hon. Friend the Member for Neath, switched on a further 30 turbines some two years ago, and in two years’ time, those at Gwynt y Mor will be up and running. When all those turbines are running, we will have the biggest concentration of wind turbines in the world. North Wales is playing its full part in renewable energy, creating jobs and growth.
I should also mention the Wylfa power station, which is to be redeveloped—an £8 billion investment, creating 2,000 to 3,000 jobs in the local economy. These big investments have been made because of the stability promoted by the former Labour Government, but we now have instability because of the coalition. In the future, my area will see the development of anaerobic digestion, tidal impoundment power off the coast and underwater wind turbines.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend might know of the two pioneering marine renewable companies in my constituency. Does he agree that their situation shows how the lack of continuity and support is affecting our credibility? Indeed, it is losing us export markets because of the influence on the ability to invest in the future?
Chris Ruane
Absolutely. The disappointment is shared by international developers, such as Sharp, as well as medium-sized and small enterprises in low-carbon creation.
I mentioned the underwater marine current turbines that will be located off the coast of Anglesey, where we are also looking at biomass. My hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) has coined the phrase “energy island” and that is what it is. However, it is not just the island, but the whole of north Wales that is playing its full part. As I say, we are looking to the Government to create that certainty for the big international operators, the national operators and the regional operators, so that they can put their investments in place to create jobs and growth for the future.
Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)
I am happy to agree with the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) when he says that the headquarters of the green investment bank should not be located in London. He will probably guess where I think they should be located.
It is not just people in Edinburgh who have been asking what is happening with the green investment bank after yet another delay last week. The Government’s announcement on the location of the headquarters had been promised by the end of February, but the deadline was put back. I might be damaging our chances by saying this, but it seems to me to be bare-faced cheek on the part of the Secretary of State to say that the fact that 32 cities have put in a bid for the headquarters excuses the delay in the Government’s announcement. If the delay was for just a few weeks, that would, perhaps, be understandable, but let us not forget that it looks like the delay means that the establishment and operation of the green investment bank will be nearly a year later than the date on which we were first told that it would be set up.
Let us not forget that on 30 June 2010, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), gave the proposals the go-ahead and that in November 2010 the Department’s business plan expected the green investment bank to be operational in September 2012. On 23 May 2011, the Deputy Prime Minister said that the green investment bank would begin to provide funding from as early as April 2012. Now we are told, however, that it will be operational from the end of the year, subject to state aid approval. I suspect that that means that in practice we will not see the green investment bank in operation until well into 2013, almost a year late. That is extremely concerning and is also a condemnation of the way in which the Government have taken forward the proposals on the green investment bank. One cannot blame a year’s delay on the fact that there are 32 rather than 20 cities interested in the proposals.
The delay is not only affecting the Government’s credibility on this issue but, much more importantly, putting us in real danger of losing jobs, making us miss opportunities for green investment and waste time that other countries will take advantage of at our expense. I have heard reports that some companies have been holding back on investment because they have wanted to wait and see what will happen with the green investment bank, and I hope that that has not been the case, although I fear that it has.
Those comments will no doubt affect Edinburgh’s bid for the green investment bank—although, in reality, I am sure that the Government will not make a decision on that basis, and we have a very good case as Edinburgh has a combination of financial services skills, the technical knowledge, a manufacturing base and academic skills as well as broad-based support across the political agenda—but I must say that the delay is extremely concerning and alarming. Will the Minister tell us when the Government expect the green investment bank to start operating in reality? I do not mean when it will have a brass plaque on the door saying, “Green Investment Bank”. What I want to know is when it will start putting money into an industry that has great potential in all our constituencies. Opportunities have been lost as a result of this delay, and I hope there is no further unnecessary delay. If the Minister wishes to continue the cross-party support there has been for a green investment bank, he needs to assure all of us in the House that there will be no further delay. So far, there have been missed opportunities and a loss to the economy, but I hope that will not continue for much longer.