Meg Hillier
Main Page: Meg Hillier (Labour (Co-op) - Hackney South and Shoreditch)
Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)
I was starting to think that my moment might not come this afternoon. I am delighted that the Secretary of State managed to make it to the House this afternoon to speak to his own legislation. The power of Twitter knows no end!
It is important to outline where the Opposition stand on the vital issues facing the Department of Energy and Climate Change and the Government. We would all agree that there is no greater threat facing the planet than global warming. In the 19 years since the Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro, when climate change was firmly put on the agenda, the issue has moved from the fringes to the centre stage. Even during the 13-year period of the last Labour Government, for whom I had the privilege to serve, the issue became more urgent and pressing. That is why Labour not only introduced tough targets to reduce our emissions of the gases that cause global warming, but enshrined them in law.
This coalition Government cannot be accused of ignoring climate change. The Prime Minister himself put the environment at the top of the Tory agenda when he took his husky ride to the Norwegian glacier. At the time, there were sceptics—including the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change—who dismissed that as merely a public relations stunt. We could doubt the Prime Minister’s commitment; after all, he has uttered hardly a word on the matter since. Why else, though, would one install a wind turbine on the roof unless one were committed?
As the Secretary of State has said, the Energy Bill provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to catalyse Britain’s journey from a high-carbon to a low-carbon economy, to change customer behaviour for ever, to lead the world in reducing carbon emissions and to be a bright beacon to our partners in Europe, America and the Commonwealth. So the coalition Government have set out their stall, claiming to be “the greenest Government ever”, and what have they come up with? After months of bravado, bragging and boasts from the Energy Secretary and his ministerial team, we have a Bill that adds new meaning to the word “disappointment”. It is a flaccid lettuce leaf of a Bill, laden with missed opportunities and ducked decisions. If the school playgrounds of Britain have indeed adopted a new phrase, “doing a Clegg”—which, for the benefit of Liberal Democrat Members, means saying one thing and doing another—the lexicon will soon contain another new phrase, “doing a Huhne”. That will mean “talking big”, for 45 minutes in this instance, “but delivering little”.
Andrea Leadsom
I am very disappointed by what the hon. Lady is saying, on behalf of many of my constituents. A couple of months ago I was at a fish-and-chips supper with some retired people, and one elderly lady was literally in tears, saying that given her very limited resources she did not know how she would manage to keep warm in the winter and eat as well. I find it pretty shocking that an initiative that is making a bold effort to remedy that situation should meet with such complete disregard from the Opposition.
Meg Hillier
The hon. Lady may be jumping to conclusions. It is this Government who are removing the Warm Front scheme, and it is this Bill that is failing to deliver for the fuel poor. I shall say more about that shortly.
In his 45-minute peroration, the Secretary of State promised 100,000 jobs. He promised that the poorest would be saved from the cold, and that the market would protect the consumer and many others. However, he did not give us the details of some important matters. We have a Secretary of State who has been rolled over by the Tory Chancellor—and, we have learned in recent hours in days, by his own party colleagues, particularly the Business Secretary—on every important issue in his Department. We have also learned today that the ECO may be within the levy cap, but not yet. We have a Liberal Democrat sheep in a wolfish Government: a Government who want to be green-tinged, but who are under-delivering on their grand promises.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
When the last Government left office, one half of 1% of the UK’s total energy production was delivered by renewables. Is that under-delivery or not?
Meg Hillier
The Opposition seem to misunderstand—[Hon. Members: “You are the Opposition!”] They are the Opposition to me. They seem to misunderstand the position. There is cross-party agreement on the need for more renewables and a lower-carbon economy, but we believe that the Bill could do more to deliver that. What disappoints us is that a Bill that promised so much is delivering so little. We hope that in Committee we shall see some movement from the Government.
At the heart of the Bill is the green deal, which the Secretary of State spent much of his speech telling us about. The task is obvious. We all agree that Britain needs to insulate its homes and buildings. It needs to improve energy efficiency in millions of households. Given rising energy bills and the need to hit our carbon reduction targets, that work must be done, as Labour’s manifesto made clear at the last general election.
Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)
If the hon. Lady wishes to improve energy security and insulation in homes and to reduce carbon, I do not understand why she does not recognise that the Bill is a game-changer. I recall another game-changing piece of legislation, the Clean Air Act 1956. That was the first in the world; this is the first in the world. That attracted—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think that the hon. Lady has made her point.
Meg Hillier
First does not always mean best. We want the Bill to succeed in its aims, but if the hon. Lady looks at the detail of the Bill and reads the report of proceedings in the other place, she will observe the glaring gaps that I will shortly highlight. As I have said, the task is obvious and the challenge is great.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
For the record, can the shadow Secretary of State tell us whether the level of fuel poverty went up or down under the last Labour Government, for whom she, of course, served?
Meg Hillier
The point is that this Government are removing Warm Front, and there will be nothing for the fuel poor; this Bill will not deliver for them.
The challenge is great. As the Secretary of State said, 27% of all UK emissions come from our homes. All Members are committed to an 80% reduction in emissions by 2050; there is cross-party agreement on that. However, during the Bill’s passage in the other place Ministers were offered opportunity after opportunity to make their proposals clearer, to introduce proper measures of accountability such as an annual report, and to safeguard consumers, but they rejected those offers of help, and we have not heard any further detail throughout the entire 45 minutes of the Secretary of State’s speech today.
Other Members may have longer memories, but I do not believe that this House has ever been asked to vote on the Second Reading of a Bill in which so much of the detail is unclear or not worked out. We are being asked to buy a massive pig in a poke, and that is simply not good enough. At the very least, the Secretary of State should concede the need for evidence sessions for the Bill, so we can shed some light on its murkier aspects, but he has refused to do so. As a result, Members will not have a single opportunity to discuss the Bill outside Committee. Today, the longer the Secretary of State’s answers were, the less we learned. [Interruption.] No, those are my words.
The key question this afternoon is whether the Government’s proposals meet the challenge. Sadly, my confirmed conviction is that they do not.
Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)
The hon. Lady seems to turn disappointment into an art form. Is she not aware that many people are very disappointed that under the Government with whom she served fuel prices and the number of people in fuel poverty went up, and she did nothing about it?
Meg Hillier
I am sure the Secretary of State would be delighted if he had the power to control fuel prices, but now may not be the time for a lesson on the global oil economy.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
What impact does my hon. Friend think a VAT rise has on fuel prices, and what impact does that have on elderly people?
Meg Hillier
I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. This Government cannot lecture us, given the impact of their policies on the budgets of households throughout the country, leaving them nowhere to go when oil prices increase.
In answer to a question from the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Secretary of State said every home would benefit from the green deal—he clearly has no shortage of ambition in this area—but the Department for Communities and Local Government predicts that there will be more than 27 million households in England by 2033, so how can the green deal possibly hit that target? The Secretary of State talks about companies being keen to get involved, but we know that most have already stepped back, so unsure are they of what the Bill will deliver.
If the Secretary of State is so confident about his proposals, why has he refused to set a target for the number of homes that would benefit? He gave us a waffly answer earlier, but at a public event he said he had wanted to call this Bill the Energy Saving Bill but was told that the parliamentary Clerks would not allow it.
I am sure that all Members are far less concerned about the title of the Bill than about what it achieves, and there are a number of obstacles to achieving the Secretary of State’s aims. First, we have no details about the interest rates at which the green deal cash will be loaned. Evidence suggests that an 8% rate will deter many households. Although there were rumours that incentives would be provided in the Budget, none were announced, yet without any tangible incentives most householders just will not bother. A loan of about £6,000 will barely scratch the surface of paying for what will need to be done to make most homes as green as they will need to be to meet our targets. The Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), has now suggested that loans could be as much as £10,000, which I hope is a sign that the Government finally recognise that there are inadequacies in the Bill, but that higher sum will be more off-putting to the poorest households whose homes are often the most expensive to improve.
On the golden rule, I was interested to hear the Secretary of State’s version of things—perhaps this is a new addition to the Bill—which was that “money today is worth more than money tomorrow”. That shows a level of financial literacy that clearly bodes well for the Bill. We also face the question of whether the banks will be interested, and the only banker that he could cite is a former Tory special adviser—he would be in favour, wouldn’t he? We need the banks to be on board if the Government’s model is to work.
Secondly, this Bill contains no assurances about who will conduct all the assessments and repairs. Who will accredit the legion of assessors—the 100,000 people that the Secretary of State talks about? Where will this army of assessors come from? We all know that the Government are doing their best to create a vast pool of newly unemployed nurses, RAF pilots and other skilled workers who need a new job, but even at the rate that this Government are destroying our services and putting manufacturing firms out of business, there will not be enough skilled people to do the job on the scale required.
The Secretary of State has been asked today, as Ministers in the other place have been, which measures could be put into a home under the green deal. Again, we have heard lots of words—for example, when he talked about double glazing—but he simply does not know the answer, and neither do suppliers, householders and landlords. Hard-to-treat remote and rural homes that are off-grid provide particularly big challenges, but the green deal, as it stands, does not step up to deliver on them. When the Secretary of State talks about success that will be determined by word of mouth, we know he has a great plan that will certainly deliver the results he sets out. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Clearly Government Members do not understand irony.
Thirdly, and most shamefully, the Bill—[Interruption.] I think that Government Members ought to listen to the detail. I say that for those who have perhaps not followed it as closely as some of us. Thirdly, and most shamefully, the green deal fails the basic test of fairness, as the poorest households will get the least help. The constituents of mine who, like some of your constituents, Mr Deputy Speaker, and those of other hon. Members, shiver under blankets every winter will not be reassured by the coalition placing the responsibility for tackling fuel poverty with the energy companies. Those households, who have the most to gain from decent insulation and lower bills—I do not doubt that Members across the House are committed to solving this problem—should be the Government’s first priority, but instead they have been left until last.
Finally, I come to an important question on which we have not been given enough detail: what about consumer rights? If the work under the green deal is botched, how can consumers get redress? If the projected savings do not add up to the value of the loan over 20 years, who will pay the shortfall? What guarantees can Ministers offer consumers that they will not be saddled with debts, especially when they buy a house with a green deal loan already in place?
The Secretary of State talks with passion about stopping cowboys getting in on the deal, but his Government have abolished Consumer Focus, the watchdog that has successfully taken up consumer issues with the energy companies. No detail on consumer redress is available to us as we debate this Bill on Second Reading. People are rightly asking these questions and even where Ministers are coming up with answers those answers are not very reassuring. We simply need more detail. We are expecting about 50 pieces of secondary legislation after the House has made its decision on the Bill tonight, on Report and on Third Reading.
Stephen Gilbert
The hon. Lady seems to be “doing a Hillier”, snatching embarrassment from the jaws of defeat. We have heard real detail from the Secretary of State today on minimum energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector. Is it not a bit churlish of her not to welcome the detail that we have heard on the private rented sector, which has been called for by many external organisations?
Meg Hillier
That tells us all we need to know about the relationships in the coalition. If the hon. Gentleman, a Liberal Democrat, believes that what we heard from the Secretary of State today is detail, he perhaps needs to look again at the Bill. The detail is missing. The Secretary of State is keen to talk about the Bill with passion but he is not giving the answers. We are waiting for detail on the 50 pieces of secondary legislation, but we have seen none at all. I lay this marker down for the Secretary of State that in Committee we will seek further detail on many of these important issues and others—
Meg Hillier
The Minister of State says from a sedentary position that that is unusual in Committee—
Meg Hillier
I’m not your love, matey, and I suspect someone else might find that surprising, too.
It is important that we get the detail in Committee and I make that point for a good reason. The Government have form on not giving answers in Committee. The Bill has been in the other place and so we might have expected it to be better. We gave it a fair wind and we would still like to see it succeed, but we need more detail before it can do that.
There is a yawning gap between Ministers’ rhetoric and their actions and it grows day by day. In public, Ministers talk about being the greenest Government ever, so why have they called the Climate Change Act 2008 “red tape” and placed it in a review of what they call “burdens on business”? Ministers might huff and puff and say that the Act is safe in their hands, and I do not doubt the commitment of the DECC team, but why then is it in the red tape review? Perhaps they need to talk to other members of their Government.
Why have Ministers ended the commitment to zero-carbon homes? That fact caused the WWF to resign its place on the working group as the decision was so out of the blue. Why will the green investment bank not be up and running for two more years? Allegedly, the money to fund it is coming from Britain’s stake in a uranium enrichment company, URENCO, which the Financial Times suggests is in doubt.
There is an elephant in the room and we all know what it is. The Energy Secretary has had his eyes on a prize other than reducing carbon emissions. I know that he has had to pull himself away from the detail of the Bill in recent days to attack his coalition partners by article, letter and leak, and it is a shame that he has had to do so because—to give him credit—it might be a better Bill if he had applied himself to it. We also know that the demands of the alternative vote campaign have, for some reason or another, taken up much of his time when he might have been meeting with green groups, consumer groups or businesses that would have told him what a mess the Bill was and how to improve it. There is still no excuse, when he is backed up by the gold-standard civil service of this country, to come to the House with this dog’s breakfast of a Bill. It is weak on specifics, clouded in uncertainty and built on such shaky foundations that few can have confidence in its standing up to scrutiny. We want the Bill to succeed, but we have no detail and no plan from the Government about how it will be implemented.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I agree with my hon. Friend that there is still much to do before the Government can claim to be the greenest ever. There are also significant gaps in the Bill. One example from my constituency concerns a community hydro project in Saddleworth that might not go ahead because of the anomaly in the current legislation, which is not addressed by the Bill, that prevents it from securing the higher feed-in tariff rates. Surely that is something we should be encouraging.
Meg Hillier
That is another example of the Government’s dither and delay in making decisions that can have perverse effects on the ground.
Andrew George
If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will sidestep the disappointingly partisan nature in which she has engaged in the debate. I am genuinely confused. She appears to endorse the principles behind the Bill and, quite understandably, is expressing some anxieties about the details. That is certainly a matter for debate in Committee. Will she urge her colleagues to vote for or against Second Reading?
Meg Hillier
I think the hon. Gentleman wants to know whether he can get home early for tea tonight.
Let me reiterate: we set out that we wanted to give the Bill a fair wind, and I personally made that clear to the Secretary of State. It builds on ideas and work that were carried out by the previous Government and it needs to work to deliver the emissions reductions that we need in this country to meet our targets. It is light on detail, however.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I think the tenor of the argument in the House is that the whole House wants to see the Bill succeed, but there is an issue with the delegated legislation and with its range. May I suggest that those on the two Front Benches meet at some stage to discuss how that can be dealt with so that we can have a constructive debate as well as holding the Government to account? We all want the Bill to succeed.
Meg Hillier
I am in discussions with those on the Government Front Bench. When I asked to see draft secondary legislation so that we could be comforted that it would deliver the securities we have been asking for if the Bill was passed, I was told in a letter from the Secretary of State that that would not be possible until the primary legislation had been passed. I live in hope that the Secretary of State—he is a man who believes in this issue; I do not doubt his commitment—and I can continue to have a dialogue.
John McDonnell
Even if the delegated legislation comes after the Bill is passed, may I suggest that there is a discussion about evidence sessions on it and some form of progress report on the Floor of the House so that there can be a wider ranging debate?
Meg Hillier
My hon. Friend makes an excellent suggestion, which I have also made to the Secretary of State. I am sure that with the support of the House the Secretary of State will see the good sense in that suggestion and I hope he will talk to officials about how they can ensure that we facilitate it.
Overall, climate change is too important to leave to the market, and that is one of the problems with the Bill. The market and the market alone will decide. We need a strong Government to lead the fight against global warming and fuel poverty, but I fear that instead we have a Government who are at war with themselves.