Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Fallon and Martin Horwood

Monday 24th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

With 1,000 people killed since the Minsk accord in Ukraine, with up to 1 million displaced and with NATO countries such as Lithuania looking as though they might be prepared to be more deeply involved, can we be told what the latest news is from the European monitoring team on the state of the ceasefire and the risk of escalation involving NATO countries?

[Michael Fallon]

I will ensure that the Foreign Office updates my hon. Friend on the latest status of the monitoring. The best answer we can give is to make it absolutely clear that the sanctions will stay in place and, if there is any further destabilisation of Ukraine, they should be increased. In the meantime, it is important that all NATO members keep up their defence spending and commit to the very high readiness taskforce that was agreed at the NATO summit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Fallon and Martin Horwood

Thursday 16th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I think it is wise for all members of the Government to agree with the Prime Minister. Shale gas is one of the greener fossil fuels, and the hon. Lady certainly ought to support its extraction rather than that of coal. We need to reduce our dependence on volatile wholesale international prices for gas and oil, and we need more home-grown energy here under our own control.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

A recent American report has suggested that, apart from the absolute volumes of water used in fracking, 90% of the water used remains beneath the surface and is removed from the local water cycle. Has that environmental impact been assessed by the Department, and if not, can it be?

Royal Mail

Debate between Michael Fallon and Martin Horwood

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

This Government have put the protection in place that the universal service has to continue and be provided irrespective of the ownership of Royal Mail.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The employee share percentage is not as high as originally advocated by the Liberal Democrats, but it is nevertheless the most significant in many decades. Has the Minister heard from the Communication Workers Union that it welcomes that significant advance in worker ownership?

[Michael Fallon]

I have had discussions with the union about the details of the employee share scheme. At the moment, the union is opposing privatisation, but my hon. Friend will recall that the unions have opposed previous privatisations, yet their own members have taken the schemes up. I will be interested to see how many members of the Communication Workers Union opt out of the free shares that are being made available.

Energy Bill

Debate between Michael Fallon and Martin Horwood

Monday 3rd June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

The judgment will be one for the Government, and I want to come on to a proposal on that. I also want to assure my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry, in relation to amendment 164, that there will be public consultation on the draft regulations in the autumn. On amendment 170, relative to what is currently required under the renewables obligation, we would remove only redundant information requirements under the fixed price certificate scheme. However, in answer to the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson), I am mindful of the points made in Committee on the need to maximise transparency.

There are a number of other improvements we can make to investment contracts. First, following the good points made in Committee by the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on the distinction between withholding and redacting information, I will make a commitment to publish a description of any information that is withheld and the reason for that. Secondly, I have tabled amendments 71 and 72, which remove the Secretary of State’s discretion to withhold information from a contract after it has been agreed, but before it is laid before Parliament. That means that any confidential information will have to be clearly identified as such during contract negotiations, and there is no further discretion then to withhold information once those are concluded.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The Minister is, however, describing a process in which information is published and laid before Parliament after the contracts have been signed. If, as is likely in the case of Electricité de France, we are talking about a 30-year contract, does he agree that it is practically pointless to have scrutiny after the event, when we would in effect be locked in for nearly a generation? What exactly does he expect Parliament to do if it then looks at the published details of the negotiations and does not like them?

[Michael Fallon]

I will describe in some detail the arrangements for the scrutiny of any deal done or any negotiations concluded at Hinkley, but I would suggest to my hon. Friend that Parliament is pretty good at scrutinising such arrangements, including through its various Committees. Likewise, it is of course also open to the National Audit Office to provide scrutiny.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Fallon]

I must be fair to the House and make some progress because I am only halfway through this group of amendments. If I am pressed to give way one more time, I will of course do so.

[Martin Horwood]

The Minister is very generous in giving way. I would like to ask him about one aspect, which was raised by Dr Paul Dorfman of the Warwick business school, and University College, London. They have speculated that the contract now being discussed with Electricité de France could be as long as for 40 years. In the spirit of parliamentary openness and scrutiny that the Minister has described, will he clarify whether that is an accurate guess?

[Michael Fallon]

My hon. Friend tempts me, but I am afraid that, much as I would like to do so, I am not able to speculate about the terms currently being negotiated with Electricité de France.

Finally on this group, amendments 28 and 29 seek to stop nuclear and fossil fuel generation from participating in the capacity market, which is designed to ensure the security of future electricity supplies. To ensure the most efficient mix of capacity and to avoid favouring specific technologies, the market needs to be technology neutral and support a range of generation sources, such as from fossil fuels, existing hydroelectric and nuclear plant and the demand-side response. I can confirm, however, that we do not intend to allow plant receiving a contract for difference, including new nuclear plant receiving a CFD, to participate in the capacity market. We do, of course, expect existing nuclear plant to play an important role.

Let me deal with some of the wider issues in this group of amendments, including bill impacts, biomass, liquidity and so forth. Amendments 32 and 33 specifically relate to biomass. I would like to thank my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey) for raising this issue. His amendment 32 seeks to define biomass in the Bill. Let me make it clear to him that I see no problem with the definition he has drafted, but I suggest that this would be better left to secondary legislation, which would give us the flexibility to amend the definition over time to reflect changes in technologies or, indeed, in the evidence.

In respect of amendment 33, I would not want to limit the amount of support that an individual biomass generator could receive under a CFD, or to impose a condition that biomass generation greater than 15 megawatts could receive support only if it utilised combined heat and power or carbon capture and storage. That would risk excluding efficient forms of biomass generation or forcing all new generation to include combined heat or power, or carbon capture and storage equipment, which it might not be possible to utilise effectively, and I think that it would have the unintended consequence of increasing costs for consumers.