Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Michael Gove and Stephen Kinnock

Monday 22nd April 2024 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The new national planning policy framework, as enacted by this Front-Bench team, will ensure that local voices determine the shape of local communities.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

My constituents who live on the Abbottsmoor estate in Port Talbot are locked into paying unjustified and extortionate ground rent fees and charges for poor maintenance. Will the Secretary of State commit to strengthening the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Bill by ensuring that all leaseholders have the right to vary their lease, setting ground rents to a peppercorn, ensuring that premiums are as cheap as possible, regulating managing agents, and abolishing forfeiture?

[Michael Gove]

I always listen with respect to arguments made by a Kinnock, and in this case, I think the hon. Gentleman is broadly—broadly—in the right territory.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Michael Gove and Stephen Kinnock

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I look forward to the intervention from the hon. Gentleman who represents the energy-intensive steel town of Port Talbot.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for giving way; he is being very generous. He talks about the importance of jobs and energy-intensive industries. Is he aware that Labour has committed to a steel renewal fund, which will facilitate the transition from blast furnace technology to electric arc furnace technology, which is vital for the future of the Port Talbot steelworks in my constituency? Can he set out whether his Government have anything like that sort of plan? Is he aware of the fact that Tata Steel has said that if the Government do not make up their mind as to whether they will support our steel industry by July, it will close down one of the blast furnaces?

[Michael Gove]

First, the hon. Gentleman is a fantastic advocate for his constituency and the steel sector. Secondly, as far as I know, the Labour proposals that have been put forward, which we welcome, are not funded. [Interruption.] No, I do not believe they are. Thirdly, it is the case that if we are to have a sustainable steel industry, we need to move towards its decarbonisation and a bigger role for hydrogen, but no scientist and no one in the steel industry thinks that will be an answer tomorrow.

As has been pointed out, we will need, alongside the development of those technologies, to ensure diversity of supply of the different types of energy needed in steel production. That is why the independent planning inspector said to the Government that we should go ahead with a new coalmine producing coking coal in Cumbria, and it is why the Opposition, without even having read the planning inspector’s report, once again put ideology before jobs and growth in rejecting it. I will always listen to the hon. Gentleman when it comes to the steel industry, but I will not take lectures from Opposition Front Benchers when they set their face against precisely the type of jobs that will help sustain steel for the future.

Levelling Up

Debate between Michael Gove and Stephen Kinnock

Wednesday 2nd February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She grew up in Accrington. Members like her, who know what it is to grow up in an industrial town, know what happened in the past, including under Labour, and know that we need investment, business and ambition. That is what this White Paper has.

[Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)]

The all-party parliamentary group on the UK shared prosperity fund, which I am proud to chair, has been calling on the Government to ensure that not a single penny is lost in the transition from the European structural funds to the SPF, but calculations by the Welsh Government confirm that the SPF will leave the UK close to £1 billion worse off and that Wales will get £750 million less. Will the Secretary of State meet our APPG to discuss how to ensure the nations and regions of our country do not get short-changed?

[Michael Gove]

That is a fair point. On this occasion, I think that the calculations made by the Welsh Finance Minister, Vaughan Gething, for whom I have great respect, were wrong, but I would be more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and others to take them through our approach.