Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Nia Griffith Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) on an excellent maiden speech on a subject that is obviously dear to his heart.

I would like to look at the reality and the practicality of putting things into practice, as opposed to the fine words. Saying that we want stricter targets must be followed up with the right finance and help to make that happen. I am worried that the coalition agreement and the Queen’s Speech focus on wanting to do certain things, but do not put in the wherewithal to do so. One thing that manufacturers always bring up with me is certainty. They want to know whether they can have certainty that there will be a market for their goods or that the right forms of incentive will be in place for people to buy their goods, particularly in the case of microgeneration. If people are going to buy solar panels or wind turbines, there needs to be an incentive for them to do so. The manufacturers need to know in advance if we are going to promote electric cars. They do a lot of work to develop prototypes and they need to know that there will be an incentive for people to buy those products.

I am concerned that the cuts announced in the business budget this week could stifle the very types of manufacturing that we wish to encourage. We need to encourage that manufacturing now, otherwise we will miss the boat and other countries will take the opportunity to develop the new techniques that we need to make more sustainable cars and more useful devices that will produce renewable energy or be more energy efficient. There is a real danger. For example, one company in my constituency, Filsol, which makes solar panels, relies heavily on knowing not only what the situation will be for the individual private consumer, but what will be done through the public purse.

Filsol was a supplier in the huge renewable programmes in the heads of the valleys, making buildings in the housing stock more sustainable. However, those programmes were obviously directed and funded largely through the Welsh Assembly Government, who now face enormous cuts. Whether we are talking about public procurement or motivating the private sector to purchase, we have a responsibility to our manufacturing industry to ensure that we get ahead, do not miss the boat and do not lose the manufacturing base for a whole new generation of products to other countries. Indeed, what I have said of the Welsh Assembly could be said of the regional development agencies in England.

One thing that my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband)—he is now the shadow Secretary of State—did when he was in office was get through the feed-in tariff legislation, so that from April, people have been able to apply for feed-in tariffs for their microgeneration. However, I would like a reassurance from the new Secretary of State not only that the scheme will continue, but that it will be extended to cover the pioneers who installed their microgeneration equipment some time ago, so that the energy that they now produce can be eligible for feed-in tariffs. It is unfair that the people who made the effort when things were difficult and people were perhaps sceptical should now miss out on the opportunity to benefit from feed-in tariffs.

We talk a lot about localism, and, although I would be the first to champion local people’s rights to have their say and influence planning decisions, I am also concerned that there needs to be an overview. The example that I want to use is that of biomass. In many areas, local planners will decide whether a particular site is suitable for a biomass power station and whether to go ahead with it, but no one seems to be looking into the cumulative effect of all the applications. The Department does not hold statistics on the number of applications that have been submitted, which now number a couple of dozen; nor does it look at where the material to fuel the power stations is going to come from. It is no longer a matter of scraping up the material from beneath our forests; we are now talking about enormous volumes of forestry that are going to be destroyed in order to feed our power stations. We do not have that amount of forestry, and the vast majority of the material will have to be imported. Much of it will come from areas with forestry and biodiversity that we want to preserve.

Before the Copenhagen summit, we were excited by the thought that forestry was going to be included in the talks. We were discussing how to incentivise the preservation of the wonderful forests of the world. The situation that we now face, however, is similar to the realisation that we had about biofuels. Land has been taken over for the production of biofuels by ripping up forests or by taking over areas originally designed for food production, and the same could happen for the production of biomass. We have not reached that situation yet, because we have not calculated the volume that we would need to fuel the two dozen or so power stations that are currently going through the planning process. This worries me, and I think that the Department needs to have a strategic overview of where we are going with biomass.

I should also like the incoming Government to consider carefully the need to ensure fair competition, and to review the role of Ofgem. I note that that has been mentioned in the coalition document. I want to highlight the use of liquefied petroleum gas by householders in rural areas. There is an estate in a village called Llannon in my constituency, in which 20 houses are all linked in to one supplier, Flogas. By some extraordinary mechanism, no one is able to get out of their contract with Flogas, because as long as one household is tied in, they are all bound to be supplied by the company. They would like to look elsewhere—like everyone, they want to be able to look around and get the best price—but they are completely subject to the whim of Flogas. Ofgem does not seem to have the power to intervene in such situations. I would like to have a meeting with the Secretary of State, if he would allow that, to look into this issue and to see what can be done to free up the market for householders in rural areas who are dependent on LPG, so that they no longer need to be tied to one supplier.

Another issue that worries me considerably is the lack of any further legislation in the Queen’s Speech on water. We brought in the Flood and Water Management Act 2010, in which we were determined to bring together the issues raised in the Walker report, the Cave report and the Pitt report. The legislation was taken through the House by my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) just before the end of the last Parliament. There remain, however, some outstanding issues relating to water poverty and to how we should deal with the disparity in water costs between the different regions. For example, Wales and parts of the south-west have huge costs compared with some of the more industrialised and urban areas of the United Kingdom. Coastal erosion was mentioned by the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) in her maiden speech today, and that issue also needs to be tackled. It would have been nice to see those issues included in the coalition agreement.

I also want to find out what support the Government will give to anaerobic digestion. A lot of work has been done on this matter to date. I note the use of the words “to promote” in the Government’s proposals, and I hope that that will translate into some proper help to get this excellent technology going. That will not be easy, as it can sometimes provoke local opposition. Community groups are trying to get it off the ground, but they need clear guidelines and help, as well as a guarantee of the prices that they can expect to get for the fuels that they produce. That will help them to raise the investment that they need to set up these technologies.

I very much welcome many of the fine words in the coalition agreement and in the Queen’s Speech, but we need an absolute guarantee that the money will be put in, as well as the words, so that we can make the necessary progress and not fall behind. We are determined to be the world leader, and we must not leave it to all the other countries to get on the new technology bandwagon and leave us behind. That would leave our manufacturing greatly depleted, rather than in the leading position that it ought to be in.