Property Taxes

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Mel Stride (Central Devon) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes recent reports that the Government is considering a wide range of increases to taxes on property; notes the Prime Minister’s commitment last year not to impose Capital Gains Tax on primary residences; and calls on the Government not to introduce an annual property levy which would tax the family home, higher rates of Council Tax, or a land value tax, or to lower the thresholds or further increase liability to Inheritance Tax, for example, by changing the seven-year gift rule.

I trust you had a good recess, Mr Speaker. I am absolutely certain that the Deputy Prime Minister also had a good recess. We saw many photographs of her down at the seaside, just off the coast in a rubber dingy—rather like many of the other photographs we saw over the summer, given this Government’s reckless policies on illegal migration. She was probably celebrating the acquisition of another property for her property empire, but that celebration was perhaps slightly tinged with a nagging doubt as to whether she had indeed paid enough stamp duty. Well, we will get to the bottom of that in due course.

Those who could not avoid paying the taxes imposed by this Government are businesses right up and down our country, many of which I took the time to visit during the recess. In the leisure sector alone, some 80,000 jobs have been destroyed by the national insurance rises, and this has particularly affected those taking their first job, younger workers, part-time workers and female workers. Jobs are being destroyed.

While the Deputy Prime Minister was lounging on her boat with her wine, this Government were all at sea, like a cork bobbing on the tide, with no control over the events swirling around them. When it came to the economy, although eclipsed by the calamities around illegal migration, we saw recently the panicked reshuffle of the Treasury Front Bench. I offer my congratulations to the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Dan Tomlinson) and warmly welcome him to his new role. However, I should also tell him that he is joining a sinking ship, whose captain has just had all her authority stripped from her, while all his comrades down below deck are fiercely trying to bail it out. I also offer a fond farewell to the former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), who no doubt thought he was very clever when he leapt off the sinking ship. He will not be feeling quite so clever when he discovers that the place to which they have sent him is even more dysfunctional than the Treasury Front Bench.

Among all this news of arrivals to our shores, we have had a cruel summer of speculation around tax. We have seen in the skies clouds of kites flown largely by the Treasury as to what taxes it is going to put up. It has all been tax, tax and tax. I am reminded of the Beatles’ song “Taxman”:

“I’ll tax the street,

If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,

If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat,

If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.”

When it comes to tax, it is not so much “Good Day Sunshine” as “Help!”[Laughter.] Okay—it was a bit hammy, but it was worth a try. I was going to try “Penny Lane” as well, but I drew the line there.

It is worth examining how we got to this point, for a reckoning for our country is surely coming. This will be a story for all time.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Mel Stride]

I will do so momentarily.

It started with broken promises. This was a party that said during the run-up to the general election that it had no intention of raising taxes left, right and centre, and yet within a month or two, this Government did precisely that, with devastating consequences: tax rises on businesses that stifle growth. They talked down the economy by confecting a £22 billion black hole that did not exist. What an irony it was that it was they who brought in the Office for Budget Responsibility to decide whether that £22 billion black hole existed and that the OBR said it could not legitimise the claim—the Government were wrong.

What happened with spending and borrowing? It got completely out of control. The combination of passing on price rises because of the national insurance increases, and the extra borrowing and spending, has led to higher inflation. We are an outlier when it comes to inflation.

[Sir Mel Stride]

In a moment.

That in turn has seen interest rates higher for longer and the servicing costs on our national debt now running at over £100 billion a year—more than twice our defence spend. I will now give way to whoever was trying to intervene behind me.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

Would my right hon. Friend agree that correcting this loss of market confidence demands decisive action from the Government at the Budget, and that that decisive action cannot be taken solely on the tax side? The tax side is what has driven us into this loop. We need decisive action on spending and particularly on welfare if we are to see some restoration of market confidence and get ourselves out of this rut.

[Sir Mel Stride]

My right hon. Friend, as ever, is absolutely right. The reality, as we see in the bond yields at the moment, is that the markets have no confidence in the ability of this Government to get on top of spending. We saw the farce of a Government who came into office scrapping the £5 billion of welfare savings that were already baked into the OBR’s scorecard because we had brought them in, and attempting to bring forward their own reforms only for their Back Benchers to vote them down. My right hon. Friend is so right; this Government do not have the will or the plan to deal with spending, and that is at the heart of the reason why we will all be punished and pay the price of more taxes come the Budget in November.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I have already shared with the House the classic example of the number of people who have left this country because of a punitive tax regime and the costs of that.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

Further to the excellent point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), the Labour party denigrates wealthy individuals who choose to come to this country. However, it is about not just the tax that they provide, but the jobs and opportunities they create by investing in constituencies up and down the country. This country has prospered for hundreds of years by being open and welcoming to inward investment. If we lose that, we lose a key plank of the competitiveness and growth that have been associated with our economy.

[Sir Mel Stride]

That is right. We live in a highly mobile world; it is easy for people with substantial wealth or money to invest to go anywhere in the world. We have to remain competitive, and this Government are making us less competitive. My right hon. Friend refers to unemployment, but just look at the record—should we have expected any more from this Government? No, not really. Every single Labour Government in history have left unemployment higher when they left office than it was at the time they came into office. What have we seen on unemployment since this Government have been in office? It has increased every single month since they have been in power.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Murray]

I am not going to engage in speculation about tax measures or any of the mechanics around them. The hon. Member and his hon. Friends will simply have to wait until 26 November to hear the specifics of the Budget. At that point, I am sure that he and his colleagues will have plenty to say.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

I genuinely congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his appointment as Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I have always found him to be an honest and straightforward speaker in the House and he deserves his position. On the point about speculation, can he confirm reports that the Government are looking again at welfare? Surely he will agree with me that, in any process of fiscal consolidation, one must look to tax rises and to spending cuts. There has been a lot of reporting about there being further measures on welfare, so will there be further measures on welfare under consideration—yes or no?

[James Murray]

I thank the right hon. Member for his kind words. As he will know, welfare measures are already going through Parliament and being investigated by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Social Security and Disability through the review that he is undertaking. This Government are determined to ensure that the safety net is there for the people who need it, and that the people who can work have the support they need to get and maintain a job.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 4th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Emma Reynolds]

Harlow is home to one of the UK’s largest supercomputers. We are taking forward the AI action plan and we also have the tech adoption review, which will look at how we can unlock the potential of AI in our high-growth sectors.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

T9.   Attracting high net worth individuals to spend more time in the United Kingdom drives jobs, growth and, crucially, tax revenues, but unfortunately the opposite is happening in the UK right now. Will the Chancellor use the spring statement to look at the statutory residence test and, in particular, the ties rules to see whether we can incentivise people to spend more time in the UK, not the other way around?

[James Murray]

As part of the reforms announced at the autumn Budget, we are modernising the system for people from overseas spending time in the UK with a new residence-based test. We are always looking at ways to encourage people from overseas to spend time in and invest in the UK and to help grow our economy.

Growing the UK Economy

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I thank the Chair of the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee for her question. She and her Committee know the huge advantage we have in the UK with our brilliant universities and research and development ecosystem, which is why we are supporting them and putting rocket boosters underneath their activity to develop world-leading and frontier research and innovation, and stimulate economic growth across the country.

My hon. Friend is right that the development in Manchester is a broad set of privately financed housing and commercial opportunities, as well as the work that Manchester United wants to do with its football stadium. I should inform the House that I cannot give a running commentary on the stadium applications for all football clubs across the country, and she will have to forgive me for not knowing the latest plans for Newcastle.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

I welcome the Government’s conversion on a third runway at Heathrow. The sort of connectivity that that enables, particularly with fast-growing economies in Asia and the Gulf, is essential to growth. However, what assurance can the Chief Secretary to the Treasury give the House that this project will not subsequently be stymied by an absolutist approach driven by ideology towards carbon emissions, which will drive it into the ground? We have been down this path before.

[Darren Jones]

The right hon. Member has been down this path before because it was his Government who went down it and blocked all these developments over the past 14 years. This Government are working on reforms to the planning system, looking at national policy statements, thinking about skills and infrastructure supply chains, and unlocking private capital because we are a Government who want to get Britain building again, and not block the projects that were stalled for years under the previous Administration.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 21st January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Rachel Reeves]

I join my hon. Friend in congratulating Intasite on its 10th anniversary as a business, and on the rapid growth it is enjoying. The announcement we were able to make last year on the carbon capture and storage work in Teesside will be a big driver of jobs and growth there, and I look forward to working with him and local businesses in Stockton to make that a reality.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Does the Chancellor of the Exchequer propose funding the reported £9 billion bill to the Mauritians for the continued use of Diego Garcia through higher taxes, more borrowing or spending cuts?

[Rachel Reeves]

We are in discussions with the new Administration in the United States around the future of Diego Garcia. We will set out details in the spending review, as the right hon. Gentleman would expect.

Finance Bill

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[James Murray]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question on the impact of the policies on children’s education. I will come to the details shortly, but to give him an overview of the forecast impacts, we estimate that ultimately there will be around 37,000 fewer pupils in the private sector. That is a combination of pupils who will never enter the private sector in the first place and those who will leave. They represent around 6% of private school pupils. We expect most of the moves to take place at natural transition points, such as when a child moves from primary to secondary school or at the beginning of exam courses.

[Sir Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

If the intention of the Government is that the moves should happen at natural transition points, why did they decide to impose the change from January? Whatever one’s views on the merits of the policy, that is not really fair on the parents affected. Indeed, one could say it is cruel.

[James Murray]

It is right that these changes be implemented as soon as possible to raise the funding that we need to deliver on our education priorities. As a result of the policies coming into effect in January, we will raise a forecast £460 million of additional revenue in 2024-25. We are ambitious for the state education system, and we want to get on with delivering the changes that we committed to in the manifesto.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wild]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Over our 14 years in government, one of the things that consecutive Education Secretaries did was to work with the independent sector precisely to open up those facilities, in recognition of the public good and benefit to their communities that they were delivering.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

Further to the excellent intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Hinckley and Bosworth (Dr Evans), that is exactly what happens with schools in my constituency. Haberdashers’ school partners with 1,400 state school pupils every single week. When the Minister talks about finding efficiencies, these are exactly the sorts of programmes that will suffer. There is no other place for those students to go if they leave private schools in my constituency, so on both counts everyone is worse off. That is one of the inequities of the policy.

[James Wild]

My right hon. Friend makes a powerful point, which reflects the rash nature of the policy and the inadequacy of the impact assessment, which does not address those issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wild]

We can but hope that the hon. Member will join us in the Lobby tonight, and also that he will one day develop the attuned knowledge that my right hon. Friend has of the tax system and the changes that were introduced in the last Parliament.

Let me add that the Association of School and College Leaders has said that there is

“increased anxiety among school leaders”

who are having to deal with the change in the middle of the academic year.

This is the first time an education tax has been introduced, which is why we need to oppose it and review its impact. The Government’s very limited impact assessment estimates that 37,000 more pupils will come into the state sector, at a cost of £270 million a year. It also concedes that there will be a loss of places equivalent to the closure of 100 more independent schools over the next three years than would otherwise be predicted. That assessment is thin, and the Government’s consultation was flawed.

[Sir Oliver Dowden]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. The Government’s impact assessment also assumes that the loss of places will be spread uniformly across the country, which will not be the case. In many constituencies, particularly those represented by Conservatives, a large number of students are at private schools, and the loss of those places will have a significant impact on local schools where there are not the places to absorb them.

Tax Avoidance and Evasion

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mel Stride]

I am pleased that the right hon. Lady has raised this issue, because the robustness of this tax gap figure is extremely high. The International Monetary Fund says it sets one of the highest standards in the world. The figure is audited and agreed by the National Audit Office and is made public in HMRC’s annual report and accounts.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

The Minister rightly talks about the need for the wealthiest to pay their fair share. Does he agree that one of the most obscene things under the last Labour Government was the fact that cleaners were having to pay more tax than the hedge-fund owners who employed them? It was a Conservative Government who closed that so-called Mayfair loophole.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. It is this Government, for example, who raised the personal allowance to £11,500, taking 3 million to 4 million of the lowest paid out of tax altogether. It is this Government who brought in the national living wage, and it is this Government who will go on ensuring that those who have the broadest shoulders pay their fair share of tax.

Budget Resolutions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

One kept promise on which the hon. Lady could have focused is the creation of 2.7 million jobs in our economy since 2010. They call themselves the Labour party, Madam Deputy Speaker, but they could not care less.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend think that the £500 billion-worth of additional spending proposed by the Labour party would do anything to increase or reduce the deficit?

[Sajid Javid]

As always, my hon. Friend makes a good point. Conservative Members know that, if implemented, Labour’s plans would result in not only more spending but more debt. Labour Members would increase the deficit and return us to another Labour record-breaking recession if they ever had the chance.

Oral Answers to Questions

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

As we have made clear, the arrangements we have with the European Union, and with any of the organisations and funds the EU operates, remain to be discussed during the negotiation phase. If the hon. Gentleman is right and we end up not participating in such arrangements in the future, we will clearly have to make separate similar arrangements on a UK-only basis—or, indeed, on an individual nation within the UK basis.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

14. Does the Chancellor agree that alongside large-scale investment in infrastructure, such as the Thameslink upgrade, relatively small amounts of money on local roads and station facilities can rapidly improve journey times and therefore boost productivity?

[Mr Hammond]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. It is often the smaller local projects that deliver the greatest benefit. They do not have the same kind of grandstanding possibilities around them and therefore are not always quite as favoured, but they are often the most effective way of intervening. They have another benefit: they can often be delivered very quickly by local levels of government, rather than having to go through many years of planning.

The Economy and Work

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Thursday 26th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[John McDonnell]

I do not want to be discourteous to any Members, but as you suggest, Mr Deputy Speaker, I will take only a limited number of interventions.

On the crash, let us be clear—[Interruption.] Well, let us talk about the crash. The policy of deregulating the banking system, turning the City of London into a casino, was the policy pursued by the Conservative Government for the previous 30 years.

Let us move on to the criterion of growth. Growth has been revised downwards for every year for the rest of this decade, and when the OBR revised its forecasts downwards, the Chancellor’s entire Budget plan was shot to pieces. He has been left with a £4.8 billion black hole of committed spending, but there is no committed funding. It is nonsensical to claim, as the Government’s Queen’s Speech did, that the public finances are being placed on a “secure footing” when there are gaping holes in the Budget and the Institute for Fiscal Studies thinks there is only a 50:50 chance of meeting the Government’s own fiscal surplus target. This is betting the nation’s finances on the equivalent of tossing a coin. There is nothing responsible and there is nothing “secure” in setting unrealistic and politically motivated targets for public spending cuts.

It is useless to preach to us about the need for a “stronger economy” when, by his actions in office for six years, the Chancellor has methodically undermined the economy. This was his choice. Austerity was a political choice, not an economic necessity. We all now live and are still living with its consequences. Because it was the wrong choice to make, the Chancellor has failed, and it is the British people who are bearing the cost.

The Chancellor has piled failure upon failure, but at the centre of it all is the failure to sustain productivity. Productivity is the key to growth in any modern economy, and the surest way to achieve increased productivity is through increased investment. Increased investment means installing new equipment and replacing old infrastructure, yet business investment remains weak. When business investment is weak, the Government should step up to make sure vital, world-class infrastructure is provided—from high-speed rail to high-speed broadband. There is now consensus from the International Monetary Fund to the OECD, and from the CBI to the TUC, in urging Governments—not just in this country but across the world—about the need to invest in the future, but this Government are clinging to their fiscal surplus target, which is set actually to cut real-terms Government investment over the course of this Parliament. Mr Deputy Speaker, you could not imagine a more perverse and inadequate economic policy.

Behind the failure to invest lies the failure of our economic institutions. Too many of them have been captured by special interests or place short-term gain ahead of long-term growth. We have major corporations, which are sitting on a cash pile of up to £700 billion, paying out high salaries to senior executives while failing to invest. It is no wonder that in the past month we have seen a series of shareholders revolts against the remuneration packages of some chief executives.

We have a Business Department that does not actually believe in supporting business and refuses even to mention the words “industrial strategy”. In Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, we have a department for tax collection that does not believe in collecting taxes—not, at least, from major corporations. That was demonstrated by the fact that when it struck a deal with Google that reflected an effective tax rate in single digits, the Chancellor calls it a “major success”. I have written to the Chancellor to make sure he urgently contacts the French authorities, so that any information they find during their investigation into Google’s Paris headquarters is shared with us to give us a better understanding of Google’s operations in the UK.

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman tell us exactly how much money was raised from Google when Labour was last in power?

[John McDonnell]

It is interesting to note that the inquiry into Google was started under the Labour Government. It is also interesting that the last assessment that was made, not by us but by the Financial Times—an independent organisation—said that the measures introduced by that Labour Government would reap tax rewards 10 times greater than anything introduced by this Government. After six years, the Chancellor has no one to blame but himself.

The Queen’s Speech furnished us with plenty more unreal promises. The Government say that they

“will support aspiration and promote home ownership”.

Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of our young people who now have no serious chance of ever owning a home of their own. Home ownership has fallen to its lowest level in decades on this Chancellor’s watch. Rough sleeping has risen in London by 30% in the past year, the biggest rise since the current reporting procedures were introduced. Nearly 70,000 families are now living in temporary accommodation, including bed and breakfast accommodation. Nine in 10 under-35s on modest incomes could be frozen out of home ownership by 2025 according to independent analysis.

Energy BILL [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Oliver Dowden Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)]

rose—

[Oliver Dowden (Hertsmere) (Con)]

rose—

[Clive Lewis]

I will make some progress through the list before giving way. The Government are attempting to sell off the Green Investment Bank and have baled out of their manifesto commitment by cutting £1 billion from carbon capture and storage. The list goes on. The early closure of the renewables obligations is the next chapter in the long, sorry list that I have just read out.

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman missed out a few things from his list—for example, the fact that 98% of solar panels were introduced under this Government; or that wind power, which has trebled under this Government, is set to increase by another 50%; or that we are on course to meet our 30% renewables target; or that we have doubled investment in renewables. Perhaps the next time he reads out his list he can add those further points to provide some balance.

[Clive Lewis]

I will come back to that point. Let us have a look at the renewable energy country attractiveness index, which saw a major reshuffling of the 10 most attractive countries for renewable energy potential and growth. One of the biggest losers was the United Kingdom, which dropped out of the top 10 for the first time since the information was published back in 20013. It was specifically because

“a wave of policy announcements reducing or removing various forms of support for renewable energy projects has left investors and consumers baffled”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis]

I will come back to that. I am informed that it relates to climate change commitments, not the renewables that this Government and the previous coalition Government have invested in, or as my list just demonstrated, have been cutting left, right and centre. But let me give you a counter-quote from Neil Woodford, head of Equity Income, one of the best performing funds. In December 2014, he said:

“The electricity industry has for too long been the victim of a misguided, short-term and politically inspired policy mess. The Government has to be held to account for its policy decisions. As long as it (and its predecessors) believes that it can arbitrarily move goal posts in this way, without appropriate economic justification, the more likely it will be that the industry will continue to shun the necessary investment in electricity generation infrastructure that the economy so clearly needs.”

[Oliver Dowden]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Clive Lewis]

I will push on. I have a few more of those chocolate sweets I might give away. If successful, the Government will be going back on their own legislation and closing the renewables obligation for onshore wind a year earlier on 1 April 2016, a date that will not be lost on any hon. Members here. If successful, the Government will have adversely singled out the most cost-effective, low-carbon technology available to us, at a time when the Secretary of State herself admits that the UK is on track to miss its legally blinding EU obligation on renewable energy by an estimated 50 TWh hours, a shortfall of almost 25%.

The Government’s answer is ever more reliance on the EU emissions trading scheme—a scheme, as we have already heard while discussing clause 80, we need less reliance on in coming years, if we are to attain the most cost-effective pathway to our carbon budget commitments. So why is there an almost obsessive compulsion to attack one of the country’s most successful renewable forms of energy?

The only answer I can glean from the debate so far is that it boils down to a few ambiguous lines in the Tory party manifesto which it is fair to question. It says:

“We will end any new public subsidy for onshore wind.”

First, these are not public subsidies. Strictly speaking, the payments come out of bills, not the public purse. While the word “new” is also open to a broad interpretation, let us not forget that this is an existing, not a new subsidy—a subsidy that was already closing as part of the Energy Act 2013.

The Minister will also be aware of the huge amount of consensus and engagement with industry, proper consultation and pre-legislative scrutiny, that arrived at the 2017 wind-up day for the renewables obligation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis]

I will come to the point about the cost to billpayers later in my speech. Even with the retrospective grace period the Government have announced, many renewables companies will be adversely affected. Michael Rieley, senior policy manager for Scottish Renewables, said:

“However, many of our members will be bitterly disappointed that ministers are not going to allow projects which have submitted planning applications to be given a grace period.”

More importantly, as I have mentioned already, this retrospective chop-and-change approach by Government is damaging investor confidence in the wider energy sector.

[Oliver Dowden]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way to another East Anglian MP? [Interruption.] I do not agree with the designation but people at a higher pay grade have determined that.

[Clive Lewis]

I will give way.

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the poor investment record, and says that companies are being put off investment. Can he confirm that nearly £52 billion has been invested in renewables since 2010 when the Conservatives first came to power?

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It is a pleasure, Mr Bailey, to be on the Committee. I had not intended to make a speech about the group of amendments but, as ever, Government Members’ contributions have led me to get to my feet. Many of their arguments have not been robust enough; many of the positions advanced have, quite frankly, been flawed and deserve further attention.

My starting point is that anyone considering the needs of our energy system right now has to admit that the most pressing priority is to ensure that our credentials for investability are maintained and strengthened. Our energy system requires billions and billions of pounds of investment, partly because so much of our generating capacity is going off line in the next few years, at the end of its natural life; partly because the capacity market has not worked as well as was hoped in incentivising new gas; partly because Hinkley C is in as much trouble as it was always going to be—we do not know whether it will ever be there when we need it—and also because we need to take coal out of the system, as a clear priority shared by all political parties. The need, therefore, to ensure that our energy structure is an attractive jurisdiction in which to invest must absolutely be maintained.

Much of the argument that has been advanced has been about the changes to onshore wind being clearly signposted in the Tory manifesto—indeed, demanded by the windy caucus, which is a wonderful new term to add to our political discourse. I do not dispute that; ideological opposition to onshore wind has been a part of the modern Conservative party for some time. I do not disagree with the legitimacy of the move any more than I disagree with the legitimacy of all the other bad things the Conservative Government are doing to the UK, but my point is that there is surely a duty on the Government to ensure that the decision is taken in such a way as not to damage the UK’s overall credentials as a jurisdiction in which to invest.

[Oliver Dowden]

The hon. Gentleman says that he accepts the legitimacy of the Government’s pursuing the measure, given that it was in the Conservative manifesto. Does he therefore accept the illegitimacy of Members of the House of Lords—Labour and Liberal Democrat Members who lost the general election—seeking to remove the provisions from the Bill, against the will of the electorate, as expressed less than a year ago?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

The hon. Gentleman essentially asks whether I agree with the illegitimacy of parliamentary democracy, and I have to tell him that I am afraid I do not.

[Oliver Dowden]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept the Salisbury convention, which is that if something is contained in a party’s manifesto and that party wins a majority, the other place should respect the will of the elected Chamber?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

That is not what I believe has happened; indeed, a small section of my comments will address that. I believe that two positions are advanced in the Conservative manifesto and the Bill: one is that the RO should close early for onshore wind and the other is that local communities should have the final say in the projects. When I get on to that section I will tell the hon. Gentleman why I believe that those two objectives are in competition and have led to contradictions in the Bill.

Our electricity system figures for the past 24 hours show that wind has contributed something like 14% of our overall electricity need, which is just 1% less than our traditional coal-generating capacity. The issue is not, therefore, insignificant. It is hugely important; right now, wind is keeping the lights on.