Energy Bill [Lords]

Olivia Blake Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 5th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax]

It is. I have read many articles, not least by Mr Bean who, as we know, is a car expert. He wrote a very good article in The Guardian about why we are not quite ready for battery cars. If my wife or daughter is travelling from A to B, I want her to get there safely, as she can in a petrol or diesel car, without having to wait in a petrol section for some minutes to recharge her car, which then takes half an hour or so.

Our actions have consequences, and I urge the Government to think this through very carefully. We cannot impoverish our country to meet what I would call, in some cases, an almost cultish policy to turn this country into something we cannot afford. When we can afford it, and when it works, that is when we should adopt all these policies. I urge caution as the Government go forward.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

I declare an interest, as my husband is the company secretary of Sheffield Renewables, a community benefit society that funds, develops, owns and operates renewable energy systems in Sheffield.

I rise to speak in support of a number of amendments that would be vital additions to the Bill. It was a pleasure to sit on the Public Bill Committee to debate, at great length, many of the issues that have been raised today. I still feel the Bill is missing its intended purpose, as the Government put it, to

“deliver a cleaner, more affordable and more secure energy system for the long term.”

We are in a climate and nature emergency, and we are now seeing its effects. We are also facing the worst cost of living crisis in decades. Although I am pleased the Minister has listened to Members on both sides of the House on the hydrogen levy, there is still a lot more to do.

The Bill could have been our opportunity to tackle these issues head on, transitioning away from climate-wrecking fossil fuels while making energy affordable for everyone. Sadly, in its current form, it fails on those fronts. First and foremost, the Bill will fail to make energy more affordable for my constituents. National Energy Action has warned that 6.3 million households could be trapped in fuel poverty this winter, and by 2024 some households will face spending up to a quarter of their income on energy bills.

We need to overhaul our broken energy pricing system, not have more tinkering around the edges. I am proud to support new clause 36, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), which would introduce a national energy guarantee. This idea needs to be considered, as we need to make sure that the burden of the transition does not fall on those who are least able to meet it.

Secondly and shockingly, the Bill fails to deliver any energy efficiency measures. There is nothing about how we will achieve the targets that have been set. The latest CCC report is clear that the Government need to rapidly scale up and accelerate energy efficiency to stand any hope of meeting legally binding decarbonisation targets. Obviously, the greenest energy is energy that is not used, and the more we can do to reduce the need for energy in poor-quality housing the better.

New clauses 33 and 35 aim to correct the current position by making it a legal requirement for the Government to produce an energy demand reduction plan and providing local authorities with funding for the decarbonisation of homes. I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) for tabling those new clauses, and I urge the Government to support them.

Finally, the Bill fails to decarbonise at speed and scale. Again, the latest CCC report could not be clearer:

“Expansion of fossil fuel production is not in line with Net Zero”.

New clauses 2 and 29 would prohibit coalmines and new oil and gas respectively. New clause 30 would phase down UK petroleum, and new clause 59 would decarbonise electricity supply by 2030. They could and should have been central pillars of the Bill. They are about how we can transform our energy system and meet Labour’s ambitious plans to be a green energy superpower by 2030. However, the Government have removed many new clauses that were won in the Lords—for example, the one on banning new coalmines—and Ministers are refusing to support any such measures today. Instead, they waited until MPs went home over the summer to give the green light to hundreds of new North sea oil and gas licences, without proper scrutiny, in a damning indictment of this Government’s record on climate action. Those are not the only amendments that would help to raise the ambition in this Bill that the Government have removed.

Finally, I wish to mention the importance of new clause 7. The treaty that has been outlined is holding us back and we need to be on the front foot with this. I hope that Ministers will reconsider whether or not we should be part of this treaty in the future.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

This is a great Bill and I congratulate the Government as it takes us a huge step forward. Back in 2015, when I believe the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) was the shadow Energy Minister, I was Energy Minister and we announced we were taking coal off the system by 2025. I recall that at that time the whole world was up in arms, saying, “Oh no, the lights will go out. This will never happen.” Yet by 2020 coal was almost off the system and today there is hardly ever any use of coal. That demonstrates what can happen when a Government set a direction of travel, put the funding behind it and let businesses and investors get on with it. It is a huge accolade for a Conservative Government, who then stand aside and let private investment come in. It is time that we committed ourselves to building new nuclear baseload, as that is vital. We can be proud of our achievements on offshore wind and the commitment now to carbon capture, usage and storage—that has been too long in coming but I am pleased to see it.

Time is tight, but I wish to refer to my new clause 60, which calls for a specific problem to be tackled in a specific way. We all have major concerns in our constituencies, where communities do not wish to see huge electricity pylons, great big wind turbines and great big industrial sites related to energy in their area. Yet we know that we need new onshore wind, lots of solar and lots of electricity pylons. My new clause proposes to make it much easier to build the 600 km of new electricity cabling and pylons that we need by 2030 to meet our power decarbonisation targets alongside major road and rail routes. As things stand, communities understandably object to these huge pieces of kit going through their areas, and then these things get delayed and delayed. In the past eight or so years, we have built only about 30 km of new pylons but we need about 600 km by 2030. We need to get our skates on. The Government can help by making it much easier for planning—