Points of Order
Olivia Blake Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Mr Deputy Speaker
I am grateful to the hon. Member for indicating that she was going to raise this matter. I am sure that all Members will wish to express their sympathies for her constituents. She has clearly pursued this important issue with tenacity. Indeed, I have been in the Chair and heard her raise this issue before. Everybody here understands why she wants this matter resolved. Ministers on the Treasury Bench will have heard her comments. Let me say that again: Ministers on the Treasury Bench will have heard her comments, and I hope that they will be able to respond to her speedily.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Local authorities and Sheffield City Council have declared a major incident in my constituency. In Stannington, in my constituency, 6,000 litres and counting of water have been pumped out of a gas main, and there is still a lot of water left in that gas main. That has impacted 2,000 properties, hundreds of which are still without gas since Friday. Some streets have been left with repeated power cuts, with no way to heat their homes effectively or to cook food. The Council Leader has said that the area is at risk of a humanitarian crisis. Tomorrow, snow is predicted, which will hamper efforts to get people back online. Residents need more support now. Hundreds of vulnerable residents have been identified, and the ground effort by Cadent, Yorkshire Water and the council has been huge, and I thank them for that.
However, I wrote to the Secretaries of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and to the Chancellor on Tuesday and I am yet to receive a full response. I am very conscious that the council needs not just money, but resources. Parts are needed to repair boilers and meters need to be replaced. This is a huge effort. Water is flowing out of people’s ovens, out of their fires and out of their boilers, which should be sealed, and getting past the water meter. This is an unprecedented incident and “novel”, as it has been described to me, which really needs some support and action to make sure that we have the right infrastructure on the ground. I do not think that it can be left to the local authorities to organise that.
Have you, Mr Deputy Speaker, had notice of any statements from any of the three Secretaries of State whose portfolios cover this matter? How can I best get action to make sure that we have a co-ordinated effort from this place to support my community, which is obviously really suffering?
Mr Deputy Speaker
I thank the hon. Member for raising that point of order. It sounds absolutely appalling and she is right to raise it today as a point of order. I have had no indication that any Minister is to make a statement further to the ones that we have already had. If that changes, clearly, the House will be notified in the usual manner. The Treasury Bench has heard what has been said, and I ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to make sure that these points get passed to the Departments that the hon. Member has mentioned.
Bill Presented
Pre-Payment Meters (Temporary Prohibition) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Wera Hobhouse, supported by Richard Foord, Mr Alistair Carmichael and Wendy Chamberlain, presented a Bill to prohibit the installation of new pre-payment meters for domestic energy customers before 31 March 2023; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the first time; to be read a Second time on Friday 3 February 2023, and to be printed (Bill 212).
Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill
Olivia Blake Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
Until recently, the debate on climate change was about the science and about whether global heating is caused by humans. It is important to say, however, that although the climate deniers argued about science and hockey stick graphs, that was not what gave their arguments momentum.
Let us be clear. There has long been overwhelming evidence that human CO2 emissions are causing global heating. The motor of climate denial was never a rational, scientific debate; it was about defending the financial interests of the fossil fuel lobby. Pseudoscientific arguments were the only form that that defence took. Now, after decades of campaigning, protesting and lobbying, the monumental efforts of climate campaigners have meant that it is politically very difficult to deny the reality of the climate emergency. The overwhelming scientific evidence has been joined by the international grassroots political movement calling for climate justice.
We are now seeing a different strategy for protecting oil and gas profits. We are being asked to choose between tackling the cost of living crisis and tackling the climate emergency, between energy security and meeting our Paris obligations. The decision to reverse fracking is part of that new and very cynical strategy. It is an argument that says that black is white, up is down and pulling more fossil fuels out of the ground is somehow a form of environmentalism. We should completely reject that argument, because it is nonsense.
The twin ecological and climate emergencies are two of the greatest existential threats that we face. They demand that we restore our natural environment, keep fossil fuels in the ground and make a transition to clean, renewable energy. Fracking takes us in exactly the opposite direction. The Climate Change Committee has warned that the moratorium should not be lifted without an independent review of the evidence on the climate impact. Has that review been done? No, of course not.
The process of fracking produces methane, which contributes to rising global temperatures. Research by NASA has shown that leaky gas production is one of the main drivers of methane emissions on the planet. In fact, during a single week of 2019, in a site in Lancashire, 4.2 tonnes of methane—equivalent to 142 flights—were released. Extracting shale gas is also environmentally damaging because the geography of the UK means that it is more likely to cause earthquakes and chemical flowback, with waters at significant risk of contamination and further significant ecological damage.
None of this will lower our energy bills or increase our energy security. Gas prices are set not by domestic supply, but by the international fossil fuel markets. Even if domestic production significantly affected international prices, the wells here would not make a difference to those prices. That is a falsehood.
Net Zero Strategy: High Court Ruling
Olivia Blake Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
I am surprised by the right hon. Gentleman’s response to this debate, because the summary of the findings highlights that the net zero strategy
“did not reveal that the quantitative analysis put before the Minister left a shortfall against the reductions required by CB6”.
Does the Minister agree that this House should have known that and also known how the Government planned to mitigate that? Are they not embarrassed that they felt that they could hide such an omission from this House, where we hold them to account?
Greg Hands
We have to understand the context, which is setting out where 95% of emissions will come from in carbon budget 6. CB6 covers the years 2033—not 2023—to 2037. If we were to have gone back 30 years and asked, “How will we do our emissions over the next 30 years?”, I venture to suggest that that would not have been an entirely accurate exercise. I think that 95% is very credible for CB6, which covers 2033 to 2037. It is worth pointing out again that the court judgment was on this very narrow aspect—it is not about the net zero strategy as a whole. It sounds as though the hon. Lady has read part of the net zero strategy, and I strongly commend that she goes through the whole thing in more detail.
Fairness at Work and Power in Communities
Olivia Blake Excerpts(2 years, 7 months ago)
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Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, because although the Government talk abstractly about levelling up the country and addressing the housing emergency, people in my constituency and throughout the country are paying the price of years of failed policy and Government inaction.
The proposed renter reform and social housing regulation Bills in the Queen’s Speech are once-in-a-generation opportunities to build a new system in which everyone’s right to safe and secure housing is protected, respected and guaranteed in law. It is vital that this opportunity is not squandered, and I will hold the Government’s feet to the fire to ensure that it is not because, I am sorry to say, their record to date has hardly been inspiring. Throughout the pandemic, we saw Ministers’ willingness to cast aside people in the rented sector. The covid crisis only confirmed what we already knew: that rents are too high, that renters’ rights are too precarious and that too often rented accommodation is unsafe or in poor condition.
Since I was elected in 2019, not a week has gone by in which I have not heard horror story after horror story from people in my Sheffield constituency about mould, damp, exposed asbestos, broken appliances, rats, vermin and many other issues. Tenants are afraid to speak out in case they face eviction or cannot re-sign their contract the following year. Renters are being gradually priced out of areas by landlords who are unchecked, unchallenged and feel no consequence for their actions.
One family I have been working with cannot put furniture against the walls because it causes cavities where black mould builds up. This is not happening in just a handful of properties: according to a report by Shelter, across Sheffield 28% of private rentals and 4% in the social rented sector contain category 1 hazards such as excess cold or risk of falls. To make matters worse, my constituents themselves are often unfairly blamed for the hazards. I constantly hear of people being told that the black mould in their properties is because of their own ventilation problems and that they need to open their windows more and bleach their walls. Often, these families have been sitting in the cold with their windows open all year round, constantly running dehumidifiers, at great cost. One family has even innovatively —albeit sadly—been using sticky-back plastic on their walls and replacing it every few months to remove the mould.
Given the rising energy costs, problems such as those I have described are all the more concerning. The impacts are far-reaching: I have seen numerous cases of new or worsening asthma in children, formally recorded by doctors as likely to be linked to their living in mouldy or damp housing conditions. Other families have reported repeat infections. We are returning to the 1800s. My constituents are not only paying the price with their physical health; every single person I speak to with housing issues is also experiencing poor mental health. Living in conditions unfit for human habitation is devaluing. It makes people feel as if they do not matter. The stress of having constantly to complain and chase up repairs comes at a cost for people because they are having to take multiple days off work to try to resolve the issues and to protect their families.
Our housing market is fundamentally broken. This is not a new emergency, but the covid-19 pandemic has made the situation more acute, exposing worsening cracks in the private rented sector and pushing more people into long-term crises of homelessness, debt and precarity.
In Sheffield, we saw a 46% rise in the number of private renters claiming housing benefits to help pay their rent between February 2020 and 2021. Nearly 3,000 households were made homeless, or threatened with homelessness, over the same period. The main issue, as we know, is that not enough affordable housing is being built. Shelter’s recent report makes it clear that a key part of our solution must be to build more new, good quality social housing. Investing in social housing would deliver affordable homes in which local people can thrive, because genuinely affordable social rents allow people to save money and to build their lives.
Between 1946 and 1980, an average of 126,000 council homes were built every year. As of 2019, that figure was just 6,826. My city, once famed for the construction of great public housing works, including the streets-in-the-sky design of Park Hill, and the radical Gleadless Valley estate, now faces a year-on-year decline in social housing stock, largely as a result of Thatcher’s right to buy. Between March 2015 and April 2020, 1,812 social homes were sold in Sheffield through right to buy, and only 229 were built.
The situation is not just about the affordability of rents, but about the quality of housing and the affordability of day-to-day bills. I am pleased to say that Sheffield Labour group has pledged to spend £350 million to improve the quality of council housing to upgrade all council homes to EPC band C, retrofitting homes to make them warmer, and greatly cutting energy bills and emissions.
Our council now plans to build 3,100 new council homes—to the highest energy efficiency standards—but unfortunately it is nigh on impossible for local authorities to build enough to maintain that rate let alone carry out the investment in maintenance that is so desperately needed to improve council stock.
As Shelter’s “Levelling up with social housing” report states, in order to truly level up the city of Sheffield, it needs to be provided with the funding to ensure that it can build the good quality, genuinely affordable social homes that it needs. To date, however, the Government’s ambitions for levelling up have stopped far short of the action that we need to see even to maintain our current stock of social housing, let alone provide genuinely affordable, warm, new-build homes.
It is time that Ministers stepped up to the challenge. My constituents are tired of poor quality housing. They are tired of high rents and of struggling from pay cheque to pay cheque to pay their rent and bills. We need a housing revolution, and I will be fighting to ensure that that is what these two Bills provide.
I wish to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for his work as the Mayor of South Yorkshire. It is incredibly brave of people to put themselves forward for election, and I congratulate Oliver Coppard on becoming the new Mayor. I thank all candidates up and down the country who have taken the brave step to represent and build power in their community.
There is much that is missing in this Queen’s Speech. I know that colleagues today have outlined very eloquently the issues that arise from not having the employment Bill. We have heard much today about taking away the ability of people in our communities to live independently and to be empowered to get the best out of their lives. It is incredibly telling that we see what I would call a Yorkshire mix of Bills—which is a bag of boiled sweets that are all different—because it is unclear what the Government’s ideology is. It seems that each Department has a different flavour of right-wing ideology going on. That is very confusing for people up and down the country who are facing a cost of living crisis when their clear demands are to live well, live healthily, live in warm homes and have good quality, well-paid jobs.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
We come now to the last Back-Bench contribution, from Kirsten Oswald.
Paid Miscarriage Leave
Olivia Blake Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Angela Crawley
I am sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Gentleman’s member of staff. To experience miscarriage once is truly awful, but to experience it on multiple occasions can be truly devastating. It is not sufficient to say that an employee should take sick or holiday leave when they have a miscarriage. It is a grief, not an illness. That person should be allowed the time to grieve, and that should be recognised.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech and does excellent work on this issue. I fully support her. The Lancet’s recent series on miscarriage highlighted the huge and still widely underestimated mental health impact it has; those who experience miscarriage face a quadrupling of the risk of suicide. In the light of that, does she agree that flexible working should never be seen as an adequate alternative to statutory leave?
Angela Crawley
Absolutely; I thank the hon. Member for that point. Flexible leave was not designed to be a catch-all, taking the place of provisions lacking from legislation. Flexible leave absolutely has a place in workplaces—it allows parents to take time off when required, and workers to adapt their working situation and make it more flexible—but it is not designed for the circumstances we are talking about, and it does not reflect the needs of the employees we are talking about, who need far more support and wrap-around care on their return to work. It is not sufficient to say that flexible leave would cover that.
There is already a cost associated with absences of this nature. Current legislation does not give enough support to women and their partners who experience pregnancy loss in the workplace. I hope that the Minister can update us on what is being done in the employment Bill to ensure that women are helped into work and can continue to work, and to ensure workplace protections are in place to prevent pregnancy and maternity discrimination. The Bill should also recognise life events that many women face during their employment, such as fertility treatment; and the right to miscarriage leave should be in the Bill.
We must keep in mind, however, that it is not just women who are affected by baby loss; the grief is shared by the partners of those who are pregnant. As I have mentioned, miscarriage is defined in the UK as occurring before 24 weeks of pregnancy. After 24 weeks, baby loss is considered to be a stillbirth. I thank my hon. Friends the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), and for Glasgow East (David Linden), for their work on legislation that would entitle parents to two weeks of paid bereavement leave. At present, there is no provision for those who experience baby loss before 24 weeks. While the updated ACAS guidance recommends that employers still consider giving them time off—I am grateful to the Minister for hearing that—there is no legal right to paid leave, and no statutory requirement on employers to allow paid leave. Many companies, including Monzo, Lidl and ASOS, have created a workplace policy of offering miscarriage leave for up to seven or 10 days, which is welcome, but that does not happen across the board. I commend these companies for taking that step.
A dedicated workplace policy is just one of the many ways that employers can give meaningful support, and it is also further evidence that employers recognise the significance of such a life event. As companies do not consistently have such policies, however, the Government must do more to ensure that employers can support their employees.
Leaving miscarriage provision to the discretion of employers leads to inequality and can result in discrimination against parents in low-paid and part-time work. For many workers, the only option is to take time off through annual leave or sick leave—using holidays or flexi-leave—which is not sufficient. The statutory provisions are not adequate, because grief is neither a holiday nor an illness. A specific statutory provision for paid miscarriage leave should cover not only the women experiencing the miscarriage, but their partners. It would signal to those who experience baby loss that they have permission to grieve.
This is about more than changing policy. It is about changing workplace culture in the UK to account for real-life issues that affect the workforce. We should aim to support the workforce adequately, and we should adopt the recognised international best practice. Both New Zealand and Australia have recently introduced comprehensive policies on paid miscarriage leave. Only last month, the Northern Ireland Assembly legislated to introduce paid miscarriage leave following a public consultation, with the policy due to come into force no later than April 2026. Northern Ireland will be the first place—not only in the UK, but in Europe—to introduce such a policy in the public or private sector.
The Scottish Government have committed to provide three days’ paid leave in the public sector following miscarriage, but they do not have the powers within employment law to extend that further. Therefore, it is up to the UK Government. The rest of the UK should not be left behind but should follow the lead of the devolved Governments and introduce statutory paid miscarriage leave across the UK. Will the Minister look closely at the plans, both internationally and domestically, and consider how paid miscarriage leave would positively impact on workers across the UK?
I wish to highlight the Miscarriage Association’s pregnancy loss pledge, which encourages employers across the UK to commit to support their staff through the stress of miscarriage by meeting a set of basic standards. It encourages employers to create a supportive work environment where people feel able to discuss or disclose pregnancy without fear of disadvantage or discrimination; to be open about pregnancy-related leave rules, ensuring that staff feel able to take the time off that they need; to encourage empathy and understanding towards people and their partners experiencing pregnancy loss; to ensure that line managers have access to guidance on supporting those who have experienced pregnancy loss; to be flexible to those who are returning to work following pregnancy loss; and to implement a pregnancy loss policy or guidance for the workplace, ensuring that it includes affected partners.
Last week, I wrote to every local authority in Scotland, inviting them to sign up to the pledge. Many have already given a positive response, including Glasgow City, Moray, West Dunbartonshire and North Ayrshire Councils, all of which are giving serious consideration to the pledge. Fife Council has already committed to the pledge—the first local authority across the UK to do so—and commitments by large public sector employers represent a huge step forward in the right direction. I am certain that more will follow this example, and I encourage Members present to encourage their own councils to make that pledge. If he has not already done so, I ask the Minister to consider signing the pledge on behalf of his Department and to encourage other Government Departments to follow. There is no doubt in my mind that the legislative change is necessary and essential to ensure that employers have meaningful leave policies in place for pregnancy loss.
Finally, I want to thank all the parents who have shared their stories of loss and grief. I thank Morgan’s Wings and Emma from the Hopes & Dreams podcast for bravely turning their stories of grief into ones of comfort for so many other people. Pregnancy should be a time of celebration, expectation and joy, but when pregnancy loss occurs, it is not only about the loss of the pregnancy but about the hopes and dreams that expectant parents had for their little life. It can be incredibly difficult on expectant parents. The Government must do more to help those who experience miscarriage, with employers acknowledging the value of their workforce and introducing dedicated policies. However, without statutory provision or the legal right, many parents will not receive the support they require. The Government must lead and support those in work with the right to take paid leave and permission to take time off to grieve. I urge the Minister to give serious consideration to introducing paid miscarriage leave across the UK and to supporting my private Member’s Bill on 18 March, which calls for this policy to be introduced in statute.
Paul Scully
I understand the hon. Member’s point of view. I ask him to look at it in the round, alongside universal credit and other means of welfare. We have said we would always look at statutory sick pay, but we do not believe that now is the time to do it, as we are coming out of a pandemic. That is certainly something that we are keeping under review, as part of that wider holistic approach to welfare, benefits and workplace support.
All employees are also entitled to take 5.6 weeks a year of annual leave, in some cases more if their contract of employment allows. Normally, employees need to give notice of leave dates, but employers may agree to waive the notice period.
Olivia Blake
Can the Minister understand how deeply insulting it is to be told to take annual leave, having gone through a traumatic experience, and to take a holiday when grieving? Does the Minister understand how deeply offensive that is?
Paul Scully
That is exactly what I was going to say. That provision is there, and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—a good friend of mine—talked about people taking holiday leave to go through a miscarriage. When I have employed people, either here or in my previous life running businesses, I would never have dreamed of counting absences for such life events as holiday. They may want to apply for it, but I would treat them far more sensitively, for the reasons given by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam. It is so important that businesses and employers have that approach, to invest in their time and future.
Electricity Generation: Local Suppliers
Olivia Blake Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Ben Lake
I am grateful for that point, because one of the heartening news developments of recent weeks has been about the lithium in Cornwall. It is clear that those deposits will be crucial if we are to make this transition.
The question that arises from the shift that I described is whether a system with potentially millions of moving parts could be managed in a centralised way even if we wanted it to be. I believe that local generation to meet local demand offers a possible answer.
Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, which is of the utmost importance. Does he agree that fantastic community projects such as Sheffield Renewables should be better supported by the Government to provide local renewable energy, and that that support should be enhanced as we try to tackle the climate emergency?
Ben Lake
The hon. Lady’s point is an important one: we need to make sure that community schemes are supported. It also anticipates where I want to take my speech next, so I am doubly grateful.
The potential capacity of local community-owned energy is quite astounding. A 2014 UK Government report stated that community energy projects could contribute as much as 3,000 MW of electricity generation capacity by 2020. Unfortunately, we have not quite met that target, but the potential is striking nevertheless.
That potential is frustrated by the antiquated rules that govern our energy markets, which were designed primarily in the 1990s and were suited to a different system of large power stations and a handful of utility companies. Unfortunately, those rules still rule the roost, and they create insurmountable cost barriers to any community energy initiative that wishes to sell the electricity it generates directly to local households and businesses.
A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research shows that the technical and operational challenges involved in becoming licensed to supply energy to customers lead to initial costs exceeding £1 million. There have been attempts to address that. A few years ago, Ofgem launched Licence Lite, which was aimed at creating a less onerous set of supply licence conditions for specific types of new, innovative supply business models. Unfortunately, that has proved complex and has not been well used to date. To its credit, Ofgem has also launched an expanded Sandbox service to allow innovative companies to apply for derogations from the traditional licensing regime and stipulations, and it has extended its ability to grant those derogations to certain local generators.
However, the most effective solution would be to introduce greater proportionality to the licensing system, to ensure that the costs and complexities of being a licensed electricity generator are proportionate to the scale of its supply. If the costs are proportionate, it becomes financially viable for smaller-scale renewable generators to supply electricity, and, in turn, new community-owned schemes would become viable.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am fully aware of that, and I will come on to it. I have only 10 minutes, so I ask the hon. Lady to bear with me; I will address that point later in my remarks.
Electricity and gas supply licences, as I am sure everybody in the Chamber knows, are usually granted on a Great Britain-wide basis. However, Ofgem has powers to award supply licences for specified areas and specified types of premises, and that can allow licensees, once they have the licence, to specialise and offer more targeted and potentially innovative products and services. The holder of such a licence could supply customers only in the specified geographical area and specified types of premises, with the full terms and conditions of the licence applying otherwise. That means that there is already provision through this licence to have local provision. Electricity suppliers can apply to Ofgem for a derogation from a particular provision of the supply licence, and if it is granted, provisions of the supply licence will not apply to them. There is already some degree of flexibility.
Kwasi Kwarteng
No, I am afraid I am very hard pressed for time. I may have time later to take an intervention, but I need to press on with my remarks.
Ofgem, as I have suggested, has been consulting widely on how to use such facilities more effectively to bring innovation to the specified locality, as it were, in this retail market. I understand that the consultation closed on Monday 12 October, and I hope that small-scale generators who wish to supply local communities have responded fully to the consultation.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion mentioned, very ably and relevantly, the Licence Lite provision, which allows aspiring suppliers or local generators to apply for a supply licence and receive relief from compliance with industry codes. On existing mechanisms, the Electricity Act 1989 already allows the Secretary of State to exempt, by scale, electricity suppliers from having an electricity supply licence if they meet certain conditions. There have been examples, certainly in my tenure as Energy Minister, of people successfully applying for exemptions.
Being an electricity supplier, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, confers the right of the licensee to supply electricity to customers, but it also bestows certain obligations, and that is very important to remember. Those obligations include payment of a proportion of network costs. Clearly, if one is operating in a situation where one is not a licensee, then one can avoid paying the costs on which the whole system depends. That is a critical issue. In some instances, the Licence Lite regime can remove this burden, but clearly we would not want to go down a route where large numbers of suppliers are simply exempting themselves from those obligations.
Network charges, as people will understand, are levied on all users of the network, and they send signals that reflect the costs that users impose on the network. There are a range of signals to encourage generators to locate close to sources of demand, and placing a source of generation close to areas of high demand will mean that the generator gets paid credits for helping to avoid further investment in the high-voltage transmission network. Essentially, that means suppliers are incentivised to be in areas of high demand. There will be a commensurate problem in areas of low demand, because how would they attract the relevant suppliers? Ofgem is working to reform these signals through improvements to network charges, and it is also working to develop local markets for flexibility, which goes to the core of what I think the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
I do not believe—and I think the Government, thankfully, are of the same opinion—that artificially reducing network costs for local electricity suppliers is going to be highly efficient, because it could distort the market. One is essentially incentivising a behaviour that may not be economical in the first instance, and that would mean higher costs falling on other consumers, which would increase as more local suppliers were subsidised. Creating a special category of local supplier brings its own complexities, and there may well be unintended consequences as a result.
Having said that, I commend the hon. Gentleman for thinking very deeply and creatively about this issue. This is part of an ongoing conversation. He was quite right to say at the beginning of his remarks that a lot of the structures that we have today reflect the conditions and circumstances before we legislated for net zero, and in many cases reflect conditions that operated 30 or 40 years ago. There is an ongoing discussion to be had about how best to adapt our institutions to modern circumstances.
A Green Industrial Revolution
Olivia Blake Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to make my maiden speech today.
It is traditional for newly elected MPs to thank their predecessors upon entering the Commons. Jared O’Mara, the previous MP for Sheffield Hallam, highlighted important issues relating to the accessibility of this House. For that, he should be commended. While he had his faults, many of which he himself admits, I note that Members have recalled that his intervention in Westminster Hall on his own experience of autism was moving and brought the issue up the agenda. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
I would like to begin by thanking the people of our beautiful, vibrant and diverse community of Sheffield Hallam for putting their faith in me. It is an honour to represent this seat in Parliament. Hallam has a reputation for being prosperous. It is not considered a typical Labour seat, but the area has a very long history of social justice. To the north of the constituency is the village of Loxley, whose most famous son, Robin of Loxley, is also known as Robin Hood. So I am not the first person in Sheffield Hallam to stand on a platform of redistributing wealth to the many, from the few.
My constituency stretches right from the heart of Sheffield city centre, deep into the Peak district. It showcases some of the most magnificent countryside in the UK, including the many reservoirs surrounding Bradfield and Redmires, and the ancient Ecclesall Woods. The area also has a proud industrial heritage. Walking through Forge Dam or Rivelin Valley, you can see the overgrown cranks and grindstones that once drove our economy. Fulwood ward was home to Thomas Boulsover, the inventor of the famous Sheffield plate steel. It is a privilege to represent somewhere that played such an historic role as one of the engines of British industry.
Today, the seat also hosts thousands of students and researchers from all over the world; students who travelled to Sheffield to study at both our world-class universities. I am delighted to represent this young, diverse and multicultural community. Sheffield is such a great place to live and work that so many of our students stay on in the city after they have finished their studies, meaning that we have one of the highest graduate retention rates in the country. However, we also have our problems. I know that by convention maiden speeches are less political than the other things that are usually said in this House, but I hope Members will forgive me for bringing up austerity, the climate emergency and Donald Trump.
Despite the history of Robin Hood, many areas still suffer from massive inequality. Some of the most deprived areas in the city sit alongside some of the least. In fact, on polling day this was stark. We not only spoke to people on the so-called millionaires’ row, but to families who had been hit by the bedroom tax. Our students are saddled with tens of thousands of pounds of debt, and mental health issues are on the rise for our young people. Our schools have suffered almost a 10% decline in funding per pupil and inadequate budgets for the needs of our children, with the previous Government acknowledging that they did not give us enough funding for our children with special educational needs and disabilities. As a councillor, I saw first hand our local government budgets cut, cut and cut again. Government grants have been reduced by 50% over the past decade, making it impossible to deliver services—never mind tackle the climate crisis.
Local campaigners battle to preserve our community heritage, with their struggle to reopen The Plough Inn, home to the second oldest football club in the world, Hallam FC, and where the rules of football were first written down.
The countryside in my constituency is beautiful, but it is under threat. The moorlands are on fire, burnt for grouse shooting. Those acts of vandalism have made flooding more likely and are also putting important species in the area, such as the bilberry bumblebee, at risk. Across the country, peat fires have thrown millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Protecting biodiversity is a key part of tackling the climate crisis, which is why the national park, in its 70th year, is so important to constituents and visitors alike. As we see biodiversity decrease locally, we also see the global consequences of the climate crisis. As the world heats to perilous levels, wildfires have swept across California, dangerous heatwaves and floods have ravaged India, and now fires consume Australia. Across the globe, vast movements of people have left their homes because the coastlines that they once occupied have disappeared or the land that they cultivated has dried up. They join refugees fleeing war and persecution. Those numbers will only increase with President Trump’s actions in the middle east and his climate denial. I am proud that Sheffield calls itself a “City of Sanctuary”—a city that welcomes and defends migrants.
The climate chaos that we all face is unprecedented. Now is not the time for propriety; it is the old way of doing things that brought us to this crisis. Some of the industrial relics of that old way still stand in my constituency, but now we need radical change, and the only way we will get that is by taking radical action now. It is not just urgent; it is well overdue. The science is clear. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the absolute hard limit for transforming to a zero carbon economy is 2050, but the world is burning now. That is why I support my party’s pledge to work towards a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030.
To meet that challenge, we need to channel the spirit of industry and innovation that lingers along the rivers and valleys of my constituency in order to restructure our economy fundamentally. Rather than cuts, it is time to invest, not in the CO2 emitting factories of the first industrial revolution, but in the sustainable green energy infrastructure and high-skilled jobs of the green new deal.
Arnold Freeman, Labour’s 1923 candidate in Hallam, founded the Sheffield Education Settlement. It aimed to institute
“streets along which it is a pleasure to walk; homes worthy of those who live in them; workplaces in which people enjoy working; public-houses that are centres of social and educational life”
and
“an environment in which people ‘may have life and have it abundantly’”.
Freeman was right then and he is right now: the only way we
“have life and have it abundantly”
is if we look after our environment. There is no social justice on a dying planet. There is also no way to tackle climate catastrophe without changing the inequalities at the heart of our economy, and without redistributing power from those at the top to the rest of us.
It is that belief in people that energised our campaign in Sheffield Hallam. It is not a seat that people expected Labour to win at this election. The past two years have undoubtedly been difficult for my constituents, but we ran a positive campaign, rooted in our transformative manifesto, with our pledges to enact a green new deal and rebuild our public services taking pride of place. My constituents told me that they wanted me to transform our economy and save our environment. It is this agenda that I will fight for in the House—an agenda that stands up for our planet and redistributes power and wealth into the hands of our people; and that stands in the best traditions of Sheffield Hallam, from the folk heroes of Loxley to those who fight to save our community spaces and who are fighting to protect our precious moorlands.
I look forward to taking these arguments forward in the coming months and years, and I am pleased that I am sitting between my hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) and for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). Hillsborough, Heeley and now Hallam: three proud women representing Sheffield. Thank you for allowing me to make my maiden speech, Madam Deputy Speaker.