Action on Climate Change and Decarbonisation

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I add my thanks to the Chair of the Backbench Business Committee, the hon. Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns)—it is good to see him in his place—and the members of his Committee for agreeing to the proposal from me, the Chair of the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), together with my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), who respectively chair the all-party parliamentary groups on the environment and on renewable and sustainable energy. I thank them for supporting the opportunity to have this debate to discuss the Government’s spending plans for action on climate change and decarbonisation.

This is a timely day for the debate, not least given the publication last week of the Climate Change Committee’s annual progress report to Parliament for 2022. The Environmental Audit Committee—it is good to see members of my Committee in the Chamber, and I hope they will have an opportunity to catch your eye during this short debate, Mr Deputy Speaker—will be discussing the report in more detail with the chair of the CCC next week, but its headline message is unarguable. There are major gaps—some might say failures—in the programmes designed to deliver the UK’s climate goals, and I am sorry to have to say that.

I sympathise with my hon Friend the Minister who will be responding to this debate. Russian’s invasion of Ukraine has disrupted energy supplies and enormously exacerbated the demand pressures as economies recover from the pandemic. However, the scale of the current geopolitical crisis and the shock it has delivered to global energy markets clearly requires rapid recalibration of his Department’s strategy. That is not the topic of this debate, so I shall not refer to it in detail, but the cost of living crisis, to which the current price shock has contributed, is affecting us all, and the House will have an opportunity to discuss the Government’s legislative proposals on that issue later. This provides an important backdrop to the House’s consideration of the priorities for Government expenditure. There is a cost of living crisis that is making daily life extremely difficult for all of our constituents, including the most vulnerable.

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

The right hon. Member is talking about the recalibration that is needed in the Department. Does he agree with me that one area where that is extremely true is the need for a proper home insulation programme? We have never seen this Government get that right, in spite of the £11.7 billion allocated to the energy bills support scheme, which is of course welcome. What we need is a proper home insulation programme—street by street, local authority-led—and we still do not have it.

[Philip Dunne]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point, and she made a strong contribution to our Committee’s report on the inquiry into the energy efficiency of existing homes. I will comment on that in my remarks, but I broadly agree with her.

It is right that the Government do what they can to align their spending priorities to support all those who are being squeezed, but as the CCC reminded us last week, we are also in a future of living crisis. Large-scale changes in climactic conditions are undeniable, and they have the potential to make parts of the globe uninhabitable, provoking a crisis of barely imaginable severity. So it is entirely appropriate, in Net Zero Week, that the House consider in a little more detail the spending that the lead Department on net zero is proposing in the current financial year to tackle climate change and to address decarbonisation of the economy.

In October 2021, just before the COP26 conference in Glasgow, the Government produced their net zero strategy. This is an ambitious document, ranging widely across all areas of Government. It presents the first wide-ranging plan across Government to build on the initial 10-point plan for the green industrial revolution, which the Prime Minister presented in November 2020. It demonstrates that the Government are in the business of climate mitigation and climate adaptation for the long term. I would argue that there is broad consensus across the parties in the House that this has to be the direction of travel. It also reflects the broad scientific consensus that the planet is under threat from climate change as never before in recorded history, and that our behaviour must change in certain ways if we are to be able to avoid the worst effects. However, my concern is that the Government’s strategy seems, in too many areas, to defer substantive action and to leave real expenditure to a future date—and, dare I say it, possibly to a future electoral cycle. The warning from the Committee on Climate Change last week surely demands that more immediate action is taken to achieve the Government’s priorities and net-zero ambition.

My Committee had an interesting exchange last week with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He disagreed with the thrust of the CCC’s conclusions, which he thought did not make sufficient allowance for the potential contribution of technology to mitigation of the climate crisis. That is a perfectly reasonable debating point. Indeed, our Committee has looked at a number of technologies that can play their part in achieving our net-zero ambition. However, I say gently to those on the Treasury Bench, that waiting for the right technology to turn up is not a strategy.

The Committee has been looking at potential solutions to help decarbonise the economy, from tidal power to offshore wind—there is significant emphasis on that in the Government’s strategy—and heat pumps, where there is ambition, but currently a significant gap in delivery. As the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change will know—we wrote to them about this—the current state of development of negative emissions technologies does not promise a “silver bullet” from carbon capture and storage plants, which by 2050 will snatch carbon from the air and allow us all to go on as before. It is simply not there yet.

The Chancellor’s spending review last autumn gave a breakdown of the Government’s expected expenditure on net-zero measures in each year to 2024-25. In total, the Government plan to spend £25.6 billion on net-zero measures over that period, with £5.5 billion to be spent in the current financial year—subject, of course, to the House’s approval of these spending plans tomorrow. There are concerns about how effective that spending will be, and the Public Accounts Committee has recently been critical about the overall funding of the net-zero transition. The House is right to be concerned about the value for money of such approaches, and I commend the National Audit Office for its detailed and expert analysis of the Government’s plans.

The excellent briefing on the Department’s estimate, produced by the House of Commons Library for this debate, indicates that £21.8 billion—20% of the Department’s budget for this year—is dedicated to reducing UK greenhouse gas emissions to net zero. I do not include in that figure the £11.6 billion for the reduction in energy bills announced as part of the Government’s measures to address the cost of living crisis. Although the Government list that as a measure contributing to the net-zero target, I do not think that short-term energy bill reductions should be treated as a net-zero measure, unless somehow they are linked to fossil fuel reduction measures more directly.

I will focus the remainder of my brief remarks on the points that my Committee made last session in its report on the energy efficiency of existing homes, to which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) referred. It seems that this is the area where greatest progress can be made towards the net-zero target, and in the shortest time. It was also the area that many witnesses before the Committee identified as a missing component from the recent energy security strategy.

I was pleased that late last month Ministers laid before Parliament the draft legislation needed to implement the fourth energy company obligation scheme. That hugely successful scheme has driven energy efficiency improvements in a great many domestic properties. Such improvements will reduce consumer bills. They will also reduce energy consumption, and thereby emissions from power generation. In the nine years of the scheme’s operation to date, it has supported cavity wall insulation in over 1 million properties. That is impressive, but there are still some 19 million homes that need upgrading to energy performance certificate band C. The cost estimate on which our Committee received evidence averaged £18,000 per property. Our Committee, I am afraid, found that the Government estimate for decarbonising Britain’s housing stock by 2050, at some £65 billion overall, was highly likely to be a significant underestimate. Welcome though the ECO is—last month, the chair of E.ON told the Committee about industry support for the scheme—it represents only a small fraction of what is genuinely necessary to achieve domestic energy efficiency. Will the Minister be in a position to elaborate further on the Department’s plans to drive energy efficiency in existing homes? It is not immediately apparent in the spending plans that the House is examining.

It is unlikely that the average householder will be able to afford a one-off payment of about £20,000 to upgrade their property without some incentive from the centre. I do not want to hark back to the green homes grant voucher scheme, but I hope that the Government have learned the lessons from its introduction. It was a well-meaning scheme that could have kick-started energy efficiency improvement, but it was strangled by red tape and ultimately abandoned in less than a year, having reached only a fraction of the homes that it was expected to improve.

[Richard Fuller (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I wonder whether my right hon. Friend might address community-led schemes, which were the other thing that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) mentioned. Is not one reason why costs are so high because the Government’s strategy is focused on individuals making a decision about their house, rather than being a more comprehensive approach that could achieve better economies of scale, certainly in service delivery?

[Philip Dunne]

The Government have been focusing on social housing, which is typically owned in relatively large unit blocks together in a street or an estate. In many cases, such schemes are community energy schemes. For example, I have seen geothermal being introduced across an entire estate in my constituency. The Committee is looking at the prospects for geothermal to provide community-based schemes. There is a big role for that to play, but it is a part of the whole that will not be suitable for every area or every housing type.

The Government are taking steps, but I see them as overly cautious. However, I strongly welcomed the Chancellor’s announcement in the spring statement that removed VAT on energy efficiency measures for domestic homes. I expect that Ministers will be measuring its impact in the expectation that it will be a pathfinder to extensively rolling out similar support—for example, on batteries for domestic energy storage, which, as I understand it, are currently excluded from the scheme.

It is clear that the current energy cost crisis is leading to soaring public interest in energy efficiency measures to cut bills. For a Government willing to invest wisely, that represents a real opportunity for substantial returns not just to the Exchequer, but to the householder through cut bills and to the planet in reducing emissions. I do not expect the public sector to pick up the bill for energy efficiency improvements, but, with the right support, the private sector can be properly incentivised to take the lead.

In closing, I will raise one further issue concerning the Government’s approach to energy efficiency and the funding of measures to improve it. I would like Ministers to undertake a thorough review of the impediments to introducing innovative schemes that encourage home improvements. Just last week, I was alerted to how an innovative domestic solar panel installer’s business model is being constrained by provisions in the Consumer Credit Act 1974 designed to protect both consumers and suppliers from theft or loan default on portable consumer goods, such as cars. It seems problematic that those provisions should also apply to home insulation schemes, which are not portable—or, if they are, they are very expensive to move—and therefore are not a good asset on which to lend subject to those provisions. I strongly ask Ministers to examine such issues with some urgency. It may well be appropriate to do so when the UK Infrastructure Bank Bill comes to this House, to ensure that the bank is not similarly hobbled in making investments in energy efficiency projects. Thanks to the Department, those are one of its core remits.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I certainly shall wind up briefly. I will not take time congratulating hon. Members on their contributions to the debate, all of which exhibited consistency in recognising that while this country is a leader in responding to climate change, we have a great deal further to go. There is a broad understanding across the House, as was reflected in everyone’s contributions, that there is an opportunity before us, which is enhanced by the energy crisis and the changes to the energy markets in the last 12 months or so, and we need to grasp it. We need to add pace to the frameworks and the delivery of the strategies that the Minister ably evidenced.

I appreciate that we have been through a difficult period; the last two years of covid undoubtedly interrupted many plans that were in germination, and it has taken time to get them out, but now is the time. Last week’s report by the CCC, which several hon. Members referred to, made that crystal clear. I mention in particular the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), and the role that his Committee plays in holding the Department to account.

The time is now. We need to get on with these strategies. It may not be possible to do that in the next 24 hours or seven days, but certainly this year we must take greater strides in getting the plans out there, so that the industries that implement them—it will be mostly the private sector that does the heavy lifting—understand the environment in which they are delivering our net zero ambitions, which everybody across the House shares.

Question deferred until tomorrow at Seven o’clock (Standing Order No. 54).

Energy Security Strategy

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have been very clear. The hon. Lady is right to mention 2019: in October 2019 I was responsible—as was my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), who was Secretary of State at the time—for announcing the moratorium. The facts about the wholesale price have changed: it is 10 times higher than at the end of 2019. I think that it is perfectly right to look at the resources that we have in our country to see whether we can use gas here for greater energy security.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

May I build on the excellent question from my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), with which I agree? The Secretary of State has included in his medium and long-term strategy the ambition to raise solar power from 14 GW to 70 GW, which would obviously make an enormous contribution to renewable energy generation. Will he follow up the excellent work that he undertook with the Treasury to remove VAT on solar panel installation and also press for VAT to be removed from electricity storage for battery walls and similar products in domestic homes?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My right hon. Friend will appreciate that tax issues specifically are not in my portfolio, but I speak to the Chancellor of the Exchequer all the time about how we can incentivise investment in new, exciting green technologies. That is something that we are very pleased to do.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

He is nodding—thank you very much. Hansard have got it on record that he is nodding. That is very important.

I want to mention one other important thing that is often missed. Many hon. Members in all parts of the House have talked about resources, and they are absolutely right. New clauses 2 and 9 deal with that. There are nowhere near enough resources applied to economic crime: it represents 40% of all crime, but 1% of the resources. For example, last year I think the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, one of the bodies charged with enforcement, sanctioned two individuals or companies with collective fines of £85,000. In the US, a similar body levied 87 fines totalling £1.5 billion, because it is properly resourced. That is hugely important.

New clauses 14 and 27 seek to approach the problem in a different way, because they would provide protection for whistleblowers. It is pointless having lots of law enforcement people charging around not knowing where to look. Whistleblowers tell us where to look. Some 43% of all financial crimes are identified through whistleblowers, yet it is something we do not talk about. We do not just need more regulators; we need somebody to point us in the right direction. Regulators will always be watchdogs, never bloodhounds. We need the bloodhounds in the organisations who are willing to speak up if things are going wrong.

Every single economic crime I have dealt with in my work on the banking side of things has come to light as the result of information provided by whistleblowers. On GPT Special Project Management, it was my own constituent Ian Foxley. Airbus paid $3 billion in fines internationally and £900 million to the UK Treasury, and all that money came as a result of a disclosure from whistleblowers. In every single case you can think of, whether HBOS or the PPI scandal, they were all about whistleblowers. Yet the protection and compensation that we offer whistleblowers in the UK is pretty much non-existent. In the case of Lloyds/HBOS, the FCA itself was guilty of not protecting the whistleblower. Barclays tried to identify the whistleblower in a case within Barclays. Yet very little or nothing is done. So if you are thinking of blowing the whistle, will you do it? My constituent, Ian Foxley, who was involved in the GPT Special Projects case that resulted in £28 million of financial sanctions at Southwark court last year, has been 11 years without a single penny. That man was earning £200,000 a year. Do you think he would step forward next time, or somebody else would do the same? We have to make sure that we protect whistleblowers.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My hon. Friend—by the way, I support enormously what he has been saying about the banking frauds—is making a very important point in relation to whistleblowers in a domestic context. In this context, we are talking about sanctions against people who potentially undermine the law of this country, as we saw in Salisbury, by taking action into their own hands against whistleblowers—trying to take them out. It is entirely appropriate to defend the personal safety of people who undertake whistleblowing.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s support.

I will press new clauses 14 and 27 to a vote. It is very important that this is included in part 2 of the Bill. We need modernised legislation, an office for the whistleblower, to provide protection, and a compensation regime so that these people are fairly compensated for bringing forward information that leads to prosecution of these crimes. That will lead to resources for the National Crime Agency, the Serious Fraud Office and others. One thing will lead to another. The US Securities and Exchange Commission, which is hugely successful in imposing fines on financial organisations, was a relatively small organisation before the US’s whistleblower legislation came into effect. That is one for later, but now, in this Bill, the change has to be made through amendment 64 or something similar. I would really appreciate the Minister’s confirmation that we will do that in the Lords as the Bill progresses.

Post Office: Horizon Compensation Arrangements

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I want to make sure that everybody comes before the inquiry to give evidence and feels confident in doing so, so I do not want to impose my opinions at this stage about who did what; otherwise, the inquiry would not be independent. Once the answers are known, however, there will be that day of reckoning, I am sure.

On post office closures, at the moment we are exceeding the 11,500 criterion, which still stands, alongside the access criterion. It is incredibly important to have that social value that I have talked about.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My constituent Rubbina Shaheen lost her livelihood and her home. She was wrongfully convicted of stealing £40,000 from the Post Office and served 12 months in jail in 2000. She is one of the fortunate ones who have received some compensation, but it has all gone to the lawyers she had to engage to protect her name. I back the calls across the House for a proper compensation scheme to reflect the damage that has been inflicted by a faulty computer programme. I endorse the comments of colleagues: why has Fujitsu not been held to account for the damage that it has caused to so many people?

[Paul Scully]

My heartfelt thoughts go out to Rubbina Shaheen and her family. That is exactly why those who were convicted had the £100,000 interim compensation: to ensure that they could go a little way towards restoring some of their losses and that, if they needed legal representation, they had those costs paid for. We are working at pace trying to achieve full compensation.

Economic Crime: Planned Government Bill

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Paul Scully]

I thank the hon. Member, as ever. He raises the really good point that not all economic crime is international. There is a lot of home-grown economic crime and he cites just one of a number of crimes happening in Northern Ireland and across the UK. Yes, we will ensure that we bring forward measures to this place to be scrutinised and pushed through as soon as possible.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

Fraudsters, criminals and bad people take advantage of measures introduced in response to crises, whether financial or otherwise. This is an incredibly complex area. Every Member will have had constituents who have lost out one way or another through fraud over the years, so I hope the Minister will take the sentiments from across the House—I think every party in the House has spoken today—expressing concern about this issue and the delay that has come about. May I urge him to take two things into account? He says he is learning lessons. Will he learn the lessons from the response to the financial crisis, when our banks introduced measures that led to the virtual confiscation of, for example, more than 16,000 customers from the Global Restructuring Group within RBS? And can he please learn lessons to try to ensure proper corporate behaviour by lenders? Secondly, he mentions Action Fraud. The threshold for Action Fraud to investigate, or urge the police to investigate in various forces, is incredibly high. As a consequence, while we all urge our constituents to make contact with Action Fraud, invariably nothing follows.

[Paul Scully]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We recognise those constraints, which is why we are looking at replacing Action Fraud with a new organisation based with City of London police to try to tackle the areas he raises. We will also learn the lessons. He is absolutely right. We want to get the balance right, so that we are confiscating the right amount of money from the right people—the criminals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

May I, too, associate myself with your words earlier, Mr Speaker? I think we have all, sadly, been touched by the loss of someone, or more than one person, whom we have known to this dreadful disease in the past year. Thank you for your words, because it is so important that we are able to hold this moment together.

The green homes grant voucher scheme has made significant strides since its launch in September 2020. We have received more than 90,000 applications and issued 33,000 vouchers, worth £142 million, and an additional £500 million has been given to local authorities to improve the energy efficiency of low-income households, helping to reduce fuel poverty for about 50,000 households by the end of this year. This is such an important part of the just transition that we want to ensure that we achieve with net zero. We recognise that the scheme has faced a number of delivery challenges, as many new mechanisms do, which has meant it has not delivered at the rate or the scale that we had originally hoped it would. However, we are working with the scheme administrator to process the backlog of voucher applications, streamlining the voucher issuance and redemption process as a top priority. Some delays in voucher processing are due to our robust fraud and gaming checks, which we have implemented by learning from previous schemes.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con) [V]]

May I associate myself, and all those participating in proceedings remotely, with the moment of national reflection that you have just led, Mr Speaker? Thank you. Yesterday, my right hon. Friend will have seen the report published by the Environmental Audit Committee on the energy efficiency of existing homes, in which we highlighted the scale of the challenge in decarbonising the 19 million homes in this country that account for most of the 20% of UK emissions from domestic buildings. Will the Government commit in the heat and building strategy to a clear timetable to encourage owners of all tenures of homes to install affordable energy upgrades, in order to meet our net zero Britain targets?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

My right hon. Friend is right that the challenge of making all our homes energy-efficient and moving to net zero is enormous. I thank him for his leadership, as Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, in looking in depth at some of the vital issues, to help us not only to solve the technical and financial challenges but to encourage our constituents to make changes to reduce their power and heat usage through efficiency.

We have a strong track record in improving the energy performance of our homes over the past decade, with 40% above energy performance certificate band C —up from only 9% in 2008. We are also funding the first hydrogen-powered homes in Gateshead and allocating more than £500 million this year alone to improve the energy efficiency of 50,000 households in social and local authority housing throughout the UK.

Energy Efficiency Measures: Net Zero Buildings

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 26th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered energy efficiency measures in buildings to achieve net zero.

I am very pleased—I would almost go so far as to say that it is serendipitous—that for the second time in succession you, my constituency neighbour, are chairing a Westminster Hall debate, Mr Pritchard. I hope that you and other hon. Members will find the subject relevant. It is an important debate for colleagues on both sides of the House who share my enthusiasm for exploring a variety of routes to reach net zero emissions as soon as possible—certainly by 2050. One is the groundbreaking Environment Bill, on which I had hoped to contribute in the Chamber. Several colleagues who would like to join this debate are in the main Chamber. Should some of them succeed in arriving before I sit down, I hope you will be liberal in your interpretation of the rules, Mr Pritchard, and allow them to chip in should they wish to catch your eye.

Another important feature of today is that it is the first day of Lent. I am joining colleagues here and individuals from around the country in making five green pledges for Lent: to cut down food waste, to use less single-use plastic, to make more zero-carbon journeys, to buy less new and so support local charity shops and the excellent repair hub in Ludlow, which is open on alternate Saturdays, and and to litter-pick. I urge the Minister to join me in following one or more of those pledges if he is observing Lent.

Yet another important feature of today is this debate, in which we highlight the vital need to reduce fossil fuel use in heating the buildings in which we live and work if we are to achieve net-zero Britain. I declare my interest as a property owner, and I refer to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. The debate is timely, as last month the consultation on minimum energy efficiency standards in the non-domestic private rental sector concluded, and earlier this month the future homes standard consultation ended. Given that the Budget is confirmed for next month and the comprehensive spending review is to take place later this year, this is the ideal time for the Government to set out their ambition to show global leadership in improving the energy efficiency of buildings in this country ahead of COP 26 in November.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. One important measure that we will need to adopt, including in Greater Manchester, is retrofitting our much older housing stock. That obviously costs money—he is right to allude to the opportunity that the Budget presents to discuss that need—but it also requires people with skills to undertake the retrofitting work. Does he agree that the Government’s new points-based immigration system causes concern about the construction sector’s ability to meet the needs of a very extensive retrofitting programme in Greater Manchester?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne]

I absolutely agree that retrofitting existing housing stock is one of the biggest challenges we face in trying to reduce fossil fuel use in our buildings. Much of my speech relates to that, so I will go on to talk about it. I will not talk about immigration status, but the hon. Lady makes an important point when she says that we need sufficient skilled people to do the work right across the Government’s infrastructure programme. It does not apply exclusively to retrofitting homes, although that forms part of it. If the skilled tradesfolk I know in my constituency are anything to go by, most earn considerably in excess of the Government’s threshold requirements, so skilled tradespeople may well still be able to come here as they meet the requirements of the points system.

I am pleased that there has been some progress in building more efficient homes over the past 30 years. Overall emissions from homes have been reduced by about one fifth since 1990, despite the fact that there are approximately one quarter more homes now. That is ostensibly due to policies to improve boiler efficiency and basic insulation in the early 2000s, but progress seems to have stalled in recent years. Now is the time for this energetic and committed Minister, whom I am absolutely delighted to see retaining this brief, to make his mark by re-energising energy efficiency across the built environment in Britain.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned the Minister’s energy and enthusiasm, because I want to ask about energy efficiency in social housing. I am sure he is aware that measures such as insulation, window glazing and low-carbon heating can be installed very easily and cheaply in larger buildings. There are some very good examples of local authorities building low-carbon social housing and slashing energy bills for tenants. In my constituency, Camden Council has been reducing carbon emissions in its housing stock, and it has used refurbishments such as Swiss Cottage library to make big energy savings and install solar panels. Does the right hon. Gentleman think it should be down to cash-strapped councils to carry out those innovations, or should the Minister and the Government be playing more of a part in investing properly in energy-efficient social housing?

[Philip Dunne]

I am glad that the hon. Lady has raised social housing, because I will touch on that in my remarks. I am sure the Minister will respond to that point, because there was a clear commitment in the manifesto on which we were just elected to provide funding for energy efficiency measures specifically in social and affordable housing. I think she will get some good news from the Minister when he responds to the debate.

What is the scale of the challenge? The built environment accounts for nearly 40% of national energy use and approximately one third of UK emissions, but progress in the decarbonisation of buildings has been limited. Enhancing the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock is therefore one of the critical steps in achieving our net zero target.

The future homes standard is focused on new builds. The Government have called on the industry to deliver a further 1 million new homes over the course of this Parliament, with a more ambitious target of achieving 300,000 new additions each year by the mid-2020s, so getting the regulations right will have a significant impact on the carbon footprint of millions of future homes. That is good news for the environment as we move to net zero, and for people who are fortunate enough to live in the more fuel-efficient buildings of the future. The homes we are building in this and subsequent Parliaments should last more than 100 years—way beyond the 2050 target date for net zero. We must ensure that the standard of homes being built now contributes to meeting that target. It would clearly be perverse and extremely costly to build homes now that require retrofitting to reduce emissions at a later stage. There should be plenty of opportunities from technical innovation in new build standards to incorporate in the future homes standard. I have no doubt that the Government, in their response to the consultation, will seek to address the challenges we face in ensuring homes become more energy efficient and encouraging new technology and innovation in house building. I would like to see them include the notion of embedded efficiency in the materials used for construction, and not just focus on the future annual running costs.

I have concerns about some elements of the proposals that were consulted on. There is, for example, the suggestion that the fabric energy efficiency standard will be removed, which would make it possible to build less energy-efficient properties and still get them to pass building regulations by fitting larger renewable energy systems; as a result, properties would become more expensive to heat, which could increase fuel poverty. Taken over a large enough area, additional renewable energy capacity might be needed away from the new housing, bringing additional cost. I hope the Minister will reflect on that.

The proposals explicitly remove local authorities’ right to set higher than minimum energy efficiency standards, as higher standards are likely to increase costs for home builders. That would restrict their ability to set their own ambitious targets to tackle climate change, with homes that are sustainable for the future, and remove the incentive for home builders to innovate and become market leaders in energy efficiency.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. East Suffolk Council has ambitious plans to impose higher energy efficiency standards on new build properties and would be disappointed by what it would see as a retrograde move in favour of developers, which already make large profits, by letting them off the hook on reducing carbon emissions.

[Philip Dunne]

I am grateful for that example. The Minister should be willing to show some flexibility and consider the councils that want to make progress, because it could have an impact on builders’ inclination to develop to a higher standard within a particular area. In my view, these matters should be determined by self-regulating local authorities.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

There are ambitious councils, but is the right hon. Gentleman not concerned that, were regulations determined by councils, developers would be drawn to the councils that do not impose higher standards, where their profit margin would potentially be higher?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne]

That has happened where different rates of affordable housing were implemented by councils across England—in Scotland too, I suspect—and developers were drawn to the areas with the lowest standards. I am sure that the Government, in response to the future homes standard consultation, will seek to raise standards across the board, but say that if any local authorities wish to go further and faster, that will be up to them. That is a risk that we should be able to take.

The Government can assess in detail examples of how we can achieve more effective building techniques and of the associated costs versus the energy efficiency savings. One example from my constituency is in the town of Much Wenlock. The social housing provider Connexus— it is well known to you, Mr Pritchard—built a housing project there two years ago to a passive house standard, which through designer materials manages heat loss and airflow. Thanks to that efficiency, the residents save an average of £665 a year in reduced fuel bills and energy use has fallen dramatically, to the point that many tenants say that they barely need to turn on their heating. However, construction of the project carried additional costs. Connexus estimates that it cost 29% extra to build to a passive house standard compared with standard building regulations. The Government could step in to provide further support mechanisms to social housing groups and local authorities to deliver a very high standard of energy efficiency. It will be interesting to see whether the response to the future homes standard addresses that.

I will focus on the scale of the challenge of making existing housing stock more energy efficient, which, as I mentioned in response to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), will by definition require the retrofitting of a huge number of properties. Some 29 million homes in the UK account for 20% of UK emissions. According to the Government’s live tables, of those homes, only 20 million have energy performance certificate ratings. The remaining 9 million homes are presumably owner-occupied and have not yet been required to undertake an EPC rating assessment.

Of the 20 million homes with an EPC rating, more are rated D than A, B and C combined. In total, almost 12.5 million dwellings are rated at bands D to G, compared with just 7.5 million rated A, B or C. That equates to 1.7 billion square metres of space that needs to be heated or cooled, which gives some indication of the scale of the challenge for the construction trade. In addition, non-domestic floor space energy performance certificates cover a further 688 million square metres in 935,000 properties that are used as non-domestic lodgements, with C and D the most common ratings.

The Committee on Climate Change published analysis about reaching net zero emissions by 2050 and recommended that by 2035, almost all replacement heating systems for existing homes must be low carbon or ready for hydrogen, so that the share of low-carbon heating increases from 4.5% now to 90% by 2050. In 2015, the Energy Technologies Institute estimated that 20,000 households per week—over a million per year—would need to be switched from the gas grid to low-carbon heating between 2025 and 2050 to meet the then 80% emissions reduction target in the event that non-fossil fuel gas alternatives have not been developed by then.

[Dr Poulter]

My right hon. friend spoke about the importance of retrofitting existing housing stock, which makes up about 85% of the homes that we are talking about. Does he agree that one suggestion that the Minister could take away is that over time, we could increase the duty on landlords to ensure that their properties become more energy efficient? A requirement for their properties to reach an energy efficiency rating of D, then C, and so on, would not only give landlords time to adapt, but would help tenants in some of the poorest households to save on fuel bills and would also help meet our carbon emissions targets.

[Philip Dunne]

I will touch on that briefly later in my remarks. My hon. Friend is right, and the Government have already introduced requirements for landlords to get to an E rating for all properties other than those in the categories of exemptions—those include listed buildings, properties where the tenant will not allow the adaptation because of its intrusive nature, or where the cost makes the adaptation disproportionate. Those requirements come into effect from 1 April for all new and existing tenancies, and there is talk of progressively increasing the requirement to a C rating, as my hon. Friend alluded to.

That is absolutely fine for new builds and is probably fine for properties in which the work relatively simple to do, but the big challenge is for existing, and particularly older, housing stock. The work is extremely intrusive and most tenants would not be able to occupy the building while it was being done, so it can only really happen when a tenancy comes to an end. Of course, that does not affect the 9 million-odd owner-occupied houses that do not already have a rating, so about a third of the housing stock is not rated at all. It will not apply to those properties unless the Government choose to change the rules and make owner-occupiers upgrade their buildings as well.

Going back to my thread about the scale of the challenge in adapting our existing housing stock, the current level of gas boiler sales is over 1 million a year, while heat pump sales are only around 20,000 a year. The capital cost of heat pumps, and the adaptations to existing homes to make them effective through under-floor heating, wall insulation and double glazing, make them a very expensive and disruptive solution for retrofitting homes.

The issue of ensuring the heat efficiency of older homes is particularly pronounced in rural areas, such as my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter), where there are more older homes and—certainly in my case, in Shropshire—a higher proportion of listed houses. Those houses are exempt from EPC requirements at present, and they may also not be connected to the traditional gas grid. For example, only 3% of all off-grid homes are at the required minimum EPC level identified by the clean growth strategy, but rural off-gas-grid homes make up 11% of all UK homes. I encourage the Government to engage with industry to tackle that issue in working to meet the 2050 target.

We clearly face a massive challenge in adapting existing housing stock to reduce emissions and become more efficient. Some 85% of UK homes are heated through carbon-emitting gas heating systems. As I have already indicated, the pace and scale of adaptation to achieve net zero by 2050 will require a dual strategy of making homes more energy efficient and decarbonising their heat sources. The Government have taken action, including through the minimum energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector that we have just been talking about, which came into force for new tenancies in 2019. Those standards require landlords to contribute up to £3,500 to improve rental properties with an EPC rating of either F or G.

However, as I shall elaborate shortly, the experience of my constituents in rural Shropshire—and my own as a landlord—is that that sum does not reflect the actual cost of retrofitting most homes, such as three-bedroomed, semi-detached cottages in rural areas. I was surprised to discover a 95% decline in the installation of domestic energy efficiency measures since 2012, meaning that the rate at which homes undertake energy improvements needs to increase by a factor of seven to meet the targets set out in the clean growth strategy.

The Government can and must go further. For example, the market for zero-carbon heating technologies is still immature and needs further Government support to develop. The renewable heat incentive is due to end next year, in March 2021, and I sincerely hope that its successor arrangements will be included in the Budget next month. I encourage Ministers to consider replacing the RHI with a capital grant or an improved green finance loans scheme. That would better reflect the main barrier to heat pump uptake—the high up-front cost of capital equipment and adaptations required, such as underfloor heating—rather than helping to reduce running costs as at present.

I also hope that the Government will consider the recommendation of the January 2020 report of the Building Better, Building Beautiful Commission that VAT on housing, renovation and repair should be aligned with that on new build in order to stop disincentivising the reuse of existing buildings. The Government are in a position to take bold steps on retrofitting social housing. I welcome the Conservative manifesto commitment to invest £6.3 billion to improve the energy efficiency of 2.2 million disadvantaged homes, reducing their energy bills by as much as £750 a year over this Parliament.

Last year the financial scale of the challenge of improving existing housing stock was laid bare by the then Minister when answering a parliamentary question. It was made clear that the aspiration for as many homes as possible to be upgraded to EPC band C by 2035, as set out in the clean growth strategy, was estimated by the Department to have a total investment cost of £35 billion to £65 billion. If my maths is right and that applies to the 12.5 million properties at a D rating or worse, that would average between £2,500 and £5,200 per property. I have news for the Minister: from all our anecdotal evidence for the actual cost of conversion to get an EPC E rating to meet the private rental standards we have just been talking about, that seems to be an unrealistically low figure.

Whatever the figure, those are staggering sums. The good news is that, alongside doing the right thing for our environment, such investment could deliver substantial economic returns of up to £7.5 billion per year overall, and £275 per affected household per year by 2035. That would have a spin-off benefit of creating a large number of jobs to do the refitting work—estimated at 100,000—and saving the equivalent of six Hinkley Point C-sized power stations-worth of energy. There is therefore potential for a viable investment case to be made, but it needs to be credibly structured, which I am afraid some previous schemes were not.

The other significant challenge is that achieving net zero for our built environment will require improving not only domestic homes but non-domestic building stock across the country. The 2016 building energy efficiency survey identified some 1.83 million non-domestic premises in England and Wales, with vastly diverse usage and efficiencies, presenting a significant challenge in reducing emissions. In both rented and owner-occupied workplace buildings, five sectors accounted for 70% of total energy use—retail, storage, industrial, health and hospitality—and 67% of energy was used for activities that were not sector-specific, such as heating, hot water, lighting and the like. There is real scope to reduce energy consumption if the approach is correct.

The Government’s consultation set out two options outlining the energy cost implications of setting a target of achieving an EPC rating of B or, alternatively, an EPC rating of C. It is encouraging that the Government’s preferred approach seems to be to aim for the higher rating of EPC B, given the scale required to meet our emissions obligations, but that will of course require considerable investment, estimated at some £5 billion. The Government will need to reflect carefully on the delivery mechanisms used to stimulate the change required, not only using market mechanisms and support for new technologies, but enabling access for private sector businesses to green finance to facilitate adaptation.

The third area is the estate of the Government and public sector, which are of course substantial occupiers of buildings. The Government should lead by example to reduce emissions by tackling the energy efficiency of the Government estate. They have reduced emissions from the public building estate by 26% since 2009-10, but in reality that has been achieved mostly through a reduction in the estate rather than through improvements in efficiency.

Last year the Environmental Audit Committee took evidence on net zero government and learnt of interesting work going on through modern energy partners, a collaborative programme between the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the Cabinet Office and Energy Systems Catapult, working alongside the Crown Commercial Service and private sector specialists. MEP was launched in early 2018 and was expected to complete in April 2021, at which point the Government may consider the programme for adoption as business as usual.

The Conservative manifesto for the December general election committed to a public sector decarbonisation scheme totalling £2.9 billion over a five-year period, and to funding insulation in hospitals and schools. I trust that will be confirmed in the comprehensive spending review later this year. I do not want to pre-empt the conclusions of the MEP, but I hope that the Government will consider incentivising public sector organisations to invest in their own renewable energy sources wherever possible, which will deliver lower energy bills to help recoup their costs, as well as further reducing emissions and supporting the UK’s growing renewable sector.

I will also touch on the validity of the EPC ratings regime, since they have become the main tool for Government and those looking to buy properties to analyse the supposed efficiency of a building. I am afraid that I have serious reservations about the EPC regime. Its current methodology can produce perverse ratings that will hamper significantly our efforts to decarbonise existing building stock. For example, high carbon-emitting heating options can achieve higher scores because they are cheaper to run, which is clearly contrary to the ambition but a hangover from the legacy purpose of EPCs—they were originally introduced to help reduce fuel poverty, whereas their current use is primarily to assess energy efficiency. Thus, biomass boilers and wood-burning stoves often score badly in EPCs, as the number of models included in the database is limited, default efficiencies are poor and fuel costs can be higher than for heating oil, even though they generate a fraction of the CO₂ emissions of oil, coal or gas per kilowatt-hour.

In assessing EPCs, the weighting of costly measures that can make a material difference in improving energy efficiency, such as replacing single-pane with double or even triple-glazed windows, can only score two points, in the case of double-glazed windows, since it may have a low impact on fuel costs. I encourage the Minister to take away this point and to engage with stakeholders on how the EPC ratings could be updated or amended to reflect better the ambition of meeting net zero by 2050.

In conclusion, I have five clear policy points, on which I hope the Minister will reflect. First, there is a need to strengthen the future homes standard, so that inefficient homes are not being built for longer than is necessary. Local authorities, as we have been discussing, should have the flexibility to set higher standards earlier if they so wish, to meet their own climate change targets. The Committee on Climate Change has called for the date to be moved forward to give certainty, and I hope the Minister will consider that.

Secondly, the Government must support zero-carbon heating beyond the end of the current renewable heat incentive schemes—beyond 2021—including financial support and targets for heat pumps and other zero- carbon heating options. Thirdly, householders should be incentivised to improve the efficiency of their homes, not only in fuel-poor homes. In rural constituencies such as mine, that will create jobs and keep heating bills lower, while cutting emissions and energy use, but Government support is required to get it moving.

Fourthly, in publicly owned buildings the Government have a real opportunity to lead by example. They should extend their manifesto commitment to improve schools and hospitals, by enabling public sector bodies to invest in on-site renewable energy sources. That would create jobs, reduce bills and emissions, and show the Government’s commitment to their world-leading ambition in cutting emissions. My final ask is that the Minister commit to a review of the EPC system, which has moved on from its original purpose and can create perverse anomalies, particularly for older, rural homes.

I welcome the Government’s future homes standard consultation and their clear target to reach net zero by 2050, with all the steps that will inevitably entail. I hope the Minister will reflect on the concerns of various organisations that will have submitted evidence through the consultation, and Members’ comments today, to ensure that the real opportunity to bring lasting change to the way we construct, insulate and heat our buildings does not slip through our fingers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne]

Welcome to your place to conclude the debate, Mr Sharma. I thank hon. Members who made contributions—when we started, I was not sure whether there would be any. I was delighted that we had thoughtful comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) and from the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), who personalised his contribution with images of windows iced-up inside as well as outside all over his constituency. I am grateful to the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah), for the constructive way in which the Opposition approached the debate. This is a cross-party issue on which there is broad consensus—not necessarily on the detail, however, as one would expect, particularly having just come through a general election campaign—and it will continue to reverberate around the House during this Parliament.

I welcome the Minister’s invitation to colleagues to continue with these themes in the coming months. I was particularly pleased to hear his commitment to extend RHI in some form and his comments on the future homes standard. We will look carefully at the Government’s response. I share his view that, with innovation in the City of London and other financial institutions in this country, we should be able to come up with a green finance scheme to help householders fund improvements.

The one area on which I would like to press the Minister on another occasion is the EPC regime, which needs to be looked at. I was slightly disappointed that he did not volunteer that. I hope that we can take another opportunity to discuss that, perhaps outside the Chamber.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No.10(6)).

A Green Industrial Revolution

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

As I said in answer to the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), we work very closely with the Committee on Climate Change. Our target of net zero by 2050 has been set on the basis of its recommendations so that we can grow our economy, sustain our future and contribute to tackling global climate change in a way that is sustainable for the UK, with the creation of green growth, so I am confident in that regard. We will bring forward more measures throughout the year to help us to meet that target of net zero.

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way. She mentioned the cooling towers coming down. Was she aware that the four cooling towers of Ironbridge power station came down during the course of the general election, and that one of the companies interested in that industrial brownfield land is one of the leading companies involved in driverless vehicles? If the company is successful, I hope that she will come and open the factory.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My right hon. Friend might be setting up a bit of contest, because I think that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, who is sitting next to me on the Front Bench, will be fighting me for that honour. None the less, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Philip Dunne) makes a really good point about how, particularly in some of our areas of heavy industry, the fossil fuels of yesterday are giving way to the green future that we all want. He gives us a fantastic example of the work that is going on.

We have made great progress, but there is still much more to do. Our challenge now is to ramp up and scale up successes such as offshore wind, providing new sources of pride and prosperity across our United Kingdom.

In the first industrial revolution, our pioneers from Scotland to Cornwall forged their own path, and in so doing they became the envy of the world. James Watt’s Prussian rivals travelled hundreds of miles to sneak a glimpse of his steam engines in Birmingham. Richard Trevithick travelled as far as Peru to personally oversee his engines. Today, like them, we must be the first movers, not the last to act. From creating supply chains for electric vehicles to decarbonising our industrial clusters and designing low-carbon buildings, the opportunities of net zero are immense. In 2020, the first year of a new decade of decarbonisation, we must seize those opportunities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I join other colleagues who have congratulated you, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I declare at the outset that I have never been one of your researchers.

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), who ably demonstrated the geographic importance of the green industrial revolution. There are policies in the Queen’s Speech that present tremendous opportunities for rejuvenation in parts of the country that one does not naturally think of as being at the heart of the green revolution; the north of England is one of them and my constituency, which I will touch on later, is another.

It was a particular pleasure to be here for the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell), with whose predecessor I worked closely when I was in the Ministry of Defence. My hon. Friend and I share an interest that I am sure we will continue to share in this Parliament. It was also a pleasure to listen to the maiden speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook), whose constituency is one of the few in the west midlands that I did not visit during the recent campaign. He made a very impressive speech.

I welcome the cross-party consensus on the environment evident from both Front-Bench speeches today. We may have differences between us over the speed and scale of the action required, but there is no doubt that everybody in this Chamber and community groups outside recognise that the environment is a key national and international challenge and that we as a Government have to lead the way and do what we can. The science is clear. If we continue to pump out greenhouse gases at the rate we are, the climate will get worse and temperatures will rise, with devastating consequences that we are starting to see increasingly regularly around the world. We need to bring that consensus to bear to put pressure on the UK Government to lead the way in trying to mitigate climate change and on other Governments to do more collectively.

There are disagreements over targets, however, as we have heard already today. I was interested to note that the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), called for more ambitious targets. I urge her to reflect on the target in the Labour manifesto of seeking net zero by 2030 and to compare that with the target set by the Mayor for Greater Manchester, the former Labour Front Bencher, who on advice from the Tyndall Centre has set a framework to achieve net zero for Greater Manchester, where her constituency is situated, by 2038. It is quite possible to have a sincere endeavour to reach net zero carbon without necessarily agreeing on exactly what targets to set.

Ministers have recognised that fact in setting separate targets for their own sectors, Departments and activities. I applaud my right hon Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, whom I am delighted to see back in his place, for announcing at the party conference that he is actively considering bringing forward the date for the removal of diesel and petrol vehicles from the streets of the United Kingdom from 2040 to 2035. That is an excellent example of how different sectors in our economy may have to move at different paces to achieve net zero, mainly because of the state of the technological alternatives that exist thus far. We do not want to go down the route that a 2030 target, or even more ambitious targets, would require, namely the inflicting of unprecedented austerity on all our constituents. We must look with a degree of realism at how we will achieve these targets.

Many local authorities, in addition to Manchester, are setting targets. Last month my own authority in Shropshire set a climate change strategy framework which has been copied up and down the country. I hope that, over the next period, the Government will try to find ways of helping authorities to fulfil their plans. Many people feel that the current frameworks are fine words, but lack action. I think that we should use the COP26 conference, which we will host at the end of this year, as an opportunity to develop action plans across our economy and across local authorities, so that, with the leadership of our Government, a clear plan is set out during the year for how to achieve the net zero targets that are being set throughout the country.

The House has a big opportunity to lead the debate. We do so on occasions such as this, but also through structures that are available to us here. I pay tribute to Mary Creagh, the former Member of Parliament for Wakefield, who so ably chaired the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sat for the last two years. It is good to see other members of the Committee in the Chamber, and I hope that they will seek to serve again in the current Parliament.

One of Mary’s passions was highlighting inconsistencies and injustice. One of the inquiries that she led, very ably, focused on “fast fashion”, drawing the attention of the world to the extraordinary consumerism that currently exists worldwide. Consumers are being encouraged to buy clothing that is essentially disposable—single-use—and can be produced only in sweatshops. The fact that that happens not just in far-flung places around the world but, I regret to say, in this country was exposed by the work undertaken by the Committee and led so ably by Mary.

Parliament does a great deal of work in scrutinising the measures in the Queen’s Speech, and we did significant work on the draft clauses relating to the principles underlying the Environment Bill. I am pleased that the Government’s ambition is to create a world-class regulator, which they are able to do only as a result of Brexit. They will, I hope, publish the Bill very swiftly after we leave on 31 January, and we will then be able to see exactly how they responded to the measures that we proposed in the Committee to beef up the regulator and ensure that we have world-class standards. I hope that we will also, in the Bill, be able to respond to the view expressed at the Dispatch Box by the Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend East (James Duddridge), that “no regression” would be an important component of it.

Another Bill that we have been scrutinising is the Agriculture Bill, which will also be introduced as a result of Brexit. I agree with the points made by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) about the need to encourage better productivity in agriculture so that we can use less land to produce more food, as well as seeking alternative uses for land in order to improve carbon capture and all the other elements that are so important to meeting our climate change commitments. Land use is a critical issue. Members have mentioned peat bogs, and the Government have ambitious plans for the planting of trees. It is yet to be seen how achievable those plans are, and we look forward to holding the Government to account in respect of their targets.

I think that this country has every opportunity to lead the world in the green industrial revolution, just as we did in previous industrial revolutions. We need to take advantage of the exceptional skills that we have in our universities, and in sectors such as the automobile industry that can lead the world. We have touched on electric vehicles, but not on alternative technologies such as hydrogen vehicles. A company called Riversimple, which started in my constituency, has produced the first hydrogen fuel cell-powered car. We need to find ways, in the Budget and in the comprehensive spending review, to support alternative technologies and the ingenuity of people in our universities and in the City of London, where we are leading on green finance, so that the UK can lead the world in developing the right solutions to climate change, and we can achieve “net zero Britain” as soon as possible.

Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right about the need to invest in cycling and walking infrastructure. Both of us, with many colleagues, participated in a debate in this Chamber on that very subject. The Government asked the Committee on Climate Change to consider what plans they need to put in place to enable us to reach that target; they are actively considering those plans and the Treasury is looking at the cost.

I have every confidence that the Government will produce detailed plans on how we are to reach the 2050 target, but I want them to set out clear milestones for the intervening period. Judging by conversations this morning with protestors, people think we will wait until 2050 to take any action, but we have already taken significant action, and the ambition is there to go further and faster. To give people hope and clarity, we need to set out the plans and milestones in detail so that people can see what is going on.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

This country has the opportunity, through the COP 26 conference next year, to take the lead internationally on setting out actions that people and communities can take. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a role for people across this country, in the run-up to COP 26, to identify practical steps that communities and industry sectors can take, to bring those to COP 26 and to highlight them around the world?

[James Gray (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a busy debate, so interventions must be brief—one sentence at the most.

British Steel

Philip Dunne Excerpts

Tuesday 21st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Stephenson]

I remain open to discussions on a sector deal with the steel industry, and I have already met companies. I will certainly do everything I can to ensure that such a deal is reached without delay.

[Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the way in which he is handling himself and the Department, having come into his new post with such an issue to deal with. This is a serious matter, but we must remember that steel is an internationally competitive and traded commodity. The industry currently faces the challenge of the US-China trade war and tariffs being imposed on it. Will my hon. Friend inform the House what measures the Government can take to seek to provide some protection from the dumping of Chinese steel in this country?

[Andrew Stephenson]

My right hon. Friend is correct that this is a global issue. The 33 countries that are members of the G20 global forum on steel excess capacity have agreed important policy principles and recommendations to tackle unfair subsidies and practices. It is important that all G20 global forum members act on that agreement and are held to account for unfair practices.