Budget Resolutions

Debate between Richard Thomson and Darren Jones

Tuesday 12th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I am happy to be welcomed to intervene, but the debate is about the Conservative Budget here in Westminster. If the SNP has questions to answer about its performance in Government, it should do so in Scotland.

[Richard Thomson]

That was absolutely ridiculous—a complete waste of time. The reason I brought it up was that the hon. Gentleman brought it up; clearly his memory is very short.

Scotland needed much more money for investment in infrastructure, the public sector and public services, but the UK Government have let us down again in this Budget. Any attempt at boosting productivity—that is the subject of this debate, although I did not hear a great deal of mention of productivity from either Front Bencher—will run headlong into the effects of the austerity that has been prevalent since the financial crisis of 2008.

We know from first hand the impact that austerity has had on public services across the UK. As a result of those spending choices, investment levels in the UK remain the lowest of any country in the G7. Research by the UK in a Changing Europe group has found that investment is 10% lower than it would have been if we had remained in the EU. and that our GDP is already 5% lower. If the Government want to increase productivity and drive investment, it is clear that they to do more to recognise the vital role they have to play through their capital expenditure.

Capital expenditure is what maintains our infrastructure. It is what builds houses, replaces hospitals and schools, maintains roads and, crucially, drives and encourages private investment. It is utterly bizarre that as a consequence of their spending decisions here, the UK Government will be cutting the Scottish Government’s capital budget in real terms by 10% over the next five years.

Another key area where the Budget does nothing to shift the dial is research and development, as I have said before. The UK lags behind our European competitors when it comes to overall levels of investment in research and development, but London and the south-east are taking the lion’s share of even that reduced amount. Wales and the north of England lag behind. Scotland holds its own, but if the Government genuinely want to level up—not words we hear paired with each other terribly often these days—they need to shift the dial and start to address inequalities inherent in the way the Government carry out business as usual.

Let me turn to energy. The decision to continue the energy profits levy can only be described as a slap in the face for all the bold and brave Scottish Conservative politicians who were boasting about how they were going to personally oppose it and get rid of it. However, the Labour proposals to increase its level further risks killing the goose that laid the golden egg. I am a big fan of the way the Norwegians have run their oil and gas sector. Scotland and the UK would be in a much better place if we had done the same, but the UK basin is closer to the end of its life than much of the Norwegian basin. Simply saying everything will be alright on the night if we tax at the same level as Norway puts investment decisions on a precipice. I caution the Labour party to think about that carefully if or when it forms the next Government. Increasing taxes beyond their current level in that industry risks putting tens of thousands of jobs on the line.

Finally, we are all quite bored with weak leadership, but does leadership get any weaker than a party taking its one and only identifiable policy—investing £28 billion in renewable energy—and throwing it on the fire because its leader is absolutely terrified of losing political ground to the weakest and worst Conservative Government any of us have the misfortune to remember in our lifetime?

It is absolutely vital not just for the country, but particularly for the north-east of Scotland, to get the energy transition right. Labour is absolutely correct to say that it will have a pretty dismal economic inheritance from the current UK Government, but, my goodness, what a dismal legacy Labour will leave for the Government who eventually replace it if it continues on the current path. That is why Scotland needs to be away from both the Labour and Conservative Front-Bench teams and making decisions for ourselves as a fully sovereign independent country.

Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee

Debate between Richard Thomson and Darren Jones

Thursday 10th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Darren Jones]

I thank the hon. Lady for her kind words and her pledge of support on behalf of the Liberal Democrats for the call for cross-party consensus on tackling climate change, which the Labour party also supports. On her question about the most immediate action, this autumn and winter is the most important period of time in dealing with this issue; not only do we have to borrow and spend significant amounts of money due to the economic consequences of the pandemic, but we are also waiting for key policies from the Government—from the energy White Paper to the net zero review, through to the Treasury review on green finance, the heating in buildings regulations and so many other things that are all due to come together in the next few months. Now is the opportunity for the Government to bring all that together and to set out a progressive set of policies to meet the scale of the challenge, which I am sure will be in line with the principles of the climate assembly report.

[Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)]

The report expresses some concerns over the potential robustness of carbon capture and undersea storage, although not perhaps as a way of achieving the transition to net zero. In 2019, the then Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee said that it did not believe that the UK would be able to meet its Paris obligations without applying CCUS. Does the hon. Member think that this remains the case or does he agree that the UK should continue to pursue this technology over three or four sites, and would he agree that one of those should be at St Fergus in the north-east of Scotland?

[Darren Jones]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for the suggestion that I have any influence over the location of these sites. Unfortunately, I have to break it to him that I do not. Carbon capture and storage was an interesting debate in the climate assembly report because CCS is a little further ahead compared to other negative emissions technologies in proving its capabilities in research and scaling up into industrial settings. Assembly members felt that it was a way to slow down the action we need to take on other renewable sources of energy, and were concerned about issues such as the leakage and storage of carbon in the use of these technologies. That is why they down-prioritised it compared to wind or solar. It is important to note that the assembly was unable to consider issues such as tidal power because the research is not in the right place to be able to do so comprehensively. We quickly need to understand the capacity of carbon capture and storage for scaling up and meeting needs, but we should also recognise that we must prioritise an urgent speed-up in the use of clean renewable technologies, and in my view carbon capture and storage is only a temporary solution.