Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

rose—

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

rose—

[Chris Huhne]

If I may make a little progress first, I will happily give way again.

It is because of the urgent need to deal with climate change that we are committed to making this Government the greenest ever by taking that urgently needed action at home and abroad. This is not merely an aspiration; it is essential. The actions of this Government in this Parliament will define our ability to combat climate change in the decades to come. That is why, in the first week of the new Government, the Prime Minister announced that Departments would reduce their carbon emissions by 10% in the next 12 months—an early indication of our intention to take real action rather than merely setting meaningless targets.

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[Chris Huhne]

I am always pleased to hear questions from the hon. Gentleman, because he is a neighbour in Hampshire and has followed this agenda closely, with great passion and commitment, for many years. The issues that he raises are key. He will note that the coalition Government agreement contains a firm commitment to feed-in tariffs, and we will take that forward. Renewable heat is an important issue and we want to ensure that we make progress on that. The Department will have to come up with the exact ways in which we do that, but this is a crucial part of the whole package. Broadly speaking, a quarter of our carbon emissions come from our housing stock, much of which will still be there in 2050; people will still be living in it. Given that, what we are trying to do, particularly with the green deal, is move to a situation where we can retrofit that stock with insulating measures that will make a dramatic difference. Our Bill is designed to do that, and I very much look forward to working with people from across the House, including those on the Opposition Benches, whose substantial commitment to this agenda over many years I recognise, to make this a really effective, long-term piece of legislation. We want it to be something that we can all take pride in, that will be on the statute book for many years and that will stand the test of time.

[Simon Hughes]

My right hon. Friend knows that I warmly welcome him, with his fantastic commitment over many years to the green agenda, to his post, as well as the greenness of this Government. Given that our party had the most ambitious programme, with a 10-year programme for home insulation across the country, and that the commitment is continued in outline in the coalition Government agreement, will he assure us that as he and colleagues across Government work out how that can be delivered, they will be as ambitious as possible, not just for five years but over 10, and that every home that it is technically possible to convert will be able to have that programme met most generously from reduced fuel bills? It would make the most fantastic transformation for real people in their homes.

[Chris Huhne]

My hon. Friend has stated precisely what the objective of this key centrepiece of the legislation will be. It is essential that we deal with the issue and leave a legacy that will stand the test of time and will genuinely modernise all our old housing stock, including the pre-first world war housing stock. There are a lot of problems, such as solid wall insulation, of which we are all aware, and such measures can make a dramatic difference to our ability to meet our climate change targets. Indeed, we are all committed in the Climate Change Act 2008, which was taken through the House by the right hon. Member for Doncaster North, to a very dramatic cut in carbon emissions. We have to accept the logical consequences of that commitment, one of which will be measures across the economy to decarbonise the economy and to save energy. I agree with the emphasis put on this subject by my hon. Friend.

As well as reducing carbon emissions and helping to reduce energy bills, the investment in energy efficiency will support our green recovery. It will create more green jobs in the building industry as we convert our old housing stock to state-of-the-art standards. It will help industry grow and build a thriving green economy for the UK, as well as help to close our energy gap in the most efficient way possible by saving energy that we waste.

We are also committed to using our Bill to put in place the building blocks for our low-carbon future. The economy of the future is likely to be powered by electricity and we need to be able to generate enough electricity to meet future needs from low and zero-carbon sources. We are still working on the detail and identifying where legislation is required, but these measures might include the reform of our energy markets to meet the challenges ahead in delivering security of supply and the transition to a low-carbon economy, including the introduction of an emissions performance standard to regulate emissions from coal-fired power stations.

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[Edward Miliband]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the House. I wish that the Labour party had won her seat, but she comes to the House with a distinguished campaigning record on green issues, and she will inform our debates and bring great expertise to them.

I disagree with the hon. Lady about nuclear power, because we have to plan for the long term. She is right that we have to meet an urgent challenge, but we also have 80% targets for 2050, and we must drive our targets for 2020 beyond 2020 to 2025 and 2030. The Opposition’s view is that nuclear power needs to play a role.

[Simon Hughes]

The right hon. Gentleman is part of the Labour party’s conversion to nuclear power, and he knows that my party has not done so. As well as the fact that nuclear power cannot deliver quickly, is it not true that the contribution that it could deliver is so far away that it will also make a minimal contribution, if one at all? Can he honestly tell the House that he believes that nuclear power can be delivered in this country without public subsidy, unlike in the United States, Finland or any other country in the world?

[Edward Miliband]

Yes, I can, because we have learned the lessons of Britain’s past on nuclear power, as well as international lessons. What have we said? For example, we said that companies will have to put aside money to cover legacy waste. I honestly believe that that is necessary. That is not to say that nuclear power has no challenges, but the challenge of climate change is far bigger, and we reject the alternatives at our peril.

The mystery is that the Secretary of State and the new Government seem to have three positions on nuclear power, but there is a revealing history, and we need to be clear and honest about the fact that Liberal Democrats said in the past that, if they ever got into government, they would do everything that they could to stop nuclear power happening. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), who is not in his place, said:

“I assure any investors who may be watching our debate...that their investment will be at risk if we play a part in any future Government, because if we had the chance we would seek to slow down, and if possible to stop, the development of nuclear power.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2008; Vol. 475, c. 322.]

I have to tell the Secretary of State, whom I greatly respect, that people will think that that is his and the new Government’s hidden agenda. He has said no to nuclear and described it as a “dead end”. It is quite simple: to show the clarity that the Minister of State says is necessary and to send a clear signal, I urge the Secretary of State to say that he was wrong to say, “Our message is clear: no to nuclear.” The grown-up thing to do is to admit that he got it wrong and that he wants nuclear power to be part of this country’s energy mix. Surely, if he believes in his own policy on public subsidy, all the Liberal Democrats should vote for it. He has set a policy—we do not disagree with it—and Liberal Democrat Members should vote for it. Sending those mixed signals is not good for the business community.

Let me end my comments on nuclear power by making the point that there is a very strange thing in the coalition agreement at the end of the section on nuclear power. I have been scratching my head about it. It says that they—presumably, the people who wrote the coalition agreement—want

“clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence”.

What an extraordinary thing for a Government to say about their own policy. Oppositions normally say that they do not have confidence in a Government’s policy. The Government are saying that their do not have confidence in their own policy. What confidence can the world outside have in the Government’s policy when they say that they do not have confidence in it?

The person whom I feel most sorry for is the Minister of State. He must be tearing out his hair. He spent many distinguished years in opposition. He persuaded the Prime Minister to abandon his position that nuclear was merely a last resort, and now he ends up with the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) in charge. Someone said rather unkindly last week that it really is like having a vegan in charge of McDonald’s. I think that that is very unfair, but Tory MPs, most of whom support nuclear power, must be shaking their heads. The coalition has given us the dogma of the Tories on wind farms, which will mean that they find it difficult to deliver, and the dogma of the Liberal Democrats about nuclear power. Neither side is willing to face up to the tough decisions that we need to make as a country to make the low-carbon transition.

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[Malcolm Bruce]

My hon. Friend makes a pertinent point. As I have said, we missed the boat 35 years ago, and we must not do so again. There is a real risk that that might happen, if we do not get the policies right.

[Simon Hughes]

The benefit for apprenticeships and jobs is also manifest. People who are training to work on offshore oil rigs understand that in their careers they might work on renewables or carbon capture and storage, so we have to see this area as an apprenticeships, skills and jobs opportunity as well as an energy opportunity.

[Malcolm Bruce]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend.

I hope that the Secretary of State took away several points from the exhibition. Exciting as the development of renewables is, it will not replace oil and gas soon in investment, jobs, tax revenue or exports. That will take some years—but if we run them in tandem, we can build one up as the other declines. Renewable technology will require a number of push-and-pull measures to realise its full potential. For both of them, we require substantial onshore investment in ports and transport infrastructure. As a representative of part of the city of Aberdeen, I am concerned that our infrastructure is not appropriate for a city that claims to be the energy capital of Europe. Our promised bypass has not happened, our commuter rail service has been postponed indefinitely, our city finances are in a considerable mess and we have the two most underfunded councils in Scotland, with money being diverted to other parts of the country. In those circumstances, my message to the Secretary of State—and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland—is that it is the UK Government who stand to lose if that infrastructure is not right, because some of the investment will go out of the UK altogether.

I welcome several of the proposals in the Queen’s Speech to promote marine energy and to support home energy efficiency, which can help move us away from dependency on the national grid and huge power stations, and make microgeneration genuinely part of the national grid, rather than just a domestic alternative to current generation. As I keep asking at every event I attend, when will we get micro combined heat and power? What steps will be taken to provide an easy way for people to take up feed-in tariffs? I defer to the point made by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) about renewable heat, which is part and parcel of that issue. What can be done to help people with hard-to-heat homes—a question asked earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes)? We have many such in Aberdeen, and they are expensive and difficult to tackle.

I would like to address the international dimension. I am a vice-chairman of GLOBE UK and GLOBE International, which played an invaluable role in testing potential policies and negotiating positions in the run -up to the various climate change summits. In fact, in advance of Copenhagen, GLOBE clearly identified China’s concerns, through the climate change dialogue that we run.

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[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Mr Speaker, congratulations on your re-election and thank you for giving me the privilege of speaking in the Queen’s Speech debate.

I have had the privilege of being elected for the same part of my borough for the eighth time and I say to colleagues elected for the first time, to whom I pay tribute, the excitement does not pale just because we have gone through the democratic process again. The honour is always as great and the sheer equality of the democratic process, which means that everybody’s vote counts the same, reminds us to be humble about the privilege we have of being here.

I am seeking to speak in this debate because, in the last Parliament, I was responsible in our party for these issues. I enjoyed that task immensely and have taken a long interest in environmental and energy issues. I wish the two Secretaries of State and their ministerial team all the best in what is one of the most important areas of public policy for us to get right.

As someone who sat for 27 years on the Opposition side of the House, haranguing Government to be greener—[Hon. Members: “Come back.”] No, I am certainly not coming back. I plan to stay on this side of the House for the rest of my career. It is encouraging to hear the Government say—I believe them—that this will be the greenest Government ever, which will be in everybody’s interest. It was great that one of the first things the Government did was to sign up, as a Government, to the 10:10 campaign, which I endorsed on behalf of my party on the day it was launched last September at Tate Modern.

I draw the attention of the House, and those outside, to the huge number of policy commitments made in the areas of energy and climate change and environment, food and rural affairs; 24 specific commitments of policy made under the Department of Energy and Climate Change, and 18 made under the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. That shows the seriousness of intent of both coalition partners to the enterprise of changing the way in which we do business in Britain.

It would be remiss of me to fail to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband). He knows that I hold him in high regard and had a very good working relationship with him. I applauded him when I thought he was doing the right thing and encouraged him in the work he did at Copenhagen. I thanked him for that and I do so again. He also talks a good talk as well as having real convictions in policy terms. I wish him well in his leadership election and I say to him that we were glad to have him as the first Secretary of State for the Department. He set a high standard to be followed; I am sure it will be. We had disagreements on certain issues, but I would not want that to undermine the value of what he did. The Government did not always meet their targets—on biodiversity, fuel poverty or renewables, for example—although one would not normally have known that to hear the then Secretary of State. I hope that the new Government will do better.

I want to select a couple of subject areas that I think are important and to encourage the Government to be strong. I will then deal with two things of huge importance. First, it is important that the Government have made the commitment to the green investment bank. If we are to have a sustainable economy, we need the mechanism to fund the initiatives that come with it. That relates to the future of apprenticeships and sustainable jobs in the manufacturing industries of the future. We have missed many tricks over the past 25 years by not being ahead of the game. Other countries have overtaken us and we must now catch up and go forward. Colleagues who are warning that the review of investment decisions made by the previous Government means the end of that should bide their time. This Government will not want, as a matter of policy, to pull the plug on good green investment decisions made by the last Government.

Secondly, as I indicated in an intervention on my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, it is a real challenge, but a real opportunity, to make every home in Britain that is practicably able to be a warm home. More than 25% of the emissions in our country come from the domestic sector, or badly insulated homes. The programme that the Liberal Democrats put in their manifesto was ambitious; it granted people up to £10,000 to be spent in a home that passes the test and worked that through the devolved Administrations and local government in England. I hope that the new programme will allow a programme to start in 2012 for 10 years. That would make a fantastic contribution, not just to reducing fuel bills for people, to preventing untimely deaths of the old and vulnerable and to reducing our emissions, but it would produce huge numbers of jobs and apprenticeships in the building and construction industries. It is a win, win, win, win agenda item. As a postscript, let us not forget the homes that are off the mains, because they need assistance too.

Thirdly it is important that the Government continue to build and support small rural communities that have suffered too much from the loss of primary schools, post offices and, sometimes, pubs, as well as the loss of cheap housing for people who work on the land. That must remain a focus of Government across the UK and I know that Ministers are aware of the importance of them as the lifeblood of rural communities.

Lastly, it is great that we have had so quickly the decision that there will not be a third runway at Heathrow and that we will not have expansion at Gatwick and Stansted. We must understand that it is not necessary to go on building more airports and airport capacity in the south-east. If we go ahead, as we will, with a high speed rail network—not just in Britain, but across Europe—people will begin to understand the environmentally better ways of travelling. That requires other things; my friends in the Department for Transport know that it requires fare structures that work better and encourage people to use trains by making travelling across Europe something one can do as easily by train as one has in the past by plane.

The first of the two big issues that I want to flag up is biodiversity, alluded to by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State. This is the international year of biodiversity but the EU target to halt the loss of biodiversity by this year has been missed. I ask all Ministers to look at the report issued last week by the United Nations and the international committee set up to deal with these matters. The report makes it clear how badly we are doing and how serious the issue is. It says:

“The target agreed by the world’s Governments in 2002, ‘to achieve by 2010 a significant reduction of the current rate of biodiversity loss at the global, regional and national level as a contribution to poverty alleviation and to the benefit of all life on earth has not been met…Species which have been assessed for extinction risk are on average moving closer to extinction…Natural habitats in most parts of the world continue to decline in extent and integrity…Extensive fragmentation and degradation of forests, rivers and other ecosystems have also led to loss of biodiversity and ecosystem services…The five principal pressures directly driving biodiversity loss (habitat change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive alien species and climate change) are either constant or increasing in intensity.”

I hope the Government will take this issue seriously in all their Departments, and not only at home in the four countries of the UK, but across Europe and internationally. Unless we save the land of which we are the stewards, we may not have a land worth saving, and there may be greater risks as well.

It would be surprising if the second matter I commented on was not the nuclear industry, especially as I am following the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed), who stands up vigorously, and very coherently, for his constituency, which is what I would expect. My party and I do not agree with nuclear power. I have not changed my view as a result of the election. We think that it would produce too little in terms of energy, that it would be too late and too expensive, that it would need public subsidy—in effect, the hon. Gentleman accepted that—and that it would be too dangerous. The process that has been negotiated and agreed has been arrived at as a result of an acceptance by my colleagues in government that there is majority support in the Government and across the House for nuclear power, but it does not seek to change the mind of those of us who think it is the wrong way to go.

I hope that that approach will be coupled with one other thing. I have made this request to both the previous and current Secretary of State. The Government are required formally to justify proceeding to nuclear power. That is called the process of justification. It is required under European Union law, and it looks at the cost-benefit analysis and the health risks. A draft justification has been written, but the Secretary of State is entitled to call for a public inquiry on the justification for nuclear power. It need not be a long inquiry—it could last for a year—but I believe that if we are to have science and evidence-led policy, the right way to proceed towards making the decisions on these matters, coupled with the view that there should be no subsidy, is for the Government to announce in the near future that there will be a public inquiry into the justification. I might add that I do not believe that we in this country will ever have a future generation of nuclear power if the private sector has to pick up the pieces, but we will wait and see.

[Albert Owen]

Although the hon. Gentleman and I hold diametrically opposed views on nuclear power, I respect the firm stance he takes on the matter. What he has just said about kicking things even further into the long grass will dismay those people who want to invest in the industry now, and are prepared to do so. Will he explain his party’s policy—not the coalition’s—on the extension of current nuclear power stations, which are generating safely as we speak now? Will they have the opportunity to extend their generating life and thus maintain high-skill jobs in this sector?

[Simon Hughes]

First, let me say that, in the context of the hon. Gentleman’s beautiful island, I understand why he holds to his position on this matter. I understand, of course, that Wylfa has produced jobs in the nuclear industry, as Trawsfynydd did before it, and that the people in north Wales need jobs. We hold different views, and that is the result of all sorts of factors working on us. My party’s policy is that we would continue to use the existing fleet of nuclear power stations, but we would not artificially continue them and we would not want to build new ones. That has been the Liberal Democrat policy over the years. We are obviously in new territory now, and there will be new processes, and the hon. Gentleman and I will, no doubt, continue to participate in the debates on the matter.

The fact that part of my constituency, which is just over the bridge, has had MPs continuously since 1285—or, perhaps, 1295—reminds us that we are all just passing creatures in this place. There are two big issues that my constituents would expect me to mention. We still need affordable housing in large measure, and that must be a Government priority. Of course tackling this is difficult, but things need to be improved and we need many new properties to be built. I do not think there is a single constituency in the country that does not have an affordable housing need, and Bermondsey and Old Southwark certainly has that need. We will also continue to need apprenticeships and jobs in lasting industries, and I will take every opportunity to encourage the Government to address that.

I want to end in a slightly unusual, personal way. For my family, 27 May is a difficult day, as it is the anniversary of both our grandmother’s death and my dad’s; he died on 27 May a long time ago—in 1976. He would have been very excited, as any parent would, at his son sitting in Parliament, although he never lived to see that, but he would have also wanted me to be here to do something, because that is what he was all about. His agenda would have been, “Make sure you support manufacturing industry.” He was a brewer and understood that unless we make things, we do not earn to pay our way. He would also have said, “Make sure that young people have the chance of going on to college even if they cannot afford it.” He would have encouraged me to oppose tuition fees, which I do. Lastly, he would have said, “Make sure we continue to look after our troops in the front line, when they go and fight for our country,” which we must do. I will say one other thing in his honour. He died of cancer, and we must continue the research and development to ensure that fewer people die of cancer and that diagnosis happens quickly so that people have the best chance of being treated, for all our families and all our constituents.