Solar Power (Feed-in Tariff)

Debate between Simon Hughes and Albert Owen

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure once again to follow the Secretary of State, but I am afraid I cannot resist referring to his last remark on policy Catherine-wheels. He is the man who said that the nuclear industry was flawed and should not continue, but today he is Mr Nuclear. He said that solar panel feed-in tariffs were not ambitious enough, but now he says that they are flawed and too ambitious. He is the undisputed champion of flip-flops. Today he has told us that he is looking after the interests of the consumer, but he is doing exactly the opposite.

Since entering the House, I have been a consistent supporter of nuclear energy, renewable energy and energy efficiency as a package. I see no contradiction in that whatsoever. It will help consumers in the short term and the environment in the long term, which is what proper policy is about.

We do not have much time today, but, because of the country’s anger at the policy changes, we are here today, arguing the case for consumers. I shall read out a few examples, because they show how out of touch the Secretary of State and Government are on this important issue.

It was not just the industry, but ordinary individuals who took this Government on trust, and they have broken it. The Liberal Democrats know that, because they argued that the scheme was not ambitious enough. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who is in the Chamber, said that the then Government were not going far enough.

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

rose—

[Albert Owen]

I am happy to take an intervention from the right hon. Gentleman. I wanted to wake him up and stir him so that I could get an extra minute and listen to his remarks. Is he prepared to intervene?

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes]

I did press for a scheme when we were in opposition, and a scheme was introduced, but it was not adequate. I support the fact that it has to be reviewed because of the take-up, and the answer lies in the Secretary of State’s answer, which I heard very clearly. It is to look at a new community tariff, to be announced as soon as possible, which I heard him say will be in January.

[Albert Owen]

But the right hon. Gentleman said in opposition that the rates were not ambitious enough. Those were very his words, and he has now done a flip-flop on that. Yes, we need a proper review; of course we do, because the industry is calling for it and everybody is calling for it, but it should be done on a sliding scale, not at the rate that the Secretary of State describes.

Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Debate between Simon Hughes and Albert Owen

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[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.