Great British Energy Bill

Simon Opher Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 5th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dr Simon Opher (Stroud) (Lab)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay) for his support for this really exciting piece of legislation—one of the most exciting in our manifesto. I am delighted to be making my maiden speech during a debate on renewable energy. Stroud has been a centre for sustainability and the environment for many years.

I thank my constituents for supporting me. I have been a GP in Dursley, which is part of Stroud, for 30 years. I have looked after my patients there through thick and thin, through the most heart-rending moments and through the most joyous moments, and it has been an absolute privilege. To be honest, I slightly miss them in this place.

I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor, Siobhan Baillie. Siobhan was always so cheerful and positive, and I really admired her for that. She also squeezed the last Government into introducing what was probably their best bit of legislation, which was about childcare. This Government are continuing that and making sure that we deliver it. People who knew Siobhan will know that she also had a lot better hair than I do. [Interruption.] Thank you very much—I will move on hastily.

I would also like to pay tribute to my Labour predecessor, David Drew, who was probably the best constituency MP I ever met. He is still very well loved in the area, and is still involved in local politics. He has given me lots of pieces of advice. One of them is to be yourself, which is good advice for all of us. I thank him for that.

My father actually said that there are quite a lot of similarities between being an MP and being a GP. He said, “First of all, both of you have surgeries, don’t you?” I thought about this more, and I thought about what I tell the doctors I train: “As a GP, you have to know the first three things about everything, which is true for MPs as well. You do not have to be an expert on anything, but you have to know a little bit about everything.” I have certainly learned a lot about that. Both GPs and MPs also need to be embedded in their community. But probably the most important thing to being a good doctor and a good MP is listening, not talking. The best doctors and the best MPs are the best listeners.

Stroud is the most beautiful area, and its hills and valleys were made famous by Laurie Lee in “Cider with Rosie”, which Members may have read. A previous GP in the area, about 200 years ago, was Dr Edward Jenner. He was in Berkeley in my constituency, and he discovered vaccination. He saved the most lives in history, so we must honour him. Vaccination is transformative for health. One of the big benefits of the pandemic is that we developed mRNA vaccines, which in the future will be used to treat cancer. This new therapy is really exciting.

Stroud is also home to cutting-edge companies, including Renishaw in the engineering industry. Ecotricity, owned by Dale Vince, has been at the cutting edge of sustainable energy for many years.

We also have the fantastic Forest Green Rovers, the world’s only carbon-neutral football club. They are also vegan. Sadly, they were relegated from the football league this year, but I promise they will be back. I hope they will be, anyway.

Dale Vince built the first wind turbine on Tinkley Lane in 1996, and there is a lesson there, because there was incredible local opposition to it for years. People did not like it, but now it has come to be accepted. This is the future. Many of us have spoken about community energy, which we have been developing in Stroud. We now have six projects. Waitrose will have solar panels on its roof, and we are going to cover the hospital with solar panels. There is a scheme to put solar panels on every public building, which will save having to put them on farmland. I recommend such schemes.

A number of my constituents are currently in prison for climate activism. Although I do not condone their protests in any way, I ask the Home Secretary to review their really excessive sentences, and I ask organisations such as Just Stop Oil to get behind us. We are the greenest Government this country has ever seen, so will they stop protesting and start building with us?

Community is really important in Stroud. We have community hubs throughout the constituency. One of the best is GL11 in Cam, run by Indigo Redfern. Its volunteers look after vulnerable people. We have the country’s oldest community agriculture scheme, and we have a big scheme that buys community shops. When pubs close in little villages, we buy them, too. We are also looking at buying land to protect it for people to use.

I worked in May Lane surgery for so long, and I praise the doctors, the nurses and all the reception staff for continuing to deliver extraordinary care to patients. General practice is delivering extraordinary care throughout the country, but we are in a certain amount of crisis. We have very low morale, and everyone is complaining about not being able to get a GP appointment, so I am proud that this Government will fix general practice by investing, innovating and making sure that patients receive the service they received in 2010.

Another thing I would like to say on innovation is that, about 25 years ago, I introduced an artist in residence at my surgery to treat patients with mental ill health, and I managed to prove that it was incredibly effective. We then expanded into green prescribing, getting people to take walks. We have poets in nursing homes, and we started prescribing allotments. These non-medical prescriptions are crucial, and they save the NHS money, because people realise they do not need medicine to make them better. The arts are crucial. We must support this country’s world-class arts sector, and we must use it to make ourselves better.

I will come to a conclusion. When I first arrived in the House, I was talking to some of the wonderful parliamentary staff who looked after new MPs so well. One of them said, “It is strange, because it is like there has been a generational change in the Commons. A wind has blown through the Commons and replaced what we had before with much younger Members”—not me, by the way—“and many more women. It is really ethnically diverse and there are LGBT people as well. It is like a fresh wind has come in.” I feel that offers a real opportunity for us to deliver real change in this country.

My father is 90. He was going to be here today, but he could not make it, which is really sad. He has been a lifelong socialist and Labour party member. He said in 2019, “I will probably never see another Labour Government,” but he has got to see one. Let us make this work and work hard to deliver renewable energy, so we can bring down the cost of power and change the whole environment of the country.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I think I was stuck on the vegan football club!