John Bercow
Main Page: John Bercow (Speaker - Buckingham)
Mr Speaker
Order. The right hon. Lady certainly should not accuse anybody of misleading the House—[Interruption.] Order. I do not require any advice from other Members. I am perfectly capable of dealing with these matters. If the right hon. Lady wants to insert the word “inadvertently”, that would make it moderately less disorderly, although she still should not chunter from a sedentary position in evident disapproval of the stance taken by the Secretary of State. That is rather beneath the dignity of a distinguished former Minister.
Caroline Flint
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I think the Secretary of State inadvertently—
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I welcome the action that the CMA recommended for prepayment customers, but I urge the Secretary of State to heed the words of my hon. Friends who urged her to go further. I am sure that she is as angry as I am about the treatment of these customers. I am sure she is also as angry as we are about the treatment of 70% of customers who have been overcharged to the tune of £1.7 billion a year. The Energy and Climate Change Committee said that the Secretary of State’s
“Sudden and numerous policy announcements…lack of transparency…insufficient consideration of investor impacts…Policy inconsistency and contradictory approaches”,
coupled with the
“lack of a long-term vision”,
have raised the cost of investing in UK energy by £3.14 billion a year. Given that she is costing bill payers almost twice as much as the big energy companies, will she refer herself to the CMA?
Andrea Leadsom
I can tell the hon. Lady that a lot of onshore and offshore wind projects are in the pipeline, so we expect renewables’ share to increase in the coming years. She will be aware that we have announced further CfD auctions specifically to support offshore wind, so we expect further increases in the deployment of offshore wind as the costs come down. That is an absolutely key requirement. As the costs have come down significantly, I certainly expect that it will be possible to deploy onshore wind farms, if communities want them, and without bill payer subsidy.
Mr Speaker
We need to speed up a tad, and I am sure that we can be led in our mission by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
3. What assessment she has made of the implications for her Department’s policies on energy efficiency of EU proposals to increase the level of VAT applicable to energy-saving products.
Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)
I would like to follow up on that. It is just two days since the Government accepted the amendment that I and my hon. Friends the Members for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) and for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) tabled to the Budget resolution. The Chancellor was the first in history who had to accept an Opposition amendment to his own Budget, and that was within a week of its delivery. Now we discover that the Finance Bill makes no provision whatsoever regarding VAT on energy-saving products. In fact, it is worse than that, because my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles has just received a written answer from the Financial Secretary stating that the Government are “still considering” their policy, and that the lower rate of VAT will continue only “in the meantime”. Will the Secretary of State tell us whether there is a now a U-turn on the U-turn?
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
After we passed the Climate Change Act 2008, we hoped that other EU countries would follow with similar commitments: none did. Indeed, many countries, including Austria, Holland and Ireland, have made no emissions savings since 1990. We saw the result of that in the Paris COP 21 when the EU submission was significantly lower than the UK’s targets. Can the Secretary of State look me in the eye from her position and tell me that we will not be acting unilaterally this time?
Mr Speaker
Order. May we have an end to this rather tedious business of requests for looks in the eye? I say that in the context of answering the hon. Gentleman because the Secretary of State’s responsibility is to address the House. If she looks at anybody, she should look at the Chair. She certainly should not be looking behind her at the hon. Gentleman, a very agreeable sight though it may be.
Amber Rudd
Thank you for that guidance, Mr Speaker. May I point out to my hon. Friend that a positive element of the Paris deal is that other countries are now making commitments? I know that he is concerned that other EU countries are not making the same commitments as us, and it is correct that our Climate Change Act is one of the most ambitious, but I am proud of it and other EU countries are beginning to emulate it, although there is more work to do.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I recently met a group of EU foresters—it was a very unusual meeting—at a symposium in Milverton in my constituency to discuss sustainable forestry. They expressed concerns that our growing biomass industry is putting pressure on many countries further afield to supply wood, possibly causing deforestation. Will the Minister assure us that sustainability is a key part of encouraging this exciting new biomass industry?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend enjoys that kind of meeting very much. I can absolutely assure her that we keep the whole question of sustainability under review. She will be interested to know that analysis of the 2013-14 sustainability data that companies report to Ofgem under the renewables obligation shows that all the reported biomass achieved the greenhouse gas saving target and met the land criteria, two years before they are mandatory. But we do keep this under review.
Several hon. Members rose—