Jobs and Growth in a Low-carbon Economy

Steve Brine Excerpts

Monday 5th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Flint]

I will make some progress before giving way again.

In government, we set up a system of feed-in tariffs to support solar and other forms of microgeneration. Within 18 months the solar industry had grown from 3,000 employees in 450 businesses to 25,000 people in nearly 4,000 businesses. Our vision was shared by many other countries; Germany installed half the world’s solar panels and supported 250,000 jobs and Australia could boast at Durban about the completion of 1 million homes with solar PV. What can this Government boast about? Cutting off an industry at its knees put hundreds of businesses at risk, destroyed thousands of jobs—5,000 according to the Government’s own estimate—increased the import of Chinese solar panels and denied millions of households the chance of a little more control over their energy bills. I will not dwell on the catastrophic series of events that have left us where we are. Suffice it to say, even the Energy and Climate Change Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), has stated that

“the damage to both investor confidence and to some consumers could have been avoided.”

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to the right hon. Lady’s speech—there are a number of Government Members who are. Is she seriously suggesting that she left a feed-in tariffs regime that was fit for purpose and that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), did not have to salvage it from the car crash he found when he took office?

[Caroline Flint]

Well, it took the Government 18 months to give six weeks’ notice to the industry, but the truth is that Labour always said that this scheme and others that support fledgling sectors need to be reviewed and that prices will change and come down, but not in the way the Secretary of State and his predecessor indicated. It caused mayhem in the system and has left other business investors in green technologies questioning whether they should dip their toe in the water. The fact is that the Minister is now offering pie-in-the-sky predictions of the UK overtaking Germany in solar capacity by 2020. He needs to get real. Just how can he cut support for solar power by 70% in six months and still expect to overtake Germany by the end of the decade?