Energy Bill

Tom Greatrex Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)]

We have had an interesting and, at times, enlightening debate on what will be highly significant legislation. Given the number of contributions that we have heard, I apologise in advance if I am unable to refer to them all in my remarks.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) said at the beginning of the debate, the Opposition share the objectives that the Government have set for the Bill. However, as we have heard from many right hon. and hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Glasgow North West (John Robertson), for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) and for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), parts of the Bill still require further detail and greater clarity and gaps need to be plugged.

The Minister, who is charged with taking the Bill through Committee, can anticipate full scrutiny on the many issues that have been flagged up today by hon. Members from across the House. I am sure that he would expect nothing less. Indeed, he is known to be a fan of Burke and a prodigious quote machine, so he will know that Burke said:

“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn said, we do not consider the Bill to be a bad one, but we do consider that it requires some improvement and change.

I hope that the Minister’s constructive approach will endure through Committee. Judging by the nature of the contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the House, he will have heard a significant number of concerns expressed about the areas that require further work. It is in that spirit of constructive engagement, genuine scrutiny and an overriding determination to improve the Bill that we will act, as our reasoned amendment makes clear.

As the hon. Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), who chairs the Energy and Climate Change Committee, said earlier this week:

“This legislation is far too important for Britain’s future to get wrong.”

As the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) observed, in the next decade around 20% of the UK’s generating capacity is likely to cease to operate. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) referred to the power station in his constituency, and although some nuclear power stations have had their lives extended in recent weeks, the power stations at Cockenzie, Didcot and Tilbury are likely to close in the next few months. The hon. Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams) referred to the Ofgem report and the impact of the capacity squeeze over the next few years.

For all those reasons, the Bill is very important and the implications of not dealing with these issues are particularly serious, as my hon. Friends the Members for Southampton, Test and for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) said in reference to our carbon targets.

It has been a long road to get to this point. It is almost two years since the Government launched their consultation on electricity market reform. Since then, we have had a White Paper, technical updates, a draft Bill, pre-legislative scrutiny, which my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West and other members of the Select Committee referred to, and now the Bill is before the House. I am sure that Ministers would concede that it has not been a painless process for the Government. The Chancellor’s interventions have not always helped in DECC’s desire to provide, if not certainty, certainly predictability for the investments that need to be made in the future, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn observed.

What the Minister described in last night’s Adjournment debate as the great bargain between DECC and the Treasury, with the incessant semi-public fighting within Government, has left many people nervous and reticent about investing in the UK. Those mixed signals are not good for reducing the capital costs of investment, as the former Minister, the hon. Member for Wealden, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and others observed.

The recent Ernst and Young renewable energy attractiveness index for the third quarter of 2012 blamed

“political miscommunication and the lack of consistency”

over key energy reforms for impeding future investment in the UK. We cannot allow that situation to continue. Without a sense of purpose, the upgrade in energy infrastructure that we need in this country will not happen as quickly and might well cost more, and we will be ever more at the mercy of global commodity prices than we would be with a much more balanced and diverse energy mix that many of us, although not all who have taken part in the debate, see as very important.

As many hon. Members, including my hon. Friends the Members for Southampton, Test and for Ynys Môn and the hon. Member for North Warwickshire (Dan Byles) made clear, there are gaps and omissions in the Bill. There are not yet measures on demand reduction, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher), my hon. Friend the Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and the hon. Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) mentioned. There is not yet any fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s promise of a few weeks ago on prices and not yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) and many others observed, a clear 2030 target for the decarbonisation of the power sector.

All those things, I contend, are required to stimulate the necessary investment. As the Chair of the Energy and Climate Change Committee said earlier this week:

“Setting a target for emissions from electricity generation as recommended by the Climate Change Committee has been put off until 2016, prolonging the political and regulatory uncertainty that is killing investment.”

That issue is at the heart of our reasoned and reasonable amendment, and it is an issue for which the Secretary of State and his Cabinet colleague the Chief Secretary to the Treasury argued vehemently less than three months ago at their party conference. We all know how important consistency is to the Liberal Democrats; we also know the perils of inconsistency and the need to ensure that we move towards a decarbonisation target.

As one industry chief executive remarked to me just last week, targets help investors see the direction of travel, like the star shining over Bethlehem that showed the direction of travel for the three wise men. As I look at the ministerial Bench this evening, I indeed see three men; given the charitable time of year, I will wait until Third Reading to judge their wisdom.

Also missing from the Bill are measures to support the type of co-operative and community energy about which my hon. Friends the Member for Edinburgh North and Leith and for Cardiff South and Penarth spoke so eloquently, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Steve Reed), with his experience of what happened in Brixton. Members will be aware that his predecessor was one of the most thoughtful and serious contributors to energy debates in the House; in this, as in many other respects, he has a worthy successor.

The Secretary of State recently said that he wanted nothing less than a community energy revolution. I say to him that the Bill is an opportunity that we will help him to use to encourage that. There remain serious questions. We are all pleased to see the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies) here 10 years after his operation; he referred to some of the difficulties with the detail of the contract for difference. Many other hon. Members referred to the capacity market and other things for which some detail has yet to be given.

I can anticipate some of what the Minister, a seasoned and erudite contributor to the House, may well say in response this evening. He will doubtless quote Dickens, Churchill, Burke or Disraeli—if we are lucky, more than one of them. He will indicate his own brand of energetic commitment to the Bill and say that he is working with officials, industry and stakeholders to hammer out the detail to which I have referred. Yet a failure to fill some of the gaps in such a significant Bill, leaving it all to secondary legislation, will prolong the period of uncertainty.

Were the Minister able to offer publication of some of that secondary legislation in draft in Committee, Members on both sides would find that extremely helpful for effective scrutiny. At the very least, Ministers should be able to ensure that the impact assessment is updated before Committee and made available to Members; I have raised the issue directly with the Minister and his officials, but it is important to get that on the record to ensure that there is a commitment to assess properly the impact assessment that needs to be updated.

It is in the best interests of the country that the Bill should leave the House in the best possible shape. The Minister prompts me, just by his presence, into recalling the words of Disraeli:

“The world is governed by very different personages from what is imagined by those who are not behind the scenes.”

I anticipate keenly my behind-the-scenes encounters with the Minister and hope that he will not disappoint me in taking into account the many issues that have been raised not just by Opposition Front Benchers but by Members across the House during the debate.

It is a pleasure to be taking part in the final debate of the year on Government legislation before Christmas, before many of us spend time with our friends and families—and in my case, no doubt, a daily dose of Peppa Pig. Christmas is also a time of year for reflection. Given the pace of our work and proceedings in the House, we often do not get much time for the luxury of reflection. I therefore conclude by genuinely wishing Ministers a happy Christmas and expressing the hope that during this period they will have the opportunity to reflect on the issues raised by Members across the House and come back reinvigorated, refreshed and ready to engage in those issues so that we can ensure that this Bill does the job that many of us want it to do.