Fuel Poverty
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
No one should have to make the choice between feeding their family or heating their home, yet this is the choice that the 3.2 million households living in fuel poverty face. In Bath and North East Somerset, generally considered an affluent area, over 10% of households are struggling with their fuel bills. We are fortunate enough to have an excellent Citizens Advice, but Citizens Advice cannot replace urgent Government action.
The effects of fuel poverty are heartbreaking, such as needing to wrap up in a duvet in damp conditions with restricted mobility. Existing health conditions, including mental health, deteriorate fast and family life is often under severe pressure. The pandemic has made things even worse. It has created additional financial hardship while increasing household bills, as people were forced to stay at home and wholesale energy prices rose. Research suggests that people working from home added an extra £16 a month on energy costs, adding up to £195 a year for those on poor value tariffs.
We must address fuel poverty not only to end this unjustifiable inequality, but because it could be a major step forward in tackling the climate emergency. All too often fuel poverty goes hand in hand with poor housing, especially poor insulation. Energy inefficient homes are not just bad for the environment, but a huge drain on the household bills of low-income families. Behind the reduction in fuel-poor homes in 2018-19 was the increase to an energy efficiency rating to band C or higher, but the Government are relying only on the energy company obligation and the warm home discount. That is simply not enough.
The Government need to make much more serious efforts to drive the retrofitting of Britain’s old housing stock. We need a coherent plan, and we need action, not words. Where are the training programmes to dramatically build up the skills base we need? Where are the tough energy efficiency and heating regulations? Why do the Government not give more powers to lead on the delivery of the schemes to local authorities, which are in a much better position to support house owners and landlords, and better identify the households living in fuel poverty?
The clearest example of the Government’s failure is the scrapping of the green homes grant only five months after it was introduced. Only 6% of the budget was spent, and only a fraction of the vouchers were given out. Rather than ending the whole scheme as quickly as it was introduced, the Government should have extended the scheme over 10 years, with the clear aim to end fuel poverty and cut greenhouse gas emissions by the middle of the decade. With a long-term commitment, the industry would have been able to scale up to deliver this massive task. Knee-jerk actions and short-termism are not just bad for the environment; they are letting down the 3.2 million households that will continue to live in fuel poverty. I urge the Government to reinstate a new net-zero homes grant, but this time with a long-term commitment to end fuel poverty once and for all.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Paul Scully
I agree with my hon. Friend about Nissan’s investment and the confidence it has shown in this country, which is a ringing endorsement. Indeed, the Secretary of State is up in Ellesmere Port talking to Stellantis about its investment in this country as well.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]
Anne-Marie Trevelyan
As I said earlier, we already have a number of funds working in community energy. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady at any point to discuss her perspective.
Enabling Community Energy
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 4 months ago)
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Sir David Amess (in the Chair)
I do not think it is necessary to remind colleagues how we proceed during Westminster Hall debates, but I remind those who are participating virtually that we are watching you all the time, so be on your best behaviour and watch what you are up to. Members who are participating physically should keep their masks on.
There has been just one withdrawal, and Wera Hobhouse is opening the debate and closing it. I will not impose a time limit, but everyone other than the Front Benchers, who have 10 minutes each, should take roughly four minutes each. Please share the time.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered enabling community energy.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir David, and I am looking forward to the Minister’s response. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting the debate, which I secured with the hon. Members for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). We want to make the case for enabling community energy by removing the blockage that is preventing its huge potential from being realised.
The evidence that the climate crisis threatens to destroy human civilisation and the natural world is increasingly alarming. We must achieve our emissions reduction targets and get to net zero by 2050 at the latest, as set out in the Climate Change Act 2008 and the Paris accord. The UK is way off track in doing that, as the Climate Change Committee has made clear. Currently, only 12% of our power comes from renewable sources. The only sector that has made reasonable progress is the production of electricity. In all other sectors—heating, transport, agriculture and heavy industry, let alone shipping and aviation—Britain is failing to reach its own targets.
The two big challenges facing householders are heating and transport. How do we rapidly transition from powering our heating and transport with fossil fuels towards doing so with clean energy? A change of this scale can be achieved only through the active involvement of people, because they will have to pay for it through their energy bills, the products they buy, and the taxes they pay. People will need to host the new infrastructure in their neighbourhoods and communities, and they will ultimately need to change their routines and practices. If people do not agree to pay for it, host it or do it, progress to net zero will be more costly and more contested, and it will be less inclusive, equitable and environmentally sustainable. The individual householder or consumer must be at the centre of our transition to net zero, and it seems the Government have not quite understood this; otherwise, they would by now have developed a coherent plan to engage people along the way.
Community energy is one of the few existing tried-and-tested means of engaging people in the energy system. Indeed, the strength of community energy comes from its connection to people and places, because people make community energy. Community energy means smaller-scale, renewable power generation that is owned and run, at least in part, by local community companies or co-operatives. The individual providers might be small or medium-sized, but when taken together, community energy could be done on a very large scale. A 2014 Government report stated that we could have had 3,000 MW of clean community energy generation by 2020. The Environmental Audit Committee’s recent community energy inquiry said that
“by 2030 the community energy sector could grow by 12-20 times, powering 2.2 million homes and saving 2.5 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year.”
Let us imagine a future in which we can all buy clean electricity directly from a local supply company or co-operative and in which every pound spent powering our homes, workplaces and transport supports local jobs and helps to fund new facilities and services in our communities and in turn contributes to the building of more renewable energy infrastructure. Right now, UK community energy generation is just 319 MW—just 0.5% of our total energy generation. That is a great failure of potential.
The huge potential of community energy is being blocked by our energy market and licensing rules, which are largely unchanged from when they were designed in the 1990s. They make the cost faced by community energy groups insurmountable. A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research states that the financial, technical and operational challenges involved in setting up a licensed energy supply company mean that initial costs exceed £1 million.
Let us imagine setting up a microbrewery. We plan to deliver our beers to local pubs, off-licences and homes, but then we are told that we have to pay £1 million in road tax for our delivery van. These businesses would never be started, and the savings in transport costs, greenhouse gas emissions and prices would never be realised. That is the reality that the community energy sector faces.
The 319 MW of installed community energy capacity exists because of the dedicated efforts of the people who make up the UK’s few hundred community energy groups—groups such as Bath and West Community Energy, which is in my constituency and which uses its revenues to support energy efficiency in homes, fuel-poverty programmes and low-carbon transport. Often, these groups reach those who are traditionally left behind. They are staffed largely by volunteers, who work hard to survive in an unnecessarily harsh regulatory environment.
Our outdated energy market rules mean that the groups must sell their power to large utilities, which sell it on to customers. That makes it impossible for community energy to scale up. The market structure does not recognise and incentivise the efficiencies and savings that community energy’s distributed generation creates by enabling power to be consumed closer to where it is physically generated.
The Government say that there is no problem. In answer to a parliamentary written question on 1 March, they said:
“The right to local energy supply already exists under the Electricity Act 1989. One of Ofgem’s key strategic priorities is increasing flexibility across the electricity system to support the delivery of net zero and ensuring that consumers benefit from these innovative changes.”
That misses the point: the fact that the right exists does not mean that it is practically possible. In answer to a written question on 2 November 2020, the former Minister of State, who is now Secretary of State, said:
“Ofgem can award supply licences that are restricted to a geographical area and has just consulted on how to use this facility more effectively to bring forward innovation. Ofgem’s Licence Lite regime also aims to reduce the cost and complexity of entering and operating in the market for suppliers.”
Clearly, neither has been able to achieve the potential of at least 3,000 MW of community energy generation that was identified in the 2014 Government report.
The intention behind Licence Lite was commendable, but it has not delivered what was intended. Its key flaw is the need for local renewable generators to partner with a willing licensed energy utility. None of the existing community energy groups in the UK is licensed to sell its electricity directly to local customers. That is why community energy has hardly grown for more than a decade when it should have been multiplying many times over. The flexibilities and allowances for local supply that Ministers referred to have not delivered. As the call for evidence for the Environmental Audit Committee’s recently launched community energy inquiry put it so well,
“the ability of communities to sell the energy produced locally is limited in the UK’s centralised regulatory system, meaning that projects often have to sell energy directly to the grid, then buy it back at additional cost.”
The solution is a right to local supply that enables community energy schemes to sell their power directly to local customers. That would make it viable to expand existing schemes and to construct many new ones. The Local Electricity Bill proposed by the hon. Member for Waveney in the last Session would do that. Think of it—a surge in clean energy and a surge in public buy-in for climate solutions, because people would see the local economic benefits happening in their own communities.
The Government have said they want to enable community energy. They have agreed in principle with the need for a right to local supply, but they have not agreed to look at the detail of how the true potential of community energy could be unleashed and why there are persistent barriers. Words must now become actions. I therefore ask the Minister to engage with me and other lead Members supporting this reform, and the campaigners and experts behind it. Together, we can get the detail right and implement it quickly and effectively.
The need to get to net zero is becoming more and more urgent. We will not get there without the consent and active engagement of the people who have to pay for it, host any infrastructure and change their habits. Community energy could make a large contribution, not only to produce the clean power we need but to bring people with us in our ambition to get to net zero before it is too late.
Wera Hobhouse
I thank everybody for their powerful contributions this afternoon. There is clearly widespread cross-party support for community energy from all corners of the nation and fantastic enthusiasm in our communities. We have put the Local Electricity Bill, which everybody has supported today, at the centre of this debate. While I hear that the Government are in favour of local communities getting involved in projects and local energy supply in principle, it was disappointing not to hear the Government give consent to the principle at the heart of the Bill—the right to local supply.
Sir David, I fear that there will be another Westminster Hall debate, or a bigger debate, because, as someone else said, the Government always say no before they say yes. Let us not give up. Unleashing the potential for community energy and offering support in principle for local supply is where we need to get to in the end. I thank all Members and the Minister.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered enabling community energy.
Charity-funded Medical Research
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate with you in the Chair, Ms McVey. This is a timely debate ahead of tomorrow’s spending review. As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for eating disorders, I will focus my short remarks today on eating disorders and research funding.
We have already heard that covid-19 has had a devastating effect on the charity sector more generally, with income from fundraising lost during lockdown. The value of the expertise of medical research charities has never been more stark, yet they were not included in the Government’s £750 million support package. The charities are a huge driver of medical research in the UK, and we have already heard some of the numbers, but they are worth repeating. Members of the Association of Medical Research Charities invested £1.9 billion in 2019 alone. That is 51% of publicly funded UK medical research. They face a shortfall of up to £7.8 billion between now and 2027, according to the Institute for Public Policy Research.
I want to draw some attention to the importance of charity-funded medical research to understanding and treating eating disorders. The impact of an eating disorder can be devastating, and there is a pressing need for more research. We have heard particularly about specialist and rare diseases, but eating disorders are widespread and have epidemic proportions in many ways. Eating disorders are especially prevalent among young women, affecting about 15% of that age group, but the truth is that eating disorders do not discriminate. That is an important factor. According to the charity Beat, up to 5% of the population will experience an eating disorder.
Eating disorders are all-consuming. They have an impact on social relationships, quality of life and physical health. Anorexia nervosa is one of the most common forms of eating disorders and has the highest mortality rate of any mental health condition. According to the Medical Research Foundation, up to half of people with an eating disorder have self-harmed. Despite all of that, there is still limited research focusing on the causes of eating disorders. There is a serious lack of investment for mental health research in general. In a study last year, the charity MQ: Transforming Mental Health found that eating disorders were among the mental health conditions that received the least research funding.
In recent years, medical research charities, including several members of the Association of Medical Research Charities, have played a hugely welcome role in funding and supporting eating disorder research. Often, the chances for early interventions for eating disorders are missed, and treatments may not always be effective, so many patients are admitted for expensive hospital treatments. Currently, less than half of individuals with an eating disorder reach full recovery. Again, that is an important statistic: half never reach full recovery. That means a large proportion of people in this country are affected by eating disorders.
Studies funded through medical research charities have included research into self-harm and eating disorders, as well as the treatment of adults with anorexia and autism. In February, the largest ever study of eating disorders, the Eating Disorder Genetics Initiative, was launched. This seeks to build on existing research, which shows that genetic factors are involved in eating disorders.
In conclusion, eating disorders are serious conditions and can be potentially life-threatening. These studies help us to understand more, about not just the treatment of eating disorders but the underlying causes and common risk factors; they may even prevent eating disorders from developing in the first place. It is crucial that these charities receive the financial support they need, so that they can continue to play this vital role.
I, too, add my voice to the many here today. Medical research funding is so important, and it needs support from the Government. I urge the Minister to make her voice heard in the spending review tomorrow.
Electricity Generation: Local Suppliers
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Ben Lake
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for making that point. She anticipates a few of the arguments I wish to make this evening, but she is right to emphasise the role that batteries and improving storage will play in the future. If we are to balance local generation and local demand, being able to store a lot of this renewable energy will be key. These local, community-owned renewable energy projects support local skilled jobs and offer local economic opportunities, which will be very welcome in the face of the covid-19 pandemic’s impact on so many of our communities.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Bath and North East Somerset Council is working closely with Bath and West Community Energy, and such partnerships are incredibly important for getting local buy-in. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that in order to get that local buy-in, this really has to work financially as well for the people?
Ben Lake
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point. She rightly says that this has to be viable for these community schemes and partnerships if they are to fully realise the potential that so many of these schemes possess. I have put on record details of one local energy partnership in Cardigan in my constituency that I know is trying to grapple with some of these challenges.
The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Kwasi Kwarteng)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I was going to make very much the same point. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) on securing today’s debate, and I will make the same point: I have never seen an Adjournment debate with so many interventions. They were all extremely gracefully and graciously accommodated in his speech, so many congratulations to him.
The hon. Member has spoken eloquently about the need for local communities to be able to supply electricity, and I think there are strong arguments in its favour. I know that similar views have been expressed to me and the Department by many Members. I am fully aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) has also done his bit to try to drive the issue of local supply up the agenda.
I know that the hon. Member for Ceredigion supports a campaign for electricity generators to sell directly to local consumers, for all the benefits he suggested in terms of local employment. I think he or one of the many intervenors used the phrase “local buy-in”, and those arguments are fully appreciated.
In my remarks today, I will address the matter in quite a technical way and give the specific reasons why we as a Government feel that this particular provision is not something that we would adopt, but I suggest to him that local community participation has to be on the agenda. It is certainly something that I as the Energy Minister will be willing to engage with and have a discussion about.
With regard to the licensing—we will talk a little bit about that—changing the licensing framework to suit the business models identified by his campaign appears attractive, but the danger—and we always have to be mindful of dangers in government—is that it would create wider distortions elsewhere in the energy system. I will talk to those directly. Instead of the hon. Gentleman’s proposal, I would urge stakeholders and hon. and right hon. Members across the House to engage with the ongoing work that the Government are undertaking with Ofgem to support flexibility and innovation more generally. Then perhaps we can come to a view about how the local element can play its part in the solution.
Wera Hobhouse
Is the Minister not aware that the main problem is the lack of a level playing field? Basically, the smaller providers cannot compete with the bigger providers, and therefore we need this change.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I am fully aware of that, and I will come on to it. I have only 10 minutes, so I ask the hon. Lady to bear with me; I will address that point later in my remarks.
Electricity and gas supply licences, as I am sure everybody in the Chamber knows, are usually granted on a Great Britain-wide basis. However, Ofgem has powers to award supply licences for specified areas and specified types of premises, and that can allow licensees, once they have the licence, to specialise and offer more targeted and potentially innovative products and services. The holder of such a licence could supply customers only in the specified geographical area and specified types of premises, with the full terms and conditions of the licence applying otherwise. That means that there is already provision through this licence to have local provision. Electricity suppliers can apply to Ofgem for a derogation from a particular provision of the supply licence, and if it is granted, provisions of the supply licence will not apply to them. There is already some degree of flexibility.
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy: Departmental Spending
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
The climate emergency is real and, as the word “emergency” suggests, it needs urgent action now. I want to thank the Minister for his time yesterday, and I will continue to engage with him; some of what I am going to say now he heard yesterday. I continue to worry that although the Government do something to address the need to lower our carbon emissions, they fall short of addressing the urgent need to get to net zero in the next few decades. The Government need to publish a comprehensive and coherent plan of how to get to net zero, not just to low carbon emissions, across all sectors of our economy—transport, heating, energy, agriculture, construction and so on. All this has to be done simultaneously. It is well understood that this is a very complex task, but any Government who take a climate emergency seriously would have such a plan, not just announce piecemeal measures.
One of the biggest set of carbon emissions comes from heating our homes and buildings. The Government need to set out what they believe the future of heating our public and private buildings will look like, and how the transition to net zero is going to be achieved. If the Government are serious about hydrogen, significant pilot schemes need to be rolled out soon, not only to guarantee their safety but to indicate to investors and businesses what the future direction looks like. I urge the Government to fast-track green hydrogen production, so that we do not end up with hydrogen coming predominantly from natural gas and we do not still pump fossil fuels out of the ground in 30 years’ time. The production of green hydrogen requires a large scaling-up of renewable energy production, so thinking about one sector branches out into another. District heating could play an important part in heating our homes, but rather than going forward with its roll-out, since 2018 we have gone backwards. The energy company obligation scheme is going to be continued into 2022, but I urge the Minister to look into widening it to include the most vulnerable people.
If private vehicles will be largely powered by electricity, we need a large increase in grid capacity. People will find it a lot easier to switch to electric vehicles if they can be confident that they can quickly and easily charge their cars. However, I hear from car makers across the board that the Government have not committed yet to the large infrastructure changes needed to allow them to be confident about the quick and large-scale take-up of electric vehicles. Taking steps in the right direction is not good enough; we need a coherent plan and big leaps to get to net zero.
A Green Industrial Revolution
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Bob Stewart
I certainly do, and I want it to happen in my house as soon as possible.
We are decarbonising our economy faster, apparently, than any other G20 country, and we have reduced our emissions by 29% in the past decade, but here is the point: every breath we take is full of something called particulates, which, to be honest, I did not know much about until recently. These particulates—particularly something called particulate matter 2.5—are about 200 times smaller than a grain of sand, so they just float through the air and go into our lungs. They pass into our bloodstream and end up somewhere in our brain, or any of our other organs. I am told—of course, I am no expert, and I suspect that very few of us in the House are experts—that this causes illness and death. Having looked at the January 2019 report by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, I understand that only 12% of particulate matter comes from vehicles.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning particulate matter, which is an issue of air pollution, but we should differentiate air pollution and climate change. They are two separate matters and we need to tackle them differently.
Bob Stewart
I accept that, and that I am no expert, so I accept the hon. Lady’s point of view, but particulate matter does have an impact on us all. Around 13% comes from industrial processes and 38% comes from wood burning and coal fires. That is quite a lot—more than comes from vehicles. I am looking up at the clock because I promised the Deputy Speaker that I would be finished in under 10 minutes—and I will.
I like the clean air strategy that was published in January last year: it is a good, bold new goal. We have to think carefully about using wood-burning stoves—I do not use the fireplace in my house anymore—and having open fires, and farms will have to change the way they do business. The move on the reduction of particulate matter has been welcomed by the World Health Organisation as an example for the rest of the world to follow.
As a good boy, I am now skipping through my pages, Mr Deputy Speaker, to make a final point. We produce about 1% to 2% of the world’s greenhouse gases. If we became carbon neutral right now, it might not make much difference, but that should not stop us doing it —we can become an example to the rest of the world—and the rest of the world is starting to follow and to deal with climate change. Bring it on: let us change the way we live so that the future is bright for those who follow us.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
One of the obvious advantages and pleasures of being called late in the debate is that I have been able to listen to several wonderful maiden speeches. In the two most recent speeches, the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) gave a full history of Scotland, and the hon. Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) offered a wonderful portrait of her town and its people. It has been a pleasurable afternoon, and I am looking forward to the next maiden speech of the day.
It is just weeks since the general election, during which all Opposition parties proposed detailed plans for tackling the climate emergency and getting us to net zero emissions as soon as possible, and I have been encouraged by how the scientific consensus and the political consensus have matched. We have known for over a year that we need to keep global temperature rises to below 1.5° C and that our old target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions must change to net zero by 2050 at the latest.
The Opposition parties offer similar commitments to climate action, and we share similar thinking on the science and technology. We share similar aspirations for a just transition and for ambitious targets, but where is the Government’s plan? Climate action is notable by its absence from the Government’s plan for this new Parliament, and I have a term for that: climate action delay. The climate emergency is real, and we need urgent action now. Climate action delay is no better than climate change denial, because if we delay now, we will fail to keep temperatures below the threshold of 1.5° C necessary to avoid global climate chaos.
What does climate action mean in practice for transport, for energy and for our homes? In transport, net zero means that cars, lorries and buses need to be powered without using fossil fuels. For us that means no sales of new petrol or diesel cars from 2030; for the Government the target is 2040, which is too late. Is there a scientific reason for a 10-year difference? No. It is climate action delayed.
The next sector is electricity. In net-zero Britain, electricity must come from renewables and green hydrogen. For us that means massive new investment in renewable energy such as offshore and onshore wind, solar and marine power, starting now. No one should be in any doubt that this is a big challenge. Electricity usage will go up enormously as we transition from natural gas for heating and petrol and diesel for vehicles.
Our target is to generate 80% of our electricity from renewables by 2030. Net zero means completely transitioning out of fossil fuels in this sector. What would the Government do if they were serious about a net-zero Britain? They would support a fast and extensive roll-out of renewable installations, including onshore wind and marine power. They would demonstrate that there will be no fossil fuel extraction in the UK, and they would put a clear stop to fracking now. They would reduce and remove all fossil fuel subsidies.
What are this Government doing? The signs are not good. The indications are business as usual. Business as usual means going at a sufficiently slow pace so as to ensure the continued need for fossil fuels. That is climate action delayed.
The third sector is the energy efficiency of our homes. To get to net zero, we need to stop heating our homes with natural gas and oil. We will succeed in that transition only if we have an ambitious programme of insulating our homes to the highest energy efficiency standard feasible.
We know what needs to be done, and the technology is there. We can build new homes to high sustainability standards. What is this Government’s plan? Little or nothing. They are consulting on or suggesting making some changes five years from now. Once again, that is climate action delayed. We cannot afford delay any longer. We need a clear and decisive plan for how to adjust and change almost every sector to deliver net zero, starting now.
This Government talk the talk, but they do not walk the walk. We need climate action now.
Several hon. Members rose—
Grant Shapps
Let the Member who has never flown argue on that subject. I mean no disrespect, but the reality is that we have to reach an in-between place involving hybrid fuels. We probably have to go through a hybrid stage, as we have with road vehicles, where we use biofuels and other things. The Department is doing a huge amount of work in that respect.
Grant Shapps
With hon. Members’ permission, I will make a little progress first. I have not even touched on anyone else’s speech yet, so let me talk about this afternoon’s debate. We know that global warming is one of the biggest threats to humanity. That is why tackling climate change is so important, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy set out some of the measures we are taking.
The contributions to the debate have been particularly impressive, and I pay tribute to the nine Members I noted making their maiden speech today. Each was brilliant in different ways. My hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (Simon Fell) spoke about the poor rail service in his constituency—I am sorry about that. Other Members mentioned rail services in relation to Northern. The House will be aware that I have been speaking about that recently, and will again very soon. He made a beautifully pitched and calmly delivered speech, showing how much he cares about the community he now represents. Our hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook) spoke in great terms about his constituency and everything going on in the community, and did a wonderful job.
The hon. Member for Coventry South (Zarah Sultana) described her constituency with great care, leaving us in no doubt about her passion for it. My hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) made a fantastic speech, showing great knowledge of subjects including offshore wind. She pointed out that seven of the 10 largest offshore wind farms are here in the UK —a great statistic. The hon. Members for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) and for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) also made their maiden speeches in this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) proposed a statue of the “Beast of Bolsover”, although we do not know how that would be taken. His was a fine speech.
The new hon. Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) talked about her constituency—the constituency in which I got married, it so happens—with great passion.
Finally, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake) also spoke about her constituency very passionately indeed. There were fantastic speeches all around, and all concentrated on today’s subject of green growth.
Reducing carbon in the atmosphere is incredibly important. I know we have had a bit of a debate about it this afternoon because we will say, quite rightly, that our economy has expanded by over two thirds since 1990, but we have managed to cut carbon emissions by more than 40%. I want to point out—because this was questioned during the debate—that these are figures not that we have somehow come to but which have been calculated under the internationally recognised system for assessing the amount of carbon that has been cut. The figures do show a 40% cut since 1990, which is faster than any other G20 country.
We continue to lead the world in this process. We have legislated for zero carbon by 2050, becoming the first major economy to do so. Of course, what happens internationally is important, but I do not accept the argument that just because we cannot control what everybody else in the rest of the world does we should not be making the effort ourselves. It is the right thing to do, and we should be proud of our performance in this area.
We also know that measures have to be viable and practical. It is easy to say that we should just follow Norway, where a number of electric cars are sold. Does the House know why that is so? It is because it does not have a domestic car production facility to protect before the change to electric; it does not produce its own cars. So to all those Members who say, “Look, why don’t we just do it tomorrow? Why don’t we just demand that every car is electric from now on?”, the answer is: because every single factory in every single one of the constituencies affected would be closing tomorrow. We have to work with the industry and help it to make the transition, and that is what this Government are doing every single day of the week.
Let us not forget what this country has achieved so far. We ratified the Paris agreement. More than half our electricity—53%—now comes from low-carbon sources. We fostered green industry, which is now worth £45 billion; and that goes to my previous point that we need to have a period of transition for industry. The new green sector now employs 430,000 people, so it is growing all the time. We are setting a net zero target, and have committed around £2 billion to green growth initiatives. An awful lot is happening.
To manage these great efforts, we know that there has to be a framework—an industrial strategy. The clean growth strategy, which details our carbon-cutting plans through to 2032, is exactly that document. In July we published our green finance strategy to trigger investment in green infrastructure technologies and services, from offshore wind to energy-efficient housing. Of course, the Prime Minister will chair the new Cabinet Committee on Climate Change to help co-ordinate the effort of the whole country to get to zero carbon. Later this year the UK will have the honour of hosting the climate change summit in Glasgow.
Oral Answers to Questions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Kwasi Kwarteng
My desire and propensity to visit all these installations know no bounds, and I should be very happy—diary permitting, obviously—to take up my hon. Friend’s offer.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
Does the Minister agree that hydrogen should be made from renewables via electrolysis in the medium and long term?
Kwasi Kwarteng
The hon. Lady is right to point to the advantages of hydrogen, but, as she will understand, the issue with electrolysis is that it is currently very expensive, so the green hydrogen to which she has referred is something that we are continuing to develop.
Government Plan for Net Zero Emissions
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Sarah Newton
I absolutely agree. There is a lot of scaremongering and misinformation. Most of the people that I meet are genuine and sincere, but there is no doubt that there are people who have seen the popular support and concern about what is happening to our climate and nature and are deliberately infiltrating and organising in a way intended to create chaos, and fundamentally to bring down our whole way of life. We must guard against that. In any democracy that enjoys as much freedom as we do—it is fantastic that we have those freedoms—we must guard against extreme elements in our society, which will always want to undermine and bring down our whole way of life. My right hon. Friend makes a very good point.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I believe that the biggest danger we face is not climate change deniers, but climate change delayers—those people who think we are doing okay. It is an emergency. The guys are out there because we have not done enough. Does the hon. Lady agree that we should all take note of that?
Sarah Newton
I gently ask the hon. Lady: how can she claim to speak for everyone outside? A little bit of humility in all of us does not go amiss. Everyone in this room is 100% committed to getting to net zero. It is clear from Parliament’s actions that we want to do that. That is why I wanted to focus this debate on ensuring that we have clear plans and communications and measures are reported in an open and transparent way, so that people cannot make cheap party political points, which damage people’s wellbeing and how they feel about this issue.
Let us be honest: in post-Brexit Britain, we will need a unifying cause. We will need something to bring the whole country together, and this is it. People from all walks of life, all backgrounds and all ages want us to work together, to tackle this huge challenge, which I believe is also a huge opportunity. In this debate we should show our unity of purpose in supporting the Government to take those actions, and that we are truly a United Kingdom that everyone can be proud of.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I love the way the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) promotes what her community does. I am just as proud of my council in Bath and what it is doing.
It is true that we need to harness the energy of everybody. It worries me that we have all been guilty of complacency; we have not done enough. It is not that we are saying that we have done nothing, but we have not done enough. This Government need to step up and to understand that we need to do more than we have done in the past. That is all I am pleading for.
As Liberal Democrats, we believe that at the heart of the transition needs to be a massive transformation of how we do things in the next 10 years. There needs to be a fair transition. We need to set up a fair transition commission—the Government could do that tomorrow—to look at which communities are the most affected by the change, where we will face the most job losses and where industries will collapse, and to provide new jobs and new opportunities. We need to take those communities and the people who are most affected with us, so that the people who can least afford it do not have to pay the highest price. That is very important. The Government could set up a just and fair transition commission tomorrow if they were serious in their thinking about the subject.
Bringing people with us has been talked about a lot, as well as how we are organising citizens’ assemblies. Again, the Government could start that process now. It is not just a matter of informing people about what we want to do; we have to involve people in decision making. Citizens’ assemblies do not take decisions out of Government or Parliament; they allow people to be part of decision making by letting them develop options. Anybody who is serious about taking people with us should look at the way citizens’ assemblies work. They do not just inform people at the bottom from the top; they allow people from the bottom to help us come to good decisions. I trust in people and I believe that we can involve them. Let us set up citizens’ assemblies; we can do that tomorrow.
Climate Change, the Environment and Global Development
Wera Hobhouse Excerpts(5 years, 3 months ago)
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Andrew Stephenson
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for that point. Most of the committee’s critique of the Government is fair, but we are about to publish updates on 80% of the actions. In many we have signalled a clear policy intent, for example on future home standards. A lot of progress is being made, and I agree with his point.
On 27 June, we set a legally binding target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions from across the UK by 2050. That world-leading target will bring to an end our contribution to climate change, and makes the UK the first major economy to legislate for a net zero target. The UK also has a strong track record on international development, through our legal commitment to provide 0.7% of our gross national income as official development assistance. Alongside efforts to reduce our own emissions, we have committed to work with developing countries, including as part of our ODA, to enable them to pursue clean growth and climate-resilient development. We are on track to provide £5.8 billion of climate aid—our international climate finance—to help developing countries tackle the causes and impacts of climate change between 2016 and 2020.
That climate aid is delivering real results. Since 2011, we have helped more than 47 million people cope with the effects of climate change and natural disasters. We have provided 17 million people with access to clean energy. But it is still not enough. As the International Development Committee noted, it is not a problem that can be solved by Government action alone. We need businesses, communities and individuals to also act. It will be really challenging: real shifts in behaviour and global ambition will be needed, and there can be no more business as usual.
The next few years are critical. That is why tackling the crisis has become such a high priority for the UK, and it is why we have offered to preside over the major UN climate summit next year—COP 26—in partnership with Italy.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
On the point about business, what has also been said clearly this morning in the report back from the Committee on Climate Change is that the Government need to set out a road map so that business can understand in which direction they are going, and then the investment will follow. The first action has to lie with the Government.
Andrew Stephenson
To go back to the example I have just used of decarbonising transport in this country, “The Road to Zero” is a clear road map that was set out a year ago by the Government. It was not a kneejerk reaction: it was done in consultation with industry, other bodies and our international partners to come up with a credible track to reduce carbon emissions from road transport.
The UN climate action summit in September this year is a key staging post in our efforts. It will be a critical opportunity for world leaders to set out their ambitions ahead of COP 26, and to drive an unprecedented shift in the way we approach resilience and adaptation. Despite the scale of this challenge and the opportunities to be gained from acting, it is often seen as a problem for the future. That is why the United Kingdom and Egypt are co-leading the resilience and adaptation theme at the UN climate action summit in September. We want to drive a transformational change in the way different stakeholders around the world think about and invest in resilience and adaptation.
Dan Carden
The hon. Lady should wait for my full contribution, but there are certainly differences between many Members and the Government, not least around support for fracking and other fossil fuel investments still being supported by the Government.
Wera Hobhouse
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that if there were consensus on the need for us to stop using fossil fuels, the Government could ban fracking exploration tomorrow?
Dan Carden
I do agree with the hon. Lady, and that brings me to my next point.
The language that we use in this debate is important, and it is important that we are now calling this climate emergency what it is, but unless we as a House act faster to deliver action, these will be nothing more than warm words. It is clear that we must be far more ambitious about international climate action that serves the interests of the world’s poorest, and not just its elites. We must act now, and go further and faster than ever before.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
Will my right hon. and learned Friend give way?
Sir Oliver Heald
I was just about to say how I would tackle the problem. Let me do that, then perhaps I will give way.
How do we tackle the problem? First, we have to bring forward the phase-out date for the sale of new petrol and diesel cars to at least 2035. Given the life cycle of a traditional car, the Committee on Climate Change is clear that ensuring that all cars and vans are electric by 2050, which is needed for net zero, will require all new vehicles to be electric by 2035, and I believe that is achievable. By 2025, new electric vehicles will have the same up-front cost as equivalent conventional models, and if we can get the infrastructure right by that point, there should be no reason for consumers not to buy an electric vehicle.
Sir Oliver Heald
Certainly there is a key role for incentivising that. The advantage of electric vehicles is that they avoid those damaging types of pollution we are concerned about.
Wera Hobhouse
I am grateful to the right hon. and learned Gentleman for mentioning road surface transport and the fact that our emissions are still increasing. He is absolutely right that we need the right infrastructure. Does he agree that what does not work is, for example, Highways England, in its recent consultation not even considering that it is its responsibility to provide the electricity grid needed to power electric cars? It is important that Departments work together and that Highways England takes responsibility for ensuring that we have the right electricity infrastructure.
Sir Oliver Heald
I agree that co-ordination is crucial. The hon. Lady makes a good point about infrastructure.
To make that long-term target a reality, we need short-term policies to get us to the point where we can accelerate electrification of road transport. Important measures include providing Government-backed interest-free loans for electric vehicle purchase; creating incentives for the installation of ultra-rapid electric vehicle chargers at key strategic points, such as on the motorway network; a new tax on sales of non-electric vehicles after 2030; introducing the right as a tenant to request an electric vehicle charging point; and changing the sort of fuel we use in petrol or hybrid petrol cars. I support the campaign recently instigated by the all-party parliamentary group for British bioethanol, which has considerable support in the House, for a shift to 10% ethanol in standard petrol, which would deliver both emission reductions and UK jobs and which I see as part of the transition.
British bioethanol is created essentially from wheat in the north of England. The wheat would otherwise be used for animal feedstuff if, and only if, a high-protein additive such as soya were added to it. It cannot be used for human beings. The soya comes from South America, which touches on the point about the Brazilian rain forest, which makes these soya imports a subject of environmental concern. A by-product of making bioethanol from British wheat is a rich-in-protein animal feed, which displaces the soya. With total investment of £5 billion, two factories have been set up in the north of England, involving 5,000 jobs. One of them is mothballed and the other is running at half capacity as they wait for the Government to mandate E10 petrol—petrol with 10% ethanol. Forward-looking countries in Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA are already doing that; it is time we got on board. It is estimated that the reduction in carbon emissions from E10 being used as the UK’s standard petrol would be equivalent to taking 700,000 cars off the road; it would also be less polluting and protect British jobs. I know the Department for Transport has already consulted on this, but it should move quickly to make this change, certainly for 2020.
Let me now talk about the tax situation and how we deal with the change from fuel duty to a world of electric vehicles. As we shift to electric vehicles, the amount of revenue the Exchequer takes from fuel duty will naturally shrink. We need, therefore, to change how we pay for roads. Road pricing is based on the principle that those making use of public roads should pay a sum commensurate with costs involved. Ideally, the total sum should include the costs of air pollution and greenhouse gases as well. Sophisticated schemes also use live data to factor in congestion, and charge people more to drive during peak times on busy roads. There are existing schemes, such as in Singapore, that show that this can be done. So the Government should be looking at that as a possible way forward. By working with the power of market price signals, road pricing incentivises individuals to use cleaner fuel and to travel at times that are less damaging.
I shall turn now to regional rail networks and bus, tram and cycling services. The lack of decent transport outside London is a handbrake on UK growth. Local transport networks in towns and cities are woefully undeveloped compared with those in similar sized places in other countries. For example, Leeds is the largest city in the European Union with no mass transport system. Its twin city, Lille, has two metro lines, two tram lines, and an international high-speed rail connection. Fixing this disparity is critical to UK growth and to easing the pressure on housing demand in London. To meet net zero, we need a switch of freight from road to rail, and for commuters and travellers to feel confident to use low carbon transport.
I wish to mention a few strategic transport investments at this point. Surely the time has come to modernise the rail network across the Pennines—
Gillian Keegan
Yes. Last year I went to the Nucleus conference at Goodwood and saw one of the world’s leading electric car manufacturers, NIO—a Chinese company—which is solving the problem in a different way. Instead of creating lots of charging points, they had changeable units that people could pick up and drop off in a garage, like we do with Calor gas on the continent. We need to consider all the best practice, because we do not want to get policy wrong again.
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Lady is right; we need to get this right and take people with us. Is it not also true that we are up against some strong vested interests? We should not underestimate how much those with strong vested interests in the fossil fuel industry and the car industry would like to continue as before, because that would be easiest for them. They are going to push back, and that is the challenge we face in this House.
Gillian Keegan
As politicians, we are very used to strong vested interests; in fact, most of us can spot them a mile off. I worked in car manufacturing for eight years before coming to this place. Those companies have made radical changes to their manufacturing processes and designs, and all of them are moving to electric vehicles. We must be generous to those businesses and industries. There is sometimes a little bit of anti-business rhetoric in this place, and we ought to remember that those businesses do most of the investment in most technology innovation in this country.
Wera Hobhouse
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again; she is being very generous. I am not anti-business. My family runs businesses, and I understand how business works. They need to have the right incentives. When I talk to those in the car industry, they say that the Government need to send a strong message out to the industry and investors about where they are going, and currently they are failing to do that.
Gillian Keegan
Having spent 30 years in business, I can tell the hon. Lady that no business waits for politicians to give them the answer. They do not; they innovate, they invest in innovation and they invest in where the market is going. In fact, they often create the market.
We need to take drastic action, but we need to do it in a way that is not drastic. This became apparent to me during the Extinction Rebellion protest. When it came here, I spent an hour listening to, learning from and debating the points raised by one group. One of the suggestions made by some in the group was the introduction of a one child policy here in the UK. That would be a rather totalitarian response, and it is unnecessary given our already declining total fertility rate of just 1.76 in 2017.
That said, there were plenty of sensible ideas as well, such as installing solar panels on all new builds, putting in alternative fuel boilers and ensuring we are insulating homes properly, which is one of the simplest things that can have a massive impact. We should all be doing it, and I hope to see some action on that. Obviously, we should also be moving to greener modes of transport, reusing and recycling, and restoring peat land and planting millions more trees a year. All of these offer many financial and environmental benefits.
It is fundamental to remember that to become a carbon neutral country, we will need to invest in technological development and to incentivise, with incentive schemes, green infrastructure and much more. However, I believe we must be cautious about policies and ideas that negatively impact on growth; for example, calls that limit people to one long-haul flight, which was another Extinction Rebellion idea—it did confirm that it meant return flights—and one short-haul flight per year. As someone who has worked internationally for 30 years, I would clearly be out of a job, because I used to take 200 flights a year. It was my job to grow business and to grow jobs, and such flights are sometimes part of what needs to happen in a globalised world.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
It is always a pleasure to speak last, because one can follow all the interesting comments and contributions.
I absolutely agreed with the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) when she said so passionately that there are wonderful opportunities. We should not be all gloomy, because there absolutely are opportunities. We should look forward positively, rather than thinking only that we do not really know how to do it. We do know how to do it.
We should of course work together across party lines, but I am a bit baffled that some behave as if this was a new subject and we have suddenly seen the light and understood what is going on. This is not a new subject. I have grown up with it and I have been thinking environmentally for as long as I can remember. The fact that we have been destroying our planet is not news. Certainly since we heard from Al Gore in 2006, we have known the inconvenient truth that we are warming up this planet in a very, very dangerous way, and that we are heading for extinction unless we do something. So, what have we been doing in the past decade? It is really disappointing to see, particularly over the past four years with this Government, that we have actually gone backwards. I feel very angry about that, and it is normal for the young generation to feel angry about it, too. I am not surprised. We really need to look at ourselves and ask, what have we done when we knew that this was coming our way?
I really hope that this is a new beginning, that we are all going to work together, and that we understand that some difficult decisions need to be made. We will probably have party political ding-dongs about that, because there are so many different ways of achieving what we need to achieve. We all know that we need to get to net zero by 2050, but how we get there is obviously the big question.
I do welcome the fact that we want to work cross-party on this matter. I am looking forward to that and, as I said earlier, one starting point for me would be to stop fracking. There are some simple things that we can do, but obviously there are political differences to overcome. Mention was made, for example, of nationalising the grid in Scotland. Is that a proposal? There are different ways of addressing this issue. We need to have a rational discussion about it and be honest about the difficulties, but we also need to understand where our political differences lie and, hopefully, overcome them. We need to do something; we owe it to the younger generation.
The climate crisis is the most pressing challenge of our time. We are already seeing its disastrous effects across the globe. The UK has a moral responsibility to take the lead in tackling the crisis. First, as a pioneer of the industrial revolution, we have been among the greatest producers of historical emissions, so I do not take the point that we are responsible for only 1% of global emissions. We have a much greater responsibility than for just 1% of current global emissions. We need to take our share of responsibility for the emissions that we have produced over many decades, and even over centuries. Secondly, we are a rich country. We have the means to decarbonise more quickly than poorer countries.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
The hon. Lady has made a very important point. One of the challenges that we will have to meet as a world is how we bring billions upon billions of people out of poverty in a way that does not damage the environment. If we are not careful, we will be seen as saying, “We’re okay,” and as pulling the ladder up after us with our comfortable standard of living. It is a real challenge for us to tackle climate change both here and across the globe in a way that is fair and equitable to those people who are currently living in poverty.
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. Social justice absolutely must be at the heart of tackling this issue internationally and in this country. We cannot afford to allow such action to become the burden of the poorer communities. We need to work internationally and collaboratively, which is why the whole debate in this country about separating from Europe through Brexit—I will touch on that later—is so damaging, because it sends out a message that we want to say goodbye to international collaboration.
Thirdly, as Lord Deben, the chair of the Committee on Climate Change, said this morning, when we know, we have a responsibility to act. We know now how to get to net zero, so we have a responsibility to do it. This is a very important point. It is not that we do not know how to go about it; we do know what to do, and therefore we have a moral responsibility to do it, and do it quickly.
I welcome the fact that this House and the Government have now said in legal terms that we should get to net zero by 2050, but I wonder whether that is only a desperate effort to build a legacy for the current Prime Minister. The hypocrisy of it is striking, given that her Government have relentlessly undermined the climate progress achieved by the Liberal Democrats in the coalition Government. Distant targets such as 2050 are meaningless unless backed up by concrete short-term action. The Committee on Climate Change has reported that of its 25 headline policy actions for the past year, this Government have only fully delivered on one—one out of 25.
Complacency—[Interruption.] Complacency, which I am hearing from the Government Benches, is not in order. The Liberal Democrats are committed to achieving a net zero target by 2045, but we recognise that that will be achieved only if vital steps are taken immediately. For example, we need to ban fracking now. It is unacceptable that the Government support the development of new fossil fuels when all our efforts should go into developing renewables as sources of power. The Government blocked the Swansea tidal lagoon, even though it would have allowed us to become world leaders in tidal power. They privatised the green investment bank and stopped the growing solar power industry in its tracks. They have all but banned onshore wind, although that is now the cheapest form of renewable energy. They are also failing to lay out a clear road map that would allow industries to make long-term green investments.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
I apologise for not having been in the Chamber earlier; I had to attend a Westminster Hall debate. The hon. Lady mentioned the privatisation of the green investment bank. Will she inform the House of how much money is being lent by that bank post privatisation in comparison with when it was under Government ownership?
Wera Hobhouse
The hon. Gentleman wants to make a political point—that the private bank works better. This will be the big debate about climate change. Who will take the lead—the private or the public sector? I am not convinced that the private sector will deliver what we need to achieve the net zero target in 2050. I do not believe it will. Those will be our big political differences. I do not mean that everything needs to be nationalised, but we need a clear debate about what will be carried by the public sector and by the private sector. I believe that, to make the transition socially just, the public sector will have a very important role to play.
I am going to say something else that the Government side of the House will not like. If we are serious about the climate emergency, the most immediate thing we can do is stop Brexit. Climate change is a global problem and the fight against it requires co-ordinated international action. As our closest geographical neighbour, the EU is a good place to start. It has been a force for good in meeting the challenge of climate change. Through its institutions, we have learned how to negotiate and bring together separate national interests under a commonly shared vision.
The process is not easy and not perfect, but it is far preferable to going it alone. The EU has taken the lead on international climate change action: it has, for example, introduced projects such as emissions trading schemes and interconnectors between national grids. One initiative important for local councils was that of the European directives on biodegradable waste, without which this country would have done nothing about recycling.
This is why the European Union actually works: it makes national Governments take action when they would not do so on their own. EU directives have required member states to take decisive action even when national Governments would not have done. It has built environmental protections into its dealings with the rest of the world, putting key protections at the heart of its trade deals. Outside the EU, we will be weaker. We will have less clout, for example, against the United States, which might impose environmentally harmful terms on us as a condition of any new trade deal. While we are desperately looking for new trade deals, we might be victims of all that.
Luke Graham
The hon. Lady mentioned the impact of Brexit. I am not trying to rehash the Brexit debate here, although we probably would have been on the same side. The Paris climate accord obviously includes countries outside the EU. We can show leadership and try to bring countries together from both inside and outside the EU once we leave.
Secondly, does the hon. Lady agree that a number of Members in this House are nationalists who want not only to break out of the EU but break up our own United Kingdom? Surely breaking up the component parts of the United Kingdom would not help us to tackle climate change in any way.
Wera Hobhouse
It is absolutely true that we should not be getting into the Brexit debate, but I believe in co-operation at every level, and the environment that has been created in this House in the past two years against the European Union is very damaging to international co-operation.
Our closest geographical neighbour is the European Union, and we should work very closely with it. That is why the best thing we can do if we are serious about climate action is to stop Brexit. History will not look kindly on us for leaving the European Union just at the moment when our moral responsibility is to protect our planet and work together. We should be placing ourselves at the heart of the European project, because the climate emergency demands it.