Autumn Statement Resolutions

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Thérèse Coffey

Thursday 23rd November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The United Nations has warned that we are on track for 3°C of global warming. That is unacceptable and would be a catastrophe. We urgently need to limit global temperature rises to 1.5°C. We cannot pretend that the UK is safe from climate change. Last year, the UK suffered the most intense heatwave it has ever faced. Hospitals struggled to cope, there were around 3,000 more deaths among people aged over 65 and 20 % of operations were cancelled. These impacts will only get worse.

Sadly, our Government are in denial. The Chancellor speaks about economic growth, yet fails to understand that reaching net zero is an opportunity as well as a necessity. The green transition can encourage billions of pounds’ worth of investment, yet this Government are ignoring that unprecedented opportunity. The US Inflation Reduction Act and the EU’s green industrial plan will see a combined $670 billion of green investment. Even Canada, an economy smaller than ours, announced a package that offers nearly £50 billion-worth of tax credits for clean technologies. This autumn statement was an opportunity to equal the ambition of our international partners, but the Chancellor is explicit that the UK will not match the ambitions of other countries

If the UK does not invest now, we will turn our backs on investment worth potentially £1 trillion by 2030. I am pleased that the Government plan to halve the time taken to build new grid infrastructure, but why has it taken 13 years to see the problem? I am also pleased the Government will provide tax relief for meeting energy efficiency targets. However, why are they waiting until 2025 to put these measures in place?

All the dither and delay gives the Government time to U-turn on their commitments. Their record speaks for itself, including on transport. After months and years of defending HS2 and spending millions of pounds preparing for it to go ahead, the Government are now in chaos and without a vision. Transport is the largest emitting sector in the UK. Rail produces 76% less carbon dioxide emissions than the equivalent road journey. We must encourage a move away from polluting transport modes, towards greener public transport, such as trains.

[Dr Coffey]

I hear what the hon. Lady is saying, but instead of building the extra bit of HS2, the money will be used in a variety of ways, mostly on roads and the electrification of train lines. That is an important way of decarbonising our existing rail industry. Between 2010 and 2015, both Secretaries of State, including the current leader of the Liberal Democrat party, were Secretaries of State for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, so they were there when that policy was being developed in a variety of ways, early on in the lifetime of the Government.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I am not sure what the right hon. Member’s question is, but I am not denying that we need to invest more in all these sectors. The worst thing about HS2 is the dither and delay, the back and forth about decisions. That is what wastes the millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money and is unacceptable.

The decision to scrap the northern leg of HS2 will mean 500,000 more lorry journeys up and down the country. Meanwhile, as the right hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) has just said, the Chancellor plans to take £8.6 billion meant for the railway to support road use.

The Government also want to increase aviation. I was shocked to hear that Luton Airport has called for an expansion in passenger numbers to 32 million a year. Hertfordshire’s skies would become polluted with endless planes and noise. The plans directly contradict the Climate Change Committee’s recommendation of no net expansion in airport capacity. I urge the Government to do the right thing: listen to local people from Harpenden and Berkhamsted and block the Luton Airport expansion, which flies in the face of our climate commitments.

This Government have failed to invest in renewables, have failed to support greener public transport, and are now failing to keep our constituents warm. Last winter was devastating, with the average annual household bill increasing by nearly 178%. Many people had to make severe sacrifices in order to heat their homes. It is a scandal that some people had to restrict themselves to one shower per week. This was not a blip. The Government need to realise that, even under the energy price cap, annual bills this winter will be 69% above summer 2021 levels. People need help. Lowering energy bills must be a priority, yet there was nothing in this autumn statement to support my constituents from the increase in energy bills.

We Liberal Democrats propose that the Government implement a social tariff. This would bring in lower energy bills for vulnerable customers. The Government must also ensure that the warm home discount is made available to all customers in vulnerable circumstances. That would prevent a repeat of last year, when suppliers set limits on the number of people who could access this money.

The green transition is a huge opportunity. We need a Government with the political courage to treat climate change with the urgency it demands. The country needs a bold Government with a bold plan. This autumn statement is simply another missed opportunity.

UK Food Shortages

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Thérèse Coffey

Thursday 23rd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

No, that is not the situation. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) could have been in the Chamber earlier if he wanted to ask a question. What we have particularly now is an issue that has affected a supply chain of certain products and the supermarkets are acting. It is happening in other European countries, although not in all of them. As I have explained to the House on more than one occasion, sometimes, the contracts are different, which is why my right hon. Friend the Minister for Food, Farming and Fisheries is convening a meeting with the retailers directly. We have already been doing that as a Department and we will continue to do so.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

The Secretary of State keeps dismissing the concerns of the farming industry about food shortages, yet supermarkets are restricting food to customers—clearly, her Department is out of touch with the real world. Does she agree that the Prime Minister should call a Cobra meeting because this is now a national emergency and out of the control of her Department?

[Dr Coffey]

As I said to the NFU yesterday, farmers are here to feed the country. That is why we support them and will continue to support them in a number of different ways. We are going through a transition away from a financial support system of direct payments, the basic payment, where more than half the money was going to just 10% of farmers because it was based on how much land people had. That is part of the journey we are on, but there are still significant amounts of basic payments going in. That is why we still want, as our manifesto set out and as I said to the NFU yesterday, to at least maintain the amount of domestic food production, if not increase it. We will continue to try to support that, to ensure that our farmers are there for generations to come.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Thérèse Coffey

Thursday 12th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

Brazil already produces a significant amount of foods that are not produced in this country, so we welcome any imports. My hon. Friend highlights the importance of trade and how we can export to Brazil. In any potential future trade agreement with Mercosur, of which Brazil is a member, we would want to make sure that we uphold our standards on food safety, animal welfare and environmental protection.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

T3. Between 2020 and 2021, there were more than 775,000 sewage spills in England and Wales. The Government have muddied the waters further by scrapping vital indicators of river and stream health, and by omitting water quality from their legally binding environmental targets. The Secretary of State avoided my previous question on this subject, so I ask again: how can our constituents be sure that their water is clean?

[Dr Coffey]

We will be publishing our environmental improvement plan, but the hon. Lady will be aware of the action already taken by the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow). As we have highlighted to the House today, thanks to Conservative Government monitoring is now widely available, so that we can tackle that, and we never had it before. That is why we are trying to resolve the issues and I know that the hon. Lady will want us to achieve that as quickly as possible.

Convention on Biodiversity COP15: Outcomes

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Thérèse Coffey

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

I can say that our beaches are cleaner than we inherited them in 2010 from the Labour Government—that is clear. The hon. Lady must be very proud of the last Labour Government’s record of achievement on that. I say to her that this matters not just in our countryside and on our coast, but in our urban environments as well. We already have targets on water quality. In fact, I was discussing today with the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) who is responsible for environmental quality and resilience, the approaches we are going to take to try to improve water quality, particularly by thinking about the chemicals in our water, which are particularly problematic in urban areas. That is something on which we need to work with local councils, as well as with the Environment Agency, to try to get changes so that we clean up the water right around the country. I am sure that the hon. Lady will join us when we need to take appropriate action in her constituency in future.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

An historic deal has been reached today, including a global target to conserve at least 30% of land and inland water at a time when we know that not a single river in the UK is free from pollution. The Government only last week scrapped the indicator on river health, the only measure for water companies and the public to know whether their water is clean. Without that indicator, how will my Bath constituents know in future that their water is clean?

[Dr Coffey]

I think the hon. Lady is incorrect in her understanding about that. The targets are still in place on our aim to achieve for our rivers a 75% “good” ecological status by 2027. That is what we signed up to when we were part of the European Union, that is still our target today, and that is what we will keep working on. It is important that we continue to try to improve the environment—she will know that, given the difficult things that happened with air quality in her city—and we will continue to try to make sure that we take that right across the country.

Covid-19: DWP Update

Debate between Wera Hobhouse and Thérèse Coffey

Monday 4th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

First, I thank my right hon. Friend for praising staff at the DWP. He is right to do so, and I thank him for that. I am very aware of the issue he is bringing to my attention, and I am actively looking at that particular scenario, where people, not realising some of the eligibility rules, have then made the application and are no longer effectively going to receive working tax credits. I cannot give an answer to my right hon. Friend or the House today, but I assure him that I am looking very carefully into what changes we could make to address that situation. I have already asked for the website to be updated, so that people are crystal clear when they apply.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD) [V]]

May I, too, thank the staff at the DWP for their very hard work? The hospitality, arts and tourism sectors, which are vital industries in my constituency, will not recover overnight, even when the restrictions are lifted. Many of my constituents will have no option but to go on universal credit, with no job prospects any time soon. Does the Secretary of State think—she has even been reminding company directors of their eligibility for universal credit —that the current universal credit allowance of just under £5,000 a year for the over-25s is enough to live a dignified life?

[Dr Coffey]

With regard to the hospitality and tourism sector, the hon. Lady will be aware of the generous approach taken by the Government, whether that is grants, the furlough scheme or the other reliefs that are being applied. The figure that she quotes is solely the standard allowance. There are other elements of universal credit that people may be entitled to, such as if they have children or housing costs. It is the rolling up of six benefits into one. She focuses only on one, which equates currently to about £94 a week. I think that is a reasonable assumption, disregarding the other costs.