Spring Budget 2024
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I too welcome the noble Lord, Lord Kempsell, and congratulate him on his maiden speech, which was concise and interesting. That bodes well for future contributions.
I recognise the scenario that the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, put forward. I did not really recognise the scenario that the Minister put forward. I think that we are in a terrible mess in this country, and this Budget does nothing for it. This is not really even a debate at all, because we have two parties arguing over the same set of policies, while the general public see their taxes misspent on a mix of corrupt contracts and privatised services. It does not seem very fair, really.
The reality of the UK today is that a lot of hard-working people will get paid less than they did a decade ago, while the very richest get even richer. There has been no austerity for Conservative Party donors or the friends of Cabinet Ministers; they came out of Covid richer, as a result of fast-track PPE contracts, and now of course they are paying less tax, with fewer regulations and with the ability to stow away their money in offshore trusts.
Brexit has failed to benefit Cornish fishermen or voters in Sedgefield, Wrexham or Leigh. Levelling up is an excuse that enables the Government to channel public money to marginal Conservative seats. The whole Thatcher project has failed, yet politicians of both major parties treat it as a sacred text. For example, North Sea oil and gas has made Norway one of the richest countries in Europe, from the 1980s onwards, with an oil fund worth approximately $1.4 trillion. Revenue from the fund accounts for one-fifth of government spending. The UK should be even better off, but we handed it all over to the private sector. The result is energy customers being ripped off in the past two years, with record high energy bills and record high profits for the oil and gas industries.
Instead of coming out of the last 50 years with a thriving economy, we live in a country where things are falling apart and nothing works. Anyone who walks around towns will see the lack of investment, as councils are struggling and going bust up and down the country. NHS waits are getting longer and dentists cannot be found. These headline tax cuts will do nothing to reverse the decades-long real-terms wage freeze that most workers have faced under successive Conservative Governments. You have to ask where all the money that we had when Margaret Thatcher took power went.
We have 171 billionaires now, which we did not have before and which is obviously something that we should all be proud of. Why is a wealth tax not the number one priority for both parties, especially the Labour Party, at the next election? It would enable this country finally to invest in large-scale renewables and the insulation of homes. A wealth tax could deliver cheaper energy and lower bills, which is exactly what the majority of us need.
Rail privatisation has led to far higher fares, at a time when the climate crisis dictates that we need lower fares, more trains and fewer cars. Water privatisation has given us sewage in our rivers, higher bills and a collapsing infrastructure. Water bills are due to go up another £125 on average this year to generate the £56 billion needed to fix our leaky pipes and overloaded sewerage system. Oddly, that is a very similar amount to what the water companies have paid out in dividends. They took the money and did not do the work, and I do not see any penalty for that from the Government. There have been a few fines, but they pay those happily. Instead of asking for fines, we should be taking shares. The solution to our economic decline is not privatisation, of the NHS or anything else; it is public ownership of railways, water and the NHS, and the end to taxpayers being ripped off by dodgy contracts.
The Green Party wants this country to have its future back, which means changing the way in which we manage our economy and the environment that we live in. It means clean water, clean air and clean politics. The Green Party is putting together a manifesto at the moment for the general election, which will have a fully costed budget, which I am happy to share with all political parties. We need a bit of forward thinking in all our decisions over the next few years. We are in trouble as a human race. Somehow, nobody seems to get this—they just do not understand the urgency of what we have to do. I would argue that this Budget is fairly useless. I look forward to sharing the Green Party budget with everybody, so they can see what good ideas look like.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords and Sisters, there have been some absolutely brilliant speeches today. After the first four speeches—the noble Baroness, Lady Vere, and her optimism, the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, with cold, hard facts, the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, with her calm, concise clarity, and the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, with her passion and sincerity—I ran back to my office to rewrite my own speech. I thought, “I can’t compete with any of those speeches”. When I got to my office and I started casting round to find some things I wanted to say, I suddenly thought, “I don’t have to compete; all I have to do is support what I heard, collaborate, and be part of a debate that is incredibly important in today’s world”.
It is about a century since women got the vote—in 1919 for women with property and 1928 for all women—but society is still unequal, and women are still being left behind. The statistics speak for themselves. Women still do not have equal pay. Women do not have equal representation, whether in Westminster or in boardrooms. One in four women is subjected to domestic violence during her lifetime. The number of rape cases and domestic assault cases that come to court is abysmally low, which we as a society should be utterly ashamed of. Of course, many cases are never reported—why bother if it will take years for them to come to court? The levels of violence against women and girls are at epidemic proportions, and there is strong evidence that the media’s sexist portrayal of women is part of the problem.
The Government could do a lot about that. They possibly have done some things, but there is a lot left to do. My noble friend Lord Sikka today tweeted about something quite useful: the government “policies against women”. He mentioned:
“Gender pay/pension gap. Lower state pension. Unpaid carers. Real wage/benefit cuts—majority public sector workers & benefit recipients are female”.
We have heard about those issues in today’s speeches, and it is a sad reflection on 14 years of Tory government that they have not tried to equalise society in the way that only Governments can.
On the issue of our climate crisis, it is more often women who suffer. They are more likely to die in a climate disaster, be displaced by climate change or die from pollution. They are not inherently more vulnerable, but intersections between sex, power dynamics, socio-economic structures and societal norms and expectations result in climate impacts being experienced very differently by women. In many countries, women more often grow food for their families on small plots and are vulnerable to small changes in rainfall or soil quality. Sex inequality also intersects with discrimination based on other aspects of identity—class, age, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity, ethnicity and religion—all of which multiply the impacts of climate change.
When I was casting around for what to say, I looked at my noble friend Lady Bennett’s speech last year. I thought that it was really good and that I would take some of it. I thought I would not bother telling anyone, but then I thought she might notice. She said:
“When we think about food systems and the health and economic well-being of women and girls, we also need to think about the way in which the financial sector plays against it. When the overwhelmingly male-dominated financial markets expand under current arrangements, the rest of the world suffers … This is a threat to women and girls around the planet, to their chances of having a healthy diet and a liveable world. The financial sector is a parasite and we need strong medicine to stop it sucking the lifeblood out of this planet, particularly the well-being of women and girls. The financial sector funds big agriculture—the handful of companies in seeds, agrochemicals and industrial, giant-scale agriculture—which all too often robs the women and girls of this planet of their land, fresh water supplies and current food systems, and of their chance of a sustainable, secure life”.—[Official Report, 10/3/23; col. 1032.]
If we care about women, it is not enough to talk; we actually have to act.
Noble Lords here today probably act in their own lives to make things more equal for women. I first got into politics because of a fluke in our electoral system. After my first year as a London Assembly member, the Evening Standard did a review on how good everybody on the assembly was, and I came bottom of the poll. Two years later, I was the Deputy Mayor of London and, two years after that, I helped the Mayor of London bring in all sorts of multi-million-pound measures. We can do the most amazing things, but we have to change the world. We are all capable of it, but co-operation among ourselves is a big part of it.
Local Authorities: Budgets
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(8 months ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
The Benches opposite may not like being reminded of their record, but it remains a fact. The reality is that in the recent spending review we have committed more money to local government services, and that was increased further last year at the Autumn Statement in light of the inflationary pressures that councils are facing.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, this Government can promise what they like for the next election, but the fact is that they are not going to be in power, so all those promises come to nothing. What this Government have done is to reduce council budgets and make severe cuts. I heard only today from councillors from East Hertfordshire Council that the Government have cancelled four big infrastructure projects. How can councils carry on if this Government do not support them, which they are not doing?
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government are supporting councils. This is not about what is happening after the next election. In this spending review period, councils will receive £4.8 billion of new grant funding—the largest annual increase in core funding in over a decade—and that was further topped up at the Autumn Statement last year, recognising the pressures that councils face. Councils are doing an excellent job up and down the country, and we support them.
Corporate Profits: Inflation
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(10 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
I am afraid I am going to have to disagree with the noble Lord. I will not cite again the figures I gave to the House a moment ago. We have heard about the IMF in this Question today. Despite the challenges we face after the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the IMF has noted that the UK has taken decisive and responsible steps to tackle inflation, and all major forecasters expect inflation to fall this year. We cannot be complacent about that, and that is why this Government’s number one priority is to bring down inflation.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, the fact is that the majority of people in Britain are suffering from the cost of living crisis and this Government are doing nothing to make it better. The noble Lord, Lord Sikka, has come up with some things that would generate income for us that would help the majority of people. Why are the Government not at least thinking about some of these ideas?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I would say three things to the noble Baroness. First, this Government are not doing nothing to support people with the cost of living crisis; that could not be further from the truth. Over last year and this year, we are providing £94 billion of support to people to cope with the crisis, which is targeted at those on the lowest incomes who are least able to afford the increase in their bills. Secondly, the noble Baroness talks about revenue raising. Where we see windfall profits, we have taken action. The energy profits levy is going to raise billions of pounds in additional revenue in tax to support that action. Thirdly, at the end of last week, on Friday, the Chancellor announced new action to help people who are struggling with higher interest rates to afford their mortgage payments or to go on to new terms to cope with those payments—but, crucially, without adding fuel to the fire of inflation. I could not disagree with the noble Baroness more.
VAT: Building Repairs and Maintenance
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, the Government keep all taxes under review, but there are no plans to change the VAT treatment of repair and maintenance. The noble Viscount made the important point that we need to ensure that the maintenance of heritage and other older buildings in particular is supported, and we do that through a number of ways other than VAT relief. For example, approximately £206 million of the £2 billion culture recovery fund supported heritage sites and organisations through the pandemic, and several other sources of funding from government arm’s-length bodies are available for historic buildings in need.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, does His Majesty’s Treasury not have a climate change policy? What goes on there? Does it really not understand that this does not just come down to the cost of living? It comes down to dealing with the impacts of climate change. This tiny measure from the noble Lord, Lord Swire, would actually help with that because it would reduce the amount of embodied carbon that gets trashed every year and we would have a more efficient housing system.
Baroness Penn (Con)
My Lords, it is not a tiny measure; it is a measure that has costs in the billions. There may be several different ways to achieve the point that the noble Baroness is making, which is more energy-efficient construction to create new dwellings. That is the point that I was making to the House.
Budget Statement
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I have a huge apology to make to the noble Baroness, Lady Moyo, because I was not here for her maiden speech; I am very sorry about that, but I will of course read it in Hansard and congratulate her next week.
Before I start on the Budget—because that was probably the nicest thing I am going to say this afternoon—I would like to give the Leader of the House a couple of tips. First, a speaking limit in this debate might have been a good idea. Secondly, if the heating is going to be switched off before we meet, could blankets or hot water bottles be supplied? After my speech, I am going to go and get my coat, just like the noble Lord, Lord Brooke.
Noble Lords can imagine what I think about the Budget. Quite honestly, this Government do not have a clue about any sort of greening of the economy. It is ludicrous for them to talk about all the green things that they are doing when they are absolutely not green.
The IMF has forecast that the UK will be the worst-performing large advanced economy this year, but Britain’s decline, relative to those of other rich nations, is rooted in problems both old and new. Clearly, this Government have done their absolute best to trash our economy. We have had 13 years of economic mismanagement. We used to say, “Well, the thing about the Tories is that, however awful they are, at least they can manage money and know how to run an economy”. We cannot say that any more; in fact, the opposite is true. They have run our economy into the ground. I understand that Covid did not help but, in a crisis, you look to your best talents—clearly, the Tory Government did not have any. That is why we are in this situation at the moment.
Billions of pounds have been lost in bad decisions and lost investment. Millions more people are in poverty. Children and parents are going hungry. People are living in cold homes, with pensioners dying from hypothermia—and this Government have the cheek to put in their Budget the 1%, or whatever it is, for pension pots. Who is that for? It is for millionaires; it is not for people who are starving and cannot manage to pay their heating bills. It really is time that this Government understood the exact impact of what they are doing.
Today’s Budget announcement falls far short of the strong climate action needed. I have to repeat to the Government that, as Greens often say, green growth is an oxymoron. The minute you grow anything, you have to degrow in a different area. Green growth is possible but not if you do not cut somewhere else. Every time we grow the economy, we take a bite out of the planet’s resources—and it is a bite that will not grow back. Whatever this Government do, they seem to be moving in a way that is even more damaging to climate change.
Speaking to the Dutch Parliament recently, Professor Jason Hickel—his book, Less is More, should be compulsory reading for this Government—debunked the concept of green growth, saying:
“Decarbonization with growth is like trying to run down an escalator that is accelerating upwards”—
you are likely to fall on your face. People have to understand that using a tonne of fossil carbon and then trying to replace it with a tonne of new trees does not work. It is not a fair exchange; it is nowhere near compensation for the fossil fuel used. Carbon offsets will not save us from the worst of climate change; they are just something that make people feel good. They are absolutely ineffective and we have got to stop.
The simplest way to solve the problem of climate change is stopping the extraction and burning of fossil fuels. The Government have not even understood that; they are still mad about digging up coal and using oil. It is incredible that after decades of Greens like me telling the Government how to mitigate climate change, they still do not get it—plus, of course, this Chancellor continued the regressive freeze on fuel duty. That shows no grasp of the situation we are in; neither does his tweaking of the pension pot while not paying nurses and doctors. It is unbelievable stupidity. I know that there is now a deal, thank goodness, but why was there not one weeks ago? Why did we have to go through this pain? Why did patients have to go through it? I simply do not understand.
By the way, nuclear is not green. I cannot tell you how many times I have said that in this Chamber. Nuclear power is not green. It is filthy, it is very expensive and it is going to cause us problems in future. It is not green and it is not sustainable.
Our Green Party MP, Caroline Lucas, said in the other place that the Chancellor could have announced a
“wealth tax on the 1% richest people”,
which
“could raise up to £70 billion”—[Official Report, Commons, 15/3/23; col. 864.]
and fund cheaper public transport, more home insulation and public sector pay rises for millions. He did not do that. He put in a measure that will benefit millionaires.
If you are worried about jobs, why not upscale green initiatives—green growth, if you like? For example, clean, green, abundant and affordable renewables are so much quicker, easier and cheaper than nuclear; with onshore and offshore wind, tidal and solar, we could do it and do it quickly. We must remember that growth is not necessarily prosperity; people seem to conflate the two but it is not true.
Green Alliance was very quick off the mark to give us a rapid review of the Spring Budget. It shows that the Chancellor has taken absolutely no steps on the path to a green economy. While the fiscal situation might be improving, the UK’s economy is still forecast to shrink this year, with falling living standards for households being a primary reason. It is not falling living standards for people such as us—we can manage; it is falling living standards for people who cannot even manage at the moment.
There is one tiny thing the Chancellor did right: alcohol duty will rise in line with RPI from 1 August. That might reduce alcohol harm in the UK while raising perhaps crucial public funds, but it is really so minor as to be almost not worth mentioning.
A Green Party economist, Molly Scott Cato, former MEP, said that a green Chancellor would ensure major investment in a green economy. That means meaningful investment in affordable renewables and a nationwide insulation programme. We have had so many complaints about Insulate Britain, the campaign group that caused so much fuss. In fact, we should have said, “You’re absolutely right: we need to insulate Britain. It is cheap, it is fast and it helps people”. This Government got hung up on the group’s campaigns, and now we are seeing the Public Order Bill, and so on, which are trying to stop people protesting again. Just those two measures—insulation and renewables—would help tackle greenhouse gas emissions and mean that people could afford to be warm in their homes. Is that not a kinder thing to do than to cut living standards?
Other measures would include fair pay for public sector workers and 35 hours a week of free childcare for all. I support the Government’s idea of capping bus fares, although it will not be in every place. The Greens would put a £1 single fare on all bus routes in England.
It really is time this Government were gone, before they cause yet more damage to us, our society and the reputation of the UK, and before they damage the planet any more than they have already.
Energy Profits Levy
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to review the impact of their energy profits levy, given the profits announced by Shell on 2 February.
The Parliamentary Secretary, HM Treasury (Baroness Penn) (Con)
The energy profits levy was introduced in May 2022 to respond to very high prices that mean that oil and gas companies are benefiting from exceptional profits. In the Autumn Statement, the Government confirmed that the rate of the levy would rise by 10 percentage points to 35%. This brings the combined headline rate for tax for the sector to 75%. The OBR forecasts that the levy alone could raise more than £40 billion over the next five years.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I thank the Minister for her Answer, but it is obvious to us all that gas and oil companies are making obscene profits just when the poor and the old are frightened of turning on their heating because they cannot afford it. I would like the Government to promise to increase the windfall tax on companies such as Shell, BP and others, close the tax loopholes, use the money to speed up insulating Britain—which is a good campaign slogan—and stop their planned hike in energy prices for companies in April. Is that something they will do?
Baroness Penn (Con)
I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of protecting consumers, including vulnerable consumers. We have the energy price guarantee and other support for them, for example, through increasing rates of universal credit. I completely agree with her on the need to focus on energy efficiency, but I disagree on her interpretation of the current regime as having “loopholes”. They are about encouraging investment in the sector, which is incredibly important for our energy security and for keeping bills down in the longer term.
Autumn Statement 2022
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I too welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Lea. Her speech was indeed uncontroversial; it is quite possible that we need more of that in this House. I certainly do not subscribe to that other view.
I want to condemn the Chancellor’s austerity Budget in the strongest possible terms: to excoriate it; to revile it. I will explain why. The spending cuts of £30 billion have left people paying the price for a decade of Conservative economic mismanagement. They will impact the poorest the hardest, while those profiteering from the crisis—we know who they are—have been let off the hook.
The Chancellor announced that he would be sticking to his cash spending plans for the next two years, meaning public sector pay rises of just 2% with inflation at 7% next year, which would result in a 5% real-terms pay cut for public sector workers across the country. Whatever Jeremy Hunt claims, this amounts to taking £30 billion away from people who need it during a cost of living crisis, both directly and through cuts in services. The cuts will force local councils and national public services to deny people vital support.
Yet we know that there is enough wealth in this country for us to avoid the dire economic situation that this Conservative Government are forcing us into. The problem is that wealth is concentrated in too few hands when it should be spread throughout the economy to the benefit of everybody. I can tell you what the Green Party would do: we would introduce a 1% wealth tax on the super-rich—obviously, that is nobody in your Lordships’ House— and increase taxes on unearned income to ensure sufficient money to fund the public services that we need and deserve.
That brings me to two questions that I really would like answered by the Minister today. She talked about a stronger NHS. Does that have a privatised element or is it still completely public? If she could tell me that, it would be fantastic. Also, she mentioned new hospitals. I really would like to know where, when and how many. It must be possible to tell us.
The Green Party would also close the loopholes in the windfall tax to enable investment in green solutions to the energy and climate crisis—not schemes like Sizewell C, which will cost a fortune to build, will come onstream far too late to make a difference and will be incredibly polluting during its construction phase. These measures would put an end to the spiral of Conservative chaos and guarantee investment in the green infrastructure and world-class public services that our country hopes for.
Several noble Lords have mentioned how good—how necessary and stabilising—growth is. That is complete nonsense, I am afraid. Growth destabilises the planet. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, very kindly covered the issue of climate change being completely absent from the Autumn Statement so I do not need to go into that; but I can tell your Lordships that growth is not necessarily good.
Why on earth did the Government cancel the green stuff and leave tens of thousands of people with draughty homes and huge energy bills? Why do we not save everyone money and tighten up the standards for new homes so that they are all net zero? We should not even be going for net zero; we should be going for carbon negative. That can be done; it is more expensive but it saves money in the long term. It saves home owners money, it saves the Government money in terms of health and illness, and it will help to deal with the climate emergency. The only people who will be put out are the developers who quite possibly donate to the Conservative Party.
The Green Party proposals also include taxing the wealth of the richest 1% of households to raise at least £70 billion; and imposing a dirty profits tax, without any loopholes, on the oil and gas companies currently making huge sums from fossil fuels and the energy crisis. That, of course, is extremely damaging to our planet and to our future security on all sorts of fronts. We would provide increased funding for the Environment Agency and Ofwat to ensure proper enforcement of privatised water companies so that they invest in the infrastructure needed to end the scandal of sewage being poured into the rivers and seas. I have been highly amused by the number of MPs who rush to say, “Nothing to do with us,” in spite of the fact that they voted it through in the other place.
Money raised from the wealth tax and the dirty profits tax would help fund: a new green skilled workforce; a dash for renewables to bring down bills; a national home insulation programme to keep people warm; free childcare to ease the cost of living burden; reducing the cost of travelling by train and bus to make public transport cheaper than travelling by car; an end to the sewage scandal; a national minimum wage of £15 an hour; and decent pay increases that reflect rising inflation for public sector workers.
More Tory austerity will create fear in communities across the country. Services are already facing extreme pressures, and the country cannot stand billions more pounds of public spending cuts. While the Government seem belatedly to have acknowledged the importance of driving down our use of gas through energy efficiency, the measures announced in the Statement go nowhere near far enough to help people who need their homes insulated right now.
Our tax-raising alternative would mean that polluting companies and the very richest households contribute more while our investment in a rapid move to a net-zero economy would fund the new skilled, sustainable, well-paid jobs that will be needed to replace those reliant on fossil fuels. Our plans ensure that those most able and most responsible pay, while the vast majority reap the rewards of a rapid move to a green economy.
While I am laying out our measures, I mention also that we ought to have an immediate freeze on rent rises and a ban on evictions by landlords who simply want to increase rents between tenancies. The Scottish Government have done that; I cannot see why we could not do it here. It would be a very quick measure and would make people feel a lot safer.
I do not want—please—to hear any more of Ministers in your Lordships’ Chamber saying, “Well, nobody has come up with other ideas.” We have; lots of people have better ideas and we need to think about them. Of course they are better ideas, because this Government are themselves washed up and out of ideas.
Lord Skidelsky (CB)
Before the noble Baroness sits down, could I ask a question, please?
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Excuse me, but before the noble Baroness sits down, she did not answer my questions, unless I fell asleep, which is quite possible because it is past my bedtime. I asked two specific questions about NHS funding and hospitals.
Infrastructure Bill [HL]
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(9 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Borwick (Con)
My Lords, I think that the period for monitoring proposed in Amendment 113G—the previous 12 months—is unnecessary. The British Geological Survey found that background methane in aquifers is generally low. It also concluded that the majority of sites it studied showed little change in methane levels. That says to me that we should monitor situations on an individual basis, based purely on risk and not on anything else. Extensive monitoring like that proposed in the amendment is only going to delay safe projects from going ahead. Once we get a green light at an extraction site, we should get on with it.
On Amendment 115A, I do not see a great need for the Government to spend time putting together a report on fugitive emissions. Industry will already monitor emissions from the site; indeed, all the companies involved are committed to doing so. Fugitive emissions occur from leaks and poor-quality construction. In the UK the well design and plans have to be signed off by the regulators and reported on, so that is unlikely to be a major issue. Civil servants could spend their time far more productively than in producing such a report.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I support Labour’s amendments. They attempt to improve the regulatory framework but they do not go far enough. I hope that other amendments will be pushed through. We need a complete rejection of fracking. The things that have been said so far are not borne out by the facts and it would be very interesting to see future examples of just where fracking has gone very badly wrong.
We need to see a reprioritisation of renewables and energy efficiency. That would reduce our overall energy demand and make us much more able to fulfil our agreement under the Climate Change Act. Energy efficiency and renewables are already delivering jobs. They are very good at supplying employment and will do much more for energy security, lower bills and reduced emissions than an unacceptably risky shale gas industry can ever do.
The Bill contains some very worrying new measures that will, if given the green light by Parliament, threaten the UK’s wildlife. No one seems to take that into account. It will also promote the unfettered extraction of unconventional fossil fuels, which will undermine the Climate Change Act and our ability to avoid, as one nation among many nations, dangerous climate change.
The coalition talks endlessly about its supposed concern for future generations when it comes to reducing the budget but the same level of commitment is, surprisingly, absent when it comes to the environment and handing on a planet fit to live on. The next generation will be given a very degraded natural world if we do not understand the sort of damage that fracking can do.
If we want any more evidence that this is not the “greenest Government ever”, we need look no further than Clauses 32 to 37 and the deeply worrying and hugely unpopular new provisions to give companies the freedom to frack under our homes without letting us know. The Government have pushed ahead with this change despite recent polling showing that 75% of people are against it and the fact that 99% of respondents to the consultation rejected the proposals. I remind noble Lords that those people are voters.
If we look at just how much we have to do if we are not to allow the world to heat by more than 2 degrees—although it is probably already too late to avoid that—it is clear that fracking cannot be part of it. It is not even as though shale gas will bridge the gap that we keep hearing about between now and a future based on renewables. Shale gas will not be online until about 2020, or even well into the 2020s, so if the Government stick to our commitments under the Climate Change Act and coal is offline by the early 2020s, shale gas will not be replacing coal. We will see exactly what we have seen happening in the United States, which is that it is simply able to export more coal when shale gas fills its own energy needs. Shale gas merely displaces fossil fuels; it does not replace them. Professor Dieter Helm of Oxford University has told us that there is enough gas and coal to fry the planet several times. But of course we cannot use it. It must stay locked up. That is the most efficient form of carbon capture: leave it as coal.
These clauses will also allow fracking companies to undertake activities that have not yet been assessed for their environmental safety, including the keeping of substances within infrastructure on the land with no limits on what can be kept or for how long. Injection wells could be extremely damaging. They have caused problems in the United States, particularly in Ohio, where there have been earthquakes.
We know that the existing regulatory framework is full of gaps. Rather than continue the obsession with deregulating fracking and allowing the industry—an industry that the Chancellor proudly stated has the most generous tax regime in the world—to regulate itself, the Government should see this as an opportunity to introduce regulation that is fit for purpose in order to safeguard the climate. Balcombe, which has been the scene of a lot of interest in the context of fracking, has now decided to go carbon-neutral. If Balcombe can do it, the rest of us can do it.
That brings me to these innocent-looking amendments. If it is the mover’s intention merely to probe the Government’s intention, then I would go further and say that they are welcome amendments. In particular, the new clause proposed by Amendment 113G insists that the integrity of wells used should be independently assessed rather than it being possible for firms to use their own preferred consultants. I hope that the Minister heard the consensus around this House that that was a sensible recommendation and the disappointment that the Government have rejected it.
We need to set our arguments in a broader context. In the committee, we heard from the leading environmental groups, and I am afraid that the speech just given by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, confirms that they were not really interested in whether the wells were integral, how much methane should lapse out or whether there were any risks of earthquakes. Instead, they sought to raise every empty canard about fracking and treat it as if it were a genuine concern. Their aim was transparent—to surround fracking with regulations and planning constraints to ensure that in practice it never happened without having, in theory, to oppose it. For example, I asked a question of Mr Molho, the spokesman for the environmentalists. I said that,
“if there was no threat of global warming in this gas, would you still be against it, or would you say … that if the regulatory framework is right, it could be a goer?”.
He said:
“We would revise the position accordingly, yes”.
In other words, what the environmentalists want is to stop fracking, and the Trojan horse they use to hide their armies is more and more regulation, which is in danger of killing the whole thing.
That was the environmentalists and, unfortunately, they are not heavily represented in this House, so it is always a delight to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Unfortunately, their philosophy has popped up within these amendments. Amendment 113G specifies a 12-month period for groundwater baseline monitoring. It pops up in Amendment 115A, which demands a monitoring programme, including on fugitive methane, to report within six months of the passing of the Act—not, as the committee did, a report only when extraction begins. The amendment sets up a whole new system designed to ensure that fracking is compatible with climate change aims.
Those features make me worry about the position of our Front Bench. It says that it is not opposed to fracking. Indeed, I hope that the noble Baroness will say when she responds to this debate that she is in favour of fracking with the right regulation. However, in practice, it wants to make it more difficult than even your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee wanted. We are somehow left trying to ride two horses at once—no doubt, cheers from some environmentalists, although, in my experience, they are never satisfied by whatever concessions you make to them; not the extreme environmentalists. We are saying that we are in favour of fracking in principle but want to make it harder in practice. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, is not in the Chamber but his predecessor, Jimmy Maxton, said that if you could not ride two horses at once you should not be in the circus. In this particular case, the trick becomes a little demanding when the horses are galloping in opposite directions. Are we for fracking or against it, subject to the right regulation? At the end of reading these amendments, I was in great doubt.