Preventing Avoidable Sight Loss

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Tuesday 28th March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have 27 minutes to speak. I jest, by the way; I am not going to speak for 27 minutes.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Mr Shannon, you have plenty of time to speak. I feel I should declare an interest as I am wearing glasses to read my papers.

[Jim Shannon]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. I give special thanks to the hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani), who very capably set the scene for us all on a subject that is obviously close to her heart; I believe it is close to the hearts of those of us who are here to participate in the debate as well.

As someone who has needed glasses from eight years of age—I am over 50; well over 50, let me tell you—I have never really known any other way; that is the fact of it. I can well remember those first glasses, with those round circles of glass like milk bottle bottoms. Those were the prescription glasses I wore in the ’60s; we have come a long way to the perfection of eyesight and glasses today. In my case, I wear varifocals, and others in this Chamber probably have the same. I look down to read and look up to look away. Varifocals give that better vision, and it is good to have that.

I certainly have compassion for those whose sight is deteriorating or lost completely. I think losing sight is probably one of the worst things that can happen to anyone. How much do we all appreciate seeing things in colour and all around us? There are some who cannot. My dad lost his sight at a late age in life, and I know it is one of the things that he particularly missed. He used to read his Bible in braille in the last few years of his life. To understand that sight loss can be prevented in some cases is something that we must all work towards achieving, and we must play our part in the House.

The Library pack has been quite helpful, and some of the information it gives is particularly applicable. The fact that sight loss costs the UK economy £28 billion is something that cannot be ignored when it comes to adding equations; we understand and appreciate that we have to balance the books, but when balancing the books we should sometimes do the necessary preventive action that the hon. Member for Wealden referred to.

Almshouses

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) on setting out the case so clearly for us all. He made sure that the issues that are specific and perhaps peculiar to almshouses are on the record. I am not aware of any almshouse charities in Northern Ireland, but the issues the right hon. Gentleman discussed are important. It is also important to put on the record our need for such organisations to deliver throughout society, which they very clearly do and must continue to do. I thank those who prepared the background information on this debate. It is very detailed and helpful and will help with my contribution. I shall make only a brief speech, but it is important that we put on the record the importance of almshouses and of charity.

Over the years, people with compassion have stepped in with charity when Governments have perhaps been unable to help. There are around 160,000 general charities in the UK. According to the “UK Civil Society Almanac 2012”, charities have a combined income of some £37 billion. That is money raised from charitable giving, charity shops and fundraising events, and by volunteers actively trying to make people’s lives better. That is the core issue of this debate, as has been made clear. Charities provide for and help people when they are abandoned by others—such help has to be encouraged at this time.

Almshouses are charitable organisations, some of which are also registered social landlords, and mainly specialise in housing for the elderly. They specifically set out to help those who are vulnerable and in need of help and care that they cannot get or are not getting through the welfare system. There is a specific role for the work that almshouses and charitable organisations do for the people they target and on whom their help is focused.

Of the 1,700 almshouse charities throughout the country, more than 30% occupy listed buildings, and many have celebrated anniversaries of over 400 years. Such anniversaries are important to record and acknowledge. Another feature of their rich heritage is that many almshouses lie in the heart of towns and villages, which ensures that they remain closely integrated in the local community. It is important to recognise the added benefit of their location, which ensures that residents are close to shops and services. In other words, they are in the right places and have the right focus in local communities.

The majority of today’s almshouse residents will be of retirement age and of limited financial means, and will have lived in the vicinity of an almshouse charity. Residents pay a weekly maintenance contribution, which is similar to rent but different in law, and less than a commercial rate. I hope the Minister will be able to respond to the concerns raised by the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster on the specific circumstances of almshouse residents.

Almshouses make a real difference to the quality of the lives of their patrons. The House must recognise that and make the appropriate allowances. They help to fill a gap, which is why I support the representations made by the right hon. Gentleman and others on the Government’s intention to cap housing benefit entitlement for residents at local housing allowance rates and the requirement to reduce rent levels by 1% each year for four years from April 2016.

I am given to understand that, as a general rule, the rents charged for supported housing are higher than the rents charged on other social housing units. Thus the impact of capping housing benefit entitlement for residents of supported housing has caused particular concern, which is the reason for the debate. The whole point of these charities is to provide the additional care and support that is needed, and capping housing benefit in this way will make things even less affordable for those who need a little help to feel a little safer in their community, or even to stay in the community in the specific place where they are living.

About 17% of older people are in contact with their family, friends and neighbours less than once a week and 11% are in contact with them less than once a month. These figures underline the need for consideration —perhaps special consideration—of almshouses. Two fifths of older people say that television is their main company; for some older people, it is their only company. When there are so few community hubs, it affects the quality of life of almshouse residents, so almshouses should be protected.

It is a well-known fact that residential care is an expensive business. It is my belief that this cap will be a false economy, as it may leave some people feeling that they have no other option than to go into a home. For those who do not have a large pension, which will include those who benefit from almshouses, the cost of their going into a home will be met by the taxpayer.

With respect, I do not see any great saving in this change. I am sure that the Minister, when he responds to the debate, will say that that is not the case, but in my 31 years of representing the general public in an elected capacity, I have seen too many cases where the refusal to put a care package in place has led to people being put in residential care, at a much greater cost and causing much greater difficulty for those people physically, emotionally and financially. That must be taken into consideration.

I conclude by saying that our elderly people need help and consideration, and I feel that these proposals to cap housing benefit are not necessary or useful in any way, shape or form at this time. Therefore, I fully support my colleague and right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster, if I can call him that, in bringing forward this matter for consideration in this House, and I look to the Minister for a positive response. We have a duty in this House to help those who need help, and legislatively we can help them. Let us hope we can do that as a result of this debate.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

I do not think that we have any other speakers from the Floor, so we will move to the wind-ups.

Alternative Transport Fuels

Debate between Jim Shannon and Cheryl Gillan

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

I am delighted to have secured this Adjournment debate and I hope that I have not misled the House with its title, because today I want to ask about a specific fuel. I want to ask the Department for Transport about its position on the new diesel substitute fuel, aqua methanol, and its potentially vital role in reducing diesel exhaust pollution.

The previous Labour Government’s diesel-friendly policies have led to a serious diesel particulate and nitrogen oxides pollution problem, and there are dreadful health consequences. Ministers will be aware of the recent Supreme Court judgment indicating the urgency of the Government’s acting to alleviate this health problem. That would also mean that the UK could avoid incurring extremely large fines for failing to meet EU air quality standards.

On a day when we have had a very large environmental lobby at the House of Commons, I want to ask the Under-Secretary of State for Transport, my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones), whom I welcome to his role and to the Front Bench, what he will do to support a fuel that will contribute to reducing emissions and improving our air quality.

In 2001, my constituent Peter Dodd and his company Zero-m drove a senior official from the Department for Transport along Oxford Street in a very special London black cab. That cab was unique because it ran on aqua methanol and emitted virtually no poisonous particulates or nitrogen oxides. In the following six years or so Zero-m, sponsored by the Department for Transport and the Treasury, converted vans and heavy goods vehicles to run on aqua methanol so that those other major sources of diesel pollution could be cleaned up.

The resulting report, delivered in 2009, confirmed without doubt that aqua methanol could have a major impact on diesel pollution, could reduce carbon dioxide, could reduce UK exposure to oil prices and, most importantly in these continuing times of austerity and unlike nearly all other alternative fuels, would require only modest Government financial support during its introductory phase even if oil prices stayed low.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the right hon. Lady agree that there are other alternatives, such as electric cars? That is a new way of reducing pollution across the whole community. Does she feel that the Government should emphasise that as well?

[Mrs Gillan]

The hon. Gentleman has pursued that issue, and I hope that the Minister will have taken note. It is important that the Government consider alternative fuels, particularly in the light of the detrimental effect on our environment of the fuels that are currently in use.

The report concluded that aqua methanol should be introduced as soon as possible, so the question is why there are not yet any clean aqua methanol vehicles on our city streets. The answer is that the Europe-wide fuel tax rules are blocking their introduction. They mean that aqua methanol would cost some £1.90 a litre at the pump and, obviously, that is a commercially impossible price.

Fortunately, after thorough investigation and confirmation of the report’s findings under the coalition Government, the Treasury has now agreed to make the tax changes necessary to enable the new fuel to be competitively priced against diesel in the UK by putting it on a level playing field with other gas-based fuels. It announced its intention to do so in the two most recent Budgets and autumn statements and finally included the necessary legislation in the last Finance Bill, just before the recent election. However, the change has still not been enacted, because in the wash-up process the Opposition objected to it despite the fact that the entire green fuel challenge project to demonstrate the need for aqua methanol and prove its worth in exchange for the tax change was initiated and completed during their time in government.

I am now hopeful that the Chancellor will take the measure through on 8 July, so the debate is meant to emphasise the importance to health of enacting this new fuel tax measure immediately. Equally importantly—we have yet to have an undertaking from Government on this—we must integrate the fuel into the DFT’s fuel strategies and funding programmes to accelerate its introduction. The importance of doing that as soon as possible can hardly be overstated.

It is unlikely that many people will have heard of aqua methanol until now, but those with long memories will remember the green fuel challenge, which aimed to foster the development of greener transport fuels. Of the three groups selected for support, the highest award was given to Zero-m Ltd, a company in my constituency. Its proposition was that converting commercial diesel vehicles to aqua methanol offered many advantages, including reducing particulate emissions from diesel engines and lower NOx, which is the diesel exhaust gas responsible for forming smog and acid rain, and which is central to the formation of tropospheric ozone.

Further, the company also discovered that renewable aqua methanol could be made more easily and cost-effectively than most, possibly all, other proposed green transport fuels. In addition, as if that were not enough, it discovered that substituting aqua methanol for diesel would improve UK fuel security and reduce our exposure to politically volatile crude oil prices, because aqua methanol is derived not from crude oil but from the huge and growing global resource of natural gas. Importantly, from the climate change point of view, it can also be made from a wide range of renewable sources, including, rather amazingly, renewable electricity and the carbon dioxide in the air, turning that controversial little climate change bugbear into a jolly good friend.

By introducing methanol made from plentiful natural gas in the short term—so-called brown aqua methanol—we can immediately strengthen the fight against diesel pollution, and at the same time, relatively quickly, win CO₂, fuel security, exports and job benefits. Once brown aqua methanol is established, it can be replaced down the track by chemically identical green renewable methanol once that form becomes economically viable when compared with diesel. Brown natural gas-based methanol paves the way and acts as that solid bridge to near-zero-CO₂ green methanol, without requiring the massive Government subsidies that would be incurred in trying to go directly to the green form without using the brown bridge.

Between them, the members of the Zero-m team have the most amazing experience. Together they have more than a century of expertise in alternative fuels, so these constituents of mine really do know what they are talking about. They particularly understand how oil markets work and the importance of minimising the need for Government subsidies, because oil prices can go down as well as up. When they go down—and history shows that they can stay low for a long time—subsidies that looked fairly short-term and affordable can suddenly look very high and indefinite. In fact, they can become, as they often have in the past, completely unsustainable economically.

With long experience of seeing high-cost alternative fuel projects fail because Governments cancelled the subsidies when oil prices fell, Zero-m’s approach throughout has been to find a way to introduce a fuel that will be commercially viable when oil prices are low. It is interesting to note, anecdotally, that before the second world war it was believed that there was only 12 years’ worth of oil left at the then consumption rate of about 8 million to 10 million barrels a day. Today, the numbers in BP’s June 2015 statistical review show that apparently we have 52 more years of reserves at the 2014 global consumption rate of 92 million barrels a day. Therefore, we are using about 10 times more oil today and it is going to last four times longer than they thought it would last in 1935.

Although it is probably true that oil could run out at some distant point in the future, the oil industry has a habit of finding new deposits and even cheaper means of extracting ever more from them, extending today’s problem with pollution into the future.

Zero-m believes that aqua methanol could be the earliest commercially viable alternative, because it only needs launch support to begin replacing diesel made from oil. Of course, it has to be remembered, but rarely is, that the more that subsidised alternative fuels displace oil, the greater the over-supply of oil will become and the lower the oil price is likely to go. That is the Catch-22 of developing alternative fuels: they look good when the oil prices are high, but if they succeed they will almost inevitably cause oil prices to fall.

Biofuels are one of the key planks of the European Union strategy to reduce emissions, but a 2015 departmental report on options for energy transport policy to 2030 showed that crude oil prices in excess of $250 a barrel are needed before most anticipated renewable biofuels can become commercially viable on a stand-alone basis. Even the Government are expecting bioethanol and biodiesel to need heavy taxpayer subsidy far into the future through the renewable transport fuels obligation.

It is surely worrying that even that Government report accepts that biofuels are not expected to be commercially viable even by 2030, and possibly far beyond. Add to that the fact that including biodiesel in diesel fuel does virtually nothing to reduce particulates and NOx, the key city street-level pollution issue, and that, even worse, including biodiesel in normal fossil diesel actually reduces miles per gallon. It seems to me that aqua methanol is one initiative that can definitely be foreseen to be commercially viable at today’s low oil prices of around $65 a barrel, which is massively below the over $250 a barrel that the Government are expecting biodiesel to cost in 2030, as set out in the report I referred to earlier.

Zero-m has calculated that, in terms of particulates and NOx reduction, converting one diesel van to aqua methanol, at an estimated cost of £5,000, is equivalent to converting five cars to electricity, which costs the Government at least £25,000 in subsidies. Converting one heavy goods vehicle, at an estimated cost of £15,000, would deliver the same diesel fume reductions as converting 30 cars to electricity, at a cost of more than £150,000. If the Government funded, say, £5,000 for each van and £15,000 for each HGV converted to aqua methanol, that investment could save them £20,000 and £135,000 respectively, versus what it would cost via the electric car route, and still achieve the same result.

When it comes to cutting street-level diesel pollution, aqua methanol has the ability to give us a significantly bigger bang for our tax pound than relying mainly on the introduction of electric vehicles—or indeed of hydrogen vehicles, which are likely to be even more expensive, with commercial viability even further into the future. However, despite all that promise, aqua methanol is still not an integral part of the Department for Transport’s published alternative fuels strategies and funding plans, even though all common sense suggests that it should be strongly backed to accelerate and bolster current efforts to tackle the awful diesel pollution problem. Waiting for electric cars or hydrogen buses to fix the problem is being tried, and has been tried for some time, but still the diesel pollution worsens, with consequential health problems compounding the costs to the Government.

Tonight I am asking the Minister to add this potentially powerful new string to the Government’s bow in the urgent battle to improve air quality. The proposed tax change is the culmination of over 14 years of Government-initiated and sponsored work to investigate this exciting new fuel and then enable its introduction. The new tax measure has been approved by all relevant Government Departments, including the Treasury, the relevant legislation has been drafted and all necessary consultations have been completed successfully. There is nothing further that the Treasury needs to do now beyond including the measure in the Finance Bill on 8 July, with an early implementation date.

I have worked alongside my constituents on this journey, and it has been a long and painful one. We are very grateful that the Treasury has now heard the message. Aqua methanol can and should be a major and effective part of the solution to this problem, and it would require no financial support from the Government after the introductory phase.

I am sure that the Government will now enact the promised deferred tax change. Tonight I am asking the Department for Transport to complete the picture and integrate aqua methanol fully into its published strategies and funding policies. Without the tax change, the launch of aqua methanol is economically unviable and will not occur, and all the fine opportunities and valuable benefits will be forgone. However, without the other half of the equation—the Department for Transport—supporting aqua methanol, both financially and with publicity, our city air will continue to be full of dirty diesel particulates and NOx for much longer than it need be. With both those steps in place, Ford, Mercedes, Iveco, Scania and DAF, to name just a few of the most popular van and HGV manufacturers in the UK, could start making and importing clean aqua methanol-capable vehicles into the UK.

I would like to applaud the Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer for having the foresight to see that aqua methanol deserves to be put on the same taxation footing as other natural gas-based transport fuels. Now I also urge them to redirect funds from some longer-term, higher-cost initiative, such as hydrogen, just as the Department is already doing for compressed and liquid natural gas. Given the severity of the pollution problem, continuing with the status quo is not an acceptable or justifiable option. By being an early adopter, we can improve our environmental credentials. I hope that the Minister will give a response that encourages my constituents and enables us to kick-start the introduction of aqua methanol, so that we can clean up our air as quickly as possible.