Costs of Living

Baroness Hayman of Ullock Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As the noble Baroness knows—and we have debated this extensively—we have the largest offshore renewable sector in Europe, so we have been investing considerable sums in renewable energy. In fact, in the energy Statement a couple of weeks ago, we announced an even further ramping up of what has been a very successful sector.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I have been listening very carefully to the Minister’s responses about everything that the Government are doing, but more families are falling into poverty. We need more than the monitoring he talked about: we need steps, and we need them now. I genuinely do not understand his response to the noble Lord about the windfall tax. Why will the Government not bring that in now?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I know that the Opposition like to use these easy soundbites, as if there were an enormous pot of free money that we can somehow access, but, of course, money that is taken off those companies is also money that does not go to shareholders, many of which are pension funds that pay the pensions of people up and down this country. They are not greedy plutocrats who can just absorb the money. We are, of course, keeping all options under review, but it is not a cost-free option: it would result in lower investment in the renewable energies, which everybody keeps telling me they want to see in the future.