Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 8th February 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman, from a sedentary position, refers to conspiracies. My constituency is next door to Wales, and I can tell the House that that is not a conspiracy; the 20 mph zones are incredibly unpopular in Wales. This is a blanket policy that makes no sense and is not supported by the public.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

6. What steps he is taking with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero to improve the allocation of resources between the production of sustainable aviation fuel and other uses of biomass.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Anthony Browne)]

In developing the biomass strategy and our forthcoming low-carbon fuel strategy, my Department has worked closely with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, whose policy paper on the biomass strategy was published last year. Sectors that are harder to decarbonise, including aviation, should be priority uses for biomass. We are continuing to work across Government, and with industry experts, to ensure that policies that increase the supply of sustainable aviation fuels deliver on our climate change commitments.

[Dr Whitehead]

As the Minister will know, the sustainable aviation fuel mandate will come into force in 2025, but meanwhile the Government have not yet responded to consultations on how it will work, and there is no real-world fuel sourcing analysis or plan that would take account of the changing nature of municipal waste arising from the already allocated uses of municipal and agricultural feedstock for purposes other than the production of SAF. What steps is the Minister taking to develop a realistic plan for feedstock availability and use?

[Anthony Browne]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s question. As I have just said, we will shortly publish the low-carbon fuel strategy, which will set out the different sources of low-carbon fuels. We will publish our response to the SAF mandate by the spring. A great deal of detailed analysis and work is being done in relation to different fuel sources. We will also publish a revenue certainty mechanism to ensure that we have a UK SAF industry. We engage regularly with the industry on this, and it is very confident about and supportive of the Government’s policies. We do have a detailed plan, and I want to commiserate with the hon. Gentleman, because I am sure that as Energy Minister he too had a plan, but the Opposition’s plans seem to have been U-turned today.

Ultra Low Emissions Vehicles

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous]

I referred to last week’s very bad levels of air quality. The hon. Lady is right; as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, local authorities absolutely have a role.

If the Government are to meet their legal air quality obligations, change is necessary. We need to make sure that there are affordable, cleaner alternatives for people on low incomes to switch to. What estimate have the Government made of the ability of compression engines to mix diesel and hydrogen in vans and lorries to reduce emissions? It is excellent to see the Liverpool-based technology firm ULEMCo working with the University of Liverpool and Huazhong University’s Wuhan New Energy Institute to do exactly that. It is also good to see the Scottish company Alexander Dennis partnering with Chinese vehicle manufacturer BYD—it stands for “Build Your Dreams”—to put electric buses on our roads and Zhejiang Geely making electric taxis in Rugby for the streets of London.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Would the hon. Gentleman perhaps like to add to his ask list the issue of local authorities that are grappling with air quality issues? Five local authorities are under infraction and, with the Department, are dealing with a plan for low-carbon development to counter poor air quality caused by transport. The Department’s response may well be to provide funding to, for example, convert taxi fleets, local authority vehicles and public vehicles to low-carbon usage. Would he encourage the Department responsible to make sure that grants go to those local authorities?

[Andrew Selous]

What is happening in London with taxis for the future is excellent, and I am sure we would all like to see more cities across the United Kingdom making progress. The hon. Gentleman has a long record of interest in this area, and I thank him for putting that point on the record.

What discussions are the Government having with local authorities to roll out ultra low emissions buses and taxis more widely across the United Kingdom? As the UK seeks new markets and trading arrangements, I want to see this country excelling in that area, with high take-up in our home market and massive exports around the world. I am extremely grateful to colleagues who have come along to take an interest in this important matter today.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr McLoughlin]

I am more than happy to ensure that the Scottish Government are consulted if it is decided to take any further measures. The matter is taken seriously in all parts of the House and I welcome the points that the hon. Lady makes.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

10. What his policy is on privatisation of Network Rail.

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr Patrick McLoughlin)]

I have no plans.

[Dr Whitehead]

The Secretary of State will be aware that the Treasury-backed Shaw report, the final version of which is due to be published next week and which looks at the future financing of railways, has made it clear that full privatisation of Network Rail is on the table. I am sure the Minister would agree that we do not want to go back to the dark and chaotic days of the private management of our rail system under Railtrack. Beyond having no plans, will he commit himself today to rejecting any recommendations that lead to the privatisation of Network Rail?

[Mr McLoughlin]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on seeing a report which I do not think has been published yet. How he knows what the contents are is beyond me. I am very proud of what we have achieved with the railway industry. It has been a fantastic success, with the franchising that takes place. I am sorry that that is being put at risk, not by the Government, but by the Opposition.

Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to make substantial progress. I am concerned that other hon. Members will not be able to speak.

New clause 19(g), and amendments 3 and 65, are on depth limits. A company looking to develop shale or deep geothermal will need to obtain all the necessary permissions before it can proceed. The process of obtaining those permissions rather than the level at which we set the depth level will provide the relevant safeguards. There is no question of changing the existing regime governing access to land at surface down to depths of 300 metres.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

How can the Minister assure us about fugitive emissions and the safety of fracking when she proposes to give untrammelled access at 300 metres to developers, as she has just mentioned? Fracking lines travel far higher than 300 metres and cannot be detected in advance by the Environment Agency or others undertaking baseline monitoring.

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman raised that in Committee. We share his concern about safety and care for the community, but the Government believe that the Environment Agency is able to address that, and that we can rely on it to do so. In my conversations with the agency, it has given us that assurance, and it is the expertise that we have in particular in the UK that is so useful.

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[Mr Yeo]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I was very tempted to sign his new clauses on that point. Improving gas storage would not only greatly improve our energy security, but make it possible for some of the low-carbon, intermittent generating technologies, such as wind and solar, to be used much more widely.

There is no reason to suppose that decreasing our reliance on imports will lead to an increase in gas consumption. Consumers will not suddenly think, “Oh, as we’re not importing gas, we’ll turn the heating up.” It is a completely mistaken notion to think that allowing fracking has such malign consequences.

In any event, emissions in this country are now subject to the carbon budgeting process. It is greatly to the coalition’s credit that it has confirmed the fourth carbon budget. Achieving that rigorous set of targets will absolutely put us on the path to meet the EU target of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. That will be the case whether or not fracking occurs in this country.

My Committee looked very carefully at the environmental and safety concerns. We are satisfied that with the right robust and rigorous regulatory framework, fracking presents no danger to the integrity of the water supply, the health of local residents or the environment generally. The mistakes made by the fracking industry in the US in its early stages can easily be avoided in this country.

[Dr Whitehead]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, according to all the projections produced by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the amount of gas used between 2020 to 2030 will be substantially less than at present—not none, but substantially less—and that the likely net effect of recovering gas by fracking is that it will be for export, not the domestic market?

[Mr Yeo]

I do not entirely agree. The fall in gas consumption in the UK will not take it below the level at which we require imports. Even if gas consumption goes down, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, we will probably still import gas. For the reason I have just mentioned, if that gas is LNG, using our domestic supplies of shale gas would be beneficial in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

I note that the environment, health and safety concerns highlighted by the Environmental Audit Committee are not shared by the Environment Agency. I also note that Lancashire county council’s objections relate not to such concerns, but to noise and traffic movements. Those understandable issues arise in all sorts of planning applications, many of which have nothing to do with the energy industry.

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[Mrs Main]

I welcome new clause 7 and the Minister’s comments on new clause 19(a), (e) and (m). I have chalk streams in my constituency; they are a valuable water resource. The public need reassurance about contamination or pollution of such special sites, as they are rare resources in our country.

[Dr Whitehead]

I rise to voice my support for new clause 19, which I believe provides a substantial series of baseline starting points for any fracking to take place. If those baselines are not in place, no fracking takes place. That is my understanding of the new clause and it seems to me to provide very substantial protection indeed.

I am also concerned about the cumulation of fracking over a period. I tabled a new clause which addresses that. If we have substantial and extensive fracking to the extent that is envisaged in the Government’s rush for fracking, we may well find that we have 18,000 or 20,000 wells across the country, perhaps more than half of those in two particular parts of the country, with virtually no environmental safeguards on the cumulation of those arrangements, even if there are some environmental safeguards on individual fracking enterprises as they go forward. It is essential that should there be any cumulation of fracking, those safeguards are in place. New clause 19 provides protection both in the individual exploration phase and in the production phase. I would like to see—

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[Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)]

I rise to support new clause 16 and I will be brief. The Government have done a lot on pubs, but I wish to address the points made by the Minister and explain why new clause 16 is, on all fronts, a better and neater solution that the very welcome concession the Government have made.

Let us bust some myths. First, new clause 16 simply puts pubs on the same footing as laundrettes, theatres and—would you believe it—casinos and nightclubs, which currently enjoy more protection under the planning law than pubs do. Most people in this House would think that was very strange and needs rectifying. So there is an easy precedent for this clause and nothing draconian about it.

Secondly, we are being presented with the straw man of boarded up pubs lining our high streets as a result of the new clause. A local pub of mine, The Foresters, was known to be a drug den. It was turned into a Tesco and nobody shed any tears. Had new clause 16 been in place then, that would have simply gone through the planning process, as most things would do. Local authorities have every incentive to approve planning for a derelict site, and so we can discard that straw man out of hand.

Let us look at what the Government have already done. An article 4 direction is well intended, but in practice it is burdensome. People cannot apply for an article 4 direction for their pub unless it has already been threatened, and many communities will want to apply for an article 4 direction before it is threatened. Each article 4 direction is expensive, costing between £2,000 and £3,000 for local authorities, which are already stretched. If communities wanted to protect every pub in the country, the cost would be about £50 million to £100 million. However, a much more fundamental question lies at the heart of this issue: what is localism? In a welcome move towards localism, this Government decided that it is about local planners making decisions, as is the case elsewhere in localism. However, the Government’s concession seems to present it as a patchy, bureaucratic position, which also favours those with sharp elbows. I am deeply concerned that it will be inequitable in practice.

I am particularly puzzled as to why the Government’s default position is against, not for, community pubs. Most of us would consider that the default position should be for the community pub and in favour of the community, not in favour of developers, who can move far faster than communities, particularly our most vulnerable ones. Indeed, if the Government had implemented new clause 16 long ago, we would have avoided the confusion involving, and potential overlap between, assets of community value and article 4 directions. I very much welcome the Government’s move, but we have a short time left in this Parliament. Indeed, we are on last orders for our parliamentary time—[Interruption.] Thank you very much; I am here all night. There is doubt as to whether we would actually be able to make this proposal in time. I thank the Government for their welcome move, but new clause 16 does it better, it does it here, and this evening we have an opportunity to do it now.

[Dr Whitehead]

I congratulate the Minister on keeping a straight face while introducing his proposals for the Government to introduce zero-carbon homes. He knows that the proposals go away from zero-carbon homes, systematically and determinedly, and do not move us towards them, as had originally been intended under the code for zero-carbon homes, and the time scales and levels it proposed. As we have heard, we are moving away from code level 6 and down to code level 5. As the Minister says, code level 4 is regarded as the starting point for alleged zero-carbon homes, but there are exceptions within that relating to affordable solutions and the small site exemptions where fewer than 10 units are being built, which will affect about 20% of new builds. That is nothing like having zero-carbon homes for the future. The amendments try to put this at least some way back on track, and I urge hon. Members to examine them carefully and support them if they value zero-carbon homes for the future, as I am sure we all do, in making sure that our building stock is of the best quality we can get for future sustainability.

[Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)]

I rise to support two of the provisions tabled and ably espoused by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert). The first is new clause 12, where he has put the case succinctly; after all, we made a manifesto commitment to abolish the Planning Inspectorate. I also want to draw the House’s attention to the fact that the inspectorate is not taking sufficient account of local feelings in the judgments it makes.

I particularly wish to draw the Minister’s attention to new clause 20, which, as my right hon. Friend has said, builds on our localism agenda. The limited right of appeal to the Secretary of State is extremely important and would be of great benefit to my constituents in Sutton Coldfield, where there is massive opposition to the proposition that we should build between 5,000 and 6,000 homes on its green belt. Yet that opposition, expressed in marches across the countryside as well as in public meetings, has been entirely ignored by the local authority.

In proposed new subsection (2B), my right hon. Friend points out the importance of

“ward councillors for the area who have lodged a formal objection to the planning application in writing to the planning authority, or where there is more than one councillor, all councillors by unanimity”.

Giving that degree of local support to what the local community want is extremely important. I believe and hope that the Minister, perhaps on Third Reading, will be able to give my constituents some comfort on that.

The opportunity of genuine community involvement should be built in at every stage of planning the process; there should not just be the one-off chance that those responsible for development can choose either to respond or to ignore. Recently, when the inspector held an oral hearing at which I was able to give evidence on behalf of my constituents, he asked for more evidence to be adduced on the requirement for the colossal amount of building involved. We have always argued that there was not sufficient evidence to build on Sutton Coldfield’s green belt, particularly in respect of the inward immigration figures in the area. We draw some comfort from the decision by the Planning Inspectorate, but it is extremely important that the local community is able to have far more say than we do at that moment, at this important juncture in the life of the royal town of Sutton Coldfield.

Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

That is a fair question, and one which has already been put to me by those in local government. I will look closely at that, but I am anxious—the right hon. Gentleman is a great expert, given his experience as a Minister and, beyond that, his understanding of house building—and keen to ensure that this does not create unnecessarily bureaucratic or over-regulatory delay. The point he makes is a good one and I will certainly go away and consider it during the passage of the Bill. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham—who has intervened twice and might have another go in a minute, who knows?—that this is a very good example of the Government taking action to make the system more straightforward and less bureaucratic, so that decisions can be made in a timely way and be acted on with appropriate promptness. Wise as they are on these things, I am sure the Opposition will not disagree. Likewise, when they reflect on much of the Bill, I suspect they will appreciate it is the right thing to do in the national interest—but we will hear from them in a few moments.

Public sector land is an important source of land for development, and we have already released land with the capacity for 90,000 new homes, but to make that happen we propose to allow a Government arm’s length body to transfer disused surplus land directly to the Homes and Communities Agency or the Greater London authority, rather than having first to transfer it back to the parent Department. This measure will once again reduce bureaucracy in the transfer of land, meaning that disused Government-owned land can be brought to the market more quickly to build homes and improve communities.

As you know, Mr Speaker, the Government are committed to England’s public forest estate remaining in public ownership—[Hon. Members: “They are now.”] I know Labour is in the woods, but we are committed to the past, present and future of our forests. Hon. Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), have raised their constituents’ interests several times in the House and have influenced the decision to amend the Bill to ensure the measure will not apply to them.

The move to digitise and centralise local land charges and free up the Land Registry to take a wider role will ultimately help people buying and selling their homes. The Government aim to make dealing with property quicker, cheaper and easier. The Land Registry is well placed to help achieve that aim because it is already at the centre of the conveyancing process and is the largest single source of property information. The changes in the Bill will stop the wider disparities in charging, currently ranging from approximately £3 to £76, and will lead to a more efficient service for searches as people access a single provider rather than one of 348 separate providers. We need modern systems to underpin the property market.

On zero-carbon homes, we have already tightened building regulations to make new homes more energy efficient. Today’s new homes save people about £200 on average—

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hayes]

I give way to the hon. Gentleman, who is such a distinguished member of the Energy and Climate Change Committee.

[Dr Whitehead]

Given the Minister’s concern for linguistic exactitude, will he reflect that he is talking about “zero-carbon homes”, yet he must be clear that the provisions in the Bill mean that no zero-carbon homes will be built now or in the future? Would he care to rephrase his contribution to something such as “slightly less energy leaky homes”, or some such locution, to make his language exact?

[Mr Hayes]

Even if I believed that, such an ugly turn of phrase would fit ill on my lips, and I could not possibly bring myself to issue it. To that end, I will stick with my own choice of words.

The hon. Gentleman knows, because he is a great expert on these matters—far more expert than I am, I have to acknowledge—today’s new homes save £200 on average on their energy bills compared with homes built before the coalition came to power. He knows that new homes are more energy efficient. I want that energy efficiency to grow, however, so new homes will have net zero-carbon emissions from energy used to heat and light them, and there will be a higher efficiency requirement that may be augmented by on-site renewable energy measures such as solar panels.

Where that is not possible, however, to abate all carbon emissions on-site, the Government will allow developers to offset remaining emissions through off- site carbon abatement measures known as “allowable solutions”—precisely what the hon. Gentleman was referring to—which is a cost effective and practical way of dealing with carbon. I know it does not appeal to the purists, but it is deliverable. Either we want to hit these targets and get to our destination, or we do not.

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[Nick Herbert]

Local authorities are clearly nervous. They fear that if they do not give planning permission in response to a speculative application—although their plans are in the process of being developed—if that is overturned by the planning inspector, costs will be awarded against them. They feel that there is no equality in the process.

I do not resile from the importance of providing a great deal more housing, because it is clearly needed. The issue is how that can best be provided. I think that the early adoption of neighbourhood plans by consent shows that, given power and responsibility, communities provide the necessary housing, while top-down intervention of the kind that Government Members have always criticised can undermine that provision.

The third issue that I want to raise relates to the proposals in part 5 of the Bill to provide access to subterranean land for the purpose of fracking. This is a live issue in my constituency. An application to drill in an area of beautiful countryside that is very close to a national park was turned down by West Sussex county council, but is the subject of an appeal by the company involved.

Two sets of issues related to fracking concern local communities, and I think that we should try to separate them. First, there are the environmental concerns about the impact of the activity that takes place below ground. As many Members on both sides of the House have said, those concerns need to be addressed by means of proper regulation and controls, and we should discuss the importance of ensuring that they are adequate.

Secondly, there are the issues that relate to what happens on the surface, and the choice of sites for drilling. In my constituency, the choice of sites has been crucial. Opposition to the drilling does not just come from communities who are concerned about the environmental impact below the ground. Rural communities fear that they will experience significant lorry movements through their villages—which they would not otherwise have experienced —over an extended period. Wise site location which minimises disruption to communities on the surface is a second way in which the industry could address much of the concern about these proposals.

We now have a specific proposal in this legislation on trespass, which seeks to deal with the land ownership issues. That comes against the background of great concern about the activity. It is true that members of the public have largely misheard the proposals so far. In my constituency, I fear that many people believe that the proposals will license invasion on the surface of their land by those who wish to drill, without them giving permission and without any of the regulatory controls which exist. The Government must continue to reassure local people that in fact these proposals relate to deep subterranean activity and do not change any of the requirements for permission to be given by a landowner as to whether they want drilling on their land, nor any of the regulatory requirements.

[Dr Whitehead]

rose—

[Nick Herbert]

I will give way in a moment

On the specific proposal for subterranean drilling, there is a question mark over the way in which compensation is to be given to landowners via some kind of community fund, and one of the issues that needs to be explored is whether the compensation should go directly to the landowners who are affected. I think that might be a better way to ensure there is confidence in this procedure. It has been proposed not only by the Country Land and Business Association but by one oil company, INEOS. I hope the Government will consider that proposal carefully as a means to ensure that communities and individuals are properly compensated for these activities.

In conclusion—

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[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

I hope that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley) will forgive me if I do not pursue the points that she has raised, because I want to concentrate on part 4 of the Bill. It is an important Bill and, overall, one that I welcome; I shall be supporting it tonight. I shall concentrate on planning and related matters.

My first point relates to the arrangements for national infrastructure policy. I welcome the changes, which represent a logical development from what is currently in place and fit logically with the work that has already been done on the national planning policy framework. I should like to make a few observations. I have taken an interest in this area, both when I was a Minister in the Department for Communities and Local Government and subsequently. Professionals to whom I have spoken, including representatives of the National Infrastructure Planning Association and of the Compulsory Purchase Association, welcome the steps that the Government are taking in the Bill.

It is worth noting that development consent orders are a key element of the process, and it is valuable to tighten up the way in which they operate. There is a feeling, however, that we should be prepared to go still further in due course. I am not suggesting that that should be done in this Bill, but I hope that Ministers will bear in mind that, helpful though these changes are, there is a strong feeling among many professionals in the sector that they will not be a substitute for a comprehensive review of the operation of our compulsory purchase and land compensation legislation and its associated case law, and that such a review should be undertaken before too long.

Some of the legislation is fairly elderly by now and I hope that in the next Parliament we will take a comprehensive look at the way in which land compensation works. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) pointed out that other jurisdictions, such as France, deal with major infrastructure projects partly through quality of design and partly through much swifter and sometimes more generous land compensation arrangements when compulsory acquisitions are required. We may need to consider that in this country.

Clause 26 deals with planning conditions and deemed consents, which we discussed when I was a Minister. On balance, I support the proposed changes, which are necessary. It is worth taking a step back and remembering that planning conditions are an important part of the system. They are imposed essentially to make what might otherwise be unacceptable development acceptable, so they have a legitimate and proper role. The issue that arises here is not the legitimacy of the role, but the efficiency thereafter. There is a genuine issue that needs to be addressed.

Concern was flagged up as long ago as the Killian Pretty review of 2008 that one of the worst causes of delay is the post-consent process. There will come a time when conditions either have been complied with or are no longer necessary for various reasons and ought to be discharged. There is no reason, therefore, why speeding up the discharge of conditions should be a problem in terms of the principle of planning law. We need to make the process more efficient. Killian Pretty was clear about the problems that remained, and my right hon. Friend the Minister, in introducing the Bill, highlighted the fact that that remains a difficulty.

As well as looking at deemed consents imposed by the planning authority, we should pay particular attention to the situation where the planning authority has imposed a condition at the behest of a statutory consultee. It is sometimes difficult for planning authorities themselves, who may be caught between the devil and the deep blue sea—the legitimate desire of a developer to get on with important development. There are all too often delays by the statutory consultees in responding to the inquiries made of them. Part 1 happens to deal, in a different context, with one statutory consultee, but frequently the Highways Agency and the Environment Agency have been among the worst offenders in this regard, and local authorities are in a difficult position.

As well as doing what the Government are doing, which I support, I hope we might consider going further and deal with a situation where, in relation to applications, discharge of conditions and potentially also appeals, a statutory consultee fails to respond by the time limit. In such a case, why should there not be a provision deeming that the statutory consultee has no objection to the proposal involved? Such deemed assent by the statutory consultee would speed up the process and remove a pressure from the local planning authority that it cannot otherwise effectively control. Another mechanism that might be considered is some cost penalty against statutory consultees that delay the process.

During my time as Minister for the Thames gateway, I was repeatedly frustrated by the delay in getting decisions out of the Highways Authority about important aspects such as removing the tolling booths at the Dartford tunnel, when we were using technology that any Londoner had known about for many years, or the necessary improvements on the A13 between the DP World site, a nationally significant infrastructure site, and the Dartford crossing. I hope that whatever new arrangements we have for the highways company, as it is now to be, there will be a greater sense of the commercial imperative to speed up decisions.

I remember one important housing site, which everybody agreed was the right site for housing; an otherwise properly prepared and robust local plan by the planning authority for the area was suddenly thrown into disarray at the very last minute by the Environment Agency’s raising an issue about habitats, which ought to have been foreseen much earlier in the process. We need to put more pressure on statutory consultees not only to do their duty, but to do it properly and efficiently. I hope we might be able to strengthen the provisions of that part of the Bill.

I turn to two more technical areas, which are important. The first relates to easements, which I racked my brains about when doing planning law, but I eventually got to the bottom of it. These are particularly important in the context of London, so I speak now as a London Member of Parliament. Clause 28 makes changes to easements affecting land. The changes are good as far as they go. A particular problem arises in London, and I draw it to Ministers’ attention in the hope that we can address it in Committee. We all know that it is important that easements run with the land; that is a fundamental concept. I refer to the overriding powers of the Greater London authority, the Homes and Communities Agency and now mayoral development corporations, which I hope we may see replicated with joint authorities outside London. Allowing these bodies to benefit their successors in title will be hugely important for unblocking development, as is already the case in the capital.

Developers and specialist lawyers in the field have significant concerns that the law threatens development sites. That was an omission from the Housing and Regeneration Act 2008, which clause 28 is designed to tackle—and it does so, up to a point. However, it is not retrospective. Usually I am not a fan of retrospective legislation, but in London we have a specific issue. Some key development land, in particular land in the docklands area, was transferred from the London Development Agency in 2012. A lot of land around the Olympic park, the lower Lea valley, was part of the land for debt swap that some right hon. and hon. Members will remember.

As the Bill is drafted, that will not be covered so there will not be the legal certainty that successors in title will benefit when the land is sold on down the development chain. I hope the Minister will look specifically at the Mayor of London’s request that the Government delete subsections (11) and (12) of clause 28. That will enable it to operate retrospectively in relation to those areas of development land in London that had already been transferred, before the Bill becomes operative. It is a technical matter but a very important one, because it affects some of the most significant housing and commercial development land in our growing capital.

The final technical area to which I shall refer relates to clause 32 and the allowable solutions arrangements for offsite carbon abatement measures. Clause 32 is a sensible clause and very useful, as far as it goes. The principle of allowable solutions is a fair one because not every site will permit a mitigation measure onsite, so a degree of flexibility is sensible. However, there is an issue in relation to the geography. Again, it applies particularly to a large strategic planning authority, such as London. Unless there are some additional protections from London’s point of view, the Mayor of London and the Greater London authority are concerned that the scheme could see investment draining out of London, because it would be cheaper for developers to provide their offsite alternative solutions in areas of lower land value—in other words, outside the capital, rather than within it.

[Dr Whitehead]

rose—

[Robert Neill]

I shall give way in a moment, when I have developed the point.

It is important that there is some means of making sure that the investment is captured within the capital. There is some evidence to support that. Unintended consequences have occurred under the energy companies obligation scheme, so that the capital has received proportionately less in funding than it should receive. For example, about 13% of the national share of housing is in the capital but in the first year of the ECO scheme London received only 6.4% of the spending. That system, once in place, could generate about £90 million per annum, so it is important that London gets a fair share of it.

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[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I get two kinds of letters about infrastructure. The first kind says: “The infrastructure in this country is inadequate. It is the cause of congestion, housing shortage and economic inefficiency. We must invest heavily and speedily in more infrastructure.” The second kind objects to any specific item of infrastructure being built or proposed. Those letters say: “A new road? No. We should be investing in rail,” or “A new rail line? No. We should be relying on short-haul aircraft,” or, “More airport capacity? No. We should be staying at home,” or, “Build more homes? No. We can’t build more homes because we haven’t got the infrastructure to support them.” We suffer from infrastructural schizophrenia in this country. To some extent, that has been exemplified in the debate.

I congratulate the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who has responsibility for roads, on finding the one piece of infrastructure that does not arouse antagonism: the widening of the A1(M), for which my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) has campaigned so hard with my support. That has won near-unanimous support in our part of Hertfordshire, not least because it is economical, it will be done on an existing hard shoulder, it involves minimal disruption and it can be done rapidly.

I want to focus on the element of the Bill that empowers drilling under other people’s land. When I initially heard those proposals I was worried, although I am sympathetic to promoting and developing the shale oil and gas industries in these countries. The proposals sounded like an unprecedented invasion of people’s property and an act of trespass, but they are far from unprecedented. The London underground runs under the street where I live in London. I can often hear the rumble, even though we live a couple of floors above it. I doubt whether the owners of my property should have had the right to prevent the building of the London underground.

The tube is a maximum of 100 feet beneath the ground. Coal mining involves massive and relatively shallow tunnels, which can cause subsidence. Sewerage, water and other underground networks also run under other people’s property. By contrast, a lateral gas or oil well is usually just a 7-inch bore about 1 mile below ground. It can cause no conceivable disturbance to the surface landowner.

[Dr Whitehead]

The right hon. Gentleman observes that lateral drilling and fracking for gas takes place a mile underground, so why do provisions in the Bill deem deep-level land to be 300 metres underground?

[Mr Lilley]

Well, 300 metres is 10 times as deep as the London underground. The Bill states that deep-level land is at least 300 metres down, but normally drilling will be about a mile down because—as the hon. Gentleman will know from serving on the Energy Committee—about 7,000 feet of rock is needed to compress the shale sufficiently to turn it into gas or oil.

Rightly or wrongly, mineral resources in this country were nationalised before the war and, unlike in the USA, landowners do not have the right to extract them. I do not see why landowners should have the right to prevent the extraction of a national resource that is collectively owned by us all. After all, we do not have the right to prevent aircraft from flying over our property, although frankly the chance of an aircraft falling on our property is rather greater than that of anything welling up through a mile of rock and affecting our homes.

In theory we could revert to the pre-war situation, as in America, and give landowners rights over subsurface minerals and their exploration. If we did so, the general taxpayer, who stands to benefit from a 61% tax on profits from any shale gas, not to mention royalties and fees, would be the loser, while landowners lucky enough to own land above any of that natural resource would become richer—I am not sure whether that is the direction in which the parties of Keir Hardie or the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) are going, but I think we should keep things as they are. The resource is collectively owned; let us open it up for sensible, properly regulated and environmentally sound exploitation.

In the USA, when landowners are given the choice between preventing or allowing the exploitation of land from which they will profit, they overwhelmingly say yes. Despite strong campaigns to discourage the development of the fracking industry in north America, 2.5 million wells have been drilled and not a single person has been poisoned by contaminated water, nor a single building damaged by the minute seismic tremors that fracking can cause.

A lot of letters I receive say, “But this is against the laws of trespass. This is terrible. You’re trespassing under my land, which is as bad as trespassing on it.” Actually there is a great deal of misunderstanding about the law of trespass. My father did not have many political opinions but he was a libertarian. When we went out in the country and saw a sign saying, “Trespassers will be prosecuted”, he would say, “My son, as a free-born Englishman, you have the right to go anywhere as long as you do not cause damage. The landowners are bluffing and cannot stop you.” He was right, of course. Subsequently, Mr Fagan wandered into Buckingham palace and the Queen’s bedroom, but he could not be prosecuted because he had done no damage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Unlike the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), I do not rise to support every single part of this Bill.

Earlier in the debate, the Bill was described as a kaleidoscopic vision. I would prefer to describe it as a rag-bag. One dictionary definition of “ragbag” is “a confused assortment; a jumble”. Perhaps that is a little harsh, so I prefer an alternative definition: “a bag in which small pieces of cloth are kept for use in mending”. I am afraid that time prevents me from pulling more than a couple of pieces of cloth out of the ragbag to examine. I will therefore concentrate my remarks on just two pieces, neither of which seems to have been designed to mend anything in particular.

The first piece of cloth I want to pull out is the question of the so-called moves towards zero-carbon homes. I say “so-called” advisedly. The explanatory notes to the Bill clearly state:

“The Government is committed to introducing a zero carbon emissions standard for new dwellings in England from 2016.”

However, the Government have now made three attempts to knock down the original version of what would have been moves towards zero-carbon homes by 2016. As hon. Members will remember, that arose from the 2006 code for sustainable homes. There were rising levels of sustainability going up to code level 6, and homes were supposed to be getting towards that level by 2016. I accept that there could have been allowable solutions under certain circumstances when it might have been difficult to get homes up to that level, but they should have been the exception. The code level should have got as close to 6 as possible before those allowable solutions came about.

This is a very important infrastructure issue. If one is pursuing a major project to try to make sure that all the homes that are standing by 2050 are as energy-efficient as possible—as the Government claimed they had been doing with the energy companies obligation and the wider issues of energy efficiency in homes—it seems nonsensical and perverse not then to seek to build new homes that are as energy-efficient as possible to replace the ones that they were trying to make as energy-efficient as possible in the first place. However, that is what seems to be on offer in this Bill.

The Zero Carbon Hub is a group consisting of, among others, the National House Building Council, the Federation of Master Builders, the Home Builders Federation and major house building companies, all of which said that allowable solutions should be put in place only after the code for sustainable homes went up to something like a 60% improvement over part L of the building regulations. Yet the Government have simply said, “That’s not feasible—there’s no evidence. Lets put it down to 40%-odd over part L.” Indeed, the explanatory notes state:

“The intention is therefore to set a maximum on-site carbon dioxide emission standard for new homes and for the remainder of the zero carbon target to be met by house builders supporting off-site carbon abatement measures”.

What that means is that those homes will be built to nowhere near the zero-carbon-emission standard. Relatively modest improvements will have to be made over and above the part L building standard commitments and it will be possible to pay money to get out of that particular commitment.

Although the Government appear to be arguing, despite having no evidence, that the standard is unobtainable, the additional cost of building zero-carbon homes has halved since 2011. The payback for that additional cost takes only a few years in terms of the lower energy bills in homes built as close as possible to a zero-carbon standard, but the Government have decided that they do not wish to pursue that course.

Let us be clear that, under the Bill, a major element of infrastructure—new housing—is moving away from being zero or low-carbon in the future. The allowable solutions suggested by the Bill are not just applicable to circumstances in which it is not easy to make the homes zero carbon, but act as an excuse for making sure that those homes are nowhere near zero carbon. Moreover, the regulations are very unclear about the amount of money builders will have to put into the fund if they do not make their homes zero carbon. As we have heard, that may leak out from planning authorities and may not go towards alternative zero-carbon proposals for retrofit. That rag needs to be looked at.

A number of other hon. Members have addressed the other rag that needs to be seriously examined, namely fracking. We need to be clear that the relevant clauses are all about trying to make sure that fracking can be undertaken as speedily and with as little examination as possible, as opposed to making sure that there are proper environmental safeguards and that concerns are properly addressed if fracking is to go ahead at all. I mentioned in an intervention that fracking usually takes place at least 1 mile, possibly 2 miles, underground, so what could be the harm in that? Unfortunately, however, the Bill suggests that anything below 300 metres—a third of a kilometre, not even a third of a mile—will be regarded as deep underground and therefore available for fracking.

It will be possible for there to be access beneath the land on which people live. As we have heard, regardless of assurances about safety, there are no proposals for any kind of baseline or environmental impact assessment. Even if concerns are correctly expressed, such as the question of what might happen to the land should there be a fault with it that could lead to some damage being done, we do not know who would be responsible, because there will not be that baseline assessment.

We also do not know—there is nothing about this in the Bill or elsewhere—what the position will be regarding the accumulation of such holdings. It appears that the regime envisaged will simply enable drilling after individual planning permission is given and accumulation will not be an issue as far as water or fracking fluid are concerned. Indeed, it is not even an issue with regard to where fracking goes.

The Bill’s proposals fall far short of the very minimum that one might expect from any sort of regime that would make fracking an assuredly safe procedure as far as the public are concerned. It is of paramount importance that public concerns about the safety of the fracking process should be addressed. If we persist in putting through legislation that appears to suggest the opposite to the public, it will not be surprising if they continue to raise very serious objections about what is going on behind the whole process and ask whether the design of the process is in their interests at all or in someone else’s interests entirely.

High Speed Rail (London - West Midlands) Bill: Select Committee

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Joan Walley]

The right hon. Lady is absolutely right about that. We are increasingly understanding that environmental issues are cross-cutting and that public health concerns are at the core. All of those need, somehow or another, to be costed and factored into the decision making. It is incumbent on the Government to say how such issues will be taken forward at a later stage, given that no precise instruction is being given to the Select Committee on that.

Let me say a brief word about Crossrail, because we have heard a lot about how it had the best way of going about this and so on. We cannot compare the geographical scale of HS2 and Crossrail, as HS2 dwarfs it. We have just heard about the biodiversity and environmental impacts of HS2, particularly on ancient woodlands. My Committee received a lot of evidence about that, but it has not really been included in the debate. This is being taken forward as a hybrid Bill, with HS2 phase 1 and HS2 phase 2, and there has not been the opportunity to examine the overarching aspect, and what happens in phase 2 will be very much determined by what happens in phase 1.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that our Committee took a lot of evidence and information on surveys, particularly those of ancient woodlands, that one would perhaps expect to have already been done in the early stages if this were any other project? The emphasis should therefore be on how the hybrid Bill ensures that the things we would expect to have been done are done as part of the project, rather than in any new effort that we would expect to be undertaken outside any other project?

[Joan Walley]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, because he is not only a dedicated member of our Select Committee, but an incredibly knowledgeable one. The fact that we had so much evidence about the failure to map areas and the huge gaps in information shows how unfit for purpose the environmental assessment has been so far.

Cruise Market (Competition)

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that comment. When I conclude, I will ask the Minister to work with his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government on that very subject.

Is the support selective? Does it confer an advantage on specific companies, parts of industries, or on companies in specific regions? Yes, again. No other port operator, whether ABP, Hutchison or the port of Tyne, has received that sort of assistance for their cruise facilities. They have had to invest in their facilities themselves using private capital, just as they should in a free and fair market.

Has competition been distorted or might it be in future? We can fairly safely respond to that one. In requiring Liverpool city council to get state aid clearance from the European Commission prior to commencing turnaround cruises, the Government appear to endorse that view. However, what has happened in Liverpool? It has started anyway. The European Commission states that if that has happened, the Commission must disallow the support unless it is shown to be compatible with the common market.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Would the hon. Lady care to comment on what appear to be further proposals by Liverpool for a permanent terminal by investing £23 million, including a further £10 million of possible public subsidy? I understand that that was not discussed with the Department for Transport when competition was first raised. Does she consider that it indicates a possible permanent arrangement as far as distortion of trade is concerned?

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. We are not just talking about £21 million of public money, but future moneys, including the £10 million he mentioned, for a permanent turnaround facility that, in my view and that of several other hon. Members across the country, will have a permanent distortion on the cruise market.

To relate some of the history, as the Minister is well aware, the city of Liverpool cruise terminal was built using £19 million of public money on the explicit condition that it would not compete with other ports that had invested their own money to build similar facilities.

Cost of Living

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

Since becoming Secretary of State, I have spoken to Professor John Hills, given all the work he did analysing fuel poverty, and I have made changes to the energy company obligations as originally designed. The Deputy Prime Minister talked about this issue recently. We will be laying regulations before the House for debate this summer which will contain all the details that the right hon. Lady seeks. I say to her in the nicest possible way that she needs to wait a little bit, but those regulations will be laid before this House.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State accept that unless action is taken on the interest rates charged by those providing the loans for the green deal, the green deal is unlikely to deliver what he says its likely benefit is? What action has he taken to get that right, and why is he doing nothing further to ensure that the interest rate is compatible with an effective green deal for the future?

[Mr Davey]

I have been looking at the financial arrangements of the green deal. When we are able to announce even more details than we have already, I believe that people will see that it is a very attractive offer. I also believe that there are many low-income households that will actually welcome the rate of credit that will be asked through the green deal, compared with some of the rates of credit that they have to pay other lenders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Davey]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there are people predicting that wholesale gas prices will go up later this year. We had the announcement from Centrica last week, and we also had the announcement from E.ON. I am sure that other providers will be competing on price. However, I have already laid out some of the measures that we have been taking, whether it is the discussions that we had with the energy providers on gas and electricity bills, the collective switching or the work that Ofgem is doing on tariff simplification. All those measures make up quite a strong package to try to help the constituents he has just mentioned.

Returning to the energy Bill, there are four parts to our reforms: new long-term supply contracts to provide stable incentives to invest in low-carbon electricity generation; a capacity mechanism to ensure that we can keep the lights on; an emissions performance standard to keep carbon emissions from new fossil fuel plants down; and a carbon price floor to give investors certainty to commit capital to low-carbon projects. These reforms will attract the investment that we need to secure our electricity supplies. The investment will bring real rewards: up to 250,000 jobs in the construction and operation of new power plants, 19 GW of new electricity capacity, and an energy system that is fit for the future.

This is one of the biggest delivery programmes that this Government will oversee. It will stimulate growth, support new skilled jobs, upgrade our ageing energy infrastructure and bring down consumer energy bills. Our latest analysis shows that over the next two decades the average household energy bill will be 4% lower than if we did nothing. If we do not act now, we face a higher risk of blackouts and more exposure to price spikes, and higher consumer bills for both homes and businesses. That is not a future that this Government are willing to consider, so we will take the right decisions for the long term. The provisions in the forthcoming energy Bill will keep the lights on and our carbon emissions down, at the lowest cost to the consumer.

[Dr Whitehead]

As the right hon. Gentleman has made specific mention of the consumer benefit that will arise from electricity market reform, would he care to place on the record this afternoon how many consumer-based levies are in his energy market reform proposals, and what price effect their implementation will have on consumer bills?

[Mr Davey]

When we publish the draft Bill for pre-legislative scrutiny, I will set out a range of details, with a lot of technical documents. What I can say to the hon. Gentleman ahead of that is that there will be fewer levies than Labour planned. Labour planned a levy on bills for carbon capture and storage, which I believe would have cost consumers £9 billion. We are not going ahead with that.

This is a difficult time for many households. I am sure that Members on both sides of the House have heard from constituents who are struggling to pay their bills or keep their businesses afloat. Promises from politicians will not make the end of the month come any sooner, but the Government are doing what they can to help. We are making it easier for people to get a better deal from their energy suppliers; we are bringing energy efficiency to the mass market, making homes in every corner of the country cheaper to heat; and we are reforming our electricity system, to protect consumers from a more unstable and more expensive energy future. These three objectives share a common cause: not only will they insulate our consumers from energy price rises, but they will deliver a cleaner, more secure and more affordable energy system for generations to come. This is government for the long term, and that is what this coalition stands for. We are taking action where the last Government delivered inaction.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jake Berry]

It was 46p when I bought it last weekend, but since the general election, the cost of the pint of milk that I buy for my milky coffee has gone up by 10%. Although that is not the world’s greatest economic indicator, all hon. Members can accept that it is a symptom of the huge increase in the cost of fuel, which puts pressure on families in all our constituencies.

I am a great supporter of the great British pint—I am sure some of my colleagues think that litres are a European abomination—but one thing that we buy in litres is fuel. The cost of fuel in my constituency is 6p or 7p a litre more expensive than in the neighbouring towns of Bury and Bolton. I became absolutely fed up with that, so I wrote to the major supermarkets to ask why there is such a difference. Apparently, for people who live in rural isolated areas such as Rossendale and Darwen, the local supermarket sets the cost of the fuel at the pump. Therefore, in a small geographical area that encompasses my constituency alone, the biggest retailer in my patch—the supermarket—sets the price and is the major supplier.

People in my area say, “Welcome to rip-off Rossendale or dearest Darwen if you want fuel in your car.” That situation cannot be right. It is wrong that supermarkets behave in that way on fuel pricing. I can find out the price of a Tesco pint of milk or a can of beans by going on its website, but it is not prepared to set a tariff for fuel nationally and instead discriminates against rural and isolated areas.

I support the Government’s idea of getting energy suppliers, particularly the utility companies, to write to their customers to offer them the lowest tariff, but supermarkets should offer petrol at the cheapest price to the young, hard-working families in my constituency—they might have to put diesel in a van to go to work or petrol in a small car to take children to school—and not at a price that they know they can get away with just because of location. The major supermarkets have had a monopoly—the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), who is no longer in his place, spoke extremely well on farming and the price of milk in that respect. Anti-competitive practices on fuel are pushing small, independent fuel retailers out of business, which is bad for businesses and for my area.

That extra £5 a week where I live to put fuel in a vehicle to go to work is the difference between people being able to turn the heating on or not, being able to feed their children healthy food or not, or being able to go out and spend money in the economy or not. I hope fuel price setting is part of the Government’s programme to look at the relationship between supermarkets and their suppliers.

The cost of gas and electricity is another major issue raised by all our constituents. Those costs have ballooned beyond anyone’s increase in income over the past few years. They have risen by as much as 20%. We tell people to switch supplier. When people visit me in my patch, they say they will not switch supplier because they are nervous of bill shock. Uniquely, virtually, in a service industry supplying utilities to our houses, it is expected to be self-service. People are asked to read their own electricity meter. People in my advice surgeries have told me that they purposely underestimate how much electricity or gas they have used to help manage their cash flow. That builds up a huge legacy bill. Others simply have underestimations having had their meter readings underestimated over a long period.

Those people are worried about switching, because they know that when they switch they will have to give an up-to-date meter reading and will have a huge legacy bill that they cannot pay. These people, sometimes those on the most expensive tariff, are unable to switch because they cannot pay their historical bill. That is why it is absolutely right that the Queen’s Speech sets out a programme to introduce smart metering. Bglobal, a successful business in my constituency, which I am delighted to see has retained its profitability, does business-to-business smart metering. There is an opportunity for us all to have smart meters in our homes.

[Dr Whitehead]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that consumers should pay for smart meter installation or should other methods of payment be considered?

[Jake Berry]

However they are paid for, ultimately the consumer will pay, because if the electricity company pays, it will be added to the bill somewhere.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) is interested in smart metering. As I said, Bglobal, a business-to-business smart meter supplier in my constituency, is doing very well. The great thing about smart meters is that they enable us to pay only for the energy we use. There is not the bill shock; there is not the legacy bills which make people nervous. Paying only for the energy we use helps us to manage our electricity consumption and means that we can reduce it over time. People underestimate their readings so that they can manage their cash flows and pay their bills, but that is not real; they are simply putting off the pain. I want people to understand that by smart metering they can regulate their utility use and genuinely reduce their bills.

Bill shock is a real block to switching, as too is the fact that switching between the majority of energy suppliers involves an online medium. I refer to the uSwitch website, which I am sure many Members have used. That is a real block for the elderly and people on low incomes who do not have an internet connection. There are plenty of silver surfers in my constituency—they e-mail and tweet me—but that is not for everyone, so switching online is not right for all. People without phone lines or internet connections cannot switch.

Having said that, uSwitch does make the switching facility available in paper form. I am sure that many Members, like me, have collected the uSwitch envelopes and taken them out to elderly constituents, saying “Get your last utility bill, put it in here, and uSwitch will write back telling you the best tariff to go on.” As MPs, we should be publicising that and ensuring that vulnerable constituents are not excluded from saving what can be hundreds of pounds by switching their electricity supplier.

I support the Government’s proposal that energy suppliers should be compelled to write to their customers every year offering them the cheapest tariff. That does not enable people to switch between suppliers, but it at least ensures that they are on the best tariff. Of course, that is not always the one with the lowest electricity charge. Some people—those with very low usage, for example—might choose not to pay the standing charge and pay slightly more for their electricity. Tariffs have to be tailored to individuals.

Finally, I turn to the proposal to ensure that power generation in this country is environmentally sustainable. Often in this place we obsess far too much about short-term issues. As important as things are such as the eurozone, part of our job has to be horizon scanning. If I scan the horizon and think about what might affect our children or grandchildren, global warming is probably the biggest issue that I spot. I absolutely support the Government proposals to move to more sustainable electricity generation, but we have a problem with wind energy. In my constituency, 30 planning applications for wind turbines are currently under consideration by the local authority. That points to a market that is completely out of kilter with commercial reality. We saw it with solar energy: we had a sort of gold rush, because people suddenly realised that they could get 16% guaranteed by the Government tax-free. We are now seeing similar speculation by major energy suppliers, with the applications for large wind turbines in my constituency.

We all support wind generation, but I do not want to see my patch become the wind capital of the UK—although colleagues might look at me and think that it already has become that. I hope that the Government will have a look at the subsidy for wind generation and try to ensure that we cut the “get rich quick” merchants—the speculators—out of the market. I am happy to see the development in my area, but I want to ensure a local benefit, so that it really works for our children and grandchildren.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

Today, we heard that energy prices for the average household went up by 12% over the last 12 months, and by 34% over the last four years. That clearly has a tremendous impact on the cost of living and, as we have heard already, on the rise in fuel poverty.

Bills are not increasing because of green initiatives, although they contribute. The Daily Mail and others who have suggested that green and environmental initiatives add hundreds of pounds to energy bills are wrong. They are increasing mainly because of the non-transparent energy market and global fuel prices. The latter are not about to change, but we can do a lot about other issues.

Investing in green energy and the low-carbon economy is one route to lower fuel costs in the future, because of the disaggregation of fuel costs and world mineral energy prices. We can keep getting indigenously produced and stably priced fuel in the future. Investing in energy efficiency in homes and offices—using less energy more efficiently—is a no-brainer, as has been said. Lower energy usage will bring smaller bills. The best method for combating fuel poverty is to fuel-poverty-proof UK homes.

All that investment in energy and the low-carbon economy means jobs, energy security and the development of technologies where the UK can play a world role. In some instances, we already have a world lead that needs sustaining. I understand that the Foreign Secretary recently intervened on these matters in a letter to various Departments. He said:

“I am in no doubt that we must meet this challenge, not only to safeguard the sustainability of our planet and the security of our energy, but also to ensure we are at the front of the queue when it comes to the jobs and industries of the future.”

I agree with many of those sentiments, but it is remarkable that the right hon. Gentleman felt it necessary to write that letter if the Government are indeed the greenest ever, as has been suggested.

Current policy on the challenges is patchy; in practice the Government even fail to get to grips with the targets in their own legislation. It looks as though the carbon emissions reduction and community energy saving programmes will end ingloriously, seriously short of their targets. The targets and likely achievements and ambitions of their replacements—the green deal and the energy company obligation—are being downgraded before our eyes. The green deal is stuck on the question of interest rates.

On fuel poverty and hard-to-treat homes, the overall ambition is being bound by the imposition of levy caps. That is a peculiar element of forward Government policy, in that the response to the question of levies for environmental and green purposes is first to introduce them as a policy instrument in energy policy in the future, and then to disembowel their effectiveness by capping them. There is no plan B, and we can see the results of that process in the recent solar PV feed-in tariffs fiasco. Hence the serious binding of the energy companies’ obligation at £1.3 billion a year, even if successful, leads us only halfway towards those hard-to-treat homes’ insulation targets. If a switch is made towards dealing with fuel poverty, that target will be further downgraded and there will be no serious impact on long-term fuel poverty.

The levy theme is recurrent in future energy policies, as well as in present initiatives. We have a levy for the energy company obligation, a levy for smart meters, a levy for the warm home discount, a levy for feed-in tariffs and a levy for carbon reduction commitments. In the energy Bill, levy mechanisms are the engine oil of the measures to reform the energy market, although as I have commented previously, the Bill is remarkable in seeking to promote energy market reform without reforming the way the energy market works—that is, it continues with the loose regulation of non-transparent bilateral deals a long time ahead, without any change in the new energy Bill.

We will shortly see what the Bill consists of, but we know already that there will be a new levy, effectively for capacity payments, a levy for contracts for difference, a likely levy for a fund to underwrite the counterparties to the contract for difference, and indirectly at least, a levy fund to anticipate payments into Government when energy prices rise above the agreed strike price level. So a series of new levies will come in with new legislation, undoubtedly being capped by the Treasury in the process.

That seems to me not to be a sensible long-term form of green and low-carbon energy policy. It is a dead-end in policy development, and one that we need to get over if we are to meet the ambition, among other things, set out in the Foreign Secretary’s recent letter. We can start to do that, in the context of this Queen’s Speech, by redesigning the Bill that is coming up on energy market reform genuinely to reform the energy market, so that it works around a transparent pool which will drive prices down through full contract transparency and the ability of new and competitive entrants to come in on a level trading playing field.

There seem to be no demand-side measures in energy market reform, unless there are big surprises in the Bill when it emerges, to incentivise and support reductions in energy demand and the advance of energy efficiency in our energy market. Is it because DECC cannot negotiate further levies with the Treasury that there are no demand-side measures in electricity market reform as it stands? We should go further and look at the relationship of green taxes in the future, not the hypothecation of current taxes, to the advancement of the low-carbon economy.

Why should new green taxes that are supposed to tax bads and reward goods simply disappear into the Treasury, thereby underlining the often unjust accusation that they are not green taxes at all, and are merely stealth taxes? Should not those new forms of taxation, such as the carbon floor price and the auction of EU emissions trading scheme credits, be placed behind our move to a low-carbon economy and our support for low-carbon technologies within it, rather than acting as an arguable one-way tax that does not connect with the promotion of environmental goods in any way?

The energy bill revolution campaign suggests that at least some of these taxes should be applied to the promotion of energy efficiency, and in particular to home insulation. I applaud that idea. I would like to go further, to relate green taxes to our support for green initiatives, instead of the dreary round of levy imposition, followed by Treasury cap, followed by policy fiasco. This can be, among other things, mediated and given enormous added value by the green investment bank, the other environmental measure contained in the Queen’s Speech—a green bank hobbled at present by Treasury formulae so that it cannot be a bank and do what banks do as far as credit, bonds, lending and so on are concerned until 2017 at the earliest. Legislation to make it a real bank early is another important matter.

It is the lack of ambition for the green and low-carbon economy, and the difficulty in creating policy instruments to move the low-carbon economy forward, that stand out in the proposed measures. These are measures to which we should pay urgent attention as we debate the Queen’s Speech.

Port of Southampton

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Wednesday 18th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

It is appropriate that we are discussing Southampton port this morning, one day before the House discusses the national ports infrastructure planning document. That document looks, among other things, at the whole question of the strategic role of ports in the UK and at the requirements for ensuring that our ports continue to play such a strategic role in the best way that we can arrange. That is vital.

UK ports provide 95% of our capacity for importing and exporting goods; 95% of imports and exports go through UK ports. So the best possible deployment of UK ports is essential. Historically, Southampton, with Felixstowe and many other UK ports, has always played a major role in providing that national infrastructure, which, as hon. Members have said, is being maintained and improved predominantly on the basis of investment by the companies that run the ports.

Southampton and Felixstowe are particularly important in terms of national strategic planning inasmuch as they are two of the country’s leading container ports with a large throughput of containers. They are either side of London, in close proximity to major international shipping routes, and are vitally placed for receipt of containers, which then go to the rest of the UK. Indeed, the Government have recognised the importance of those strategic ports in terms of what has happened with assistance not to the ports, but to the infrastructure in the recent upgrade of the rail line from Southampton to the midlands, and the proposed upgrade in road access to Felixstowe port.

The Government have recognised the infrastructure considerations for the same reason that ports recognise what they need to do to maintain their competitiveness, not with one another, but as part of the national ports infrastructure. The Southampton rail upgrade is a good example. The international standard now is high-box containers with a height of 9 feet. They cannot be transported efficiently on traditional rail-based container transport, not least because they tend to collide with bridges. To upgrade to international standards and to maintain competitiveness, it is necessary to prevent containers from colliding with bridges on the way north, which is an upgrade to stay in the same place.

It is interesting to reflect on a debate that I obtained 11 or 12 years ago on the future of Southampton port. I speculated about the level of container traffic that would be required in future for UK ports, and the size of container vessels that would come to the port. I talked then about the prospect of vessels of perhaps 8,000 to 10,000 containers coming into the port, and the necessity of considering how we would deal with larger vessels coming in. Now, Southampton’s main customers are talking about shortly bringing in not 8,000-container vessels, not 4,000-container vessels, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) mentioned and which was the standard a few years ago, but 13,000-container vessels. If our ports in general cannot take those vessels, that will be detrimental to Britain’s national strategic port planning, not just to Southampton or any other specific port.

As my right hon. Friend said, the issue is not just that container-vessel traffic is distributed around the UK; ports across the channel are able and waiting to take traffic that comes up through the channel to container ports. If those vessels turn right because they cannot turn left to the UK because of their size, containers will be trans-shipped from the continent to the UK at a cost of £100 per container over and above what happens at present when they arrive in the UK. Yes, we would receive our containers, and yes, business might proceed as usual, but at a considerable cost to the UK economy and considerable detriment to our strategic port planning.

It is essential that ports such as Southampton address the issues, and Southampton has done precisely that in its proposed £150 million investment in its container terminal, not a new container terminal, but an upgraded one. Ships already come into the port, and the £150 million is for dredging and upgrading the facilities to ensure that new, larger vessels can come into Southampton and be dealt with.

As my right hon. Friend said, not only has Southampton addressed the issue, but it thought that it had introduced its proposals in good time a few years ago. It is a sad record that the Marine Management Organisation has been less than fully adequate in dealing with the challenge of that proposal. It had to re-issue the consultation; it apparently retreated in the face of judicial review when permission had been given; and more recently it has cast around to see whether it has the power to resist further judicial review and challenge of its inherited powers from the Board of Trade in terms of permissions. Southampton made its proposals not just in good time, but in very good time. However, it is faced with the prospect that, if matters do not now go absolutely right—among other things, the salmon run up the River Test is an issue—it will lose its very last window to put that vital upgrade in place to cope with future business at the port.

Why has that judicial review come forward, and why has the Marine Management Organisation, apparently petrified about the possibility of further judicial review, reviewed its powers accordingly? Is it because local amenity groups in Southampton are up in arms? Is it because the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is worried about the effect on birds? Is it because English Heritage is worried about the effect on the Solent? Is it because Natural England is worried about the natural environment around Southampton? No. None of those organisations has ever objected to the proposal, and none has ever tried to stop it. All agree that the arrangements are satisfactory. Indeed, I understand that no one in the Southampton area has ever objected to the proposal. Nor should they, because the proposal is to upgrade an existing container terminal to bring it up to date with what is required for the port. That is all.

It is astonishing to hear that an organisation from its vantage point 200 miles away has introduced judicial review of the upgrade’s details into the proceedings. It might be said that that organisation wants a level playing field. That appears to be more of a cover than an up-front argument, and it does not require an enormous amount of brainpower to consider what might happen if the port of Southampton were made to go backwards rather than forwards. That is what happens with port management; ports either lose trade or they gain it.

UK trade can be obtained for everyone; it is not a zero-sum game. It is not, however, difficult to conclude that Hutchison Ports believes that delaying or scuppering Southampton’s plans to upgrade its facilities, thereby making it unable to accept larger ships, would directly benefit Felixstowe. A judicial review is a fairly small investment—perhaps £100,000—for what is potentially a large gain. I caution, however, that such a move does not necessarily mean that more traffic will go to Felixstowe. It may not end up in the UK at all, and even if some of it did, in terms of UK plc it is equivalent to one car manufacturer seeking to sabotage another’s production line in the hope that the public will buy its cars, even if some members of the public then buy imported cars. That is the sort of action we are contemplating, and if that is the motivation behind the judicial review, I deplore the fact that it has been requested.

I have reflected on the importance of the port of Southampton to UK plc, and feel that any attempt to obtain such a review should be resisted. We need the ports of Southampton, Felixstowe, Liverpool, Hull, Portishead, Thamesport and others because, as we will discuss tomorrow, they will play a vital role in planning the UK’s future port capacity. The development of the port of Southampton is not only about Southampton but about UK plc making its way and dealing with imports and exports from and to the world. If Southampton fails to get its upgrade as a result of backstairs dealing and, quite frankly, poor service by the body that is required to decide on such applications, that will be of detriment not only to Southampton but to the UK as a whole.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

The hon. Gentleman makes the case proudly for Southampton port, as did his right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham). It is a bit of a shame, however, to start impugning commercial decisions. We as parliamentarians want companies to be treated consistently by Government agencies, and in the example we are discussing consistency was not applied. The MMO has ended up paying the costs of the judicial review because it failed to apply the law as it should have done.

[Dr Whitehead]

There is some force in what hon. Lady says. It is a shame, however, that we have to think about the possible motivations behind those who apply for a judicial review. From my vantage point, the conclusion that the prime motivation behind this judicial review did not involve a concern for level playing fields is almost inescapable. Level playing fields should exist for everybody, but someone feeling that they were not applied in their particular circumstances does not warrant an attempt to upset the playing fields for everybody in the country. I hope that we will hear no more about the judicial review, and that mature consideration of what is best for all, including the ports of Felixstowe, Southampton and the others that I mentioned, will prevail.

I hope that this debate, and the efforts made by many of my colleagues from across the south to assist Southampton’s progress with its application, will mean that at this final stage, the MMO ensures that the process proceeds as quickly as possible, and that those involved with UK ports consider what is best for all our ports, rather than individual interests. If that is a result of today’s debate, which I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen on obtaining, it will have been a prize worth fighting for.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Coastguard Modernisation

Alan Whitehead Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hammond]

The Humber station already covers the coastline of Norfolk and part of Suffolk, and the people working there will have the experience and knowledge that my hon. Friend talks of. I would like to take this opportunity to remind hon. Members that part of the proposal involves reinforcing professional coastguard support for the volunteer coastguard operation. An additional net total of 32 uniformed officers will be deployed in direct support of the volunteer coastguard, further reinforcing the resilience and effectiveness of the service.

[Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)]

When the Minister was proposing two marine operations centres, he proposed to have 96 staff at the Solent centre. Now that he is proposing one marine operations centre, he is still proposing to have 96 staff at the Solent centre. Does he envisage the service being half as good nationally or the staff working twice as hard?

[Mr Hammond]

Neither. The point about reducing the proposal to a single marine operations centre is that resources that are not deployed in the other centre will remain deployed in local stations around the country, which is the thrust of most of the representations that we received—that we should seek to protect and maintain local knowledge deployed in local stations. Resilience in the event of disaster will be provided by a ghost facility at Dover, which would allow the marine operations centre in the Southampton-Portsmouth area to be transferred en masse to Dover in the event of any catastrophe befalling the Southampton-Portsmouth area.