North Sea Oil and Gas

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2026 Westminster Hall

[Torcuil Crichton (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I thank the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) for securing this important debate.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Aberdeen South (Douglas Lumsden) on his recent win. Of course, his was not the only big win in Scotland in recent times. In Na h-Eileanan an Iar—the Western Isles—the Labour candidate Donald MacKinnon won a historic victory after 19 years of SNP neglect and complacency. What we did in Na h-Eileanan an Iar we did against the political tide: despite the polling and without the magic of Makerfield, we created a new king of the north. In short, we won because of Donald MacKinnon’s island credentials. Our local identity trumped the SNP’s artifice of a national identity. I know that we will be one Scotland tonight in Miami, but in reality, Scotland has many different communities and many different voices.

A large part of our island identity over the last two generations has been the North sea. The issues that anchored the by-election in Aberdeen South were currents that ran through the Western Isles during our May election as well. The fortunes of the North sea have shaped my village in Lewis and many other communities on the west coast and in the north. It has sustained us for two generations now. It is not just the men who have made that contribution; women are effectively running single-parent families because of the two weeks on, two weeks off or three weeks on, three weeks off pattern of the North sea.

The North sea has become part of our identity. Its shifts, weather and fortunes ripple through the Hebrides just as much as they do through the communities of our Doric cousins. It is not appreciated by many in this debate on the transition away from the North sea that our identity, a sense of belonging and who we are because of where we work are a big part of this.

The UK is undertaking one of the greatest economic and industrial transformations of our time, from fossil fuels to renewables and nuclear power. I wish the SNP Scottish Government, although apparently they now have a new industrial strategy, would show some maturity on nuclear power and recognise that it has a role in our future as oil and gas diminish. We should be clear-eyed about why we are moving out of the North sea. It is a mature and declining basin, and at the same time we face—as we do outside today—the undeniable reality of a warming planet. We have a responsibility to meet these challenges and a duty to those who will inherit the world after us to act.

The transition away from the North sea and into renewables is not the same as abandonment. This Labour Government are not, and must not be, in the business of switching off the North sea. We must not allow a justifiable drive to renewables to lead us into decisions that as a nation we may later regret. There remains lots of work to be undertaken, revenues to be generated and energy to be produced in this sector. As long as this country requires oil and particularly gas, and that can be produced and processed domestically, we should carry on working in the North sea. We should make more of tiebacks, and I would like to hear about Ministers doing so. The industry knows what that means—using existing infrastructure to explore and extract extra resources from the basin—but the public do not, and I call on Ministers to make more of tiebacks.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Gentleman comes to the crux of what we mean by a transition. The difficulty for the Government is that, on the current trajectory of development, we risk reducing at a speed that means we will lose the critical infrastructure and end up pushing the whole industry off a cliff. If we do that, we will have no just transition.

[Torcuil Crichton]

I thank the right hon. Member for that intervention. I hear him and I hope Ministers hear him as well. In that transition, we on the west coast and he in the Northern Isles have a privileged vantage point. We look eastwards to the North sea and the jobs and fortunes that it has provided to our islands, and we look westwards into the Atlantic and see the wealth of wind, the promise of renewable energy and the next chapter of our country’s story.

The Minister knows that we in the Western Isles have the highest concentration of community-owned renewables anywhere in the UK. I believe that communities should have a big share in that new industry and in the renewables fortune. The Select Committee on Energy Security and Net Zero, of which the hon. Member for Bromsgrove is a member, recently recommended that community power schemes should have priority access to the grid.

Communities and councils should have the right—indeed, they already have the right; it is just that it has not been enacted—to take a 20% stake in any commercial renewables scheme in their area, onshore or offshore, and commercial wind farm companies ought to be incentivised through the planning system to see communities as partners, not just as peanut beneficiaries of their schemes. In that way, my community and those across Scotland that have earned a fortune for this country and for commercial companies in the North sea will have a share in the future and the fortune of renewable energy.

Let me be clear that I support a pragmatic transition in which we utilise domestic gas production rather than importing it, and support Scottish skills and jobs as we move the workforce into renewables and elsewhere. I accept that, as the hon. Member said, there may not be a like-for-like match between existing jobs and emerging jobs. The North sea is one of the most dangerous environments to work in anywhere in the world, and the pay reflects that.

But this is not just a question of pay. It is not just a question of economics, climate change or tax regimes, important as all those things are. It is just as much a question of who we are—a question of identity and belonging, and the relationship that we have with place and our place of work, which is a powerful political emotion that we should take note of. And as my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm) said, it is not an either/or. Our task is not to choose between the two, but to manage the transition from one to the other responsibly, pragmatically and in a way that protects the country’s energy security and, crucially, ensures that we enrich the communities that have already powered this nation for two generations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Uma Kumaran]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend.

We are talking about communities that are dependent on this industry. As a proud member of the GMB, I absolutely understand why workers must be at the heart of this. North sea oil and gas reserves are in terminal decline. They cannot provide a secure future for workers, and there is no long-term future in them. We have heard that just 10% is left to be extracted.

[Mr Carmichael]

Much of what the hon. Lady says is correct, but she is setting oil and gas up in opposition to the development of renewables, when they absolutely are not. I do not believe there is a long-term future for the oil and gas industry, but we will need oil and gas in the future. We are talking not just about the long term, but about the short to medium term. That is the whole point of a transition: it is about how we get from here to where we want to be. There is no way of getting to the renewables future without going through oil and gas first.

[Uma Kumaran]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point. I cannot say that I agree with all of it, but we need all voices around the table.

[Mr Carmichael]

Each time, the hon. Lady says, “Instead of that, it’s this.” It is not an either/or; it is an “as well”.

[Uma Kumaran]

The oil industry and fossil fuel lobbyists want us to believe that we need to take them on the journey with us. The case for renewables is there. At the moment, however, the voices for the renewables industry and more sustainable energy sources are being drowned out by those who want us to preserve the system that we already have.

--- Later in debate ---

[Pippa Heylings (South Cambridgeshire) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I am sure that the whole country joins you in finding it difficult to deal with this heat and to perform to the best of one’s ability. I am thinking about those students who are sitting GCSE and A-level exams this week.

I thank the hon. Member for Bromsgrove (Bradley Thomas) for bringing this debate to Westminster Hall. We have heard how seriously we are considering our current and future jobs for oil and gas workers in the North sea and in the new renewable energy sector. Families across the country and businesses are struggling with skyrocketing energy bills. We are also seeing hits to our economy and avoidable deaths from a warming planet. This week, we have had the first red alert under our new UK Health Security Agency alert system, alerting us to the climate impacts of global warming.

Less than a month ago, families and households received the news that, once again, their energy bills are going up, this time by an average of 13.5% or £221 a year—what we could call a Trump tax. We know that rising energy bills are one of the biggest worries facing households and businesses. They bring stress, anxiety and uncertainty, and they are plunging more and more people into unaffordable debt. Right now, energy debt in the country is about £5 billion, and it is due to rise exponentially. Also, our businesses are seeing some of the highest industrial energy prices, making us as a country among the least competitive, which is hitting our economy. Families, too, will now be bracing themselves for the next price cap announcement and wondering how much they will have to pay through the colder winter months. The reason for these spikes in our energy bills is clear: our dependence on the rollercoaster of volatile global fossil fuel markets.

The energy crisis is an oil and gas crisis. Just as with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the middle east conflict shows how a single geopolitical escalation can send energy prices soaring, leaving households and businesses exposed to shocks entirely beyond their control. That is not inevitable. In Spain, an increase in renewables has seen the Spanish electricity market go from the 10th most expensive in the EU to among the cheapest.

But as we have heard in this debate, a transition will not happen without a careful, concentrated and accelerated focus on the oil and gas we need today, on the renewables that we need to scale up, on the infrastructure, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) mentioned, on the jobs and, as the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) mentioned, on the culture and identity involved in this change.

We need a serious and honest debate about this transition. Even proponents of the “Drill, baby, drill” argument from the Conservatives and Reform have recognised that further expansion of oil and gas production in the North sea, a mature basin from which we have already extracted 93%, will do nothing to cut people’s energy bills. Any oil and gas extracted is sold on the international market to the highest bidder.

[Mr Carmichael]

My hon. Friend has come to a point of some interest. We talk about oil and gas as if they are one commodity, but they are very different things, of course, and she will know that the gas that is to be extracted in the North sea and also to the west of Shetland is brought ashore and goes straight into the UK market. The point about a global market and a global price for oil is well made, but oil and gas are different.

[Pippa Heylings]

I thank my right hon. Friend. We have many discussions about this issue, and he is absolutely right to point out that it is complex. We know that if we extract beyond what has already been licensed, the UK can contribute only a tiny fraction of global supply, particularly of oil, even if new licences are given. It will not cut bills, and it will not shield us from global price shocks.

The next argument is about UK energy security. On that point, Members from across the House have admitted that most of the UK’s recoverable North sea oil and gas has already been extracted.

[Mr Carmichael]

I am keen to emphasise the great breadth of agreement between myself and my hon. Friend on this matter. She is absolutely right about the future of jobs. She knows that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on marine energy. Marine renewable technology is developing and will be able to provide jobs for my constituents and others in the future, but it is important that we keep the critical mass of the oil and gas industry, because if these people lose their jobs now, they are not going to sit on their hands and wait for AR9, AR10, AR11 or whenever it is that we can actually get commercially exploitable marine renewable energy.

[Pippa Heylings]

Once again, I thank my right hon. Friend; I will be coming on to exactly that point.

For more than a decade, the previous Government had a policy of maximising North sea oil and gas extraction and of removing and reducing taxes on oil and gas companies. With the issuing of hundreds of new licences in a maturing basin, what we have seen produced after 14 years is little more than a month’s worth of gas to date.

Energy security is national security. We know, and have admitted in the debate, that we have to reduce our dependency on gas and come to a transition. The Liberal Democrats recognise not only that we will need oil and gas for decades to come, but that the North sea’s most productive years are behind it. That is why we support a managed and just transition away from North sea oil and gas, with investment in renewables at its heart, and strong support for the workers and communities most affected.

Those working in the North sea are skilled workers. They have kept our lights on and have contributed enormously to our economy. They deserve our support through transition—not just words—and honesty about the future. That is why the Liberal Democrats are calling for the creation of a just transition commission and an acceleration of the clean energy jobs necessary. Under the Conservatives, jobs in the oil and gas industry fell by 70,000, and at that time we did not hear the cries that we hear now about what is happening or how those workers are being supported.

I grew up in Hull, a city that knew the devastation of unmanaged transitions—from coal and from the cod fisheries—and through my father’s work as a GP, I saw the human cost of industries collapsing without a plan. We cannot repeat those mistakes. No community should be left behind. In Hull today, when I go back, I see what success can look like: the manufacture of offshore wind turbines by Siemens; the Humber region pioneering the offshore wind industry; investment creating skilled, well-paid jobs now and for the future. Confederation of British Industry economic data has shown that beyond Hull, across the country, the new green economy underpins the jobs of 1.1 million workers throughout the UK, generating £105 billion in gross value added. That is the model we should be scaling up towards, with our skilled oil and gas workers and the supply chains front and centre of the transition.

Finally, in this sweltering heat, with this first ever red health alert for danger to life from extreme heat, we must recognise the costs of failing to tackle climate change. This week has shown us the future we face if we do not act—lives lost to extreme heat, schools closed, fields parched, transport networks gridlocked and economic costs spiralling. Climate breakdown is a national security threat, driving instability, displacement and economic shocks. It is incumbent on us to do all we can to avoid worsening climate shocks, so we must find a way forward through electrification that balances cheaper energy bills and security of energy supply, and meets our climate commitments.

The future of the North sea plays a vital role in that endeavour of transitioning from being a net exporter of oil and gas in the past to becoming a net exporter of home-grown green energy—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) said—again trading in the EU internal electricity market and joining North sea countries in meeting joint offshore wind investment goals, while decarbonising the gas production we will still need for decades to come. I therefore ask the Minister to clarify whether he agrees with the Liberal Democrat proposal: a just transition commission, acceleration of clean energy jobs, and our essential energy guarantee, to ensure that all families have their basic energy needs met.

In addition, the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Torcuil Crichton) talked about the identity and culture of the communities that have to face this transition. That, too, is crucial. The sooner we embrace the transition and the sooner we can deliver a secure and affordable energy system, the sooner we can finally give families the lower, stable bills that they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Shanks]

Because we want to steward the future of the basin and have a strategic plan that industry can get behind. Very few of the licences that have been issued in the past few years have come to production, so they are not the route to that, but the process had so far not had clarity from the Government. That is why we said what we said on licences.

The second part of our manifesto commitment, which is often ignored in this conversation, is that we will continue to manage existing fields over their lifetime. We are not rescinding any licences—we are not saying that new production could not come forward in existing licensed fields—or rescinding any projects that currently exist.

My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar made a point about the importance of tiebacks. This is the pragmatic approach that industry has called for, recognising that the most economically viable route to sustaining the fields is to have a tieback to an existing field that produces new oil and gas. That maintains the critical infrastructure and supply chains, as well as prolonging jobs. That is what industry called for, and that is the pragmatic approach we took in the North sea future plan.

[Mr Carmichael]

How confident is the Minister that he can maintain the infrastructure in the North sea and to the west of Shetland, so that oil and gas can be brought onshore, as well as through floating production storage and offloading units, without new licences?

[Michael Shanks]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about what the stewardship of the basin has to look like, and he made another important point earlier about not conflating oil and gas. Equally, the story we tell about the North sea is often what the North sea looked like 30 or 40 years ago. It has changed significantly; the operators in the basin have changed, but so too has the structure of many of the operations. The North Sea Transition Authority has a role in planning the future of the basin and identifying issues relating to sustainability and infrastructure. It also has a role in looking at how we can do more around, for example, the electrification of platforms, so that we can reduce emissions from the platforms wherever possible and tie into offshore wind projects where possible.

Let me turn to the critical issue of the workforce. Under the North sea future plan, we will introduce a statutory objective for the North Sea Transition Authority to consider workers, communities and supply chains in its decisions. The NSTA has been looking at how it can support the transition for a long time, but this gives it a statutory objective to do so. This is not just about production and infrastructure. It is about people and places; it is about the workers who built the North sea success story, and with it the success of the British economy, the communities that supported it and, crucially, the supply chains that go with it.

We will also extend employment rights and protections to offshore renewables workers, and I hope that everyone in this House will support that. Coming to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield (Steve Yemm), we recognise that the clean energy workforce of the future has to have strong and fair protections, be trade unionised and have good, well-paid jobs. That is partly why, for offshore wind, we have driven forward the fair work charter as part of the clean industry bonus, so that rights are at the heart of these jobs and that, wherever possible, workers can transition from oil and gas into these jobs with good terms and conditions. That was opposed by some Conservative Members when we took it through Parliament recently, but I hope that they will rethink, because it is hugely important.

The hon. Member for Bromsgrove made a point about energy security, which is absolutely right. Our energy security is our national security. It is perhaps more important now than in recent years that we recognise that, in an uncertain world, our energy security is a hugely important part of how we build much more security at home. The point made about refinery capacity was right. We lost two refineries in this country, and I regret hugely that we did not do more to prevent those closures in the years leading up to them. We have now to protect our four refineries, which are hugely important sovereign capacity. In a global fuel crisis, those refineries have been key to ensuring that Britain has not suffered fuel shortages. We have to continue to support them.

On the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Alloa and Grangemouth (Brian Leishman), we committed to invest £200 million in the future of Grangemouth, and other projects are coming through. I gently say to him that we had to pick it up with no planning done in advance, and I am afraid it is not possible for us to get projects off the shelf, invest money in them and get them built immediately. We need business and industry to come forward with propositions, and the Government have an open door to engage with them directly on how we can deploy that money to Grangemouth. I meet them regularly to make sure that is happening, and we will continue to do that.

Again, I thank the hon. Members who have participated. It is hugely important that we talk about these issues. I hope we can also find a way, at some point, of reaching some consensus on how we can have an all-energy approach to the future of the North sea. I recognise that needs a pragmatic position on our side, but it also needs a pragmatic position from those who, in recent years, seem to have become anti the very investment that will drive forward the future of the North sea.

It is not possible for us to secure the long-term future of the North sea purely by calling for new licences in oil and gas. Anyone who believes that is the long-term answer is ignoring the reality in front of us. Oil and gas is hugely important, but the transition works only if we also invest and build up what comes next. We need both of them. A fair, managed and prosperous transition means investing in all of that—in offshore wind, carbon capture, long-duration energy storage in Scotland and elsewhere, and in supply chains so that we are building energy in Britain again, not towing it in from somewhere else and offshoring the jobs. That is the opportunity in front of us.

None of this will be easy. We will have to wrestle with some real challenges, but if we move fast to invest in the future and take a pragmatic position, I believe the North sea has a strong future ahead of it. I do not pretend that it is straightforward or that that will somehow give comfort to the workers who are facing it just now, but I am absolutely committed to making this work, and so are the Government. I thank the hon. Member for Bromsgrove for securing the debate, and I thank everyone who participated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 21st May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris McDonald]

My hon. Friend knows that when he talks about reindustrialisation and improving the manufacturing base of this economy he finds a very sympathetic ear in me. Certainly, we have all seen over the course of the past few years, through multiple crises, how the resilience of global supply chains has been reduced. Increasing the share of our economy that is dedicated to manufacturing will serve the ecological aims that he has mentioned, improve our national resilience and provide good, well-paid and high-productivity manufacturing jobs in our industrial heartlands across the whole of the country.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The largest sector of the manufacturing base is food manufacturing, but it was deliberately left out of the industrial strategy. As a consequence, food manufacturing is now facing rising input costs, especially from energy, and is unable to get the assistance that the Minister just referred to. The Food and Drink Federation thinks that food price inflation could get to 9% or 10% this year. With the benefit of hindsight, do the Government think that it was possibly a mistake to exclude food manufacturing from the industrial strategy?

[Chris McDonald]

At the time that the industrial strategy was established, the Government carefully selected those sectors that had the greatest growth potential for the economy, but we were also extremely clear in communicating that that does not mean that sectors that were not identified as having high growth potential were not important—quite the contrary. Our food manufacturing sector is incredibly important, and the Government are acutely aware of the issues around food prices. I believe that the Chancellor of the Exchequer may well have more to say on that subject in a statement later today.

Processed Russian Oil Products: Sanctions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 20th May 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Mr Speaker, you will be aware of the phrase that sometimes it is conspiracy and sometimes it is something else. I just want to say that, in relation to communications, there is no conspiracy. Nobody is trying to undermine our support for Ukraine. The statutory instrument on the tougher measures was always going to come into force today. Up until today it was perfectly legal to import Russian products that had been refined in third party countries into the UK. It will no longer be legal to do so. There are several categories under that which will be banned. For instance, it will tackle carbon fibre used in the production of Russian drones, chemicals used in precision missiles, and goods used in emerging technologies such as quantum computing and AI. I want to ensure that these licences will be as temporary as possible. In 2022, along with the Foreign Affairs Committee, I visited Kyiv and Avdiivka, right at the very edge, roughly a fortnight before the full-scale invasion. We saw Russian troops and snipers pointing at Ukrainians. This battle has gone on since 2014, not just since 2022. I can assure my hon. Friend that the British Government stand 100% beside the Ukrainian people.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

For years, Ministers on the Treasury Bench have told us that oil is traded as a global commodity, so it makes no difference where in the world it is taken out of the ground and that, as a consequence, we can wind down production on the UK continental shelf—availability of supply would continue. Given what the Minister has had to announce today, is he satisfied that that argument still holds water?

[Chris Bryant]

Well, it has not been an argument that I myself have advanced, although obviously I stand by my Labour colleagues if that is the argument that they have been making—I am part of a team, after all. The point I would make in relation to drilling in the North sea is that I think it is a wrong argument to say that if we were to issue new licences today that would affect the energy prices we are facing because of the situation in the middle east. What we absolutely have to do is make sure that we deal with market instability today. It was not our choice to have this war in Iran. We have not taken part in it. We think it was a mistake to enter into it without a plan. I am very aware, from conversations I have had with many of my counterparts in the Gulf—perhaps there will be more on that later on today—that these issues are at the forefront of their minds.

Energy Developers Levy

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I thank the hon. Member for his well-timed intervention; I have that heard said before and was just coming to that issue. I suspect that the Minister may have similar concerns. As the hon. Member points out, there may be concerns that a levy would increase consumer bills. That grates on me given that the National Grid reported an adjusted operating profit of £2.29 billion for the six months ending 30 September last year.

Let us be clear. This is not about asking bill payers to shoulder more of the burden; it is about asking developers, when they are developing multibillion-pound investments and returning substantial profits, to absorb a proportionate cost and ensure co-ordination.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

The hon. Member has really come to the nub of the matter: the energy companies that are building and installing the renewable capacity are making a lot of money out of it. In my constituency, there are turbines whose owners are being paid for not generating anything, while we have the highest levels of fuel poverty in the country. Does that not speak to the fact that we need wholesale reform of the way the energy market is regulated?

[Jenny Riddell-Carpenter]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman; I am sure that the Minister will address that issue, which has long been talked about.

I was discussing the incredible profits that the energy developers are making. For me, this issue is about simple fairness: those creating the disruption and generating the return should fund the systems to manage the cumulative impact. More importantly—most importantly, perhaps—what I am suggesting would not lead to higher bills. Proper co-ordination would reduce bills: reduce the duplication, prevent redesign and avoid the need for repeated construction and legal conflict. Proper co-ordination saves money. This is not anti-growth, but smarter and inclusive growth.

Suffolk Coastal must not become the unmanaged frontier of energy development. So many in my constituency are pro-net zero, pro-investment and pro-growth, but we are asking the Government to be pro-co-ordination. What we have now is a fragmented planning system and eroding trust in the energy transition that we all support. If we are serious about delivering clean energy power at pace, we must treat host communities as partners, not afterthoughts, in that transition. We must do more to bring communities with us.

I am asking two things of the Minister today: first, a meeting with officials to examine this proposal; and secondly, a departmental feasibility study into the merits of an energy infrastructure co-ordination levy and how that could support both growth and nature recovery. The Government have already consulted on mandatory community benefits for low carbon energy infrastructure. The question now is whether we go further—by creating a clear levy model that funds meaningful co-ordination between clustered projects, such as those on the Suffolk coast; that builds local accountability and capacity; and that provides independent oversight, delivering tangible community and environmental mitigation. Communities such as mine are not asking for less ambition. We ask simply for better co-ordination when projects are approved.

If we get this issue right, we can deliver the green revolution in a way that communities support, nature benefits from and the country can be proud of.

[The Minister for Energy (Michael Shanks)]

It is a pleasure to join this debate under your chairship, Mr Twigg; I know that you take a great interest in these issues. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Jenny Riddell-Carpenter) for securing the debate. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) was right: my hon. Friend is making a name for herself as a hard worker in this space. Our meetings about this issue have been genuinely really helpful and insightful for me—and her as well, I hope. She is right to flag these issues.

I should also say at the outset that I genuinely welcome the tone that my hon. Friend has taken since she has become MP for Suffolk Coastal. In this place at this time, it is very easy to take the view that the easy answer is simply to say that we should not build anything anywhere ever again and let the country continue to slide further and further backwards; many on the Opposition Benches, who of course are not here at all, would say that.

My hon. Friend concluded her speech by saying something worth repeating: many in her community and across the country are pro the energy transition—they are pro-investment, pro-growth and pro-building the infrastructure—but they rightly want to know that that will be well planned and benefit their community. It is entirely legitimate for communities to ask for that and to be concerned when it does not happen. Given that spirit, she has raised this debate in the right way.

I want to pick up on a couple of things and also go back to why the infrastructure is so important in the first place. We sometimes lose sight of why it is so important for us to build energy infrastructure—in particular, much of the transmission infrastructure that is in my hon. Friend’s constituency. She said that the previous Government had not done that work, and I will come back to that.

It is worth remembering that since this Government came to power we have sought to tackle the energy trilemma: how we bring down bills and make the cost of living more affordable—today’s decision on the price cap is an important statement of how seriously we take that mission; how we deliver our long-term energy security in an uncertain world and how we move away from the volatility of fossil fuels, which have cost us so dearly in recent years; and how we build infrastructure that sets the country up for the future. This is about connecting not just renewable energy but the demand projects that will stimulate economic growth across the country. If we do not do these things, all we will do is harm that economic growth. Those decisions are incredibly important.

[Mr Carmichael]

I urge the Minister to learn from the experience of Shetland and Sullom Voe, 50 years ago. We took the most important step on North sea oil and gas coming ashore in Shetland, but on our terms: there was a genuine funding stream coming to the community. If we give the whip hand to the corporates, they will always use it to their benefit.

[Michael Shanks]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a good point; a generation of lobbyists should look back at the history books of Shetland Islands council at the time, because it is an extraordinary story of how it seized the opportunity of what it knew then would be decades North sea oil and gas and has still benefited from it.

I was also going to come to the right hon. Gentleman’s other point, around the Viking wind farm, which I have seen in the Shetlands myself. The scale of it is extraordinary, but the community benefits are not where they should be and the community is not feeling enough of the benefit of it. It is important that we do everything we can to reduce the constraints on wind, so that local communities benefit directly from it and the country as a whole benefits from cheaper power on the grid, bringing down bills.

Let me turn to some of the actions that we have taken since we came into government. We have set up Great British Energy—a really important moment for us to say, for the first time in 70 years, that we want the public to have some ownership stake in our energy future. We have delivered the most significant programme of investment in home-grown clean energy in our history. Just a few weeks ago, we published the local power plan, the biggest shift of wealth and power in the energy space in British history, to make sure that energy projects are not just built by developers, but owned by local communities that have a real stake in their energy future. We also published the warm homes plan, so that we can have the biggest upgrade to homes in British history.

Any infrastructure, in the energy space or elsewhere, brings local impacts, and there is no point in anyone pretending that those impacts do not upset local people. That is why we have an extremely rigorous planning system, why we take great care over decisions that are made and why, at times, there is great frustration about the length of time it takes for planning decisions. However, that is because the public rightly have a voice in that process, and important determinations should take time. We should always remember the fundamental outcome: since the poorest in our society have paid the price from our exposure to fossil fuels, the infrastructure we are building today is imperative, and it is important that we move faster than ever before.

My hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal and I have talked about cumulative impact before, and I have said repeatedly in the House that it is a serious issue. All nationally significant infrastructure projects must take account of cumulative impact, including the range of those cumulative impacts—not just the number of projects in a particular place, but the impact on other local services and other bits of infrastructure. They must submit a local impact report, which makes the examining authority aware of what those potential impacts are. That process must demonstrate that the applicant has taken seriously the concerns of local communities. If they have not, that will count against them. Consultation cannot be an exercise to tick a box; there must be some demonstrable engagement with that process. Local communities have a voice in that process through early consultations, but they can also register through the Planning Inspectorate in the pre-examination stage. All those various issues are taken into consideration.

Let me also speak to the broader point about how we plan the future energy system. My hon. Friend made a correct observation: while the previous Government now want to run a mile from all the renewable energy projects that they developed, which we would support— I think I am the only person still cheerleading the previous Government’s drive for renewable energy, because they certainly are not—they did not design and co-ordinate the system such that we were not building unnecessary grid to connect all those projects. My hon. Friend’s constituency is a good example of where better co-ordination at a strategic level would have got the same outputs from the system, but with much less local impact.

We are taking forward a number of things—this is where we get into the acronym soup that is the energy world. First, and most importantly, the National Energy System Operator will design the first ever strategic spatial energy plan, or SSEP, which will be published by the end of next year. This is an important opportunity for us to design the future of our energy system holistically: to take into account what can be built where and what the future energy system looks like for our needs, not now, but in the future. As a result of that planning, we can design the most efficient network and transmission system that goes with it. The centralised strategic network plan, which will be the holistic design of the network, will follow that. This is something that we should have done 15 or 20 years ago, but we start from where we are now, and we are determined that the future of our energy system will be much more strategically planned and aligned.

That plan will take into account local impacts and views, and the regional energy plans in particular will take a much more granular and local look, engaging with local authorities and others to make sure that those plans really take into account both local needs and local opportunities. Those will be designed for Scotland, Wales and nine English regions, and we will bring together various people to share their views on how the plans should meet local priorities. I want to be really clear about the scale of that work. The reason why the Government are taking longer than perhaps we would like is that that is the best way to plan long into the future what the system will look like, and to give communities a real opportunity to shape it at an early stage. That is important for the planning of the system and for community benefits, which other Members have raised.

It is really important that we fundamentally recognise that communities who host energy infrastructure are doing a service for the country. Infrastructure has to be built somewhere. There is not some third place that would let us say, “Well, we are in favour of this, but please don’t build it in my area.” At some point, it has to go somewhere; as a Government, we are done with dither and delay and we are going to build things again, but communities should get a benefit from that infrastructure being built. We are committed to making sure that communities who host infrastructure will benefit. As my hon. Friend said, we have consulted on whether community benefits should be made mandatory—at the moment, they are voluntary and a patchwork across the country, and they have different degrees of impact on communities, even where the funding is being delivered—and we will respond to that consultation soon.

In the Planning and Infrastructure Bill, we have also outlined the very first community benefits and bill discounts for people close to transmission infrastructure, recognising that often they have been left behind in terms of community benefits, as pylons and transmission wires flow through communities. That scheme will be up and running soon. It will directly deliver money off bills for those people living within 500 metres of new transmission infrastructure, but also millions of pounds of investment in communities next to significant pieces of transmission infrastructure such as substations. The grid is critical for the future of the country, and those who host grid infrastructure should get some benefit from that. In July last year, we also published guidance on voluntary community benefits to make sure that they are as robust as they can be.

My hon. Friend mentioned a levy, and I am happy to meet her to discuss that further. I pay tribute to the fact that, having identified a problem, instead of just bringing that problem to the House—I do not want to criticise other hon. Members here—she has worked on a solution. I am happy to engage with it and to look at it further.

There are two things that I want to say clearly. First, the affordability crisis is this Government’s No. 1 objective. It is driving decisions right across Government. It is what has led to a 7% reduction in bills from the next price cap period, which was announced today. Every single penny that might find its way on to bills has to be scrutinised very carefully. I am initially hesitant at the idea of an additional levy. Although my hon. Friend made the point that these energy companies are making significant profits, and I would not disagree with her on the scale of some of those profits, we should also be aware that, unless the Government are going to take a power to cap those profits, it is likely that the cost of a levy and the costs of the projects themselves would simply be passed on. Consumers, at the end of the day, would pay for it. I will look into her suggestion further, because every penny on bills makes a difference.

Finally, on section 106 agreements, in addition to community benefits arrangements locally, developers are already required to mitigate specific local impacts through 106 agreements. They are legally binding agreements that are paid to local authorities. With section 106 agreements and community benefits together, we think work is being done to invest in and enhance communities, but I am happy to look at what my hon. Friend has proposed in more detail.

To conclude, I reiterate two things. First, my thanks not only to my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal, but to right hon. and hon. Members across the House who made serious points and suggestions on how not to turn away from necessary investment, but to ensure that communities genuinely benefit from it. They are absolutely right to champion their local community and to ensure that everyone benefits from the energy transition. Secondly, we should not for a moment think that building that infrastructure is optional, or that it can all be done somewhere else. There are those in this House who believe that we can simply go backwards to deliver energy security and affordability without a serious and credible plan to do so, but simply tying communities to fossil fuels for longer is not a serious proposition.

I reiterate what I said at the beginning. My hon. Friend rightly made the case that all the polling that we have seen points to the country being in favour of the energy transition. Every piece of research points to the importance of tackling the climate crisis, which is not a future threat, but a very present reality. Infrastructure, which for too long has been held up in this country, is necessary to do that. It is necessary to get clean power, cheaper power, to people’s homes and businesses, and to bring down bills, but it is also absolutely necessary to unlock the economic growth that this country needs. There is no shortcut to doing that. We have to build the infrastructure that the country has been crying out for, for many years.

I thank hon. Members for their participation in the debate, including my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal. I am happy to meet her to discuss the issues further. As I said at the beginning, we take seriously the role that communities play. We thank them for putting up with disruption when infrastructure is built, and for hosting that infrastructure on behalf of the country. We want to ensure that they benefit from it.

Question put and agreed to.

Meat Exports to the EU

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 7th January 2026 Westminster Hall

[David Chadwick (Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered meat exports to the EU.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furniss. I am grateful for the opportunity to open this debate on the export of meat to the European Union, and in particular on the ongoing difficulties faced by farmers and producers in constituencies like mine when exporting to markets such as Germany and the Netherlands.

This debate matters, because a system that worked well for Welsh agriculture has been replaced by one that is more expensive, more bureaucratic and far less reliable. It has become clear that, although progress has been made, a fully settled and implemented common sanitary and phytosanitary arrangement is not yet in place, and will not be in place in the immediate future. As a result, exporters remain subject to many of the same requirements introduced after Brexit, and those requirements are having real consequences on the ground.

Right now, there is only an intention to negotiate a framework for talks and announcements about what might happen in the future. But intentions do not move meat across borders, announcements do not pay veterinary bills, and frameworks do not stop lorries being delayed. That is what Welsh farmers are struggling with right now.

Before Brexit, exporting Welsh lamb to Europe was straightforward: there were no export health certificates, no mandatory veterinary sign-off and no routine border control checks. Welsh lamb moved freely into its natural markets, allowing farmers to plan, invest and grow with confidence. Since Brexit, that has changed completely. Today, a single consignment of lamb can require export health certificates, official veterinary approval, customs declarations and SPS checks at EU border posts. Every step adds cost, delay and risk, especially for a perishable, time-sensitive product.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: an SPS agreement would be an enormous opportunity for communities like his and mine that export to the European Union. But there are already significant divergences between the United Kingdom and the European Union, so does he agree that, if that SPS agreement is to be negotiated, then it is essential that the Cabinet Office does so much more than it is doing at the moment to consult and to bring British agriculture along with it; otherwise, the agreement will be full of unintended consequences?

[David Chadwick]

I agree with my right hon. Friend. The Government would do well to listen to his wisdom and knowledge, and indeed to that of the farmers, because they are the people experiencing these problems at first hand.

Specialist Manufacturing Sector: Regional Economies

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2025 Westminster Hall

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

Yes, 1,200 apprenticeships is 1,200 decent jobs and 1,200 families who have pride that their son or daughter will make a real difference and make products that make it around the world. That is why this matters.

Only 14% of apprenticeships that started in the past academic year were in engineering and manufacturing, however. The Institution of Engineering and Technology has reported that engineering faces one of the largest skills shortfalls in the economy, with more than 46,000 vacancies in the sector. Similarly, the welding industry needs 35,000 more people. That is the key to growth. It represents a real opportunity to support young people into secure, well-paid work. Without it, our manufacturing sector will be in trouble.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I agree with everything that the hon. Gentleman is saying, but may I encourage him to go one step upstream and look at some of the wider policy context? If we are to regrow our manufacturing base, as we absolutely need to, we have to accept that it will be about future technologies, not just replacing what we had in the past. In my constituency, the development of tidal energy offers a supply chain of 80% UK product, which would then be exportable. If we could capture that, we would have something special—but for that to happen, we need a better policy framework to come out of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

[Josh Fenton-Glynn]

We have to be really bold. We need to look at our future-focused industries and at what we specialise in. The right hon. Gentleman talks about tidal energy, but we will not be able to produce that without a load of specialist valves. I want to ensure that they are built in Calder Valley and go throughout the country. That is what this debate is about: we need to plan and think, but we also need to look at what we do well.

The imbalance between small and large manufacturing companies is accentuated by the fact that larger companies often secure Government contracts, particularly in defence. Not only does that provide them with guaranteed revenue, but it often allows them to poach skilled staff from smaller firms that cannot compete with the salaries and the security that those contracts bring. Yorkshire and the Humber received the least defence spending per person, despite the fact that across our region we have a manufacturing sector that is eager to grow and develop.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 30th October 2025 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle]

The hon. Member will know that the Prime Minister and this Government stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine, and we have since the moment we came into office. We are highly aware of the risks that Russia poses, not just to Ukraine but to the continent of Europe. We are also aware of the constant attacks this country undergoes from cyber-security threats via Russia and Russia-sponsored activity. I can assure the hon. Member, from conversations I constantly have across Government and the forums across Government I am part of, that we are very aware of this threat and act constantly against it.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

13. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the potential impact of the trading relationship with the US on the farming sector.

[The Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Peter Kyle)]

I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his question. The UK was the first country to secure such an agreement with the US—one which will save thousands of jobs, protect key British industries and farmers, and drive economic growth. People said that it would be impossible to deliver such a deal without compromising on food standards, but we have proven them wrong. This Government have delivered a deal that protects our high food standards while giving British farmers access to a market of 340 million people where they can sell their high-quality beef.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Secretary of State is right that any threat of an imminent increase in US beef imports in particular is clearly not the problem, but it has not gone away either. The US Department of Agriculture has a foreign agricultural service with 100 different offices, embassies and trade missions. They work with US farming groups around the world to promote their product, and they are not spending that money just to stand still. What will the Secretary of State be doing to ensure that our farmers have the same opportunities, so that they can see free trade agreements not just as threats but opportunities too?

[Peter Kyle]

I am grateful for the right hon. Member’s insightful and thoughtful contribution. As I said, striking trade deals is vital. That is why we put so much energy into it and have had so much success, and there will be more to come. It is very important that the whole British economy and Government make sure that we exploit the full opportunities that all these agreements offer. The Department for Business and Trade has embedded highly talented trade experts right across the world, and they are trying to do just that on the frontline of all the economic opportunities we perceive around the world, and that includes agriculture. If there are specific areas where the right hon. Member perceives that the agricultural sector, either in his patch or across the United Kingdom, has an opportunity that is not yet being exploited, I want to hear from and work with him to make sure that British farmers benefit.

Hospitality Sector

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 1st July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Mike Wood]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The changes to employer national insurance contributions have meant that 774,000 workers, many of them on lower incomes or working part time, are caught in a net that punishes job creation. The cut in business rate relief from 75% to 40% has driven otherwise viable businesses into the red, hitting pubs such as the Green Man in my constituency, which has seen its business rates bills rise from about £140 a month to nearly £350 a month—before a single customer has been served or a single pint pulled. A third of hospitality businesses now operate at a loss. That is not sustainable, and it is not fair.

According to UKHospitality, the Government’s measures will cost the sector at least £3.4 billion, including a £1 billion cost from the national insurance contribution increases alone. Of course, those tax rises came in at exactly the same time as the increase in the national living wage, adding even more pressure to small business employers such as the tea room at Ashwood Nurseries, in my constituency, which already operate on tight margins.

Let me be clear: no one opposes fair pay. I am proud that the previous Government introduced the national living wage, and increased it to give workers’ incomes a boost. However, if the Government want sustainable wage increases, they cannot also pile on non-wage costs at the same time—and that is before the impact of their employment rights package, which comes into force next year. The data already shows the consequences starkly. The Office for National Statistics confirms that since the October Budget, the hospitality sector has shed 69,000 jobs, even before the latest figures from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. That is 3.2% of all hospitality jobs. To put that in context, the overall economy lost 1.2% of jobs in the same period, so hospitality’s job losses were 266% higher than the national average.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I too remind the House of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. In Orkney and Shetland, the food and drink sector is an integral part of our local visitor economy, as is the hospitality sector, but neither is part of the Government’s industrial strategy. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if we were to bring food and drink and hospitality into the industrial strategy, we would not suffer the salami slicing of over-regulation that we are seeing, especially in Scotland, where the self-catering industry is now being hit with another round of regulatory burdens?

[Mike Wood]

The right hon. Gentleman is clearly correct. One of the dangers of trying to pick winners is that those that do not make the priority list are, almost by definition, left behind. Major sectors such as hospitality and food and drink employ so many people, in every constituency, right across the age groups and in every demographic possible; leaving them out sends a very unfortunate signal, at the very least, and could be very damaging, if not corrected quickly.

A third of hospitality businesses report that they operate at a loss, with jobs lost, hours cut, investment cancelled and, sadly, many businesses closing. The Office for Budget Responsibility warns that 60% of the national insurance contributions burden will be passed on through lower wages, hitting workers despite the Chancellor’s promises. These are not abstract statistics; they are real people’s lives. Overwhelmingly, young, part-time, ethnic minority and lower-income workers are disproportionately represented among those hit, despite those being the very groups that the Government claim they want to support. The Government’s policies are deeply regressive.

It does not have to be this way. Hospitality is not asking for handouts, but for a level playing field. The sector is resilient. After the 2008 crash and during covid, it helped to revive communities and restore confidence and, within the right framework, it can do so again. It has the potential to grow six times faster than the wider economy, to create half a million jobs by 2030, and to breathe life into areas across the country, not just in the overheating south-east.

In order for the sector to do that, however, the brakes must be taken off, and there are simple, targeted steps that the Government could take now. They could protect the high streets by quickly introducing a proper reform of business rates, with a maximum discount for venues under £500,000 rateable value. They could scrap the proposed additional levy on larger hospitality businesses, which are so important to many of our communities and provide so many jobs. They could create a new lower rate of national insurance contributions for those earning between £5,000 and £9,100, to reverse April’s job losses and make it easier to hire again.

The Government could also extend the differential duty rate introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak), to help to put pubs, bars and clubs on a level playing field with supermarkets by charging lower duty on draft beer in cask and kegs than is charged on bottles and cans. They could look at ways to reschedule those covid-19 loans, to give firms some breathing space to increase the chance of them actually being able to repay those debts as successful businesses. Each of those measures would stimulate growth, protect jobs, and help every region of the UK to thrive.

Groceries Code Adjudicator

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Sir John Hayes]

I am delighted to accept the hon. Lady’s advice on that. She is not, in parliamentary technical terms, my hon. Friend, but she is a friend none the less, and she is right in her assertion, which I shall move to after I entertain the House a little further with my preparation for making exactly that argument. The essence of my call today is that this Government need to take action to deal with the near-monopolistic supply of foodstuffs that our constituents are obliged—I use the word again—to endure. The best way of doing that is through a more regulated market, and she is right to say so; but let me set the scene a little more before I come to the point at which I will call for exactly what she has suggested.

As well as the loss leaders that I mentioned, which have the seductive effect on consumers of encouraging them to buy many other things, secondly, that kind of provision of food has led to a great deal of waste. From studies that have been done, we know that these days much of what people buy—as much as 20%, or perhaps a little more—is never consumed. That would have been unthinkable a couple of generations ago. People would not have believed it was possible to stock the pantry or fridge with all kinds of things that ended up on the scrapheap.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

rose—

[Sir John Hayes]

I give way to the Select Committee Chairman, to whom I pay tribute on this subject for bravely making the case that I will make today, with less expertise than his.

[Mr Carmichael]

The right hon. Gentleman flatters to deceive, I fear. He is right about the way grocery supermarkets go about their business, but much of the problem is the way they choose to go about it. I recently heard from a livestock farmer who bought in potatoes to feed stock. He expected to find them green, bruised or damaged, but when they arrived they were perfect; they just were not conformed to the particular specification that the supermarket demanded. That demand does not come from consumers, but directly from supermarkets. If he looks around Europe and elsewhere, the right hon. Gentleman will find that supermarkets there behave very differently.

[Sir John Hayes]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. That is why, when he and I were in Government together, we introduced the Groceries Code Adjudicator. He will remember that I worked closely with his colleague Vince Cable, then Secretary of State, and was involved in that decision. He is also right to focus on the producers. I have spoken so far about consumers, but I want to go on to talk, thirdly, about the distortion in respect of producers.

I began my speech by speaking about how both producers and consumers need a multiplicity of places to buy and sell. In the model that I set out, the one that prevailed for aeons, people who made and grew food, primary and secondary producers, were able to sell to a variety of places. In our lifetimes—I might be overestimating the age of some hon. Members present, but certainly in many of our lifetimes—markets existed where farmers would take their produce to auction. Indeed, there was a livestock market in Spalding in the streets until the 1930s and a covered market until the 1990s, where livestock was brought to be traded and auctioned very openly.

Producers have also been affected by this distortion. As the food chain breaks, it is not only consumers who struggle, able to go to only one or two places to get not just what they want, but what they need, because, as I said, foodstuffs are fundamental.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) on securing time for this debate from the Backbench Business Committee. I find myself in the curious position of being in violent agreement not only with him, but with the hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey). That is a moment worth reflecting on.

In advance of this debate, we have received some very useful briefings from the National Farmers Union and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union about food insecurity and workers’ rights; the hon. Lady has just touched on those issues. Curiously, the one organisation from which we have not heard a peep is the Groceries Code Adjudicator itself. That is quite significant, because this is not the first time that the House has debated the work of the adjudicator: my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon, Radnor and Cwm Tawe (David Chadwick) secured a debate on it in February, I myself presented a ten-minute rule Bill on it in March, and now we have this debate today. If the adjudicator had a good story to tell, we would expect to have heard something from it by now, given the criticism that has been levelled at it. But not a peep: it has maintained an omertà that would put the Mafia to shame.

I do feel slightly conflicted. The adjudicator has a tiny office and, I think, a staff of seven or eight. Given its inability to process complaints at the moment, I do not know that I want it to spend that much time talking to MPs and policymakers. But if it has a story to tell, it needs to come out and tell it. Otherwise, we will be entitled to assume that there is not much that it can say.

The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings spoke about the need for reform and the way in which that reform might take shape. I disagree with very little of what he said. What we need, as the hon. Member for Salford says, is a single regulator from the farm gate to the supermarket shelves. At the moment, too many unfairnesses are hardwired into the system, there are too many players in the market and it is just too easy for outcomes to fall between the gaps. Those who suffer are always the consumers, who are left with higher food prices, or the primary producers. At the moment, it is principally the primary producers who are losing out. The supermarkets are entering into a price war as they try to push down food price inflation. As a primary food producer myself, I declare a registered interest.

There are wider issues around the behaviour of supermarkets. There has been widespread and justifiable outrage in the past few days about Asda selling Uruguayan beef. The way it is often done is instructive. The labelling on the top looks lovely. It says that the beef is 30-day matured rib-eye steak of “heritage breed origin”, whatever that means. A shopper has to turn it over and see the small print on the back or underside of the tray to find out that it is beef produced in Uruguay from cattle slaughtered in Uruguay. Even if we park for a moment the concern about animal welfare standards, the carbon consequences of shipping beef around the world in this way are utter madness, even though ironically it would help us to meet the targets set for us by the Climate Change Committee.

That example illustrates that amid growing competition among supermarkets on price, if we continue to reduce our levels of livestock in this country the resulting gap will be filled by cheaper imports. That surely renders any definition of food security utterly meaningless. Once we lose our own producers, we will not get them back.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Justin Madders)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Allin-Khan. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) on securing this important debate, and on the sweeping historical nature of his opening comments, which gave us a broad view of the importance of agriculture and food in the development of civilisation. Of course, we are talking about more contemporary issues, which he went on to address, and I will respond to some of his comments in my remarks.

This is an appropriate time for the House to discuss the powers of the Groceries Code Adjudicator because, as Members will be aware, we are currently undertaking the fourth review of the GCA’s effectiveness, as required by the Groceries Code Adjudicator Act 2013. The statutory review will consider how the GCA’s powers have been exercised and how effective the GCA has been in enforcing the groceries supply code of practice. It will also consider whether the existing permitted maximum financial penalty for non-compliance following an investigation is appropriate and whether there should be any restriction on the information that the GCA may consider when deciding whether to investigate.

On the question of financial penalties, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings referred to two investigations where no fines were issued. However, it is worth stating for the record that, following the Tesco investigation, it was charged £1 million by the GCA for the cost of that investigation, and the Co-op investigation led to a charge by the GCA of £1.3 million for the cost of it, plus compensation to suppliers of £650,000. But it is noted that the GCA has not been issuing fines. I think that is part of its overall approach to try to get compliance rather than issuing fines, but that is something that Members can respond to as part of the review.

[Mr Carmichael]

The difficulty is that the review of a limited regulator is always going to bring up a limited answer. What we need is something much more holistic. Just to take one small example, the number of small abattoirs in the country is now down to the hundreds, from 2,500 some time ago. That is a direct consequence of the way in which the supermarkets bring pressure to bear in other parts of the supply chain, so what we need is something that looks at the whole process, from farm gate to supermarket shelf.

[Justin Madders]

I thank the right hon. Member for his question. Of course, the review is dictated by the legislation that his party was, in government, involved in introducing, so part of the problem is where we are with the statutory framework, but I do take his wider point that clearly there are a number of different developments in how we deal with the overall agricultural food supply market; the GCA is just one part of it. The other developments, which Members have talked about, particularly in terms of ASCA, probably need to be looked at more holistically than is the case at the moment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Gareth Thomas]

I wondered whether the shadow Secretary of State might finally use this set of questions to take the opportunity to apologise for helping to write the Liz Truss Budget, which drove interest rates up fourteen times and did more damage to business than any other single measure in recent times. We had to take difficult decisions to sort out the fiscal inheritance we got, and we recognised that to tackle the cost of living crisis that the Conservatives bequeathed us, we needed to ensure that there is more money in people’s pockets. The Employment Rights Bill will help to do just that.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

7. What recent discussions he has had with the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs on the potential impact of his trade negotiations with the US on the farming sector.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I regularly engage with my Cabinet colleagues on a wide range of issues, and in particular the UK’s ongoing trade discussions with partner countries, given the cross-cutting nature of those matters. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is a key partner in that process, including with the US.

As colleagues know, we have had constructive discussions with the US on an economic deal, and we remain committed to those talks, but we have made it clear that we will only ever sign trade agreements that align with the UK’s national interests. Our manifesto was also clear that we will always uphold our high food standards.

[Mr Carmichael]

The Secretary of State in DEFRA recently appointed Baroness Batters to lead a profitability review in farming and has set up a farm profitability unit in the Department. Those are welcome and necessary steps, but it is not entirely unknown for the efforts of one Government Department to undermine those of another, so before the Secretary of State signs any trade deal with America, will he check in with DEFRA and run the rule over what it is doing on farm incomes so that he does not undermine its efforts?

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We will all struggle to believe that at times different Departments could be better co-ordinated —I cannot recognise that at all!

I absolutely agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The moves to look at the business models around farming and profitability are welcome, and I think colleagues on both sides of the House would support that. On matters of trade, DEFRA and its Secretary of State are closely involved with those conversations.

Perhaps in the past the community has not always felt this, but in some of the ongoing trade negotiations that we are progressing there are real export opportunities for UK agriculture. Its quality and the premium and brand associated with that is a market that is growing around the world. Part of our discussions in a range of different trade negotiations is about ensuring that there are more opportunities in future, but I promise the right hon. Gentleman that the overall efforts of Government in the sector are co-ordinated, and that is ongoing.