Fossil Fuels: Lobbying

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Hywel Williams

Tuesday 30th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his kind comments. It is always a great pleasure to work with him, and I agree entirely: when it comes to spending on elections, we seem to have an arms race that is out of control, which of course drives the obsession with getting more money to line the war chests that enable parties to fight those elections. A cap on that funding is urgently required, which brings me to the next point I wanted to make.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

To take the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) made about elections a bit further, does the hon. Lady have any confidence that things might change following the next election, given that the Labour party has said that it will stand by any licences granted between now and then?

[Caroline Lucas]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is incredibly disappointing that Labour has, in a sense, not followed its own logic; it is happy to say that it will not accept any new licences, but if Labour were to make the clear statement right now that once it got into power—if it did—it would revoke those licences, that could have a chilling effect on all the licences that are going ahead. They are going ahead at a huge rate, and the Government want to see them go ahead even faster. When an official Opposition has it in its power to stop that process and chooses not to, “disappointing” is too polite a term, frankly.

I was coming to the issue of dirty money in politics. I want to see an end to it, because it comes with strings attached that are tying up in knots our chances of a liveable future. There can be no conceivable justification for allowing the fossil fuel lobby to directly or indirectly buy favours from politicians, so there should be no donating to MPs or to political parties, and no donations in kind, whether that is to all-party groups or via football tickets, event sponsorship or trips overseas. At the same time, the rules on conflicts of interest need redesigning to shut out vested fossil fuel interests, not simply have them declared on the record. It is time to close the revolving door. No side jobs or cosy secondments; no blind trusts, putting things in the name of one’s spouse, or raking in money from shares or second jobs; and of course, much tougher sanctions for breaches of the rules—including suspension, for example.

Thirdly and lastly, the preferential treatment meted out to the fossil fuel industry must come to an end—most immediately, the handing over of public subsidies and other incentives for fossil fuels must end. Most notably, that comes in the form of favourable tax regimes, which in the past have resulted in oil companies paying less than $2 in tax per barrel of oil pumped from the North sea, compared with the $15 per barrel that companies pay if they are operating in Norway.

UK’s Exit from the European Union

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Hywel Williams

Monday 24th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Dowd. I congratulate Peter Packham on starting the petition and the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Martyn Day) on introducing it with such customary eloquence.

My Brighton, Pavilion constituency has the second highest number of signatures to this petition, with 655 of my constituents signing it. I know very well that many more than that support it, so I am pleased to be able to represent them here today. One of that number wrote in an email about the debate:

“I firmly believe that the public were misled systematically by campaigners for Brexit before the referendum. Although it is unlikely that the decision will be reversed, I believe that the record should show the truth, not a fantasy.”

That short, simple message encapsulates many of the important reasons why I think we need an inquiry and why I back the call in the petition. I believe that if a sufficient number of people over time choose it, there is a way back into the European Union. That is the virtue and beauty of democracy.

The referendum campaign and the subsequent narrative about Brexit have been a litany of misinformation and disinformation. The infamous words on the side of the bus are just the tip of the iceberg, but let us start there, with whether £350 million a week has been diverted from the EU to the NHS. As we have heard several times this afternoon, the simple answer is no. The NHS budget in England alone has risen by more than £350 million a week since 2016, but that money has come from taxes, borrowing and squeezing other Departments. It most certainly has not come from savings arising from Brexit, for the simple reason that those savings did not materialise because the overall economic impact has been so severe. If the public hoped for a transformative sum for the NHS post Brexit, they most certainly have not received it.

Turning to the economy, during the Chancellor’s recent autumn statement, he spoke for almost an hour without once acknowledging the economic catastrophe of Brexit. There was no reference to the OBR’s warning that Brexit will slash productivity by 4% and lead to a 15% drop in trade intensity and an 11% drop in investment, or that it will increase food prices and deliver lower wages, workforce shortages and the highest inflation in the G7.

I, too, am a member of the UK Trade and Business Commission, which is expertly chaired by the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). Since July 2021, we have been taking evidence about the impacts of Brexit, and, as the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk has pointed out, we have not heard of the positive impacts that were promised. To the contrary, we have heard time and again all the evidence of pain, particularly for small businesses. We have also been examining why Brexit is seen as the primary reason why we are the only G7 country that is still not reaching post-pandemic levels of growth.

While the Government keep their head firmly in the sand and continue to deny the existence of anything other than positive outcomes, they cannot begin to adapt to and resolve some of the many problems that we are hearing are caused by Brexit. Misleading the public includes wishful thinking. Who can forget the endless conjuring of sunlit uplands, the ignoring of reality, the telling of only half the story, the cherry picking and, frankly, the plain lying? It all happened during the Brexit campaign, and it has been happening since. Independent scrutiny and inquiry would help set the record straight.

The vilification of free movement by the leaders of the Leave campaign was one of the most pernicious examples of disinformation. They wilfully perpetuated a hostile narrative about immigration, deliberately conflating asylum seekers, economic migrants and refugees, and whipping up hatred and racism in the process. This was disinformation at its most destructive. No wonder they are now so afraid of light being shone on those impacts.

That brings me to democracy. In the wake of the referendum, I set up an initiative called Dear Leavers. We went around the country visiting the places that had registered some of the highest numbers of leave votes and listened to people who voted leave. The overwhelming message was that people voted for Brexit because they felt powerless. They felt unheard by a political establishment that had not listened for decades. The tragedy is that the political establishment is still not listening, and people still feel powerless.

Democracy, scrutiny, accountability and responsiveness have all been victims of Brexit. Evidence and experts were derided, Parliament was illegally prorogued and international law was trashed. We had unsettled constitutional questions and opposition to a ratification referendum. There has been an impact on the incredibly precious Good Friday Agreement, and we now have the dangerous Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill. Opposing a public inquiry into these matters only adds insult to injury.

To return to my constituent’s view that the Brexit decision will probably not be reversed, it is with great sadness that I see that the Labour leadership has capitulated to the tyranny where even to talk about rejoining is somehow judged to be anti-democratic. I want to talk about it. The Green party wants to talk about it. I think the public deserve for us to talk about it. If rejoining the EU is the right thing—for our economy, our environment, workers’ rights, young people, our public services, trade and more—we should take that step when the time and conditions are right. We should be preparing for that possibility by taking a step-by-step approach, with steps such as negotiating membership of the customs union now; full engagement with Horizon; regular adjustments to the trade and co-operation agreement to ensure that our interests are best supported; a general approach of maintaining alignment with EU regulation—that means seeing the back of the deeply dangerous Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill—and the ongoing rebuilding of diplomacy and, I hope, of our reputation as a trustworthy partner, which has frankly been trashed.

I want to talk also about the status quo in this country, because the leave vote was a howl of rage about legitimate concerns, which have still not been addressed. The social contract remains broken, and the power game remains rigged. We did not leave the EU because of anything that had happened in Brussels or Strasbourg; we left primarily because of what had happened in England, because outside the capital, every single region of England voted to leave the EU. It is meant as no disrespect to Wales—which voted by a majority of only about 80,000 to leave—to say that it was an English vote that drove Brexit.

[Hywel Williams]

It is significant that the highest vote in favour of leaving the European Union was recorded in Blaenau Gwent. Blaenau Gwent is the constituency that received the highest level of European funding, but it is also the poorest constituency in Wales. That reinforces the point that the hon. Member is making: it was a howl of rage against poverty, marginalisation and all the rest of it.

[Caroline Lucas]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman very much. I believe that one reason why there was such a howl of rage in England was that, while devolution has given powers to Scotland and Wales—not enough, but some powers—there are no political institutions that represent England. There is nothing to give political expression to our complex, rich reality, and nothing to bring power to the regions of England. It is no wonder that people voted to take back control, but they want control from Westminster, so that they have the right to make decisions about their own lives here. Rethinking our constitutional settlement more fundamentally is also key to mending some of the divisions in the UK. Brexit was the result of a divided UK, and it threatens to divide us still further unless we build a democratic consensus about changing that, together, for good.