Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill
Debate between Chris Huhne and Paul Blomfield
Chris Huhne
The hon. Gentleman has to understand what would happen in this country if there were an oil spill off the coast of Northern Ireland on the scale of that at Deepwater Horizon. He would be among the first to insist that we did everything that we could to stop it. It would be an absolutely enormous environmental disaster. Let me put the scale of the oil spill in some sort of perspective. I tried a comparison with Exxon Valdez, but we might think back to our experience with Piper Alpha. The situation was not exactly the same, because the problem was largely a gas well, but in Piper Alpha’s case, we were looking at 200 barrels of oil escaping a day. In the case of Deepwater Horizon, the latest estimate is 40,000 to 50,000 barrels a day. Given the sheer scale of the problem, we fellow politicians have to understand what our reaction would be if that were going on in our waters.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
May I press the Secretary of State for a fuller answer to the last question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) on investment in low-carbon technologies? Like my right hon. Friend, I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement of the importance of the expansion of low-carbon technologies, but that needs to be matched by practical action, particularly—in the context of Sheffield—by ending the uncertainty around the financial support for Sheffield Forgemasters. Does the Secretary of State support me in wishing to see a speedy end to that uncertainty and confirmation of that financial support?
Chris Huhne
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. When I was studying politics, philosophy and economics at Oxford somewhat before the hon. Gentleman, I was told that socialism involved the language of priorities. On the basis of the public expenditure commitments undertaken by the Government in the past six months, including in respect of Sheffield Forgemasters, I do not recognise a Government who were making choices about hard-earned taxpayers’ cash. As we have just heard from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Treasury had pencilled in £44 billion worth of cuts without finding a single one. It is inevitable that, having inherited the legacy that we have and the scale of the Budget deficit, this Government have to review our priorities and identify crucial projects to go ahead with and those that are less important. That is a process that we continue to undertake.