National Energy System Operator: Blackout Risk
Chris Vince Excerpts(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Michael Shanks
There was a lot there, but I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman is not happy to see me at the Dispatch Box. I am very happy to see him in his place, and to be here to answer this important urgent question. On security of supply, let me say that, yes, renewables are not going to be the entirety of our mix at all times. That which is why nuclear is important as well, it is why storage is important—so we can store energy for when we need it—and it is why our interconnectors to Europe are critical.
The hon. Gentleman said two things in his question that I think show the problem with the Conservative party’s logic at the moment. First, on an urgent question about the resilience of our grid, he is saying that we should not invest in the future of the grid, which is the very thing that would lead to more issues with grid resilience. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman did just say that. If Opposition Front Benchers read his question back, I think they will see that he did.
The hon. Gentleman’s second point is rightly a challenge about constraint payments, which we should not be paying, but I gently challenge him: if we had not built renewables without strategically planning where they were and the grid to connect them into, we would not be paying that money. His party may want to reflect on exactly why that happened. We are fixing the problems we inherited, and that involves investing in the grid.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
Mr Speaker, I wish you a belated happy Yorkshire Day for yesterday. [Hon. Members: “Oof!”] It’s all right—he didn’t hear me!
I thank the Minister for his answers so far and the shadow Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho), for bringing forward this urgent question. This is a really important issue and my constituents will be keen that it is dealt with. I think we would all reflect that, as we move more and more towards reliance on technology, grid connection and resilience are hugely important. Could the Minister tell us more about what he is doing to ensure we have grid resilience in Harlow, in the east of England and across the UK?
Michael Shanks
I almost thought my hon. Friend had asked a question without mentioning Harlow, but we got there in the end. I am afraid I cannot give him a specific answer about the work we are doing on the grid in Harlow, but I can confirm that we will be investing in ensuring that the grid is as resilient as it can be for all his constituents in Harlow.
We are doing two things with the grid that really matter. One is recognising the scale of investment that is necessary to connect not just renewables, but the economic opportunities, growth projects and demand projects that need electricity, and we need the upgrade of the grid to do that. Secondly, we are reforming the grid so that it works much more efficiently. We are reforming the connections queue, which got completely out of control under the previous Government, so that projects can connect, and businesses and households in my hon. Friend’s constituency can benefit from clean, cheap, secure, home-grown power.
Summer Jobs
Chris Vince Excerpts(3 weeks ago)
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Gareth Davies
Of course, that is exactly why the previous Conservative Government had such a huge focus on skills, training and vocational courses. My own constituency of Grantham and Stamford benefited at the time from much-needed funding to boost skills and vocational training, so my right hon. Friend is absolutely right.
Chris Vince
The hon. Member nearly forgot which constituency I represent, which would have been disappointing.
I do not agree with some of the conclusions the hon. Member is making and will make—for example, young people being out of work has been an issue for far longer than two years—but on skills, where I think we can find some cross-party consensus, there is a need to embed some skills earlier in young people’s education. Does he agree on the need to broaden the curriculum to include those vital employment-related skills at an earlier age? I am thinking of financial education and computer literacy, for example.
Gareth Davies
I will always agree on the need for financial literacy, but the point we are making today is that we believe in work—work as a route out of poverty, work as a way to increase the prosperity of this country—and we are highlighting the red tape that is now strangling businesses and preventing them from hiring young workers, which would otherwise give them a step on the ladder.
Chris Bryant
I never said that the situation was all rosy; I said earlier that I am completely not complacent about the situation. I know the problems facing young people going into work that have been endemic in our economy for the last 15 to 20 years. A Conservative Member—I am sorry that I cannot remember who—asked earlier, “Isn’t university a fraud on young people?” Of course, it is really important to strike a balance between getting the experience to get into work rather than necessarily taking on an academic career. We have been keen to change that mix since we came into government.
I do not suppose that there is a single Labour Member who does not worry about the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training—NEETs, as people have referred to them already. Alan Milburn’s report is a real wake-up call for us all. We are fully backing the review and will of course act on its recommendations when they finally appear. We want to make sure they are based on evidence, which is precisely what Alan Milburn is pursuing.
Chris Vince
I apologise to the whole House that in my previous intervention, I did not mention my constituency of Harlow. I will put the record straight now and talk about the incredible work that Harlow college is doing to support young people who are not in education, employment or training. As part of the ongoing Milburn review, will the Minister look at some of the good case studies, like Harlow college, to help benefit the Government’s thinking?
Chris Bryant
Mr Speaker, did you know that he is the Member for Harlow? That had completely passed us by completely, hadn’t it? My hon. Friend makes a good point and I am sure someone will send him a letter thanking him for it. I am sure lots of us have similar examples in our constituencies.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Vince Excerpts(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Peter Kyle
My hon. Friend is right that her constituents are hard-working and they deserve to have a Government on their side: in this Government, they have that. We have invested £140 million in a pilot with the mayoral strategic authorities that will benefit her area. That will connect 16 to 24-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training to local apprenticeship opportunities in her area. We are also investing £2.5 billion in the youth guarantee and the growth and skills levy over the next three years. NEETs rose by 250,000 under the Tories and we are doing everything we can to get that down, including in her area by providing specialist advice via the Business Lincolnshire growth hub.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade (Kate Dearden)
I thank my hon. Friend for his continued advocacy for young adult carers. I have been honoured to visit Carers Count Calderdale in my own constituency of Halifax, and I know about the important and vital support that incredible unpaid carers across the country are providing to their loved ones. We are reviewing the employment rights available to them, including through a public consultation that launched last month and which is currently open for views. We are considering the merits of additional support, including paid leave, improved guidance and a right to return, while remaining mindful of any potential impacts on businesses.
Chris Vince
I thank the Minister for her commitment to unpaid carers. I speak to unpaid carers across my constituency all the time, and I personally thank them for all that they do in caring for loved ones and in the wider community. However, so many unpaid carers I speak to tell me that they struggle to hold down a job, and many of them have had to give up really important careers. I absolutely welcome the Government’s commitment to a review, which has the potential to be absolutely transformative, but does the Minister agree that we must continue to support unpaid carers in Harlow and beyond?
Kate Dearden
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the vital contribution that unpaid carers make to their loved ones and their communities, and the experiences of families in his constituency reflect the challenges faced by unpaid carers across the country. We want to ensure that carers can remain in work and fulfil their potential. Through our review, we will ensure that we are backing our unpaid carers to balance work and care, as well as the employers who support them in the workplace.
Steel Trade Measure
Chris Vince Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for his statement—he is very much the Government’s man of steel. Protecting British steelmaking capacity means we will have a reliable supply for years to come, but can the Minister confirm that this announcement is good news for downstream producers in my constituency, such as MRI Fabrications, LWC Engineering and—my favourite—the Harlow Group, all based in Harlow, for today and years to come?
Chris Bryant
If I had a bit of advice to my hon. Friend—I know he is relatively new to the House—I would not have favourites in one’s own constituency because then the other people who are not your favourites end up being very irritated with you. I have 14 rugby clubs and have to be very careful. He makes a good point. Just to deal with the individual companies, it would probably be a good idea if he came along on Monday afternoon. I am making a lot of dates, aren’t I?
General Strike Centenary Commemorations
Chris Vince Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Laurence Turner
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and I truly welcome the cross-party support he has demonstrated for the principle of trade unionism and for workers’ rights. It is only fair to note that right now, additional enhanced employment rights are being considered in Northern Ireland, as well as in the rest of the United Kingdom.
In interpreting the general strike, it is important to note that union members were, as they remain, fiercely defensive of the independence of their individual organisations, and those factors militated against planning for the national confrontation that fell upon them. Ranged against the unions were a Government determined not to repeat the humiliation of the so-called red Friday a year before and whose preparations had been meticulous over the nine months that followed.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend not only for bringing this debate forward, but for the interesting speech he is giving. He will know that my passions include not just Harlow, but my interest in the 1924 Labour Government, and in particular the Prime Minister and leader of the Labour party at the time, James Ramsay MacDonald. My hon. Friend and I have had a conversation about this, and he will know that James Ramsay MacDonald wanted to speak on the BBC to provide an alternative narrative to the Government about the general strike, and he was blocked. Will my hon. Friend reflect on that?
Laurence Turner
My hon. Friend has displayed his customary ingenuity in mentioning Harlow. I believe that, as a new town, it did not exist at the time of the general strike—but I will come on to the points he made.
Ranged against Ramsay MacDonald was, of course, Stanley Baldwin, a Conservative party leader who convinced many of his natural critics of his sincere desire to bring about industrial reconciliation, summed up by his famous declaration in this Chamber a year earlier:
“Give peace in our time, O Lord.” —[Official Report, 6 March 1925; Vol. 181, c. 841.]
That apparently heartfelt plea masked a hidden ruthlessness, and an extraordinarily singular capacity for political calculation.
In 1926 the Government made, not altogether comfortably, common cause with the coal owners who, taken together, could have been the archetypes of Baldwin’s famous description of
“hard-faced men who look as if they had done very well out of the war.”
The British coal owners, unlike their counterparts in America and Europe, mostly represented small concerns that had failed to adapt, amalgamate and modernise, and they would go unmourned when Parliament obviated their role 20 years later.
Opponents of organised labour sometimes claimed that union leaders sought national confrontation, or that they wished to supplant the authority of Parliament with that of the TUC general council, but those wild words had foundation only in the imagination of their accusers. As Jonathan Schneer’s brilliant and evocative new history of the strike shows, they spent the weeks before the strike exhaustively, even desperately, trying to prevent the breakdown of talks and searching for some compromise, some new formula, and a negotiated path through. The way in which they convinced themselves that settlement was possible, as they masked their private doubts of the likelihood of victory and tried to balance what were probably irreconcilable internal and external forces—often in the small hours, and often in rooms not far from this Chamber—as the clock ran down, will feel familiar to many who have had the privilege and responsibility of trade union office.
But such doubts cannot have been at the forefront of the minds of the great majority of the nearly 3 million men and women who answered the stoppage call on 3 May. They did so at great personal risk to their livelihoods and pensions. In that hot spring, many of them wore their war medals as a conscious rebuke to those who charged them with a lack of patriotism, and even with falling under the influence of a foreign power. It is easy to see why so many strikers thought that victory was imminent and assured. In Birmingham—then, as now, inland transport’s great, interlocking heart—it was said that neither bus, tram nor train moved on that first day. “Every man in every union involved is out,” the city’s trades council enthusiastically, if somewhat improbably, reported to the TUC. That claim, incidentally, committed the sin of omission, because many women joined the strike. At the Joseph Lucas factory they were led by Jessie Eden, an imaginative version of whom was immortalised as a character in “Peaky Blinders”.
Some officials actually had to coax members who had not been called out to remain at their work, with mixed success. Most strikers could see neither the depth of their opponents’ preparation nor the lack of their unions’ own. In truth, most union leaders and the members of their executives expected the Government to resume negotiations swiftly, and extend the subsidy until the mining industry could be reorganised along the lines of the Sankey and Samuel commissions. They did not perceive, until it was too late, the Government’s hidden determination to force not settlement but surrender. While the TUC and the newly constituted local committees attempted to resolve profound logistical problems on the fly and to adapt sometimes confused central instructions to local circumstances, the well-resourced and carefully attuned Government machine sprang into action. In Birmingham—the city of a thousand trades, where general unionism and the centralising and organising tendencies that it represented had long struggled to prosper—the response to the strike was uneven from the start.
Backing Business to Create Economic Growth
Chris Vince Excerpts(2 months, 1 week ago)
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Ruth Cadbury
The hon. Member is absolutely right. I am well aware of the concerns of drivers up and down the country, which are not about the improved licensing that the Government are talking about, which they welcome, but about some of those other threats, such as the processes that Uber is using at the moment and the impact of autonomous vehicles.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend will know of my passion for taxis and taxi licensing. Does she agree that it is important that we deal with this licensing loophole to ensure that we do not have taxis that are licensed in other local authorities acting in our authority? That does not just affect the drivers; it is also a safety concern for passengers.
Ruth Cadbury
I very much welcome the work that the Minister for Roads has done on the proposed changes. I welcome the commitment to replace a patchwork of outdated rules with a single consistent framework, which will go a long way to addressing the out-of-area operations and problems that the hon. Member for Birmingham Perry Barr (Ayoub Khan) outlined, and it will fix a system that too often has failed passengers and drivers.
Baroness Casey’s “National audit on group-based child sexual exploitation and abuse” found that inconsistent taxi and private hire vehicle licensing creates vulnerabilities that can be, and were, exploited by grooming gangs. The announcement of that legislation follows the welcome commitment in the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Act 2026 to introduce minimum standards for drivers, operators and licensing authorities. However, many fear that minimum standards could perpetuate inconsistencies that affect vulnerable passengers, and they are seeking not minimum but absolute standards in taxi licensing.
Let me touch on something not directly connected to transport, which is the draft ticket tout Bill. While I welcome a Bill to stop ticket touts selling on concert and event tickets for vastly inflated prices, I wonder if it could be extended to car driving test slots sold by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. Or will we have to wait until the agency updates its IT systems, or possibly—perhaps successfully—manages to recruit and retain sufficient driving instructors, so that there is no longer more demand for tests than there are slots available, as that is fuelling the ticket touts? If the Eavis family have managed to stop ticket touts making a killing from Glastonbury tickets, surely a Government agency should have been able to do so before now.
The railways and passenger benefits Bill will establish Great British Railways as a new publicly owned company, setting up a new passenger watchdog that will set consumer standards for railways and investigate poor service, as well as simplifying fares and ticketing. A passenger-focused GBR could—not necessarily will, but could—improve reliability, simplicity and accountability across the network for passengers and freight.
Other Bills in the King’s Speech and the Government’s subsequent briefing are welcomed by many of my constituents. The social housing renewal Bill will benefit many of my constituents who will never be in a position to buy a home in west London. They just need a safe, secure, affordable and stable place they can call home, without being overcrowded or forced to continually up sticks, lose their jobs and support networks, and disrupt their children’s education, only to find themselves in another overpriced, overcrowded, damp, tiny space with shared facilities.
I welcome the fact that young people aged 16 and 17 will be able to vote, as those in Scotland have been for a decade. As someone who voted here nine years ago to remain in the single market and customs union, I welcome the proposals to bring the UK closer to Europe, our exit from which has been one of the most devastating shocks to the UK economy. Many parents and teachers in my constituency welcome the consultation to reform SEND, although they are keeping a watching brief on whether the resources will be adequate to their children’s needs.
Finally, on the commonhold and leasehold reform Bill, although it would be virtually impossible to scrap leasehold entirely overnight, the ban on new leaseholds for flats, the cap on ground rent, and the new process for converting to commonhold are all welcome measures, as is making it cheaper and easier for leaseholders to extend their lease or buy their freehold. I also welcome the remediation Bill for those living in homes with unsafe cladding. Too many residents in Hounslow, Isleworth and Brentford are still living in fear of the consequences of a fire breaking out in their block.
British Industrial Competitiveness Scheme
Chris Vince Excerpts(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Peter Kyle
I remember that visit well, and I will reflect on my hon. Friend’s words, as I always do. The eligibility checker will go live in the summer, and the businesses she refers to will be able to check their ability to benefit from what she correctly describes as a highly impactful scheme.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Secretary of State for his statement, and I welcome the extension of the BIC scheme and the difference it will make to manufacturing businesses in my constituency. I wish to make a brief representation on behalf of the Lea Valley Growers, who are based in Nazeing in my constituency. As the Secretary of State will know, glasshouse and greenhouse growers use a lot of electricity and gas, but they are not recognised as energy intensive. Will he reflect on what steps the Government can take to support vital food producers such as the Lea Valley Growers, and may I request an urgent meeting to discuss that with him further?
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for getting the Lea Valley Growers on the record, and I am keen to meet him to hear more about it.
Department for Business and Trade
Chris Vince Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Chair of the Business and Trade Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Solihull North (Liam Byrne), for securing this debate with the Backbench Business Committee—I declare an interest because I sit on that Committee—and for his important and constructive opening speech.
I recently hosted a reception in Parliament for the Essex chamber of commerce, and skills were the No.1 issue raised with me. What has the Minister done, working alongside his counterparts in the Departments for Education and for Work and Pensions, to ensure that our young people have the skills they need for the workplace? Businesses in Harlow are screaming out for young people with transferable skills. I recently met Daniel Chandler, CEO of the Young Professionals Guild, which is a new organisation with a mission to support young people into the hospitality industry. He spoke about the gap between what young people come out of school with, and the skills that industry is asking for. He has worked in collaboration with the fantastic Harlow College in its mission to decrease the number of young people who are not in education, employment or training —it has been very successful.
I welcome the recent education White Paper. What was important was not just the stuff on special educational needs and disabilities, although that got the headlines, but also the need to have a well-balanced and broad curriculum. Will the Minister ensure that this Government truly work cross-Department to ensure that the industrial strategy works alongside that curriculum? That is important, and once again I pay huge tribute to Harlow College.
The other issue that comes up when I speak to businesses in Harlow is energy costs. I will not try to make another ill-fated “reef” joke, but the Minister will be aware that Harlow has a coral farm, which is an example of a niche but energy-intensive business. I welcome that the Department for Business and Trade is focused on cutting energy costs and network charges for energy intensive industries by 90% as part of the British industrial competitiveness scheme, ensuring that UK business electric costs are in line with those across Europe. That is hugely important, particularly when we talk about trade.
Dr Allison Gardner (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Lab)
My hon. Friend mentioned the cost of electricity, but ceramics is a gas-intensive industry, so I again make a plea that when considering support for businesses, we remember gas-intensive industries, which includes steel, and that we have a strategy.
Chris Vince
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am sure the Minister will reflect on that when he responds to the debate.
In conclusion, I welcome much of what the Government are doing, much of which has been discussed already, such as the modern industrial strategy and £70 billion of investment, trade deals with India, South Korea and the EU, the small business strategy, and working to get energy costs down, although I emphasise that there is much more to do. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Amanda Martin) on her work ensuring that we tackle tool theft, which is potentially a big issue for business owners in my constituency. We also have action to protect British Steel, and I echo comments about the need for a steel strategy. I ask the Minister to reflect on how we can continue to bring down energy costs for businesses, both electric and gas, and work with other Departments to focus on the skills that employers need.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)
I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor
Chris Vince Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Helen Morgan (North Shropshire) (LD)
I am one of a handful of Liberal Democrat and Labour MPs who were elected in the wake of a political scandal. In my case, in December 2021, it was a financial scandal followed by a cover-up by the then Conservative Government, who tried to get one of their own off the hook. In the midst of my by-election, there were revelations about partygate. It emerged that the then Prime Minister had concluded that a number of the rules that people in this country were subject to did not apply to him. I can remember very clearly knocking on doors during that by-election. I felt my constituents’ anger about the fact that a small group of elite people had concluded that rules that applied to us did not apply to the people at the top of society. I think they would describe that as entitlement. This debate is important because we must restore the trust of the people who voted for me and others elected in by-elections in the wake of scandals. We need to tell the wider British public that we have learned the lessons from the political scandals, cover-ups and entitlement, and we are taking action to restore their trust in what this House is up to and what the wider establishment is allowed to get away with. It is important to hold the powerful to account. Since then, a number of other scandals have further destroyed trust in politics, including the VIP lane for covid contracts, the treachery of Nathan Gill and the appointment of Peter Mandelson.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was intimately involved with Jeffrey Epstein. We have learned in recent weeks that it is probable that their relationship was deeper and continued for much longer than we first thought. That association with one of the most despicable paedophiles in history, at the heart of the British establishment, is absolutely poisonous. The victims and survivors of Epstein’s crimes must have been retraumatised many times over the years by the complicity of those closely associated with him, who did nothing to bring his crimes to public awareness and hold him to account.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Lady makes a really important point about the victims of crimes perpetrated by people in the public eye. It is particularly difficult for those victims, and almost as if the trauma is repeated again and again when these things come to light in the press and the media. Does she agree that, in particular, we need to support victims of crimes of that nature?
Helen Morgan
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. I cannot imagine what it must have been like to be one of those victims—one of those survivors—and to see repeatedly over the years the establishment closing ranks around those who knew Epstein and telling us that everything is okay. The hon. Gentleman is entirely right that this whole process must be extremely painful for everyone involved, so the victims should be foremost in everything we do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Chris Vince Excerpts(5 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Blair McDougall
The hon. Lady is right to raise industry worries about the turbulent international trade environment. That is why it is so important that the Government are out in the world engaging—because businesses, including the one that she mentioned, need stability. I would be very happy to arrange that meeting with her.
Chris Vince (Harlow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade (Chris Bryant)
The Secretary of State has asked me to reply, because he is in China with the Prime Minister. In the last few weeks, our Department has concluded an enhanced trade deal with the Republic of Korea, published a critical minerals strategy and secured the Employment Rights Act 2025, which will see the biggest improvement in employment rights in a generation. At home and abroad, we are resolutely on the side of business, tackling barriers to trade, improving productivity, driving up growth and winning business for Britain. Growth is up, productivity is up and business confidence is up.
Chris Vince
Last weekend, I had the pleasure of visiting the Advanced Aquarium Consultancy in my constituency of Harlow, where they breed, grow and sell coral. I am not going to make any coral jokes, which will be a reef to everybody. [Hon. Members: “Oh!”] What is unique about Advanced Aquarium Consultancy is the amount of energy it needs to use. What are the Government doing to support such businesses to bring down energy costs?
Chris Bryant
I was told that my hon. Friend was going to ask a question about choral farms; I was wondering how one farmed tenors, altos and contraltos. He makes a very fair point. As the Under-Secretary of State for Business and Trade, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), said earlier, there is a whole series of industries for which the cost of energy is a significant part of the problems they face. That is precisely the kind of work that we are engaged in as a Department and as a whole Government, and why it is so important that my hon. Friend is in two Departments and therefore able to bridge these issues.