Flooding Preparedness: Yorkshire

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Wednesday 30th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)]

It is a particular pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker, not least because you have been such a long-standing champion for Yorkshire, but also because I know you take a close interest in the issue of flooding.

In November last year, I was standing in Lang Avenue in Barnsley. I had often been there before, but this time was different. In the freezing cold, around 70 homes had been flooded. Among the residents there was the quiet desperation of having been made effectively homeless in the middle of winter, of having lost precious possessions, of seeing Christmas plans lying in ruins.

There were many scenes like that last winter. Very early one morning I arrived in Fishlake, near Doncaster. That quiet village had the feel of a disaster movie, with waters running perilously high, the Army on the streets, and the emergency services working tirelessly to save lives and homes. I remember one couple who had lived there for 50 years; they were ferried out of the village on a tractor, their house waist deep in water. The husband was fighting cancer, and as they struggled with hospital appointments, they also had to deal with endless complication and delay from their insurance company. It was many months before work on their house even began.

I remember visiting a house in Bentley with my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) and the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, all of us standing together in the home of an 83-year-old woman, with her ground floor flooded and almost everything destroyed. Her insurance had been cancelled through no fault of her own. She had lost her husband not long before, and now she was faced with losing much of what was familiar and precious to her.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He is making an eloquent, passionate and moving speech. Does he recognise that, for many of my constituents who have been affected by the floods, 10 months on, this is not something they have recovered from because they are still fighting with their insurance companies? Even if they are back in their homes, they are worried about what the future will bring; in particular, they are concerned that although £170 million has been announced for flood projects, not one of them is in Doncaster. They are deeply angry about that. Does he share their anger and recognise that they want the Government to show that they understand the need to help them, not just last November, but now, and to secure better protection for them?

[Dan Jarvis]

My right hon. Friend is completely right to raise his constituents’ concerns, which I absolutely do share. What his constituents require is a plan, and we are doing a lot of work at local and regional level, but what we need is support from national Government. I will say a bit more about what I think that should involve.

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[Rebecca Pow]

I will come on to talk about much of the funding that has gone to the rest of Yorkshire. We have had a great deal of engagement with colleagues and MPs, and I will cover that in my remarks.

What I want to say at the outset is that flood and coastal management is a very high priority for the Government. I am acutely aware of the impact on businesses and individuals, as the hon. Gentleman clearly points out. Coming from Somerset, I really am aware of exactly how it affects people. I want to go back over the long recent history of flooding that Yorkshire has suffered. There have been a number of significant flooding events, notably in 2007 and 2012. There was the tidal surge of 2013, and then, in 2015, about 40,000 properties flooded. Sadly, people were affected. Very sadly, some people have died. This is very serious, and we take it very, very seriously. I will come on to highlight some of the different parts of Yorkshire that have suffered incidents and how we have dealt with them.

In November 2019, South Yorkshire, which obviously includes Sheffield, Doncaster and Barnsley, saw rainfall of more than twice the monthly average. That resulted in widespread damage, the majority of which was in Doncaster, Bentley and Fishlake, as the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) has highlighted to me a number of times. In just 48 hours, about 150% of the average November rainfall fell over the River Don. Overall, the river levels rose to, and in some locations exceeded, the previous record which occurred in 2007.

In West Yorkshire in February, the impacts of Storm Ciara were felt most in the Calder valley, with over 800 properties severely affected. River levels rose to their highest or second highest recorded levels at Hebden Bridge, Mytholmroyd and Dewsbury, and at Gargrave on the River Aire.

About three weeks later, East Yorkshire—Yorkshire is a huge place, as we all know—was affected. The River Aire catchment area received over three and a half times the normal amount of rainfall for that time of year, and 100 properties were flooded in Snaith and East Cowick. February was the wettest on record for Yorkshire. At this point, and on behalf of the House, I must pay tribute to the emergency services, the Environment Agency, the local authorities, the Army, Government officials and everyone who helped and responded in those very difficult times.

As I said, the Government are absolutely committed to investing in flood risk management, with £2.6 billion in flood defences committed between 2015 and 2021 to better protect 300,000 properties. As hon. Members will recall, at the Budget we confirmed the doubling of Government investment in flooding and coastal defences in England to £5.2 billion over the next six years from 2021. That will better protect a further 336,000 properties, including 290,000 homes. I think the hon. Member for Barnsley Central will agree that that is not insignificant.

In July, we published a long-term flood policy statement, which I really hope the hon. Gentleman has read because a great deal of effort went into it. We have had a real rethink of our direction on flooding, and that statement touches many of the things that are important to him and us. It includes five ambitious policies to accelerate progress and better protect and prepare the country, and 40 supporting actions, so I urge him to have a look at it. Alongside that, the Environment Agency has published a long-term flood and coast erosion risk management strategy for England, which dovetails with Government thinking.

Partnership funding, which the hon. Gentleman touched on, will continue to play a key part in delivering our £5.2 billion capital programme. DEFRA’s partnership funding policy will help communities to be clear about what they can expect from DEFRA and what levels of partnership funding they need to enable projects to go ahead. The hon. Gentleman touched on that, and those details are quite clear about the partnership funding that has to go hand in hand with Government funding.

In 2019-20, the Government are investing more in Yorkshire than elsewhere in the country. Over time, Yorkshire has actually been very successful in securing Government funding and attracting partnership funding. The 2015-16 severe flooding in West Yorkshire, in Calderdale, Leeds and Bradford—I went up there on a visit—and York and North Yorkshire, drove major investment in complex and innovative schemes, in particular in Leeds, the Calder valley and even York. I say to the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) that York has received £45 million of central Government flood funding to protect 700 homes, and £32 million for the Foss barrier to protect another 1,100 homes. That is a clear commitment.

Since 2015, the Yorkshire Regional Flood and Coastal Committee, which represents 12 local authorities, has received investment of £671 million, £496 of which is from the Government, to better protect 66,000 properties from flooding and coastal erosion. We can debate the hon. Lady’s intimation that the Government have neglected to fund Yorkshire for a long time, but I have given some facts and statistics that clearly show that the Government are committed to Yorkshire.

East Yorkshire has had £42 million invested in the Hull river defences. I have mentioned North Yorkshire already, so let me come to South Yorkshire. Sheffield City Council is leading on a number of schemes, including Sheffield’s lower Don valley, where the completed £19 million scheme has better protected 250 homes and key businesses. For Sheffield’s upper Don valley, a £23 million investment will reduce the flood risk for more than 400 homes. That was recently awarded in the £170 million that the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) referred to.

[Edward Miliband]

I know that the hon. Lady cares deeply about this issue and did so even before she was a Minister. She mentioned the £170 million, but does she recognise the anger of my constituents, which I highlighted to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), about the fact that those projects were not in Doncaster? My constituents in Bentley were flooded in 2007 and again in 2019. Does she recognise the need for action to minimise the risk that they are flooded again?

[Rebecca Pow]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a sound point. We have many schemes, grants and funds, but it has to be calculated. When working with the people who allocate the grants, it has to be done on the basis of the number of homes and properties protected. He knows that there is a formula for that. I urge him to continue to work with the EA, the Government and the local resilience forums so that the schemes that will help his people and communities can come forward.

In West Yorkshire, phase 1 of the Leeds flood alleviation is now complete, and phase 2 is well under way. That is a £94 million investment.

Looking ahead to the next six years, the Government will be investing over half a billion pounds in Yorkshire, with partnership funding making the overall figure significantly higher, reducing flood risk to approximately 22,000 homes. I have touched on the £170 million fund that has just been handed out to a whole range of projects that had been affected particularly during the coronavirus pandemic to help communities there. Indeed, £50 million of that went to Yorkshire, with £16 million going to the Sheffield upper Don Valley and the upper Don catchment natural flood management scheme to better protect 19,000 jobs and 665 businesses.

The hon. Member for Barnsley Central touched on natural flood management. I totally agree that this is one of the tools that have to be engaged with. Many projects are already coming forward and there are many more to come. We are committed through our new flood policy statement to many more of these nature-based solutions.

Flood Response

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Theresa Villiers]

I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to the hard-working staff of the EA and all those involved in the response to this emergency. They do a tremendous job, and they need our support in very difficult circumstances.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

May I say to the Secretary of State that three months on from the floods that hit my constituency in November, many people are still suffering and are still out of their homes, and I am afraid Government help for those particularly without insurance, despite promises made, is inadequate? May I direct her to the issue of matched funds, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) on the Front Bench, because what this means in South Yorkshire is that, although the Government have said they are making up to £1 million available—itself a measly sum compared to the need—that money is not being released because £600,000 has been raised from local businesses and people, but it does not reach the £1 million? This is penny-pinching, narrow-minded and wrong, so may I ask the Secretary of State to look at this again because it is just wrong for the people in my constituency?

[Theresa Villiers]

I am more than happy to look at this, but I would emphasise that there are many successful examples of where funding has been sought from a range of sources, including businesses, which has led to very successful results, including in Sheffield and South Yorkshire.

Flooding: South Yorkshire

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, particularly as your mother resides in my constituency, so this debate has particular relevance to your family. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) on securing this important debate, and it is good to see the Minister in her place. I know she takes the issues around climate change and the climate emergency very seriously and is a sympathetic listener, as I hope she will be today.

My constituents will scrutinise the debate today very closely, because the lives of so many of them have been turned upside down as a result of the flooding that occurred in November last year. As my hon. Friend said, the whole village of Fishlake was underwater, with hundreds of families affected. A sizeable part of the village of Bentley was flooded, with people driven from their homes. Homes in Scawthorpe were similarly affected, and other parts of Doncaster, too. Nobody can really understand the effects of flooding—the fear, disruption, misery, pain—until it actually happens to them or they see it with their own eyes. Doncaster Council estimates that 1,500 people have been affected, either driven from their homes or flooded. That is 1,500 stories of pain and loss. Then there are the businesses whose livelihoods have been damaged: 141 in Doncaster alone. As my hon. Friend said, what makes it even worse for some in my constituency, in Bentley and in Scawthorpe, is that this is the second time it has happened to them. It happened in 2007 as well. They thought, and they believed they had been told, that it would never happen again.

I want to put on the record my thanks to the emergency services and all public sector workers for the extraordinary job that they did: the firefighters from all parts of the country, the police, ambulance staff, the Environment Agency, local councillors and council staff who worked all day and all night; the Salvation Army, who offered temporary accommodation; railway workers who cleared lines; the Army and the RAF, who were eventually called in to help with the crisis. The private sector also stepped up with food, clothing and cleaning supplies. Indeed, people across the country provided donations.

Above all, it is right on this occasion to single out the heroism of the communities in Doncaster for the solidarity that they showed. The people of Fishlake kept the place going, even while it was underwater, including the local pub, the Hare and Hounds. The people of Bentley Town End rallied round each other with a makeshift hub of a local business, Custom Windows and Doors. The people of Stainforth and Moorends in my constituency—villages largely unaffected by the floods—worked day and night to get supplies into nearby Fishlake when it was cut off. Indeed, people across Doncaster helped. The people of Doncaster have set the benchmark for what solidarity looks like. The task now is for us in the House, the Government, insurers and others to do the same.

I want to raise questions similar to my hon. Friend’s. I have five sets of issues that I want to put to the Minister. First, I want to ask about Government help for people who were flooded, including for the uninsured and those with insurance excesses, which can be as high as £7,500 in one case that I know about; and for people who find that they have small print in their insurance policy, which means they have not been covered. The Prime Minister rang me on 12 November, a few days after the flooding began, to ask what were the big issues, and I emphasised insurance in my response. I said that although some people would say it is a moral hazard to help out people who did not have insurance, that ignored the fact that many people could not even get affordable insurance because they had been flooded before. They were offered exorbitant premiums to get themselves insured after the flooding of 2007. He assured me that he would override any objections and would make sure people were properly helped.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

On the Flood Re scheme that was introduced to try to deal with the problem of people who could not access insurance because they had previously been flooded, is it not time now to have a proper review of how the scheme is working, because several groups are not covered by it? It has not helped some of my hon. Friend’s constituents at all.

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend is entirely right. I was going to mention the Flood Re scheme, of which awareness is very low. I think I am right in saying it does not cover businesses; it covers residential properties. There is a real problem. People find they cannot get insurance with a private company, but they do not even get told about Flood Re and are not aware of it.

The Prime Minister went on to say publicly:

“I know there will be people who are worrying about the damage to their homes, who will be worried about the insurance situation, worried about the losses they face. All I want to say to those people is that there are schemes to cover those losses.”

That is the context in which we should see the up to £1 million that the Government are offering the South Yorkshire community foundation. Any money is of course welcome, but all the evidence is that that money is not enough. According to Doncaster Council, the cost of helping the 188 uninsured or underinsured properties is estimated at an average of £31,000 per property, or nearly £6 million. That is the figure for Doncaster alone. Will the Minister explain how the Government intend to keep to the Prime Minister’s promise and his public statement that there are schemes to cover the losses? If she cannot explain, can she signal today that she is willing to look again at the amount required with the relevant local authorities?

Even worse than the amount of money being given is that the Government have said that they will pay out the £1 million only if match funds are found. I do not believe it was the Minister’s decision, but that really is an insult. More than £500,000 has been raised from local businesses and people. Are the Government really saying that unless the amount raised gets to £1 million, they will not pay out the promised money? In other words, the less money is raised from other sources, the less money the Government will provide to help the victims. It makes no sense. Let us imagine a disaster happening overseas in a developing country. If the Government said they would contribute only if the host country found matching funds, there would rightly be outrage. We are not talking about large sums here. I simply ask the Minister to make sure that the Prime Minister’s promises are kept, and that more money is provided.

Secondly, I want to raise some specific questions about the targeted payments for families, where the Government again need to look at what they are doing. There are council tax rebates for people who have lost half their home and are living upstairs, and that is welcome, but there is a limit on those payments of three months. The council tax rebate scheme ends on 7 February—a wholly arbitrary cut-off date, because there are still people living upstairs because the work has not been done, through no fault of their own.

There is also the issue of the flood resilience grant of £5,000 to prevent future flooding. I have constituents who live in areas that were flooded and who may have narrowly avoided being flooded themselves, and they are being told they are not eligible for the grant, but the measure is preventive and they are clearly in areas of risk, because the areas were not just flooded in 2019, but in 2007 as well. I ask the Minister to consider taking a common-sense approach, so that those in flood-hit areas are eligible.

Thirdly, I want to raise significant issues about the performance of insurance companies. I acknowledge that some insurers have acted speedily, including drying out homes and rehousing residents, but there have been many other bad experiences, which the Minister should be aware of—slow pace of response, drying out of properties not being properly carried out, and attempts to claim that people are underinsured so they are entitled not to the full amount, but only a large fraction of it. I want also to draw attention to particular problems that have been reported to me, about RSA Insurance aggressively driving down people’s claims—something about which I have written to the company. I want the Minister’s assurance that she stands ready to engage on those questions with insurers that are failing in their duties and with the Association of British Insurers. I also want her to engage with the issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson) raised about Flood Re, of which there is very low awareness.

Fourthly, I echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East made about the large costs over and above the Bellwin scheme that councils face. Doncaster Council estimates those costs to be in the region of £4.5 million to £5 million: £4 million relates to damage to paths and highways. In that context I should like the Minister to explain—this is perhaps the week to do it—the position on the EU solidarity fund. When the 2007 floods happened, the Labour Government applied successfully and received funds to the net benefit of £31 million. When flooding hit in 2015, the Conservative Government successfully applied for £15 million-worth of funding. The recent flooding, for the avoidance of doubt, happened while we were in the European Union, and the Government have 12 weeks to apply for the funding. The deadline appears to be this Friday, coincidentally. My understanding is that all that the Government need to do is to signal an intent to apply by this Friday. I urge the Minister in the strongest terms to do that—or at least to explain why the Government will not do it, and how the money will be made up.

Fifthly and finally, I want to raise the issue of future flood defences, which my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East rightly raised. My constituents want answers. Why did what happened in 2007 happen again? How can we minimise the chances of its happening again? Will the Government put their money where their mouth is and fund what is necessary? The Environment Agency has estimated that we should be spending an average of at least £1 billion a year on flooding and coastal change infrastructure. I believe that in the last financial year £815 million was spent. My constituents deserve to be better protected, and they deserve to know that the Government will deliver. The South Yorkshire Mayor has estimated that a programme in excess of £200 million will be necessary. What does the Minister have to say about that?

Nothing can make up for the trauma that my constituents have gone through, but the Government can show that they have learned from what was, frankly, too slow a response and an inadequate response by properly resourcing the needs of our constituents at the moment, and by fulfilling the promises that have been made. I hope very much that the Minister will take heed of this debate and come back with answers for my constituents.

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[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I have listed a very large range of packages that were swung into action. Perhaps her councils are still discussing and talking to our officials about those, and I recommend that they continue to do so. I commend her local people for raising the money, and she can write to me about that afterwards, but I think that at the moment that matched funding stands, as it says, up to the value of £1 million.

[Edward Miliband]

rose—

[Stephanie Peacock]

rose—

[Rebecca Pow]

I will carry on, because I want to talk about Flood Re, which was raised earlier and is an important issue. Flood Re was launched in 2016 to improve the availability and affordability of household insurance for people who live in high flood risk areas, and it has made an enormous difference. Flood Re was set up as a result of learning from what had happened in previous flooding situations, when people reported that they could not get the right insurance. Indeed, many people from my own area of Somerset fed into the setting up and the working of Flood Re.

In the 2018-19 financial year, Flood Re reinsured more than 164,000 household policies, and 250,000 properties have benefited since its launch. Before its introduction, only 9% of householders who had made prior flood claims could get quotes from two or more insurers, as was commonly highlighted, and none were able to get quotes from five or more. However, since October 2017, after the setting up of Flood Re, the availability has improved so that 100% of households could get quotes from two or more insurers, while 93% could get quotes from five or more. By May 2019, 95% of those with flood claims could choose from at least 10 insurers, with 99% receiving quotes from five or more, which shows that the system is working.

The right hon. Member for Doncaster North mentioned some people reporting that they are unable to get insurance, and there are anecdotal reports that there was no flood insurance in Fishlake, Bentley and Doncaster. The Secretary of State announced a review into what happened there, why it was not available and all those things, and I look forward to its findings. We want Flood Re to function effectively, so I am happy to meet colleagues to go over issues about how it is working and how to make it work better.

[Edward Miliband]

I welcome what the Minister says about Flood Re, but I return to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East. I know that the Minister cannot commit to making this money available today, but I ask her to go with us a little bit on the logic of this. If only half a million pounds is raised from local people and businesses, less money will be available for flood victims. It makes no sense, when up to £1 million has been allocated, for the Government to then say that they are only going to give half a million pounds. As I said earlier, that would not be acceptable if we were helping a developing country, and it should not be acceptable here at home. I know the money was originally from Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government resources, so will she go and talk to her MHCLG colleagues about this and about actually getting the money out of the door? South Yorkshire’s Community Foundation has not yet received even the half a million pounds to get the scheme going.

[Rebecca Pow]

I recommend that hon. Members go to MHCLG themselves to raise this issue. I have put my case for the amount of finance coming through in the flood recovery package. I will leave that there, but I am listening to what hon. Members say, and I commend the people raising the money.

The Government have absolutely committed to investing in flood risk, to the tune of £2.6 billion, and continue to play a key role in protecting the people affected. Talking about MHCLG, the right hon. Gentleman raised new houses on flood plains and the increase in flooding risk, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford). Planning authorities are responsible for giving the go-ahead for new housing, and they always seek Environment Agency advice on all these things, but planning also comes under MHCLG.

Environment and Climate Change

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton). Her eloquent words on climate change show that the Front Bench’s loss is the Back Benches’ gain and this House’s gain.

The tone of this debate has been largely good-natured and about shared objectives, and that is important. This debate matters, and the emergency matters, because, contrary to what the Secretary of State implied, we are not doing nearly enough as a country. It is true that we have made a lot of progress in relation to the power sector, but 75% of the gains we have made overall since 2012 have been in that sector alone. The latest report of the Committee on Climate Change in 2018 says that emissions in the building sector, the agriculture sector, the waste sector and the fluorinated gases sector have been flat for a decade.

The emergency matters because it says to not only the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or other Departments—the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is also on the Front Bench—but the whole Government that this matters to everyone and that this is not just another issue we have to deal with, alongside all the other issues we face. Every issue has to go through climate change and what we do about it. It is the whole basis of our politics for generations to come. I hope that the Secretary of State will support the emergency, because it will focus minds in the Government.

I do not want to speak for long, but I do want to talk about political persuasion and in particular about how we carry the public with us on this journey. Nice words were said about me, and I am grateful to both Front Benchers for that, but the truth is that I feel a sense of guilt. I feel a sense of guilt that I have not done more on this issue and that I did not do more when I was leader of my party. I talked about the issue, but I did not do more.

It is bad thing that in the 2015 TV debate, which I do not like to recall too much, not one question was asked about climate change, and that tells us something about the fact that Brexit—it is bad enough, given how it sucks the political oxygen out of all the other issues—is not the only reason why this issue has not been more salient, or rather that it goes through peaks and troughs. I think that the reason is that this is the ultimate challenge for politics, because the decisions we make now will have impacts in generations’ time, but less so today. The electoral cycle, if we are honest about it—and we respond to our voters—is five years, or perhaps less, not 20, 30 or 40 years.

[Catherine West]

I make a very quick intervention just to say that my right hon. Friend does not need to apologise, because he did write the emissions trading scheme when he was very much part of a Labour Government beforehand.

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[Edward Miliband]

It is nice of my hon. Friend to say so.

I want to talk about how we persuade people, and I think there are four things we need to do. First, I enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Deidre Brock), who speaks from the Front Bench for the SNP, but I slightly disagreed with one thing. She said a couple of times that we need to tell people their lives are going to be less comfortable. I slightly feel that that is saying, “I’m here from Planet Politics to say you’re going to have a less comfortable life.” I do not mean this in a trite way—I think it true that sacrifices must be made—but we should promise people something else, which is that they will have better lives if we act on climate change. I do not think that is a false promise; I think that is a genuine promise.

If we think about this idea of the green new deal, what is that about? It is about retrofitting every building in this country—house by house, street by street—in the way we did in the 1960s and 1970s when we moved from town gas to natural gas. That is tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of jobs, including for my constituents and the constituents of every Member, and it is about lower bills for people. If we think about our towns and cities, we see that it is about making them much better for walking and cycling—and, indeed, electric vehicles—cutting thousands of deaths from air pollution. My first and in a way most important point is: let us tell people not just the gloomy part of this—it is important to talk about the gloomy part—but that they can have better lives as a result. That is what we are in politics to do.

Secondly, I want to say something about the role of individuals, because I have come to believe that there is something slightly dangerous in this. Every individual has to do their bit, including we politicians, but I think there is something that makes people feel incredibly powerless if we put all the weight of responsibility on them. We are saying to people, “We’ve got this massive problem; your kids are never going to forgive you; and you’ve got to act.”

Let me give the House one statistic. In Norway last month, 60% of sales of new vehicles were electric; in Britain, it is something like 1.8%. I am sure we in this House all love the Norwegians. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] Indeed. But that is not because the Norwegians are intrinsically more green than we are, but because there is a shedload of incentives to go green and buy an electric vehicle in Norway. The point is that this is about system change, not just individual change. Some of this is about decisions not necessarily that individuals are making, but what airports we commission, how we produce our power and all that. Individuals must make their contribution, but incentives matter, and we cannot place all the burden on individuals.

Thirdly, there is sacrifice—the point made by the hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith. We cannot deny that there will be sacrifice, and there will be things we cannot necessarily do that we do at the moment but have to do less. Why have we failed to make some progress on this, and I am thinking back to my time as leader as well? Because I do not think that we or the green movement as a whole have thought enough about how we distribute the costs among those who bear the burden.

The reality about energy bills is that the poor pay a significantly higher proportion of their income on energy bills than the rich. As we think about the £10 billion that goes to support energy companies, which the Secretary of State talked about, we have to think about how those costs are borne through taxation as opposed to energy bills. Unless we do that, people will say, “Well, hang on. The costs are all falling on me, and I can least afford it.” We only need to look at what has happened to President Macron and the protests he has faced to realise that we cannot just say, “It’s green and therefore it’s fair.” We have to make sure that the costs are fairly distributed.

My fourth and final point is about the international angle. The right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson), who is not in his place, wrote recently that Extinction Rebellion should go and protest in China, while he seemed modestly to approve of some of its aims. That misses the point: as Secretaries of State and the House know, the reality is that our moral authority comes from our being able to act. There is no way we could persuade China and India to act themselves if we were not leaders on this issue.

My experience at the not-very-successful Copenhagen summit was that China and India would listen to us because, unlike the US, we were actually acting. I cannot emphasise enough to the House the authority that our ability to act gives us. By the way, the Chinese recognise the opportunity. They are installing so much solar and wind power because they know that there is an economic advantage. The issue is particularly crucial in the next 15 to 18 months because of our hope to host COP—the conference of the parties—in 2020. That is the moment when we have to update the Paris targets. We are overshooting, even on the basis of the Paris targets. Unless that conference of the parties takes decisive action, it may well be too late.

[Sir Edward Davey]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right on China; it is vital that people understand this. The Chinese are moving ahead very fast. He and his colleagues, and the former Foreign Secretary Lord Hague, were crucial in making sure that the Foreign Office was engaged in climate change diplomacy, persuading the Chinese that the fall in the cost of renewables, particularly solar, made them affordable and that the health benefits of reducing air pollution made them really attractive to their population. The change in the mood in China could be the change in the mood across the world. We need to learn from China, support it and make those points.

[Edward Miliband]

I agree absolutely with the former Secretary of State.

I want to finish by saying this. I reflect on our cross- party consensus in this country, which is incredibly important. It was created in part thanks to David Cameron’s advocacy of the issue in the 2000s, and it is important that we maintain it. However, we should allow this: there will be different visions of how we get to the same goal. There will be a more socialist vision and a more Conservative one. Part of the grammar of politics that we have to learn is to argue while sharing the same objectives—maintain the cross-party consensus, but have discussions and arguments about how we can meet our goals.

Finally, I should say that there is a downside scenario, which is that future generations will say that we were the last generation who did not get it and we failed to act. But there is an upside, too: if we act, we can create better lives for those future generations.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

UK’s Withdrawal from the European Union

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but the Government’s position is not a matter for me. I say as a matter of pride that I have never been a member of a Government; that has never been part of my ambition. I must say that it is a lot easier to be Speaker than to be a Minister. My responsibility is to consider amendments if they are tabled. If Members want to table amendments to the Government’s motion, they may do so. I rather imagine, from what the right hon. Gentleman has said, that he will want to do so.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I want to echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South East (Mr McFadden) has just said. Members across the House heard the Prime Minister say unconditionally that these days would be about a vote on whether we would accept no deal and then a vote on an extension, not a conditional vote. She is sitting on the Front Bench shaking her head. Perhaps she could now, through you, Mr Speaker, explain why what you have just read out is not a conditional vote, because it sure sounds like one to us.

[Mr Speaker]

Okay. No, the Prime Minister is not seeking to raise a point of order at this stage.

Climate Change and Flooding

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who plays a very important role in the GLOBE organisation of parliamentarians. This debate comes at a timely moment after the Paris agreement, and after the tragedy of the floods that we have seen. I know that many hon. Friends want to talk about the effects on their constituencies, so I will try to keep my remarks reasonably brief.

I want to focus on the question of what the Paris agreement means for UK domestic policy. In doing so, I praise the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who played an important role in the talks. She was the host of the high ambition coalition between developed and vulnerable countries, and her office was its headquarters. She deserves credit for the very constructive role that she played. Having said that, when I listened to her statement yesterday, I felt, while I do not want to be unfair to her, that her position was somewhat to say, “Everything has changed and nothing has changed.” In other words, internationally everything has changed, with high ambitions, zero emissions and all that stuff, but for the UK things are the same as before. I want to make the case that that cannot be right, for four reasons, three of which are to do with the agreement itself.

First, on 1.5°, no previous agreement has enshrined a commitment to try to commit to

“efforts to limit temperature increase to 1.5 C.”

This is a higher ambition than there has been in any agreement before. The Secretary of State knows that, because she was one of the people who helped broker the agreement. The reason it was brokered is very interesting: it was because of the case put forward by countries like the Marshall Islands that will disappear with warming of more than 1.5°. Some people fear that the high ambition coalition was a ruse to break up the G77 and China grouping in order to put pressure on the Chinese to get an agreement. I do not believe that it was a ruse. However, we cannot just say, “Our domestic policy will not change,” because if we suggest that our attitude to a 1.5° agreement is the same as to a 2° agreement, countries like the Marshall Islands will conclude, “Hang on a minute—were these people serious after all?”

The Committee on Climate Change picked up on this point in its release yesterday, saying that it would make it even more important—I am paraphrasing somewhat but I do not think I am misrepresenting it—that we met its recommendations on carbon budgets, and that it might be the case that further steps should be taken. It said that it would come back to the Secretary of State on that in early 2016. I would be interested to hear what she thinks are the implications of this more exacting target—because it definitely is more exacting.

[Caroline Lucas]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very strong case, which I appreciate. Surely the difference that 1.5° makes means that we need to think again about aviation expansion. In yesterday’s aviation statement, which came right after the climate statement, nobody even mentioned climate, and yet aviation is one of the fastest-growing sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

[Edward Miliband]

When we were in government, I played one part in the rather unhappy saga that is Heathrow. In response to the demand that we should approve Heathrow, I pushed for a separate target for aviation emissions. Of course that must also be looked at as part of the 1.5° target. There cannot simply be unconstrained expansion of aviation. The hon. Lady makes a good point.

Secondly, the agreement contains not just the 1.5° aim but a long-term goal of zero emissions. When I asked the Secretary of State about this yesterday, she said that she was happy pursuing the existing targets in the Climate Change Act. I think that those targets are very important, because I helped legislate for them, and I am very happy that she wants to make sure that we meet them. However, when I was Climate Change Secretary we had not had a global agreement for net zero emissions. We cannot possibly say, “We’ve got this global commitment to zero emissions in the second half of the century but it has no implications for UK domestic policy.” Of course we have to look at what it means for the UK.

My case to the Secretary of State, which I hope she will consider—I am not asking for an answer today—is that when the Energy Bill comes back to this House in the new year she amends it to ask the Committee on Climate Change to do something very simple, which is to look at this issue and make a recommendation to Government about when we should achieve zero emissions. That would do a number of things. It would send a cross-party message that Britain is determined to be a climate leader; the Secretary of State has talked eloquently about the impact that the Climate Change Act had, with cross-party support. It would also reduce, not increase, the costs of transition, because it would provide a clear trajectory to business and, indeed, to future Governments.

I say to Conservative Members, who have understandable concerns, that it would be supported by business. I am not the most radical person on this issue. The most radical people are, believe it or not, Richard Branson, Paul Polman of Unilever and Ratan Tata. They want not just what I am suggesting, but something much more radical—they want zero emissions by 2050. Perhaps that is what the Committee on Climate Change will concede, but my approach is much more pragmatic, as is that of the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart). Let us not pluck a figure out of the air—such as 2050—without having the experts look at it; let us look at what the implications of the global goal of zero emissions are for the UK. That is a very reasonable suggestion.

[Graham Stuart]

I agree with everything the right hon. Gentleman has just said about aiming for zero carbon. Does not the involvement of Unilever, Virgin and other businesses show that, if leadership and certainty is given, the investment conditions will be such that we will be able to get the money flowing, as I said in my speech, and jobs will be created here? If we lag behind with uncertainty, we will not have those jobs, and pioneering businesses will not establish themselves, invest or provide jobs here. If we are going to do it, it must benefit this country to the greatest extent possible.

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman makes an eloquent point. Every extra ounce of uncertainty raises the cost of capital. He and I have discussed that many times and that is what business people are saying, because they want that certainty. They are asking, “What are we working towards?” That is why all those leading businesses are putting it forward.

I do not want to say to the Secretary of State that this is easy, because it is a long way off, but it is an easy win for her. She would go down in history as the person who helped legislate for zero emissions, which is the ultimate backstop. When I was Secretary of State, the ultimate backstop was 80% reductions. Now we know from the global agreement that the ultimate backstop must be zero emissions at some point.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I am interested in the right hon. Gentleman’s specific policies to tackle CO₂ emissions. In the US, fracking is credited by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as being the principal reason for the reduction in greenhouse gases. Does he support shale gas exploration in the UK?

[Edward Miliband]

I am sceptical that it is the solution, because we have to get to zero carbon. It is true that replacing coal with gas has helped us reduce emissions. One of the reasons that our emissions have fallen as they have is the replacement of coal with gas, and I welcome the Secretary of State saying that she is going to phase out coal, but that is not a long-term solution. This agreement is about the end of fossil fuels. Carbon capture and storage can make a difference, but essentially we are transitioning to a world after fossil fuels.

[David T. C. Davies]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that if we are going to use wind power or solar, we have to have CCS, as National Grid has said; otherwise, we will not be able to match grid demand?

[Edward Miliband]

Certainly. While we are on the subject of sorry sagas, I am afraid that one of the other sorry sagas is the CCS competition, which is a recipe for how not to make policy. It was started, believe it or not, nearly 10 years ago by the Labour Government. I think it was started under Alistair Darling. I then pushed it forward before this Government cancelled the competition, then restarted it and then cancelled it again.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

It has been an incredibly sorry saga, but I do not think that the previous Labour Government can have anything positive to say about CCS, given how badly they treated it when it was going to be introduced at Longannet.

[Edward Miliband]

I am not saying it is glorious from anyone’s point of view. What I put in place was a mechanism to provide four projects. At the time, the Conservative Opposition said, as Oppositions do, that four was not enough and that there should have been six. Then they cancelled the mechanism, then they said there would be public funding, then they cancelled that competition and then they restarted it. I think we can all agree that it has not been a glorious episode.

The third reason that I think the world has changed is the five-year ratchet mechanism in the agreement. It is a mechanism to ratchet up ambition so that the pledges that countries make meet the aspiration. At the moment, we are saying 1.5 °C, but the pledges add up to 3 °C. We argued for the mechanism and the EU said before the summit that it wanted its emissions to be reduced by at least 40% by 2030. As I understand it, “at least” meant that if there was a stronger agreement, we would ratchet up the EU ambition. I ask the Secretary of State and the Government: what is the mechanism to make that happen? The world has changed, because we have a strong agreement, and the EU said at least 40%, so how are we going to ratchet it up? In his closing remarks at the summit, President Hollande said that he wanted to raise French ambition. I would be interested to hear the Secretary of State say, either today or in the future, how she thinks we can raise that ambition.

A fourth and final thing has changed since Paris, and it relates to the Secretary of State and her role in Government. I want to say something personal to her about that. I think that the thing that has changed after Paris is her negotiating power. Anyone who has been a Secretary of State knows that not all the decisions go their way—that was certainly true when I was Secretary of State. I am sure there have been a number of times over the past few months—obviously, the Secretary of State is not going to say this at the Dispatch Box—when she wanted a decision to go one way but it went another way. Successful Secretaries of State, however, recognise their power, and I say to her that she is empowered by the Paris agreement. She is empowered by it to tell the Prime Minister that he cannot just use warm words abroad and then not follow them through with deeds at home. She is empowered to tell the Chancellor that British business is, frankly, furious at the neglect of a crucial and growing sector of the economy. Above all, she is empowered to be the Cabinet champion for tackling climate change. If the Secretary of State does that—if she is that champion—she will get support from those Members on both sides of the House who believe in this cause, as I know that she does, too. They will support her in her endeavours.

In conclusion, whatever the Secretary of State does, we need to match the high ambition coalition in Paris with a high ambition coalition at home. That high ambition coalition has to combine trade unions, business and civil society. I do not see Paris as the end in any sense; it is merely the beginning—it gives us a new beginning on climate change. In the interests of future generations, we have to seize that moment.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)]

First, may I apologise for my absence from my place last week? I am sure hon. Members are aware of the devastating floods we have had in Cumbria—it has been discussed during this debate. As my constituency is in Workington in Cumbria, I felt I should stay there to visit and support as many people and businesses as possible who had been affected by the floods. I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement during Question Time that she intends to visit Cockermouth on Tuesday.

I hope Members will indulge me for speaking from the heart about the events of the past 10 days or so. On the Sunday morning—nine days ago—I stood with shopkeepers and residents, shocked and horrified at seeing Cockermouth main street under water again after only six years. Every Member here will have a high street. I ask them to imagine standing at the end of that high street with the shopkeepers, with that whole high street, from top to bottom, under water. It is shocking. After the water subsided over the coming days, we were able to assess the damage.

Flooding is not just about water. There is a lot talked about water, but water is incredibly powerful and in Cumbria it roars down the fells in the overloaded becks. It carries everything in its path. Drains back up and overflow, and oil tanks get swept away.

Last week in the village of Flimby I stood with a family on their effluent-soaked carpet. I stood inside homes in Cockermouth that stank of diesel oil. I watched families in Workington throw decorated Christmas trees into skips. I visited the flooded village school in Brigham and went to the town of Aspatria to see more damage.

Parents are now telling me that their children are too frightened to go to sleep in case it happens again. They are frightened of the rain. It is heart-breaking.

Our community is resilient and has pulled together in an extraordinary way. I pay tribute to the local councils, the emergency services, the coastguard, mountain rescue, supermarkets that gave free food, the nuclear industry, the Kirkgate centre and so many volunteers, from Churches Together to Muslims 4 Humanity. I thank everybody throughout the country who has given money to the Cumbria Community Foundation for their generosity.

I want to pay particular tribute to Neil Banks, who works for Allerdale Borough Council. We have some flats where 34 elderly residents were trapped. They could not get out and they had no power, water or food. Neil crawled through with water and torches and gave them the help and support they needed.

One young family told me that they had bought their home because they were reassured that the floods of 2009 were a once in a 100-year or a once in a 1,000-year event. They believed that the floods were unprecedented. We have to stop using that language. The Environment Agency told me that the flood defences worked—that they did what they were designed to do. They made a big difference in some areas and to some families, but that is little comfort to the many people who have been made homeless just before Christmas.

What do we need to do? I welcome the Government’s announcement about the Cumbrian floods partnership group. I urge the group to invite Cockermouth and district chamber of trade to be a member, because it has invaluable experience to offer. I am pleased that the group is to be chaired by the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whom I thank for coming to Cockermouth on Sunday.

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. She deserves more time to make it, so I thought I would intervene on her.

[Sue Hayman]

I thank my right hon. Friend.

The Government have said that they will fund more defences, but the costs for Cumbria alone are estimated to be £500 million, and the solutions are about so much more than building higher and higher walls. The water has to go somewhere, and if we are not careful, we will build flood defences in one place with the result that protecting one area means that another takes the water and is damaged.

We must look at our design of bridges. The bridge in Cockermouth ended up being a dam as it became more and more clogged with debris. We need to look at planning—it has already been said that there is simply too much building on floodplains. I fully endorse the appeal that my predecessor, Lord Campbell-Savours, made last week in the other place for a complete ban on housing development on the West Cumbria flood plain.

I want to end by talking about insurance. Time and again, residents told me that, after the floods of 2009, they were either unable to get household insurance or it was offered with huge excesses—most commonly, £10,000. Now they cannot sell their homes.

Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Edward Miliband Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on taking up his post as Secretary of State. He has had a distinguished career as an economist, as a Member of the European Parliament and as an eloquent Member of this House since his election in 2005. He was also one of the architects of the coalition agreement and he deserves his place in the Cabinet. We will be a constructive Opposition and I welcome him to his post.

As the right hon. Gentleman is a Liberal Democrat, I know that he practises what he preaches. I am told by friends that he is going to follow his new leader, the Prime Minister, in putting a wind turbine on his house, but that he is going to go even further and put a wind turbine on all seven of his houses. We look forward to the regeneration of the wind turbine industry that that will produce.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend mentioned that the Secretary of State would be putting wind turbines on his house. I wonder whether local Lib Dems will campaign against that, as they always seem to campaign against wind farms, whether onshore or offshore, whereas at a national level they say that they support them.

[Edward Miliband]

No doubt that will be the case.

Let me say right at the outset that now we are in opposition, I intend for us both to hold the Secretary of State to account and to be constructive. In that spirit, there are some measures that we welcome, which would have been in a Labour Gracious Speech. The help for the home energy efficiency pay-as-you-save proposal is very important and we look forward to scrutinising the measures that come forward on that. The measures on the smart grid are also important, as is reform of the energy market—the work that we started in government. Internationally, we will fully support his efforts to try to get the binding treaty either at Cancun or in Cape Town that we failed to get at Copenhagen, and I will happily share with him some of the scars of Copenhagen if I can be of any help in advance of the Cancun summit.

The issue at the heart of this Gracious Speech, in this area and in many others, is whether the Government can provide the long-term direction that the country needs. In the area of climate change and energy, above all others, the country needs a clear sense of direction. The Liberal Democrats and Conservatives had different positions on some key issues at the election. I suppose we cannot blame them for that, as they did not know they would end up in bed together, but the test will be whether they produce a coherent long-term plan on those areas of disagreement or simply try to paper over the cracks, and thus fail to provide the long-term direction the country needs. We should set three tests: whether the new Government have a coherent strategy to deliver on the transition to low-carbon energy, whether they have a plan to secure a green industrial future for Britain and whether they have a commitment to make the transition fair.

Let me address the biggest challenge of all, which is the pre-condition of all other challenges on climate change that we face—the need to take carbon out of our electricity supplies. Our answer, in the low carbon transition plan we published last summer, which I hope was a plan for a decade, was the trinity of low-carbon fuels—clean coal, renewables and nuclear. On clean coal, I am pleased that the coalition agreement supports our investment and the levy that went through the House, as well as the tough coal conditions that we introduced, which are the toughest in the world.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend raises the issue of clean coal. We must also raise with the Government the immoral cost of importing coal from countries such as China and Ukraine, where thousands of miners are killed every year so that we can get relatively cheap coal. When he was the Secretary of State, he agreed to take forward this issue in the international arena. Will he join me in asking the new Secretary of State to do the same?

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend raised this important issue at the end of the last Parliament. We hope to work with the Government on that, as I am sure it is a cross-party concern. No doubt he will campaign on this issue as eloquently as he does on many others.

We will scrutinise the Secretary of State’s plans for an emissions performance standard. There is concern about whether that will lead to uncertainty in investment in coal and gas, but, again, we will judge the Government on the measures they introduce. There is some urgency on this issue, so I hope that plans will be produced speedily.

On clean coal, I think the Government are broadly in agreement with our plans, but what about renewables, which are the second part of the trinity of low carbon that we need? The Conservatives said in their manifesto that they agreed with our target of 15% renewable energy by 2020. The Liberal Democrats said they wanted a figure of about 40% by 2020, which I think is completely unrealistic. How have they resolved that difference? The new Government do not seem to have a target. They have 15% as a baseline, but say that they want the figure to be higher, and they have referred the issue to the Committee on Climate Change. There is a deeper problem here, because the Government say they want a larger target, but they are not willing to support the measures needed even to deliver existing targets. The Secretary of State made much of our record on renewables. We are the world leader in offshore wind generation, but it is true that we lag behind on onshore wind. However there is one very good reason for that, and he knows it as well as I do—most wind farm applications are blocked by Conservative councils. One might put it this way:

“At local level, Conservative councils are simply not heeding Cameron’s green call.”

Those are not my words, but those of the Secretary of State, writing about Conservative opposition to wind farms, so he knows that is the root of the problem.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman tell the House why his Government failed to take the decisions or create the climate to have new investment in electricity generation, and why they left this country with insufficient capacity and the danger of the lights going out?

[Edward Miliband]

I do not agree with that. The question for Britain is whether to meet our security of supply needs in a high-carbon way, by building gas-fired power stations, or in a low-carbon way, by building renewables and nuclear. That is why what I am saying is so important.

[The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mrs Caroline Spelman)]

rose—

[Edward Miliband]

Oh, some help from the right hon. Lady. How kind of her.

[Mrs Spelman]

Coming very recently from a Department for Communities and Local Government brief, I can help all Members of the House on this. It was the original Conservative plan, and is now the coalition’s plan, to allow local communities to keep the business rate from the tariff that comes with the wind Bill, so that communities who take wind turbines in their local communities will also gain from them. That is part of promoting that form of renewable energy.

[Edward Miliband]

I am sure that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change will be very grateful for that help from his right hon. Friend, but I do not think that that is enough. Let me explain why. I gave that quote not to embarrass him, but to raise a very important issue.

[Chris Huhne]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Edward Miliband]

In a moment.

We said in our manifesto that every council should have a local target to help meet the overall 15% target for the country as a whole—not that they should have a disproportionate target, but that they should make a contribution to the overall target. The Conservatives, including the right hon. Lady, were against that, but I thought that the Liberal Democrats were in favour of our strategy. I attended a Guardian debate on climate change with the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) during the election, and he said that he supported my policy. By the way, I regret that he is not in the Government, because I think they are poorer without him. Now, what do we see in the coalition document? The Tories have won the argument: there will be no local obligation to contribute to the national target, because of the abolition of regional strategies. So what is it? It is a charter for every council to be able to say, “Not in my back yard.” The Secretary of State said in his first interview in The Times that he is going to build 15,000 wind turbines—he is going to make a start by putting seven on his own houses—but that will not happen without a strategy, and so far, I see no strategy from him.

[Chris Huhne]

The right hon. Gentleman needs to distinguish between setting a Government target and delivering on the ground, which is much more important. One thing that the Government are going to do is to under-promise and over-deliver as opposed to what happened with the last Government, who over-promised and under-delivered. On the point that my right honourable colleague the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs made, we should remember what the evidence shows, from good examples of installing wind farms such as the Gigha wind farm in the highlands, where sharing the benefits led to support for it and its rapid installation.

[Edward Miliband]

The right hon. Gentleman is going to have to do better than that—it is just a load of old hot air. He is trying to increase our target, but he is taking away one of the key levers needed to help us meet the target. You do not have to take my word for that, Mr Speaker—you can take the word of the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, who supported our position. If he would like to intervene to tell me, or his former right hon. Friend, who is now the Secretary of State, that he agrees that local councils need to contribute to the 15% target, I would be very happy to give way to him. [Interruption.] I think that says it all. The splits are already appearing.

[Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)]

Surely, it is worse than that. By starting again with the planning regulations, we are going to lose all the momentum we have developed over the past three or four years, and we are going to encourage investors to go to other parts not only of Europe but of the world.

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend anticipates a later section of my speech. He makes a very important point.

[Robert Flello]

Have I missed something here? Up and down the country, whenever I have seen protest flags and signs saying, “No wind farm here”, they have never said, “No wind farm here unless of course you want to give us some money.” Poorer communities will have to put up with wind farms as the only way of getting money into their communities while better-off communities will say, “Not in our back yard, thank you very much.”

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend eloquently makes his point. I am afraid that the truth is that the right hon. Gentleman, in his first few days in the job, has obviously sold down the river his former Liberal Democrat colleagues, and they will take note.

Let us move on to the next part of delivering the low-carbon agenda: nuclear power, which was a very small feature of the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. He spoke one line through gritted teeth about nuclear power. I wonder why. I think that I know the reason. Let us be clear that our position on nuclear power is that the challenge of climate change is so great that we need nuclear as well as renewables and clean coal, because the challenge of climate change is so big. That is the position of the vast majority of Conservative Members––they are nodding away, which is great because we agree with them.

Of course, the Liberal Democrat position was against new nuclear power. The Liberal Democrats say in their manifesto that they

“reject a new generation of new nuclear power stations”.

But I am in a generous mood, so let us not criticise them for that, because the judgment is one of whether they have managed to achieve a proper long-term agreement, with a clear position, or whether they have just papered over the cracks.

The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), is instructive on the issue. He said about nuclear investment that

“Clarity is essential if new investment is to happen.”

I agree with him, so let us apply his test to the new Government. The coalition agreement says that the Government will introduce a national planning statement and that the Liberal Democrats can continue to maintain their opposition to nuclear power, but it does not end there. It says that

“a Liberal Democrat spokesperson will speak against the Planning Statement…but…Liberal Democrat MPs will abstain”.

Let us be clear that there is not one Government position on nuclear power, not two Government positions, but three positions: the Government are notionally in favour of it; a Liberal Democrat representative will speak against it—I do not know who that will be; it might be the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark, or, presumably, the right hon. Gentleman—and the party itself will sit on the fence in any vote. We always knew that being a Liberal Democrat in opposition meant not having to choose, but old habits seem to die hard: they seem to think that being a Liberal Democrat in government means not having to choose either.

The right hon. Gentleman seems to have passed responsibility for new nuclear power to his deputy, the hon. Member for Wealden. The responsibilities of the Department of Energy and Climate Change have come out and the Secretary of State seems to have abdicated responsibility for this issue. Delivering on new nuclear power is a very big task that needs the personal role of the Secretary of State. I used to chair the Nuclear Development Forum, bringing together all the different partners in industry to drive things forward and ensure that we would deliver on time. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will think again about abdicating responsibility to the Minister of State, much as I admire him.

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

My right hon. Friend says that the challenge of climate change is so great that we need nuclear power as well as renewables and energy efficiency, but given that we have to reduce our emissions in the next eight to 10 years if we listen to the scientists, we need to consider what is the most cost-effective and the fastest way to do that. Is nuclear power not a massive distraction in that debate? Even if we doubled the amount of nuclear power, we would cut our emissions by only 8%. Putting money into renewables and efficiency is far more effective.

[Edward Miliband]

I welcome the hon. Lady to the House. I wish that the Labour party had won her seat, but she comes to the House with a distinguished campaigning record on green issues, and she will inform our debates and bring great expertise to them.

I disagree with the hon. Lady about nuclear power, because we have to plan for the long term. She is right that we have to meet an urgent challenge, but we also have 80% targets for 2050, and we must drive our targets for 2020 beyond 2020 to 2025 and 2030. The Opposition’s view is that nuclear power needs to play a role.

[Simon Hughes]

The right hon. Gentleman is part of the Labour party’s conversion to nuclear power, and he knows that my party has not done so. As well as the fact that nuclear power cannot deliver quickly, is it not true that the contribution that it could deliver is so far away that it will also make a minimal contribution, if one at all? Can he honestly tell the House that he believes that nuclear power can be delivered in this country without public subsidy, unlike in the United States, Finland or any other country in the world?

[Edward Miliband]

Yes, I can, because we have learned the lessons of Britain’s past on nuclear power, as well as international lessons. What have we said? For example, we said that companies will have to put aside money to cover legacy waste. I honestly believe that that is necessary. That is not to say that nuclear power has no challenges, but the challenge of climate change is far bigger, and we reject the alternatives at our peril.

The mystery is that the Secretary of State and the new Government seem to have three positions on nuclear power, but there is a revealing history, and we need to be clear and honest about the fact that Liberal Democrats said in the past that, if they ever got into government, they would do everything that they could to stop nuclear power happening. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), who is not in his place, said:

“I assure any investors who may be watching our debate...that their investment will be at risk if we play a part in any future Government, because if we had the chance we would seek to slow down, and if possible to stop, the development of nuclear power.”—[Official Report, 30 April 2008; Vol. 475, c. 322.]

I have to tell the Secretary of State, whom I greatly respect, that people will think that that is his and the new Government’s hidden agenda. He has said no to nuclear and described it as a “dead end”. It is quite simple: to show the clarity that the Minister of State says is necessary and to send a clear signal, I urge the Secretary of State to say that he was wrong to say, “Our message is clear: no to nuclear.” The grown-up thing to do is to admit that he got it wrong and that he wants nuclear power to be part of this country’s energy mix. Surely, if he believes in his own policy on public subsidy, all the Liberal Democrats should vote for it. He has set a policy—we do not disagree with it—and Liberal Democrat Members should vote for it. Sending those mixed signals is not good for the business community.

Let me end my comments on nuclear power by making the point that there is a very strange thing in the coalition agreement at the end of the section on nuclear power. I have been scratching my head about it. It says that they—presumably, the people who wrote the coalition agreement—want

“clarity that this will not be regarded as an issue of confidence”.

What an extraordinary thing for a Government to say about their own policy. Oppositions normally say that they do not have confidence in a Government’s policy. The Government are saying that their do not have confidence in their own policy. What confidence can the world outside have in the Government’s policy when they say that they do not have confidence in it?

The person whom I feel most sorry for is the Minister of State. He must be tearing out his hair. He spent many distinguished years in opposition. He persuaded the Prime Minister to abandon his position that nuclear was merely a last resort, and now he ends up with the right hon. Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) in charge. Someone said rather unkindly last week that it really is like having a vegan in charge of McDonald’s. I think that that is very unfair, but Tory MPs, most of whom support nuclear power, must be shaking their heads. The coalition has given us the dogma of the Tories on wind farms, which will mean that they find it difficult to deliver, and the dogma of the Liberal Democrats about nuclear power. Neither side is willing to face up to the tough decisions that we need to make as a country to make the low-carbon transition.

[Malcolm Wicks]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that, although the new Secretary of State seems to wish to adopt a laissez-faire approach—“It’s nothing to do with me; it’s up to the industry on nuclear”—the reality is that, whether on the generic assessment of the technology, siting arrangements or deep geological disposal, one needs a Secretary of State to drive things forward? The Secretary of State talks about clarity. People wish for nuclear fusion one day. Is not the reality that we now have nuclear confusion?

[Edward Miliband]

My right hon. Friend, who has a distinguished record on these matters, is right.

We face a third problem with low-carbon transition: planning, which my hon. Friends have mentioned. I am afraid that both sides of the coalition subscribe to the idea that they should abolish the Infrastructure Planning Commission. Its abolition is absolutely the last thing that we need. For years, the thing that has held up large-scale energy projects is planning. We have worked with business to establish a system to provide certainty in which directions are set by accountable politicians and specific decisions are resolved independently. Business welcomed it and the CBI said that it was

“vital for the strategic infrastructure”,

but now the Government want to scrap it. And who gets to make the decision on new nuclear plants under the new system? None other than the Secretary of State, because politicians have retaken control, but he has a policy in which even the coalition agreement does not have confidence. On the essential test of the long-term direction on climate change—on how we decarbonise our energy supply—I fear that the Government are already failing.

[Mr Betts]

I should like to raise the issue that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) mentioned: the proposed £80 million loan for Sheffield Forgemasters to which the previous Government agreed. Is it not vital, if we are to develop a new nuclear industry in this country, that British industry is given the best chance to compete for work in building new nuclear reactors? Is it not worrying not only that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change will take the decision on nuclear, but that his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills will take the decision about the review of the grant to Sheffield Forgemasters?

[Edward Miliband]

Let me welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Deputy Speaker, and welcome you back to the House.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and he prefigures the next part of my speech, because the second test is whether we can show that low carbon is about not just climate change, but the future of our economy. To his credit, the Secretary of State talked about the importance of an industrial strategy.

In the last 18 months, the previous Government pursued an active industrial strategy. Four of the world’s five biggest offshore wind manufacturers all said that they were coming to Britain: Siemens, GE, Clipper, and Mitsubishi. Nissan said that it would make electric cars in Sunderland. We also created the chance to be at the centre of the nuclear supply chain through Sheffield Forgemasters. Those things happened not by accident, but because we had a plan that recognised that even in a market economy, Government must nurture new industries that the private sector will not invest in on its own.

In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats promised £400 million of Government investment in shipyards in the north of England and Scotland, to convert them to wind energy. We no longer hear anything about that; we do not hear of it in the coalition agreement or in the Gracious Speech. It is worse than that, as was indicated in the interventions on the Secretary of State’s speech. Now the Government say that every spending decision since January will be reviewed. That includes decisions on grants to companies such as Mitsubishi to make wind turbines; port investment for offshore wind manufacturers, which is very important; money for Nissan to build electric vehicles; and the £80 million loan to Sheffield Forgemasters regarding the nuclear supply chain.

Remember, the Liberal Democrats said at the election that they agreed with Labour that spending should not be cut this year, so I have to say to the Secretary of State that this uncertainty is a total betrayal of their position at the election. They went round the country telling people that there should not be spending cuts this year; they agreed with us. People will have voted Liberal Democrat, apparently confident in the knowledge that the Liberal Democrats were with us on the question of industrial investment.

[Chris Huhne]

The right hon. Gentleman will remember that during the election campaign, quite an important event happened on the international markets: the international markets beat up a country in southern Europe called Greece, which happens to have a smaller budget deficit than that bequeathed to this Government by the Labour Government.

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[Mr Deputy Speaker (Hugh Bayley)]

Before the shadow Secretary of State replies, I remind new Members that the procedure is that you do not intervene on an intervention, even if it is a rather long one.

[Edward Miliband]

So there we have it—the Greek defence. A person may vote Liberal Democrat, but along sails the Greek defence, which means that one does not need to keep one’s promises. Promises do not mean anything from the Liberal Democrats if something happens in Greece. The Secretary of State will have to do a lot better than that.

[Rachel Reeves]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that Greece’s debt is 110% of its gross domestic product? That is twice as high a ratio of debt to GDP as that in the UK. That, and not the budget deficit, is the important point with regard to sustainability. The budget deficits of Greece and the UK are comparable, but in terms of sustainability, the issue is the level of debt. As the UK’s debt is half the level of Greece’s, those comparisons are scaremongering excuses for policies that the Conservatives always wanted to pursue.

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend gives the House and the Secretary of State an economics lecture.

[Chris Huhne]

rose—

[Edward Miliband]

The Secretary of State is obviously feeling wounded.

[Chris Huhne]

On a matter of fact, may I point out that while Governments sometimes have to refinance parts of their debt, they have to finance their budget deficit? It is the budget deficit that is scaring the markets, not the levels of overall debt.

[Edward Miliband]

The truth is, though, that since the Budget of my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor in March, tax revenues have been stronger and the budget deficit is lower than it was at the time of the election. The Greek defence will not do, I am afraid. The uncertainty that the Secretary of State is causing with his willingness to look again at the decisions that I mentioned is a total betrayal of the Liberal Democrats’ position at the election.

I think that we can hear the sound of old scores being settled, because the orange book, as represented by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is winning, and the Secretary of State, who, to be fair to him, is at the more progressive end of the Liberal Democrat party—or so I thought—has lost. I say to the Secretary of State in all seriousness that it would be the worst sort of short-termism—something that the Government are supposed to be against—to cut those investments, which are essential for the long-term health of the British economy. If he is serious about the green industrial agenda, as he said he was in his speech, it is his responsibility to defend those investments, and we will judge him on that, because those investments are essential to make Britain part of the green industrial revolution. I hope that in the coming weeks he will defend tooth and nail those investments in the green industries of the future.

[Albert Owen]

rose—

[Mr Anderson]

rose—

[Edward Miliband]

What a great choice! I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson).

[Mr Anderson]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of the industrial revolution in the north-east is driven and supported by the regional development agency, another thing that will disappear under the coalition Government?

[Edward Miliband]

I agree with my hon. Friend, and that speaks to the attitude, which I hope the Secretary of State does not share, that the only thing that is needed to make our economy work is for Government to get out of the way. I do not think that that will create the economy of the future.

[Albert Owen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for the support that he gave my community and my constituency on new nuclear build, with Wylfa being one of the first in line. On planning, do we not have the worst of both worlds, with the scrapping of the Infrastructure Planning Commission on the one hand, and no planning commission or planning statement in place on the other? That uncertainty is costing business—

[Albert Owen]

It is. Business speaks to me. The Secretary of State might be talking to one company, but he has not talked to the companies that want to invest billions in my constituency.

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes his point eloquently. The uncertainty and the scrapping of the IPC are dogma.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that industry requires not only certainty of future energy supply but—given the long-term planning and investment needed for new nuclear and related technologies—certainty and conviction on the part of the Government promoting those technologies, rather than the dithering and delay symptomatic of the new Government?

[Edward Miliband]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we all accept that we would like a transition towards electric cars instead of petrol cars, it will naturally breed a massive increase in the demand for electricity, which will require many more nuclear power stations? The Government do not seem to see further than their nose on this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point: the demand for electricity is likely to increase, not decrease—even with measures on energy efficiency.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman delivers an eloquent speech, but would it not have much more credibility if he were to admit that the Labour party had 13 years to give us energy security and did nothing about it?

[Edward Miliband]

That is not true, because when we look at what we have achieved, in terms of the reduction in carbon emissions in this country and the transition that we have started on new nuclear, which was initially opposed by both parties on the Government Benches, we see that we are making the transition that needed to be made.

[Robert Flello]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Edward Miliband]

Let me move on to the third test, because I want to allow time for people to come in.

On the third test and the key challenge to ensure that the low carbon transition is fair, we welcome the measures on pay-as-you-save energy. However, there are two matters on which I cannot find anything in the coalition agreement or the Gracious Speech, and I hope that the Secretary of State will indicate at an early opportunity that he wants to move forward on them. The first is the regulation of private and social landlords for energy efficiency. The pay-as-you-save measures are important steps for home owners, but in the past few years we have not seen among private landlords the take-up of basic measures on loft and cavity wall insulation. It should not really be a matter of partisan debate, so I hope that the Secretary of State will move on regulation, because we are talking about some of the poorest people in our society, and they are living in substandard accommodation in terms of energy efficiency.

The second issue, which again I hope is not a matter of big disagreement, is about implementing the measure on compulsory social tariffs which we passed in the Energy Act 2010. In our manifesto we said that we would provide for money off the bills of older, poorer pensioners, and the Secretary of State will want to consider the options that are available to him, but again I hope that at an early opportunity he will make good on those measures.

[Robert Flello]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Edward Miliband]

Let me make one other point on fairness, and then I shall give way to my hon. Friend.

I also urge the Secretary of State, in his discussions on energy market reform, to look both at investment, which is very important, and at trying to open up the market beyond the big six energy companies, because the truth is that they control 99% of the market and it would be better for competition if we could find ways of opening it up. Ofgem has put forward some ideas, and if we had been back in government we would have wanted to push them forward.

[Robert Flello]

On my right hon. Friend’s last point, I must say that it is not only the big six energy companies that are playing the market for profit, rather than for the consideration of the final user, but the banks and traders. I listened very carefully to the Secretary of State’s speech but heard no mention of the Warm Front scheme. I have had my concerns about its operational levels, but does my right hon. Friend share my concern that, because of yet another uncertainty, my constituents and those of other hon. Members do not know whether to press ahead and see if they can obtain some funding through Warm Front?

[Edward Miliband]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Warm Front has done a lot, and I hope that the Secretary of State, in the discussions that he will no doubt have with his colleague the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, will defend that scheme.

We do wish the new Government well in this crucial policy area, both at home and abroad, but I say in all candour to the Secretary of State, as I have said in my speech, that if they carry on as they have started, fudging key differences and papering over the cracks, they will produce a recipe for muddle and confusion, and not the long-term direction that we need. Their renewables policy does not yet add up, because they have Lib-Dem targets with Tory planning policy; their nuclear policy does not add up, because they have three positions; and on industrial policy the risk is that short-term cuts will deny us the long-term economic strength that we need.

In the months ahead, we will hold the Government to account on delivery, because it is in the interests of everyone in this country that we deliver on fairness, on jobs, on energy security and on climate change.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—