Making Britain a Clean Energy Superpower

Debate between Edward Miliband and Jim Shannon

Thursday 9th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

I am afraid that all the hon. Gentleman is pointing out is the Government’s failure to go fast enough in driving towards renewables. Of course we need a mix of energy, but this is the question for the House and the country: do we decide that drilling every last drop, which is the Government’s position and which would be a climate disaster, is the right strategy? Or do we decide that the right way to go is home-grown clean power? We say it is home-grown clean power.

The problem is that all the nonsense the Government are coming out with really matters, and it worries me. By the way, I think it will be an electoral disaster for them, and we already see that because the intelligent Conservatives are asking, “Why are we doing all this?” Members on both sides of the House did this together. We built a consensus on climate over the past 20 years, to work across parties and not to weaponise it. People look at America and say. “Well, America has a culture war on climate. Thank goodness we do not have that in Britain.” That was the case until this Prime Minister—not the previous Prime Minister, or the Prime Minister before her—decided to do it.

On the day of the Prime Minister’s climate U-turns, the Home Secretary had a licence to go out and say that the danger of climate action is that it will “bankrupt” the country. The Home Secretary freelances on most issues, but on this issue she is actually speaking for the Prime Minister, because it is echoed by other Cabinet Ministers. This is a massive retreat from the position of both parties for two decades, that leadership on climate is not somehow a danger to our economy but is the way to seize and build our economic future. They have opened the door to the old, discredited idea that we can choose either our economy or the climate, but not both.

It is not just a retreat from the consensus; it is a retreat from reality. The reality is that there is a global race, with countries seeking to go further and faster to create the jobs of the future. No wonder business is horrified. Just last Monday, Amanda Blanc, the chief executive of Aviva, warned about the Government’s commitment to unlimited oil and gas drilling. She said that our climate goals as a country are “under threat”, which

“puts at clear risk the jobs, growth and the additional investment the UK requires”.

The Government try to claim that this is somehow consistent with climate leadership. I mean, come off it!

Seven hundred British climate scientists oppose the changes, and so do the International Energy Agency and the Climate Change Committee, which my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) quoted:

“Expansion of fossil fuel production is not in line with Net Zero.”

The Government’s own net zero tsar, the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), who is in his place, also opposes them. They appointed him to advise them on climate and energy. They said how brilliant he is, and I agree—sorry to ruin his career even further. He is a very intelligent guy. [Interruption.] He is denying it. He has great ideas, and what did he say?

“There is no such thing as a new net zero oilfield.”

Those are not my words, and they are not the words of eco-zealots or Just Stop Oil; they are the words of the right hon. Gentleman, who sits on the Government Benches. He signed the net zero target into law, for goodness’ sake. We have to grow up.

In contrast to the right hon. Gentleman, we have the Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero, whom I like —[Interruption.] I do. We have worked together on climate, but I will now say something not so nice about him. This is what he said yesterday:

“There is nothing fundamentally wrong with oil and gas, it’s emissions from oil and gas that are the problem”.

For goodness’ sake—what does that even mean? Here we are: the people who know what they are talking about do not speak for the Conservative party, and the people who speak for the Conservative party do not know what they are talking about.

I can tell the Secretary of State and her colleagues that this strategy is doomed to fail. The British people do not want a Government who say, “We are going to weaponise the climate crisis.” They do not want a Government who say, “We are desperate. We are behind in the polls”—I remember that feeling—“and we therefore have to turn this into a wedge issue.” They want a Government who will cut bills and tackle the climate crisis. All the Government are doing day after day with all this nonsense is proving that they are not the answer.

What would a Labour King’s Speech have done? Today, every family is paying £180 more on their bill as a result of the onshore wind ban that has been in place since 2015. The Government could have lifted the ban but, two months ago, they did not. They offered a weak, half-hearted compromise that will make no difference. As RenewableUK says,

“the planning system is still stacked against onshore wind”.

Why not lift the onshore wind ban? Why is it harder to build an onshore wind farm than an incinerator? The Government had to shell out billions of pounds in subsidies when the energy crisis hit. I think those subsidies would have been something like £5 billion less if we had not had the onshore wind ban. Then we have offshore wind and the disastrous auction, which added £2 billion to bills, according to the industry.

A Labour King’s Speech would legislate to lift the ban on onshore wind, to speed up the planning process and to sort out the grid, so we can decarbonise our power system by 2030. Clean power is the foundation, and next comes energy efficiency. I am afraid that here the Government have utterly failed, and their complacency is extraordinary. This is what the Climate Change Committee said about the whole sector:

“since 2010 progress has stalled, with no further substantive reductions in emissions.”

It has been a shambolic 13 years. We all know the litany: the disaster of the green deal, the green homes grant, David Cameron’s “cut the green crap”. Insulation measures were running at 1.6 million in 2010, and last year—any offers?—they were running at 78,000, which is 20 times lower. A Labour Government would do what the country is crying out for and have a proper plan, funded by public investment, ramping up to £6 billion a year to provide support for home insulation and low-carbon heating.

Next, let us talk about the green economy and building our economic future. The Government are never short of boasting about their record, but we are actually eighth out of eight major countries in Energy UK’s projections for renewable investment up to 2030. And get this: in the seven months after the passage of the US Inflation Reduction Act, which the Government do not like, the US created almost 10 times more green jobs than the UK created in the previous seven years. So in seven months, the US created 10 times more jobs than we did in seven years. What is the Government’s response to the Inflation Reduction Act? They say it is “dangerous”, “distortive” and “protectionist”. This is not some accident; they do believe that this is a role Government. I am afraid to say that that is a recipe for Britain losing the global race.

What would Labour do differently? We would have a national wealth fund, not with one-off, ad-hoc investments, but a proper plan. We would be investing in ports, our steel industry and electric battery factories. We would also have a new publicly owned energy company, GB Energy, which I am glad the Secretary of State mentioned. It would be partnering the private sector in the industries of the future. The Government object to GB Energy, because they say that we do not need public ownership of energy in Britain. I have to say to the House that the Government may not realise it, but we already have public ownership of energy in Britain, with EDF, Vattenfall, Ørsted and Statkraft. They are all companies wholly or partly owned by states—foreign states. They own our industry. In fact, nearly half of our offshore wind industry is owned by foreign states—by state-owned foreign companies. So the Government take the extraordinary position that it is okay for state-run companies to invest in Britain, so long as they are not British state-owned companies; let French, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian citizens get the wealth from our energy industry, just not British citizens. That is the Government’s position.

This makes me a nerd, but let me say that the late Ian Gilmour wrote an autobiography—[Interruption.] It is not that that makes me a nerd. [Laughter.] He wrote an autobiography about his time in Mrs Thatcher’s Cabinet, and some here will know that its title was “Dancing with Dogma”. That is what we are seeing here, because the Government are in favour of public ownership of our energy assets, so long as it is by foreign states. That does not sound very Conservative to me.

GB Energy would be investing in the industries of the future, partnering local communities to create jobs and wealth for Britain. A Labour King’s Speech would have contained an energy independence Act to make all of this possible: clean power by 2030 to cut bills; a proper energy efficiency plan; a national wealth fund; and GB Energy. That is an energy Bill equal to the scale of the crises we face.

[Jim Shannon]

rose—

[Edward Miliband]

I am going to finish.

The Prime Minister has been in the job for more than a year and he has been rumbled, just as his party has been in power for 13 years and it has been rumbled. For all his talk of change, the public know, as does the House, that he cannot bring the change this country needs. The Government’s pathetic, small legislative programme shows it, and they all know it. They are out of ideas and out of time, and the only solution for our country is for them to be out of office.

Tackling Short-term and Long-term Cost of Living Increases

Debate between Edward Miliband and Jim Shannon

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Edward Miliband]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. At every step of the way, the Government have had the chance to act, and they have not done so.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The figures for Northern Ireland are very interesting: 241,000 people—13% of people—in Northern Ireland are in poverty. Some 17% of all children, 14% of all pensioners and 11% of the whole working-age population are in poverty. Those figures scare me; do they scare the right hon. Gentleman?

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I have been around politics for a long time, as the House knows, but I cannot remember—nobody in the House can remember—facing the kind of emergency that we do currently.

The spring statement was the most recent chance for the Chancellor to redeem himself; it was just days before the April energy price rise came into effect. It was apparent to everyone across this House and in the country that what he had offered was woefully inadequate. People were literally pleading with him to do more on energy bills, but he just doubled down on his failure. He has had three chances in the past seven months, and none of his responses has been equal to the emergency. The truth about this Chancellor is that at every step of the way he has been in denial, slow to act and wholly out of touch in his response.

Corporate Insolvency and Governance Bill

Debate between Edward Miliband and Jim Shannon

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Wednesday 3rd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his position and wish him well. I have a bit of concern about what I refer to as predatory companies, which look for companies that are probably heading towards insolvency and see them as an opportunity to gain something. I wonder whether it is possible to ensure in the Bill that such predatory companies that would prey on those in trouble, of which there are many, are prevented from taking over an asset that is probably solvent in the long term but is not in the short term.

[Edward Miliband]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I once used the word predatory in relation to companies and it was rather controversial, but I think the consensus may have changed. [Interruption.] Government Members are saying it has not; it was worth a try. The hon. Gentleman makes a really important substantive point on which I think Members from all parties can agree, and it goes to the width and breadth of this provision: we have to make sure that companies cannot use it as a way to take their employees for a ride. I know from my conversations with the Secretary of State and the Minister that the intention to make sure that that does not happen is shared throughout the House, but we have to give expression to it in the Bill, and I hope the Government will indeed do so.

Let me turn to some things that are not in the Bill—