Net Zero Emissions Target

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 12th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

Everything my hon. Friend does is with enthusiasm. We will publish the details of the terms of reference and composition of the group in the next few days, and I hope it will meet with his approval.

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

The Secretary of State knows that the reason for our leadership on emissions is that we have relocated much of our manufacturing to China and elsewhere, and closed our coalmines. Is he aware of the predictions of Professor Yangyang Xu, published in Nature magazine, which simply show that because there is more methane production than originally projected and less sulphur, which has a cooling effect, we are expected now to reach the 1.5° threshold not by 2040 but by 2030? In the light of that, will the Secretary of State look again at the assumptions underlying the report on which he is predicating his 2050 target, with a view to bringing that forward? Will he listen to some of the pressure groups, such as Extinction Rebellion, which want firmer action, be it getting rid of fracking, or action on wave, solar or wind, and move forward more quickly, because there is a desperate emergency and this statement is simply too little, too late?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman is wrong in saying that the reduction in emissions comes simply from exporting our production; he does a disservice to the hundreds and thousands of men and women who work in our renewables industry and lead the world in the development of offshore wind. It is a source of great national pride and I hope he will join in that. The Committee on Climate Change is a serious and substantial body that has done an important piece of work. It was rightly established by his party when he was in government, and those on both sides of the House have respected its advice. The Committee references and is impelled by the latest climate science, which, as he says, requires a more urgent response than was previously committed to. That is exactly why it has provided this advice and exactly why we are legislating to implement it.

Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Monday 7th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I will be very clear that all of the workers’ rights that are enjoyed under the EU will be part of that Bill and will be brought across into UK law. That is very clear. There is no intention of having a sunset clause.

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

Currently all workers’ rights are guaranteed by the European Court of Justice. After we leave they will be guaranteed by the Supreme Court, advised by us. Therefore, in the future they can all be ripped up if we leave the EU, if that is the choice of future Governments; if we stay in the EU they cannot be ripped up but are guaranteed. They are guaranteed only under EU law. They cannot be sustainably guaranteed by the Secretary of State.

[Greg Clark]

I am surprised by the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. I would have thought that hundreds of years of parliamentary sovereignty and a robust and independent judiciary are a very strong guarantee of the rights we have in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

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

Devolution of power and responsibility to Wales required an Act of Parliament and a referendum of the people, yet Manchester and elsewhere are seeing ad hoc devolution that heralds the break up of the NHS. Is it not time to do this properly, rather than play a political game in the run-up to an election?

[Greg Clark]

I am very surprised that the hon. Gentleman seems to be against the devolution that has been welcomed right across the country and that has led to the leaders of Cardiff approaching the Government to request a city deal. I will visit Cardiff later this week to begin negotiations. They will be very concerned to hear that the hon. Gentleman is against it.

Living Standards

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

As the hon. Lady knows, I spend a lot of time in Merseyside; we met on the other side of the water in Liverpool recently. I would be very happy on one of my visits to Merseyside to meet her and make the point that making the economy competitive, including in the north-west and her constituency, and getting people into jobs and bringing unemployment down is the best way that people can build living standards that are sustainably high. I will come on to say a bit more about that.

There have been 1.3 million jobs created in the private sector, but what has been the Labour party’s reaction, including today, to that news? The first reaction was silence. The entire Labour Front-Bench team went to ground for the summer, although the hon. Member for Leeds West had an excuse. However, three years have passed since she stated in her excellent maiden speech:

“It would not be responsible or sensible to oppose every spending cut or tax increase.”

It was in that same maiden speech that she told the Chamber that she would

“encourage this Government when they get it right”.—[Official Report, 8 June 2010; Vol. 511, c. 239.]

Now would be a good time for her to do what she promised. I would be more than happy to give way to her if she acknowledges that the hard work of the British people is showing success that she did not predict. No answer.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that since his Government took office, GDP per person—productivity per person—and average wages have fallen? We are seeing a glimmer of hope, but the reality is that the 1 million extra jobs are on the same baseline. In other words, that is not success; it is failure. There would have been growth under Labour, as was the case up to 2010.

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman parts from his Front-Bench colleagues and at least acknowledges that there is progress. He calls it a glimmer of hope, but I think the 1.3 million people employed in new private sector jobs regard it as much more than that. The hon. Gentleman will know that the first step to creating sustainably high living standards is to get people into work and into good jobs. I will say more about that in a moment.

Finance Bill

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Greg Clark)]

I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that I went to a comprehensive school in Middlesbrough, not to Eton.

[Geraint Davies]

I am sorry that the right hon. Gentleman no longer has any school friends. Those who have abandoned the communities from which they came have proposed legislation to punish the poorest and reward the richest, which is a great shame. It is not too late for the Minister to think again about what is fair and right in distributive economics.

The reality is that the marginal impact of this change on the competitiveness of the City of London is very small indeed; it is not a serious argument. I can imagine the greed-fuelled lobbyists who come here on behalf of the City to demand an extra £145 million being the sort of people who say, “Oh, well, we have got to give these people more money, because otherwise they will leave the country.” We have heard all that before. In any case, many of those individuals have all sorts of tax havens, about which the Government pay lip service to investigating.

At the same time as we hear alleged concerns about those rich people avoiding tax, the Government say to them, “I’ll tell you what; here’s another 5p off the income tax.” People sometimes ask why there has been a 64% increase in bonuses this year. Could it be because the Government have provoked it, as people move their income from a tax year where they pay 50p to a tax year where they pay 45p? It was completely predictable, and it was even factored into the Treasury figures in the form of behavioural changes. The perverse thing was to hear the argument, “Oh, well, we are going to move to 45p instead of 50p because more money can be raised that way. Look, we are going to encourage our mates to move all their money to save tax”—[Interruption.] That proves that it is an absolute farce.

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[Geraint Davies]

It is interesting to see that the hon. Gentleman has changed from his red braces to blue braces—and very nice, too! I obviously do not regard the whole City of London and the banking community as parasites, as they are a major engine for exports, growth and productivity in Britain. The issue is about managed capitalism and what is the acceptable face of capitalism. It seems to me that many people on the hon. Gentleman’s side are not at all concerned, as more and more money is given to people who have already acquired enormous pots of money.

The distribution of income has shifted massively since 2010. We have seen the incomes of a large number of people in the top 10% growing by 5.5% each year over the past two years—at a time when most people have had pay cuts or pay freezes, certainly in the public sector, or lost their jobs. We have heard the Government boasting—this is their latest creative thought—that an extra 1.2 million people are in jobs, yet that has been contradicted by the Office for National Statistics. Even if there were another million extra people in work, with no extra growth and no extra output in the economy, productivity is going down and things are not going well. Nevertheless, the answer from the Government is still to give more and more money to the richest people and less to the poorest, and that is supposed to get us out of the mess, but it does not.

This stamp duty on transactions is the tip of an iceberg. I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have come on to describe the entire iceberg rather than the tip at the top, which we are talking about. It is important for people to stand up and be counted on this issue. There is no justification for these extra few buckets of money being thrown in the direction of those who have most. There is a great need for a more balanced growth strategy, whereby there is investment in infrastructure across the piece and where the opportunities for tax and spend are more fairly spread, so that together we can build a future that works and a future that cares—a one-nation Britain of which we can all be proud. I do not think that this suggestion makes sense, so I am very much in favour of putting a halt to this £145 million handout to people who are already rich, as it will not make any appreciable difference to the competitiveness of the City of London.

[Greg Clark]

This has been an astonishing debate. I have a lot of time for the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), but he must have been pretty dozy in recent months if he thinks that this is a Budget measure that has emerged by stealth having hitherto been hidden from view, because it was given considerable prominence in the Chancellor’s Budget speech. The Chancellor said, in the Chamber,

“I also want Britain to be the place where people raise money and invest. Financial services are about much more than banking. In places such as Edinburgh and London we have a world-beating asset management industry, but they are losing business to other places in Europe. We act now with a package of measures to reverse that decline, and we will abolish the schedule 19 tax, which is payable only by UK-domiciled funds.”—[Official Report, 20 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 939.]

However, the measure did not only feature in the Chancellor’s Budget speech. It was the subject of a press conference, and received quite a lot of publicity on the money pages. I should have thought that the shadow Financial Secretary would be aware of that, and would know what a good reception the proposal was given in the very important financial services industry.

Many misconceptions need to be cleared up. The hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) talked about banking, but this measure has nothing whatever to do with banking. A regrettable consequence of what has happened in recent years is that the financial services sector as a whole has too often been equated with the banking industry and associated with its frequently catastrophic misjudgments and regulatory failures, and people have been tainted unfairly by that association. Just as there are hundreds of thousands of ordinary working people employed by banks who bear no responsibility for—indeed, are sickened by—some of the misdeeds that were committed by those at the top before and during the crisis, there are people who work hard for a living elsewhere in financial services, who contribute to our national income, the taxes that pay for our public services and our foreign exchange earnings, and who have certainly not put taxpayers' funds at risk in the way that characterised the worst excesses of the banking industry.

The investment management industry in this country is a case in point. It employs 30,000 people across the United Kingdom, mostly in areas such as administration, IT and legal services. At least 10,000 of these people, who are directly employed in the sector—I am not talking about those who are ancillary to it—are based outside London and the south-east. A large number of them are concentrated in Scotland—I should have thought that the hon. Member for Dumfries and Galloway (Mr Brown) would be aware of that—and in the north-west and the north midlands. In fact, 12% of the asset management industry is in Scotland. I am amazed that the hon. Member for Nottingham East—not just as shadow Financial Secretary, but as a Nottingham Member of Parliament—did not recognise the important contribution made by investment management in his city. He should be aware that the professional services sector in Nottingham is an important component of the city’s economy.

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[Geraint Davies]

rose—

[Greg Clark]

I want to conclude now. I hope that the House will welcome, as commentators universally have, a significant boost to the competitiveness of a very important sector for jobs in every part of the United Kingdom. I hope that, having had the explanation, the hon. Member for Nottingham East will feel willing to withdraw the new clause and await the formal consultation, which will accompany next year’s Finance Bill.

Finance (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Geraint Davies]

That is precisely right, because the creative challenge is how to get the banking community to invest in jobs and small business, and one way is to take some money from them and create some jobs and small businesses. If they cannot work out how to do it, that seems a reasonable thing to do.

[Greg Clark]

Through the hon. Gentleman, perhaps I may express the dilemma that was raised by his hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies). I fear that a cruel deception is being perpetrated on the unemployed. They feel that a sum of money will be available to them, but it simply is not possible to raise £2 billion when the total bonus pool is less than that. I think they should know that.

[Geraint Davies]

Yes. Well, obviously, we clearly need to look at aggregate sums, but what is being debated here is—[Interruption.] What is being debated here is, is whether it is right that a community of people—I am talking particularly about people in the upper echelons of the banking community—who are making obscene bonuses should be given more and more money for doing no more work and having the taxpayers covering their backs in terms of risk, at a time when we are seeing an escalation of unemployment in various communities, including some that I represent, and when the very poorest are being asked to deal with obscene levels of pain in order to reduce the deficit problem.

Infrastructure

Debate between Greg Clark and Geraint Davies

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I do not quite understand the basis of the hon. Lady’s intervention, because the point I was making was precisely about the gulf between the capital and our provincial cities, and she has pointed out that London streaked ahead. By contrast, in other countries the performance of the regional economy kept pace with the capital, and that is something I want to champion; I want to encourage our provincial cities to be the equal of the capital on growth. I know she will recognise that in the past two years, at least, the performance of my native north-east, the place she represents, has indeed outstripped the rest of the country on creating jobs.

[Geraint Davies]

On the basis of what the Minister has said, does he agree that Wales should get its fair share of the High Speed 2 investment? It will run from the south to the north of England at a cost of £33 billion, and our fair share would be about £1.9 billion. On the basis of what he has just said, does he not agree that Wales needs a fair deal and that extra £2 billion?

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Gentleman is a fair man. He will know that the plans to electrify the Great Western railway and the railways in the valleys represent an important investment—I am sure he would acknowledge that—and a big contribution to the economic revival of Wales. It is very important that they should do that.

The divergence between London and the south-east, and the rest of the country is not a record of which to be proud. In the most difficult of circumstances, this Government are having to find the money to build the infrastructure that should already have been put in place during these years of plenty, speeding Britain to recovery. By failing to control current spending in the good times, the legacy of the previous Labour Government was not just a record deficit, but an infrastructure backlog and reduced capital budgets to pay for it. We need to invest more in infrastructure. Nick Pearce, of Labour’s favourite think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research, has said that the

“cut…was a decision of the last Labour government which the Coalition inherited”.

We need to remember that successful infrastructure investment does not begin with the allocation of budgets, but with clear-sighted, strategic decision making.

Let me give just two examples of the way in which Labour, over 13 years, failed to address the strategic need for leadership on infrastructure, the first of which relates to roads. When Labour was first elected, John Prescott was appointed as Secretary of State and soon took charge of transport. One of his first actions was to cancel almost all approved road schemes, all across the country, including the dualling of the A21 in my constituency. The reason was not that the Government did not have the cash. I am pleased to say that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) had left the economy in rude health and so they were in a good position. These road schemes were cancelled, along with many others, because John Prescott had fallen under the spell of a doctrine that said, “If you build more roads, they will only attract more traffic, so you should not build them in the first place.”

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[Greg Clark]

It is disappointing when the Opposition treat these things as matters of levity rather than of seriousness that should be pursued. I neglected to mention the improvements to Reading station only because if I were to list all the investments that are taking place, I would detain the House for longer than I have done already.

Had Labour in government taken a greater interest in the long-term future of our railways and of our cities and begun action immediately when it took office, we could have been looking at a high-speed line to Birmingham and beyond opening before the end of this Parliament. High-speed rail is a long-term project. It takes a long time to execute, but even in the two and a half years that this Government have been in office, we have increased the pace of delivery on the ground. As well as six national road schemes funded since October 2010, 17 local transport schemes approved by the Government are already under construction, including the Mansfield interchange, the Kingskerswell bypass and the Portsmouth northern road bridge, and by May 2015, 36 of these vital new schemes will be open.

We are changing the way that decisions are made in funding infrastructure investment. Why should it be the case, as it has been for the past 13 years, that our great cities should have to come cap in hand to London to beg for the investment that they need? Our programme of city deals has given the right of initiative back to the civic and business leaders of the cities themselves. Greater Manchester is, as a result, investing over £2 billion of its own resources in transport infrastructure, and it is able to do so because it has negotiated a city deal that allows it to share directly in the increased prosperity of the area that would otherwise flow to the Treasury. City deals have been struck with each of the eight biggest English cities outside London, and I am currently examining expressions of interest from 20 more cities, from Plymouth to Sunderland, from Preston to Portsmouth.

[Geraint Davies]

I thank the Minister for his generosity in giving way. He mentions the city deals, where the cities invest and get a share of the economic added value. Is that something the Government might consider for Wales so that with investment in economic development, we could get a share back and reinvest?

[Greg Clark]

There is a Government of the Welsh Assembly led by the hon. Gentleman’s party. I commend the example that we have put forward in this country. Our close working with each of the leaders of the eight cities has achieved very encouraging results to date. I dare say the hon. Gentleman can go back to Wales and commend that to his colleagues.

The way that investments can be financed has also been transformed for the better. Labour saddled future generations with PFI debts of £279 billion, of which less than £40 billion has been paid off, and which cost at least five times and often more than the original project cost of the underlying investment.