Joan Ruddock
Main Page: Joan Ruddock (Labour - Lewisham, Deptford)
Caroline Flint
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his courtesy in acknowledging that the Labour Government achieved a number of important milestones in renewable energy, and showed leadership worldwide in setting climate change targets and targets for the reduction of carbon emissions that were and continue to be challenging. However, I do not accept the woeful description of what we did in government. We doubled renewable energy generation and established Britain as a world leader in offshore wind capacity and in the prototype development of wave and tidal technology, but our achievements are now under threat. As a result of this Government’s mixed messages and failing policies, investment in green growth in the UK is falling. For instance, investment in wind energy fell by 40% in the first year they were in power.
Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
I suggest to my right hon. Friend that for many years there was a consensus across the House that there was no need to invest in renewables because we were self-sufficient in gas and oil. The fact is that no one would have invested when we had such riches off our own shores. We all took time to learn the lessons, but when we did we moved very fast indeed.
Caroline Flint
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for her contribution to that effort. We have to be realistic about the fact that the strategies in this area have been affected by different forms of complacency over many decades on what we could rely on and what was certain in our changing world. Also, importantly, even if we could rely on certain energy sources for a period of time, that would not help us do what we need to do: reduce our carbon emissions. That is why some of the comments from Government Members are so worrying. They could lead people into false arguments about how relying on new ways to access different forms of fossil fuels is somehow the answer. Those sorts of messages are very difficult for investors to understand, because they do not project a sense of moving forward and seem to reflect a view held by some Government Members that, rather than a transition away from fossil fuels, there will be an opportunity around the corner that will allow us to go back to relying on them. We cannot accept that. That is why the Opposition decided to allocate some of our time to debate this and why we will continue to talk about it in future to ensure that we stay on track, because we believe that this opportunity cannot be missed.
Caroline Flint
The extent to which Departments are joined up in the endeavour of realising the potential for new energy industries and jobs worries me tremendously. There are opportunities not only in providing cleaner energy, but in manufacturing the infrastructure to make it happen. I have mentioned the contradictions between the Treasury and the Department of Energy and Climate Change. I am not convinced that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is on board with everything that DECC wants to do. It is also worrying to hear that the Secretary of State for Education is downgrading the efficiency standards for new school buildings. This is one way in which we can use the muscle of Government procurement to make a difference without spending any more money. There are hundreds of ways in which that can be done.
We need a skills strategy. It is not only the school buildings that are important, but what is taught in our schools and how that links with industry. We must reach young people. However, we must not forget the work force in the existing fossil fuel industries. How can their skills be refreshed and transferred to the new industries as they come online? There must be hope for our young people, but there must also be hope for those in work that even if there are changes in their jobs, new jobs will be available for them and their families.
Fourthly, the Government must help to rebalance our economy. This, too, relates to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). Britain’s industrial heartlands—places such as the Humber, the north-east and Cumbria—have the business-cluster potential, the skills, the production, the ports and the energy to forge these new industries. We do not want to be a country that just installs products from overseas; we want to manufacture them. In the 1980s, small wind power developers drifted away from the UK due to a lack of support. Britain’s loss was Denmark’s gain and we have been playing catch-up ever since. Of the £1.2 billion cost of constructing the Walney wind farm, 40% went on turbines and parts that were not made in Britain. We have to do more to develop our supply chain and to support manufacturing in this country, rather than in Germany, Denmark and, increasingly, China.
Marine energy is still a nascent technology, but the potential is there. It would be unforgivable if we lost out on the economic benefits in the way that we did with wind energy in the ’80s. DECC and BIS must work together to be market makers and to build confidence in the British supply chain so that overseas energy companies know that there are British manufacturers who can do the job. At the very least, I would like to know, as a member of the public, what proportion of the steel used to produce turbines and other energy infrastructure is made in the UK.
Finally, the Government must empower the public in energy efficiency, and ensure that the public and communities become energy producers as well as consumers. The green deal must be delivered on fair terms to those people. In the Budget, the Government could cut VAT on home improvements, including those that increase energy efficiency, to 5% to give our economy the boost that it needs and to give power to people and communities.
The UK is not short of the capital skills or technology that are needed to make the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Dame Joan Ruddock
My right hon. Friend, in her excellent speech, has described the Government’s catalogue of disasters in the area of green jobs and growth. Is it any wonder that Friends of the Earth said in its report that it found little or no progress in three quarters of the 77 green policies of this Government that it examined? That is the reality of what this country is facing.
Caroline Flint
That is the reality. That saddens me because the foundations had been laid for a journey on which I believed there was cross-party consensus, which Labour worked hard to achieve in this House. It worries me that we have a Government who are short of a coherent political vision. As a result, we are in danger of missing a golden opportunity, not just to reboot our economy, but to build a more resilient and responsible economy for the future, built on not just sustained but sustainable growth.
If we fail to grasp this opportunity, it will be the public who pay the price through jobs and growth going overseas and through higher energy bills, as we become ever more reliant on volatile fossil fuel prices. UK plc needs an active industrial strategy focused on growth, skilled job creation and a revival of Britain’s manufacturing sector, which can be both clean and green.
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend will know that the costs of the renewable heat incentive and CCS were put on to consumer bills under the previous Government. We have removed those levies, and those schemes are now paid for through taxation. That is a classic example of how we have helped consumers.
Dame Joan Ruddock
I congratulate the Secretary of State on his new position. He refers to the desire to be the greenest Government ever, and we really must hold him to that. Why, then, does he think a leading environmentalist, whom his party courted before the election, said at the end of last year that the coalition was
“on a path to becoming the most environmentally destructive government to hold power in this country since the modern environmental movement was born”?
Mr Davey
I certainly do not recognise that description of this Government. It has been commented in one or two places in the press that the one thing to which I have been most committed throughout my political life is environmentalism—my first political activity was in the environmental movement. I can therefore tell the right hon. Lady of my complete commitment to that agenda.
The motion contains some good points. Cross-party support, for example, for the Climate Change Act 2008 makes the UK an attractive place to do clean-energy business—the right hon. Member for Don Valley was gracious enough to admit that the coalition parties supported the Act, which is important. A consensus on many such issues, whether energy infrastructure investment or climate change, is extremely important, because they are about investors investing over decades. If we are to hit our 2050 target, we need to give those investors and the wider economy a lot of confidence.
Mr Davey
My hon. Friend is right. However, we were behind Bulgaria, Romania and the Czech Republic. We were at the bottom of the European league. This coalition Government are going to rocket us up that league. We want to ensure that our incredible offshore wind potential is realised. It was Labour that failed to do its job properly in government. If Labour had not done so, we would already have more manufacturing, more design and more added value here in Britain. Instead, we have seen manufacturers in Europe and Asia seize much of the supply chain value. In contrast, since we came to power, our policies to support manufacturing at ports and set up the offshore wind developers forum are already beginning to yield results. Foreign companies such as Siemens are now looking to invest in UK turbine manufacturing, and British companies such as David Brown are exporting technology to developers such as Samsung.
Investors and businesses want policy stability, but Labour could not deliver in government. Let us take the feed-in tariffs scheme—which Labour voted against in the last Parliament. Given an opportunity to encourage sustainable clean-energy industries here in this country, Labour dropped the ball. It should not have been necessary to review FITs, but they were not properly designed in the first place. The seeds of instability had already been planted by Labour Members. Labour’s scheme had no flexibility to change tariffs in response to the rapidly changing technology costs. As a result, 80% of the costs of FITs in 2015 will go towards paying for just 20% of the generation capacity, which was installed under Labour’s scheme. Under our new, improved scheme, we expect to get three times as much electricity generation for less than one third of the cost. When it comes to solar power, Labour is the party of the few, and the coalition is the Government of the many. There will be many more installations, and many more households will benefit. There will also be much more carbon dioxide taken out of the system.
Dame Joan Ruddock
On that point, the Secretary of State’s predecessor has said that there is a need for a community energy tariff in relation to the FITs. I have spoken in the House about the tremendous damage done to the social housing sector by the Government’s cuts. I note, however, that there is now no reference to a community energy tariff in the consultation. Will the Secretary of State say something today specifically about what he intends to do about that?
Mr Davey
Under the scheme that the previous Government devised, there was no such system. The new scheme that we are consulting on contains proposals for a community guarantee for tariffs on which we want to hear people’s views. I hope that the right hon. Lady will engage with that consultation, because I think that that is a very positive proposal.
Following on from what I said about collective switching, I would now like to say a little more about what the coalition is doing to help, protect and empower consumers. We want to help people to heat their homes at a lower cost by improving the energy efficiency of their homes. That is why we are pioneering the green deal. We are creating a brand new market framework, designed to be driven by consumers and businesses, which will secure billions of pounds of private sector investment in Britain’s building stock. We are working with the finance industry to ensure that there is a sufficient supply of low-cost finance from day one.
The right hon. Member for Don Valley criticises a lack of progress, but we are designing an entirely new means of financing the re-fitting of Britain’s housing stock. We are the first country ever to do so, and we want to get it absolutely right. We have held in-depth discussions with a wide range of banks and other financial institutions, and established a round-table forum of key investment banks and investors. My right hon. Friend the Business Secretary has stated that the green deal is a priority for the Green investment bank. We are also in discussions with the European Investment Bank to see how it can support the green deal. I believe that we have an ambitious agenda that will help consumers up and down the country as it is rolled out.