Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th June 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Olivia Blake]

Possibly a record. Who knows?

I rise to defend the amendments made in the Lords and to speak against Government amendment 12, predominantly because of the aims of the Bill that the Secretary of State outlined when it was brought forward. Those aims were about security, but also about tackling fuel poverty. The facts about fuel poverty in the UK at the moment are very telling. I will cite the End Fuel Poverty Coalition’s numbers: 1,000 people died in 2022 as a result of living in cold, damp homes, unable to heat them because of costs. We also know that 7 million people in the UK last winter were living in fuel poverty. Taken together, those are staggering numbers, and it is important that they are at the forefront of our minds when we discuss the levy.

It is telling that there seem to be unified voices against the policy. The figure of £118 that the shadow Minister mentioned came from Onward, which is a Conservative think-tank. The discussion is also about who has the broadest shoulders to help with the changes that desperately need to be made to our energy system. I completely agree with the shadow Minister that the Bill gives the public all the risk and potentially none of the benefits.

There are 37 independently published reports that set out that they do not believe that the UK will move fully to hydrogen for home heating. Obviously there are massive benefits for steel—Sheffield is the city of steel—that could be unlocked through hydrogen, and there are many benefits for industry, but it seems wrong for Government amendment 12 to remove the protections given in the other place to the levy to prevent that cost from falling so dramatically on households. As the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell set out, it is really important that we bring the public with us.

Government amendment 12 is almost a wrecking motion for net zero, because the opposition to this will be huge. I ask the Minister to think hard about whether the Government want to champion such a burden on households when it is not clear whether the benefit will ever fall on households. We do not yet know the questions about hydrogen, let alone the answers, or what the benefits to home heating will be, if that is the path we go down as a nation when there are many alternatives growing at speed, as we have discussed. I think the Government’s amendment is very challenging. I urge them to think again for the benefit of all those who struggle to pay their energy bills now and for those who may struggle in future if the levy comes in.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I want to add to what has been said on both sides of the Committee Room today about how unwise it is for the Government to go down this path. I do not agree with what the right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said about how we should not conflate public feeling about net zero with public concern about energy bills; the green transition and the move towards renewables will bring in cheaper energy and enhance our energy security, so I do not accept his arguments. However, if I were to argue that point with him, you would quite rightly say that I was broadening the debate beyond the parameters of the Bill, Mr Gray, so I will save my remarks for this afternoon’s Westminster Hall debate on the Government’s approach to net zero.

At the heart of the issue is what the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, said: consumers want to know how this will come to us. I share the concerns—my hon. Friend listed the other green levies in legislation, but the difference is that we can see a benefit from investment in such fields—but the hydrogen levy will mostly be to the benefit of energy-intensive, hard-to-decarbonise industries, and consumers will rightly feel that they are paying for something from which they will not receive the benefit.

We know that there is huge concern. The right hon. Member for Elmet and Rothwell said that there is fear in people’s eyes about how they will meet their energy bills. There is—I have seen that concern. In my public communications about how energy bills were predicted to rise, I was very worried about making constituents even more scared. It was a balance: I wanted to warn people about what is to come, but given the stress that they were under, I felt that it was important not to be alarmist. It is a difficult position to hold. As has been said, it could put about £118 on bills. Documents from the Department state that after 2030, the impact on consumer bills will ramp up even further:

“Once introduced, we expect its impacts will ramp up as we look to deliver our 2030 hydrogen ambitions to improve energy security.”

This is a deeply regressive move.

I do feel a bit of sympathy for the Minister, because he has to defend to the hilt something on which, given the reaction on Second Reading, he will end up having to U-turn. He will get all the flak, and his boss will get all the credit for having listened to people and changed his mind.

Somebody mentioned the think-tank Onward, which has contributed a piece to “ConservativeHome”. Onward has also said:

“The Government is walking into a trap with the hydrogen levy. It would be a mistake that risks stalling the development of a British hydrogen economy. It would also be unfair to ask households that won’t benefit from hydrogen directly to pay for it. The Government should think again. And the Treasury should get off the fence and back the role hydrogen can play in the economy.”

Clearly this is not an anti-hydrogen move. It is about ensuring that the people who will benefit bear the majority of the cost.

Net Zero: 2050 Target

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 6th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Christopher.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Spelthorne (Kwasi Kwarteng) on securing this debate. I am pleased to see that he is still pursuing an interest in net zero. I agree with some of what he said, but there were some points I would have liked him to cover. For example, when he talked about the grid, as the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands) has just said, the biggest problem is not the question where the pylons go in east Anglia, but the lack of grid connectivity, which is a massive obstacle to economic growth. That is something we need to solve as we move towards greater use of electricity in our industrial sector.

Three former Business Secretaries, from the Lib Dems, Conservatives and Labour, have all come together today to bemoan the lack of an industrial strategy, so I do not agree with the right hon. Member for Spelthorne on that. He talked about retrofitting homes, which is obviously important, but it would help if we stopped building homes that do not meet energy performance certificate C standard. We are compounding the problem, having built more than 1 million homes since the zero carbon homes pledge was dropped that do not meet that standard.

The right hon. Member for Spelthorne mentioned green levies and incentives for decarbonisation. It would have been interesting to hear his thoughts on the hydrogen levy. We were in the Energy Bill Committee earlier today and it must be said that, based on Second Reading of that Bill, there is a lot of unhappiness on both sides of the House. We will oppose the hydrogen levy on bills, and I would welcome his support on that, because I do not think we should be putting the burden on consumers when it is mostly industry that will benefit.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Just to clarify, is Labour opposing the hydrogen levy on bills, or its removal?

[Kerry McCarthy]

The House of Lords voted against the hydrogen levy

on bills on the basis that it is a regressive measure and we should not be adding to the burden on consumers. We support that position; the Government think that it should go on bills, where it is the industry that benefits. There have been reports that the Secretary of State is due to U-turn on that position very soon, so the right hon. Member might want to be ahead of the curve and jump the right way before the Secretary of State does.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I am sure that the Secretary of State does not need my encouragement, or otherwise, to come to the right decision.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I am sure that the right hon. Member would be a very persuasive voice.

The Government’s commitment to a net zero target is to be welcomed, but a target for a date set far into the future—2050—is pretty meaningless unless it is backed up by a comprehensive road map as to how we are going to get there. We know that the majority of that journey needs to be done in the very early years, with just the hard-to-decarbonise sectors following at the end, so we need to know how much ground we are going to cover and when. The Government were taken to court on this issue last year, with the High Court ruling that they had provided insufficient detail. There was a big hype about “green day” at the end of March; eventually, the Government decided that it was not quite green enough and changed its name to something else, but what we got was a plan that—even in terms of our 2030 nationally determined contribution—only sets out how we would deliver 92% of that. We are still way off track.

Net zero is not a slogan or a mere box-ticking exercise: it is a whole paradigm shift that we must instigate, as a country and as a global community. Scientists are warning that we are likely to breach the 1.5° threshold in the next four years. We are running out of time, and we need to do everything as fast as we can. There has been a lot of negativity in recent days about net zero, with people pushing back against Labour’s announcement that we would not support any new oil and gas licences. Again, people have been repeating that old trope that it is too expensive to reach net zero, when we know that renewables are far cheaper now.

The Government do not seem to grasp that this is a huge challenge for the country, but as has been said, it is also an enormous opportunity. The right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), who authored the recent net zero review, said that it is

“the economic opportunity of the decade—if not the century”

to create a new economy. As the right hon. Member for Spelthorne mentioned, President Biden has not only recognised that opportunity, but seized it with the Inflation Reduction Act, and the EU has responded with its green deal industrial plan. The Chancellor has said that he will come up with a response in the autumn, which is at least better than the response from the Energy Secretary, who tells us that the UK is already decades ahead of the USA. The Minister has said that the rest of the world is “playing catch-up” with us. We do have 22% of the world’s offshore wind installations, as I suspect the Minister will tell us, but we have only 2% of global wind industry jobs—that is just one example. A country such as Denmark, which recognises the export opportunities, has over eight times as many jobs as the UK for the equivalent wind energy capacity.

Businesses I meet now are describing the Inflation Reduction Act as a game changer, and are warning that they will transfer investments to the US. There have been occasional success stories—the news that Jaguar Land Rover is set to establish a gigafactory in the south-west, in Bridgwater, is very welcome—but that comes with a sense of relief that that company has made that announcement, rather than real confidence that there is a coherent industrial strategy that will deliver the 10 gigafactories that the Faraday Institution predicts we need. I would dispute the Minister’s suggestion that we are decades ahead: we need to have a coherent industrial strategy, a response to the Inflation Reduction Act sooner rather than later, and a revised net zero strategy that shows that we really are on course to meet that goal.

Reaching Net Zero: Local Government Role

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Monday 5th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

We know that the Government’s plan to reach net zero is totally inadequate; that is the context for today’s debate. Thirteen years of failure has left us exposed to higher bills, energy insecurity, lost jobs and climate delay. As the Chair of the Climate Change Committee—a former Conservative Cabinet Minister—has said,

“This has been a lost decade in preparing for and adapting to the known risks that we face from climate change.”

The right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) —another Conservative—found in his net zero review that the Conservatives had failed on nearly every aspect of net zero policy. How are the Government responding? They have doubled down on fossil fuels, with billions in taxpayer cash being handed out to oil and gas giants. They are blocking the cheap renewable power that Britain needs; there is a de facto onshore wind ban, and war-torn Ukraine has built more onshore turbines in the past year than the UK. There is still no response to Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. There is dither and delay. There is no ambition and no urgency.

Thankfully, as we have heard today, local councils across the country are doing their best, albeit with scarce resources. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), the hon. Member for St Albans (Daisy Cooper) and my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) talked about the need for greater certainty and continuity of funding, and an end to the piecemeal, competitive approach that sets one council against another, and that can be unduly restrictive when it comes to how money can be spent. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) gave a wide-ranging speech, as usual, which covered everything from electric vehicle charging points to lobsters. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) talked in very strong terms about the need to tackle air pollution, and set out what the Mayor of London is doing on that front.

I thank the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing the debate. I share her pain when it comes to the cuts to bus services in our region. I would imagine that she is having the same conversations with the Mayor for the West of England as I am, about how we can subsidise non-commercial routes. It is interesting that she mentioned only Liberal Democrat councils when talking about the positive contribution that local authorities can make. I will make up for that by talking a bit about what Labour councils are doing. I do not need to say more about Wakefield, because my hon. Friend the Member for Wakefield (Simon Lightwood) did a sterling job in speaking about it.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I celebrate all local councils’ work to reach net zero. I appreciate that the hon. Lady is going to make up for my not mentioning Labour councils. I am sure that there are many good councils across the political divide that are making good progress on net zero.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I thank the hon. Lady for that, although she has eaten into about 30 seconds-worth of my saying nice things about Labour councils. In Bristol, the Labour council set up a 20-year city leap project in partnership with Ameresco—a £424 million public-private investment in green infrastructure. It is groundbreaking. It is helping Bristol to go carbon neutral by 2030—the same ambition as Wakefield. Bristol will retrofit all our housing stock by 2030, reduce our CO₂ output by 140,000 tonnes, and create over 1,000 green jobs in the process. England’s biggest wind turbine will open shortly in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones). It is community-owned, will provide low-carbon electricity to 3,500 homes, and save nearly 2,000 tonnes of CO₂ per year. It will mean that energy can be sold back to the grid, and the money can be reinvested in local communities.

I turn to Hull. There was a recent event in Parliament with the aptly named “Oh Yes! Net Zero” campaign. It is a really good example of collaborative local working; it involves 150 local organisations that support the city’s efforts to reach net zero. In Oxford, the Labour-led authority has been leading the way with innovative solutions, particularly on battery technology. Redbridge is home to Europe’s most powerful electric vehicle charging hub, and a project called Energy Superhub Oxford launched in July last year with the wider aim of decarbonising the city, uses the latest in battery technology, and, for the first time in the UK, infrastructure that links directly to the national grid’s high-voltage network. I echo what was said about the need to ensure that the grid has capacity to support local innovative projects. To give one last example, in Liverpool, there is a groundbreaking project: an agreement between the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority and the Korea Water Resources Corporation to create what could be the world’s largest tidal power scheme in the Mersey.

Taking a placed-based approach to net zero is vital in ensuring that the opportunities from the transition start to finally level up the towns and cities of the UK, as opposed to letting them down as this Government have done. Around 95% of Britain’s population lives in areas where the local authorities have declared a climate emergency but, as has been said, councils and combined authorities must be given the resources and powers they need to act. As one contributor to the right hon. Member for Kingswood’s net zero review put it:

“Net Zero achievements at local government level are in spite of government, not because of it”.

That would change under a Labour Government, which would recognise and value the role local authorities can play and the immense difference local action can make. We would work in tandem with local authorities to deliver our green prosperity plan of capital investment. That would support the creation of hundreds of thousands of jobs in every corner of the UK, doubling our onshore wind capacity, tripling solar capacity and quadrupling offshore wind capacity. It would be financed by Labour’s national wealth fund, ensuring that, when investment flows into new industries, in partnership with business, the British people will own a share of that wealth, as happens in other countries.

Surprisingly, we did not talk much in the debate about retrofitting homes. We have the least energy-efficient housing in Europe. Millions of homes are going cold and premium-priced heat is escaping through roofs, windows and walls. Labour’s warm homes plan would upgrade the 19 million homes that need it, cutting bills and creating thousands of good jobs for electricians, engineers and construction workers across the country. It is important to stress that this is about economic growth. It is about a future industrial strategy. It is about jobs for the future. It is about the prosperity of our local communities. And it is about saving the planet at the same time. Local government has a key role to play in that. I just hope the Government step up and help it.

Energy Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Andrew Bowie]

I thank the hon. Member for Southampton, Test and share his optimism that in a few years’ time we will be in a position to continue with appointments in relation to what we are legislating for today.

Amendment 1 corrects a drafting error in relation to the statutory basis on which the devolved Administrations are to be consulted in relation to regulations that may be made under the powers in part 1. The amendment ensures that the statutory basis for consultation is consistent across the drafting of the relevant clauses.

I turn to clause 9. The Government’s CCUS cluster sequencing programme is under way to identify the first CCUS clusters eligible for Government support. The first transport and storage licences will be granted through that process. The enduring regulatory regime will need a licence application process, and clause 9 provides for such a process to be set out in regulations. The process includes the procedure for licence applications, the conditions under which the applications may be made and the procedure for objecting to licence applications.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I was waiting for the Minister to mention the word “fee”, and he did not. I apologise for coming in right at the last moment, but clause 9 says that a fee would be payable. I know that the Minister spoke earlier about the need to avoid unnecessary burdens on some of the smaller companies that might come forwards. Does he envisage that the fee would be proportional to the size of the enterprise or would a fixed amount apply to everybody? Is that being considered?

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

The Government are always open to suggestions and ideas about how we can improve legislation. As I said earlier, it is important for the industry, nascent as it is, that there is as much clarity as possible about how it is governed and about the regulatory process that it must follow. We must also understand that, as the market and the technology grow, evolve and develop, we will need to keep that under review. However, I am happy to give a commitment to the hon. Member that we will consider whether it is possible to tighten up the language so that exactly what is meant is made clear to industry.

[Kerry McCarthy]

As we have heard, there could be subjective interpretations regarding the importance and urgency of an impact assessment, and questions raised over whether one is appropriate or impracticable. I think the Minister will share my concern that the broadly worded clause could result in people seeking judicial review if they feel that the economic regulator should have carried out an impact assessment. I do not know what the process would be for bringing such a review, but does he share my concern that the vaguer the language, the more open it is to challenge?

[Andrew Bowie]

I also do not know the exact procedure that would lead to a judicial review in this instance, but I agree that we need to be clear and give certainty to the industry. Where we can, we should look at what we can do to tidy up the language so as to ensure that we do not end up in that situation.

Question put and agreed to.

Clause 28 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clauses 29 to 31 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Energy Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Public Bill Committees

The Minister says that at a future date we may wish to bring things that we exempt now under licensing arrangements. I am not immediately assured that that will be the case if an exemption is granted indefinitely in the regulations. Nor am I particularly assured by the fact that the Bill provides enormous leeway for a future Secretary of State to interpret the idea of exemption very widely or very narrowly. It does not give any examples of where exemptions might be agreed; it merely provides a mechanism to allow the Secretary of State to think about exemptions, and relies on the secondary legislation to either curtail or expand them as the Secretary of State sees fit.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I know that this is a lengthy Bill, and there is a lot to get through, but I slightly had trouble keeping up with the breakneck speed at which the Minister introduced the clauses, so I am glad to have an opportunity to question him. He said that although there will be instances where licences are not needed, the situation might change and a licence may be needed. It would be helpful to have some examples of those scenarios to illustrate when the Secretary of State might invoke these powers. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend has read my mind, as she often does.

This clause is procedural, as I have illustrated, and essentially says: “There may be exemptions. We don’t know what they are or what they might consist of, but don’t worry about it. The Secretary of State will think about that in due course and produce regulation that we hope—but we don’t know—might set that out in greater detail.” It is important that the Minister sets out today what might be in his mind when he makes those regulations, as far as exemptions are concerned. Is he a wide exemption Minister or a narrow exemption Minister? If he is a wide exemption Minister, what is the scope of the exemptions that he will be thinking about? If he is a narrow scope Minister, how does he interpret subsection (7), which states that an exemption may be granted indefinitely, given what he just said about how things may change in the future?

I know that there are things that we thought were indefinite in legislation that have turned out not to be—most importantly because Parliament cannot decide what the previous Parliament thought. However, it seems to be a hostage to fortune to put the word “indefinitely” in this legislation in the way that we see in clause 5(7).

I would be grateful if the Minister could provide us with some thoughts on what exemptions might look like and what his intentions are as far as regulation is concerned. I have not looked yet at the end of the Bill to see how any regulations might be considered by Parliament, but when the Secretary of State makes regulations on exemptions, I would expect those to be put forward under the affirmative rather than the negative procedure so that we have an opportunity to examine what they consist of.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Clause 5(6) refers to “Notice of an exemption” being given. It would be helpful to have clarity on the reference to

“Other persons who may be affected by it.”

I am not sure how that would be decided. It is really important that we have transparency and accountability in these processes. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Dr Whitehead]

Yes, I do agree. Again, I appreciate that the wording of this Bill might be regarded as necessarily fairly vague, because of the fact that—in the words of Donald Rumsfeld—there are known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns about the future. However, it is important at least to have on the record something that guides us in a more positive way on who might be the “other” people affected and on indefinite exemptions and so on. It would be a good idea if that could at least be included in the discussion of the Bill.

By the way, our proceedings in Committee are of course recorded, and they are used on occasion in law to determine what the purpose of particular clauses was and what was thought to be in the mind of legislators when they introduced them. So it would be helpful, not just for our discussions today but perhaps for the future record, if the Minister was able to clarify these matters in a suitable way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call shadow Minister .

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I think the Minister needs to look at the dictionary definition of “subsidy”. The approval of the Rosebank oilfield would be an astronomical waste of public money, handing £3.75 billion in subsidy to a Norwegian company in tax breaks and incentives without making any difference to British people’s bills. Does he accept that it will not create jobs or solve our energy security needs, and that it will be a backward step for climate targets as it pumps out carbon dioxide equivalent to running 56 coal-fired power stations a year?

[Graham Stuart]

Of course, we are a net importer of oil and gas and, if we do not produce domestic gas, for example, we will have more tankers—[Interruption.] We will have more tankers with higher emissions coming into this country. We will undermine a sector—[Interruption.] Oil, gas and renewables is effectively one sector—[Interruption.] It is very hard to get through my answer with all this enthusiastic barracking. It will undermine the energy security of this country if we do not produce oil and gas here while we are burning that. Thanks to the legislation of this Government, we can be confident that it is compatible with net zero because we have carbon budgets that are taking us there.

[Kerry McCarthy]

Rosebank is an oilfield and 80% of the fossil fuels produced will be exported. If what the Minister says is true, why has the Government’s own net zero tsar said that approving Rosebank would undermine our climate leadership on the world stage and “trash” our net zero pledge? Why are leading scientists warning that

“we already have more than enough coal, oil and gas to overshoot what is deemed our best hope of maintaining a liveable climate”?

Why is the Minister right and all the scientists wrong?

[Graham Stuart]

It is quite simple. We are reducing demand for fossil fuels, but we are net importers of them. Producing them here and destruction of demand have to be our focus and that is what the Government are doing. We are getting rid of the power stations burning coal. In 2012, nearly 40% of our electricity came from coal, the most polluting of fossil fuels—that was the legacy of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband)—but by next year it will be zero. We have moved from 7% to well over 40% with renewables, as the Secretary of State has said. It is economic insanity for us not to produce the oil and gas that we will need for decades to come when we are a net importer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 18th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Since the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, clean energy companies have announced more than 100,000 new jobs in the US. Nearly 10 times more new jobs have been created there in the past seven months than in the UK’s green economy in the past seven years. British business wants a proper response to IRA, yet all we have had is the Secretary of State denouncing it as “dangerous”. Is not the biggest danger that of Britain being left behind in the global race as others speed ahead?

[Graham Stuart]

It is ironic that the hon. Lady says that. We have already set out the position: our energy efficiency figures have gone from 14% to about 50%, and our renewable electricity figures have gone from 7% to about 50%. The rest of the world, I am pleased to say, is playing catch-up.

[Graham Stuart]

It is playing catch-up. The Opposition do not believe in powering Britain from Britain, and they do not believe in supporting the record. The truth is that the UK has cut its emissions by more than any other major economy. Rather than hosing credits in the direction of businesses, we have a regulatory system that encourages investment.

[Kerry McCarthy]

That is just ridiculously complacent and out of touch. Only this weekend, it was reported that Britain’s only home-grown battery manufacturer is considering leaving the UK for the US, and it is not alone. The Government are absolutely at sea as to what Britain should do. They say simultaneously that IRA is dangerous, that we are doing it already and that the Chancellor will get around to responding to it in the autumn, more than a year after the Act passed. When will they realise that dogma, dither and delay are harming our country?

[Graham Stuart]

The truth is that the rest of the world is playing catch-up. Our regulatory systems—the contracts for difference, for instance—have entirely unlocked renewables in this country. We are continuing to accelerate that, for example with the grid, which is also an issue in the United States. We take our competitive situation extremely seriously and will continue to come forward with policies to ensure that we maintain our global leadership.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 28th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Minister.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

The fact is that, in the last Tory manifesto, the Government promised to spend £9.2 billion on energy efficiency, but they have allocated only £6.6 billion of that, over £2 billion of which has still not be spent. The Lords have just described take-up of the boiler upgrade scheme as “disappointingly low” and Government promotion of the scheme as “inadequate”. Does the Minister at least acknowledge that, at current insulation rates, it will take 92 years to retrofit the 19 million homes that need it and that if we are to bring down energy costs for people who are struggling with sky-high bills now, he needs to do a whole lot better?

[Grant Shapps]

There is still a considerable chunk of this Parliament left to run. As I have explained several times—I will say it again for the hon. Lady, who may have missed the point—we have already got pretty close to half the homes in this country being rated A to C —up from just 14%. We are well on our way to getting this job done. I appreciate her encouragement, but we will finish this off ourselves.

Independent Review of Net Zero

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

I thank my constituency neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West for that enthusiastic endorsement. May I welcome the new Minister to his place and thank the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), another constituency neighbour, for authoring this important review? As the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) said, it was a Herculean task, and I know how much effort the right hon. Gentleman put into it and how many meetings he had to have. I also thank him for being so open to briefing MPs from all parts of the House about the report’s contents since it was published.

The hon. Member for Waveney also said it is vital that the Government act as a catalyst, so I hope he listens avidly to what I have to say a bit later in my speech about what a Labour Government would do with our green prosperity plan. I certainly agree that this Government could do more to act as a catalyst. I might leave it to the new Minister to respond to the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), who does not like solar on agricultural land, does not like onshore wind, and says there is not much point doing anything because China is not doing anything. As the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) pointed out, that is not quite the case. I point out that we are hoping that the Government will produce a land-use strategy before too long, which will hopefully thrash out some of these issues, such as the balance between making sure that good agricultural land is used for food growing and having solar.

My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) talked about the local context, how enthusiastic young people in her constituency are, the impact of Heathrow and the fact that new social housing should be low carbon, as well as electric vehicle charging infrastructure, which is a subject dear to my heart. She said that local leaders need support to deliver this agenda. The right hon. Member for Kingswood will know what Bristol is doing on that front in trying to lead the way in becoming a net zero city. Again, I thank him for his support on that as a near Bristol MP.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) mentioned the creation of the new Department, which I welcome. I just hope that the net zero and climate change side of it does not get too swamped by the energy side, because the Government have made pretty good progress on decarbonising the energy sector. Much more, however, needs to be done in other sectors, and as the report we are discussing today says, there needs to be faster progress on that. It cannot just be seen as the energy Department with the occasional reference to other aspects of achieving net zero.

This report makes clear what we have known for some time now: this Government are failing to grasp the economic opportunities that come with net zero. I am pleased that the report is so unambivalent about the benefits that can come from a transition to a greener economy. It calls it

“the economic opportunity of the 21st century.”

We know this report was originally commissioned to take the heat off a Government who were hellbent on doubling down on polluting expensive fossil fuels, regardless of the cost to the taxpayer or planet. The then Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) desperately needed political cover while she tried to push through her attempts to bring back fracking and ban new solar developments. Thankfully she did not stick around for long enough to do that.

We hoped that the next prime Minister would learn from the mistakes of his predecessor and embrace climate action as the huge economic opportunity that we know it to be. However, what were his first moves in office? He sacked the President of the COP26 climate summit, tried to duck out of attending COP27, attempted to resurrect the ban on onshore wind and was whizzing around the country by private jet, which I gather he was at again this morning. Those are hardly the actions of a climate champion.

Given that context of two Prime Ministers who, let us be frank, clearly could not care less about the climate, I am pleased that this review is not the greenwash many of us expected it to be. It does a comprehensive job of highlighting the many areas where the Government are falling woefully short in getting us to net zero. It makes clear that constant U-turns and lack of continuity make it impossible to plan and invest. All the businesses that I speak to in my role are telling me that time and again. They do not care about the politics of who is doing it; they just want that certainty, stability and sense of direction. It is clear also that the Government are not doing enough to make green technologies affordable for ordinary households. It is clear that this Government’s decision to axe support for home insulation in 2013 is the reason for plummeting energy efficiency improvements. It is clear that this Government have failed to set out a proper plan to restore nature or balance land-use pressures. It is crystal clear that we are falling behind in the global race to seize the economic opportunities of net zero.

That last point is particularly important. The review states that we must act quickly

“to cement the UK as a prime destination for international capital”.

Economic opportunities are being missed today because of weaknesses in the UK’s investment environment. The right hon. Member for Kingswood mentioned falling behind the curve—we are in danger of doing that.

These missed opportunities are blindingly obvious to anyone paying attention. We have lost Britishvolt in Blythe, the electric Mini in Oxford and Arrival’s electric vans in Bicester, and we are losing our steel industry piece by piece. It was worrying to hear the new Business and Trade Secretary being asked this week whether Britain would retain a steel industry. She said:

“Nothing is ever a given.”

We need to green and retain our steel industry here. Other nations are not facing the exodus of jobs but are actively encouraging their own green industries. They understand that green investment pays for itself. The United States has just announced unprecedented support for green industries through the $369 billion Inflation Reduction Act. Much of that support is linked to support for domestic green industries and designed to attract investment from overseas, too. The European Union has been quick and clear in its response to that Act, with more support for green industries that need it, and proposals for a net zero industry Act and a critical raw materials Act.

How has the UK responded? With a deafening and perplexing silence. I tabled a named day question on the first day back in January asking what our response to the Inflation Reduction Act would be. I keep being told that the Government are not ready to reply. I asked about that at International Trade questions this morning and I think the Minister of State, Department for Business and Trade, the hon. Member for Wealden (Ms Ghani) had a slip of the tongue and replied that she was talking to green lithium companies about investing in the US. I suspect that she meant the UK. But there was not a concrete response to IRA and there needs to be if we are not to be left behind.

We should be seizing the initiative, not sitting on our hands. The Government should work night and day to ensure that we do not lose a penny more in green investment because of the failure to make the UK attractive to green industries, especially those at the cutting edge of innovation. The companies doing something new and taking the risks really need that Government support and catalyst that the hon. Member for Waveney talked about. I hope the Minister tells us whether and how the Government are planning to respond to the huge international investment in green industries. Or have they simply given up?

As much as I welcome the report’s findings, it has only told us what we already know about the Government’s progress towards net zero. We are simply not going far or fast enough. The right hon. Member for Kingswood is far from alone in that opinion. His report is merely the latest in a string of scathing assessments of this Government’s record on climate change. The Climate Change Committee said in last year’s progress report that the Government’s climate strategy “will not deliver” net zero. The High Court said that the net zero strategy is unlawful and inadequate. How many times do the Government need to be told that before they get their act together? Given the repeated warnings about the snail’s pace progress towards net zero, the huge uncertainty for investors and the staggering lack of ambition on crucial policy areas, I have little faith that the Government will finally step up a gear. I hope that the creation of the new Department is a sign that it will, but we will be there to hold them to account if they do not.

If this Government do not act, the next Labour Government will. We have put forward a transformative agenda for Government, with a fairer, greener future at the core. We will invest £28 billion per year to tackle the climate emergency through our green prosperity plan, which will allow us to insulate 19 million homes within a decade; to deliver a clean power system by 2030; to establish GB Energy, a publicly owned clean energy company to ensure the benefits of our green investments are returned to the taxpayer; and to set up a national wealth fund to invest in those green industries that the Government seem happy to ignore and drive overseas. That means investment in new gigafactories, renewable-ready ports, green steel plants, green hydrogen, net zero industrial clusters and carbon capture and storage. It means good green jobs and growth for every corner of the UK. That is the kind of vision that this report makes clear is necessary. It is the kind of vision that British industry and this country are crying out for.