Energy

Luke Evans Excerpts

Wednesday 12th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

The hon. and learned Gentleman is right to raise the plight of Northern Ireland. As he knows, there is a single energy market on the island of Ireland, but we need to cut electricity costs for everybody, right across these isles.

The first part of our plan would be to axe the carbon tax. The carbon tax on electricity pushes up the price of gas, wind, solar and nuclear, and it has gone up by 70% this year, thanks to the Government’s policies. We asked Labour Ministers about this, and they pretended not to know anything. We warned them not to put the tax up, and they said it was a Conservative scare story, but here we are. The Secretary of State blames gas for high bills, and I am sure the Minister will do the same in his speech, but a third of what we pay for gas is a carbon tax that the Government choose to impose. If the Secretary of State thinks that the price of gas is too high, he could take off the carbon tax and cut the price of gas by a third tomorrow. Guess what? That would make wind, solar and nuclear cheaper, too. Every time someone blames gas, it is like them complaining that their bath is overrunning when they will not turn off the taps. It is in the Government’s gift to axe the carbon tax. It has gone up because of them, so what are they waiting for?

Secondly, when the wind blows, there are wind farms in this country getting three times the market price for electricity, thanks to renewables obligation subsidies. That is clearly mad. The Secretary of State doubled those subsidies when he had his last chance to ruin the energy system. We closed the scheme in office, but it is time to scrap it.

Those two policies would cut people’s electricity bills by 20% now, in time for winter—and in time for us to be a world leader in AI, and to stop the crippling redundancies in the industry that are coming down the track. Instead of taking up those policies, the Labour party is doing something very different: it is intent on locking us into higher prices for longer.

The results of the Secretary of State’s botched wind auction will become clear in January. When the Government promised to cut bills, the cost of electricity was £72 a megawatt-hour. Last year, they locked in a fixed rate of £82 for offshore wind, and this year they are offering up to £117. These are fixed-rate, inflation-linked contracts, and they have extended the length of those contracts, so we will be paying these prices for 20 years. Essentially, they are signing us up to a 10% fixed-rate mortgage for 20 years, because they do not want to be on a 4% variable that moves around. The problem is this: if they sign up to higher prices than the current cost of electricity—this is before we include all the extra costs of wind, such as paying to turn it off when it is too windy, and paying for back-up when it is not windy enough—how will that cut bills? There will be higher prices for longer. Those are the prices that not only you and I will pay, Madam Deputy Speaker, but that our children will pay.

[Dr Luke Evans (Hinckley and Bosworth) (Con)]

We saw this in the health service, with the private finance initiative; £13 billion of investment became £80 billion of public debt to pay back. Does my right hon. Friend worry that Labour seems to be following exactly the same principle by locking in these high future costs for our children and for the country?

[Claire Coutinho]

That is exactly right, and I will come on to that point in a moment. Everyone remembers those contracts. My hon. Friend is absolutely correct; the Secretary of State is signing us up to this century’s PFI, but this time, the cost goes straight to our energy bills.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Farron]

Fuel poverty is a reality and a stain on our country. The hon. Gentleman is right to raise it on behalf of his community.

Let us get to the heart of this debate. We must bring energy bills down, and the question is how. I am afraid that the plan put forward by the Conservatives is nothing more than a mirage. They say that we should cut bills by removing the renewable obligation levy—that is great. As always, we are ahead of them and have set out our plan to do just that, but the key difference is that our plan is properly funded through a windfall tax on the extra payments that the big banks are getting as a result of quantitative easing. The plan in this motion is funded by the Conservative hand wave—a classic these days—of saying, “We’ll just cut spending.” What happened to the Conservative party being the party of sound money?

[Dr Luke Evans]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I will let the hon. Gentleman explain.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Evans]

In the previous debate, we talked about tax, and the funding that the hon. Gentleman mentions was also being used to deal with the tax burden on the high street. Will he explain the Liberal Democrat policy? How would they levy these taxes on social media giants and big banks, and where would that money go? It seems as if they are spending it twice in one afternoon.

[Tim Farron]

That is not the case. I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for mentioning two of the sources of the additional income that we would raise. It is all very well just to blandly say, “We will get the money from somewhere,” but not to say where. The Liberal Democrats have said where we will find the money. His party has done nothing of the sort. The people who support sound money and wise economics are leaving his party in droves, and many of them are coming to the Liberal Democrats.