Powering Up Britain
Debate between Nigel Evans and Graham Stuart(1 year, 1 month ago)
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Graham Stuart
I thank my right hon. Friend and again pay tribute to him for all his work. This is the economic opportunity. If we look at a map of Europe, we can see the opportunity around the British Isles, and we will capture that energy. We are also blessed with around a third of all carbon storage in Europe. We can operationalise that to decarbonise the UK and provide a service to Europe, and we will do so. It will lead to the reindustrialisation of the north-west, north-east, Wales and Scotland. The opportunities are immense, and colleagues have been fighting hard.
On the NDC, we have set that ambitious world-leading 2030 target, and we are committed to delivering our commitments, including the 2030 NDC. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Doncaster North is a little out of touch. Countries are not due to start reporting to the United Nations framework convention on climate change on progress towards meeting NDCs until 2024, but we have quantified proposals and policies already to cover 92%, and we will go further. Just as we have done with our carbon budgets, we will exceed, not fall short. It was the Labour party that fell short on insulation and renewables; this party has a record of delivery, and our policies are supplemented by others that we have not quantified yet as we work hard to roll out these things. We will meet that 2030 target. We will continue our leadership role as arguably the only major economy in the world that is on that net zero pathway to 2050.
Graham Stuart
I thank my hon. Friend for his constructive contribution, as ever. I co-chair the green jobs delivery group. We are working closely with industry to ensure that we get the signals from them across multiple trades, and engaging with the Department for Education to ensure that it can use those inputs to construct various courses to support that. We are absolutely focused. The reason we have a Minister for nuclear and networks is that we recognise that we have to get that infrastructure right. If we get it right—look at the success we have already had and at our investability going forward—it will be a tremendous transition, generating lower-cost energy and making us one of the most competitive economies in the world.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the Minister for his statement and for responding to questions for over an hour. Could he stay in his place a little longer, as this point of order relates to him?
Graham Stuart
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Court asked for more detail and I am delighted to say that is precisely what we have provided today. There was no suggestion from the Court that our policies were not adequate. It wished for more detail and we have been delighted to share that.
Retained EU Law: Trading Standards
Debate between Nigel Evans and Graham Stuart(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Graham Stuart
I happily and quickly do so. I am sure any misrepresentations were, in the parlance, inadvertent.
There is retained EU law that underpins various areas of consumer protections and trading standards work. The list of retained EU law that BEIS is responsible for can be accessed via the retained EU law dashboard, which is publicly available on gov.uk. The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill means that Departments will need to review their policy areas to determine whether existing regulations inherited from the EU are fit for purpose in the UK, or whether reform is needed ahead of the sunset date. These are entirely common-sense approaches as we assert ourselves as an independent country. They will allow Departments to take an active decision on whether this retained EU law is a good fit for the current UK landscape.
The Bill does not mean that there will be a reduction in standards, or that the protections that consumers and sellers enjoy will be reduced. This Government are committed to maintaining high standards and, as the hon. Member for Glasgow East even suggested, seeking where possible to raise those standards, as appropriate, across the UK and ensure high levels of consumer protection. The UK has a proud record and a proud history of excellent trading standards work, which sits independently of our membership of the EU. However, now that the UK has left the EU, it is only right that this Government look at all areas of policy to see where we can innovate and modernise, as well as to capitalise on the regulatory freedoms that we have for the long term. [Interruption.] SNP Members may chunter from a sedentary position and seek to intervene in an Adjournment debate, but I will carry on setting out the reality after we have heard the—[Interruption.] After we have heard the counter to that—thanks so much, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will try to stay on the straight and narrow.
We must modernise our regulations where they are outdated, and ensure that unnecessary burdens are minimised and vital protections continue to be upheld. These are all things that everyone across this House should support, rather than getting engaged in scaremongering based on false premises, which I hope I am allowed to say, Mr Deputy Speaker. We will retain our high levels of consumer protections, but deliver them in a way that is less bureaucratic and less costly, as well as ensuring that our rules are properly targeted at the real problems that consumers face.
There may be limited time, but there are a couple of areas we are looking at. For instance, package travel regulations provide an opportunity not only to make sure we continue the protections for foreign travel, but to look at whether they could be extended to domestic situations. That is the kind of agility that we have the opportunity to show. On labelling, there are cumbersome EU laws that dictate labelling on sometimes small products, leading to waste and inefficiency. We now have the opportunity to use e-labelling, which industries have been calling for, and to do so in a way that is environmentally friendly and leads to better and cheaper products for the consumer.
At the moment, there are regulations in EU retained law that cannot cope with new products, scientific advances or—as the hon. Member for Glasgow East mentioned, ironically—e-marketplaces. I would argue that the existing EU regulatory regime is not sufficiently agile to deal with that. That is exactly the sort of thing we are going to sort out and improve, and any right-minded person who was not just trying to make political points for the sake of it would support that. I guess if someone is a monomaniacal separatist, they will use any opportunity to try to make allegations suggesting that things are worse, but we will retain high consumer standards.
As it stands, there are insufficient powers to make subordinate legislation that enables the amendment of standards that are entrenched in retained EU law. In layman’s terms, that means that standards set out for commercial operators, as well as other areas of regulation, do not get updated as frequently as they should. We will be able to update them more frequently, more effectively, and protect consumers in Scotland and elsewhere.
Regulations are currently unable to adapt as quickly as they should. Now that we have left the European Union we must ensure that approaches and methodologies that trading standards uses to enforce regulations are tailored to work best for our local authorities, consumers and sellers, and are able to be consistently updated in consideration of our unique interests. Subordinate legislation that the Government put forward to the House following the review of our retained EU law is not intended to impact or erode core protections to consumers set out in primary legislation, such as the vital consumer rights enshrined in the Consumer Protection Act 1987 and the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Those rights include consumer protections against unfair terms in a contract, protections against faulty physical and digital goods, and a variety of other crucial rights that thousands of consumers depend on every day. Having stated that on the Floor of the House at the Dispatch Box, I hope we will not hear SNP Members suggest the opposite from now on for their own perverse political aims.
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill and the accompanying reviews of retained EU law in areas such as consumer protections will ensure that we use our new-found regulatory freedom to its fullest potential. Is this perhaps what lies at the heart of the frustration felt by some hon. Members? The truth is that there are Brexit benefits, and this is one of them. We are going to have a better system of law that is based on the needs of people in this country, and more agile and effective. A crucial part of the review is removing retained EU law where it is obsolete or outdated—something to which SNP Members are obviously opposed. They want to keep obsolete law. As energy Minister I was personally responsible for reviewing emissions trading scheme law. It turned out that the vast bulk of that regulation is now redundant.
Graham Stuart
What is obsolete, following the decisions of the courts, is the hon. Member’s separatist party’s desire to have a referendum and the false narrative of some partnership of nations being unwillingly held together. What is obsolete is his party’s failure ever to respect the result of a referendum. It does not like what the public decide. Well done to him and his party, who have done quite well electorally, except when it comes to the thing that matters most to him: separatism. That is what he wants, but the Scottish people do not want it. The Scottish people voted against it, and his party rails and rails against the fact that, despite all its efforts to use every single tool that it has available in the Scottish Government, his constituents and those of the hon. Member for Glasgow North (Patrick Grady) cannot be persuaded that they wish to leave the United Kingdom. Why would they? This Parliament is able, on a sovereign basis, to provide better standards of protection, better regulation, and regulation that is brought about and driven by a democratically elected United Kingdom Government.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I do not think that I have heard the House so noisy with so few people in it.
Question put and agreed to.
Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill
Debate between Nigel Evans and Graham Stuart
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman may shout—well, he may not shout, under the rules, but he shouts anyway. If he and his—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The Minister is not giving way. If he wishes to give way, he will let the hon. Member for Argyll and Bute (Brendan O’Hara) know.
Graham Stuart
I am normally generous in giving way but—am I allowed to use the word “hogwash”?—I have heard so much hogwash from Opposition Members during the debate that I feel that it is necessary to put straight the misrepresentations and, frankly, scaremongering that they have engaged in.
It is my sincere hope that Opposition Members, including those in the hon. Gentleman’s party, focus on improving the lives of their constituents—not on rehashing the debates of 2016 or indeed 2014. In both cases, as I remember, he saw a referendum result that he did not like and that, therefore, he has refused to accept.
The UK Government remain committed to respecting the devolution settlements and the Sewel convention. There are provisions in the Bill that engage the legislative consent motion process. In the light of that, we have sought legislative consent for the provisions from the Senedd, the Scottish Parliament and, if possible, the Northern Ireland Assembly. To that end, the former Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), and his officials met frequently with their devolved counterparts to discuss the Bill’s scope and overall policy and to address any concerns that they may have had. We will continue to do so throughout the Bill’s passage through Parliament.
Several hon. Members raised specific concerns about the impact on Northern Ireland. I reassure the House that we will stand by our international commitments. We will preserve, restate or reform retained EU law to uphold those international obligations.
On sunsetting, some hon. Members, including the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn), questioned the need for a sunset and, again, used fairly hyperbolic language about its impact. A sunset is the quickest and most effective way to reform retained EU law. It provides a straightforward way for outdated retained law to be repealed, and provides Whitehall—not always the swiftest moving bureaucracy, as he knows as well as I do—with an incentive to review the law on its books. I am pleased to say that that will not start after the passage of the Bill; it is already going on. The sunset will ensure that retained EU law does not become an immutable legal category—much as some EU aficionados among the Opposition, who lost in that referendum, may wish it to be. Instead, it incentivises the genuine reform of retained EU laws in a way that will work best for the United Kingdom.
This does not, however, mean that we are removing all retained EU law. Retained EU law that is deemed desirable by the Government or, indeed, the devolved authorities will be preserved using a power in the Bill beyond the sunset date as “assimilated law”. Moreover, as my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State said at the beginning of this debate, retained EU law that is primary legislation is not within scope of the sunset. I am therefore happy to confirm that the Civil Aviation Act 1982, which the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) was so concerned about— I do not know if she is in her seat—
Energy Prices Bill
Debate between Nigel Evans and Graham StuartMonday 17th October 2022
(1 year, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Energy Prices Act 2022 View all Energy Prices Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Committee of the whole House Amendments as at 17 October 2022 - (17 Oct 2022)
The Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The hon. Gentleman is doing an intervention now. Is the Minister giving way?
Graham Stuart
The hon. Gentleman has just shown why no one in the Chamber wished me to give way to him, other than himself.
The Government have committed to delivery of the payment this winter. Requiring that payment to be made directly to consumer bank accounts would significantly slow this down. Similarly, new clause 10 would require the Government to implement a heating oil voucher scheme for households in Northern Ireland. Again, that would significantly slow down delivery, so one of the challenges that we have had in engineering the various programmes is to make sure—
Free Trade Agreements: Cameroon and Ghana
Debate between Nigel Evans and Graham Stuart(2 years, 10 months ago)
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Graham Stuart
She can speak in the proper way. She should not speak otherwise.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. We heard the contributions from the Opposition side in absolute silence. I now want to listen to the Minister’s response with the same courtesy.
Graham Stuart
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
A bridging mechanism ensured continuity of Cameroon’s duty-free, quota-free access, so there was no disruption similar to that with Ghana; I am afraid that the hon. Member for Richmond Park was misled.
Some hon. Members have voiced concerns over the relationship between the Ghana agreement and that country’s ambitions for regional integration. Since 2016 the EU’s agreement with Ghana has been in place despite Ghana’s existing ECOWAS membership. That is also true of Côte d’Ivoire, another ECOWAS member with a trade agreement with the EU. Although this debate does not concern Côte d’Ivoire, it is worth noting that we have also rolled over that bilateral agreement. We are working closely with its Government to develop our relationship further. The UK’s agreements with both Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire include provisions from the EU agreements on working towards a future trade agreement with the west Africa region. We look forward to discussing this prospect with our west African partners.
On scrutiny, it is important to note that Parliament has already had the opportunity to scrutinise existing EU agreements. As with all continuity agreements, we follow the statutory process of laying agreements under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, but in line with this Government’s commitment to transparency, we went well beyond the statutory requirements of CRAG and provided comprehensive information to Parliament to support its scrutiny of our trade policy approach.
On the rendezvous clauses, our agreements with Ghana and Cameroon retain provisions from the original EU agreements, which provide for further negotiations relating to specific aspects of the treaties: for example, a provision to negotiate further commitments on sustainable development with Cameroon. This is in line with the principle of providing continuity of effect that has guided our approach to all continuity agreements. The parties are not obliged to make changes. Any updates would be negotiated, and changes to treaties would be subject to further parliamentary scrutiny. [Interruption.]
I now turn—preferably without further chuntering from the Opposition Front Bench—to the concerns that hon. Members have raised regarding the environmental provisions in these agreements. In line with our international obligations, the Government will continue to ensure a high level of protection for the environment in all new trade agreements. We have long supported the promotion of our green values globally, and this will continue now that we have left the EU and become an independent trading nation once again.
The UK’s trade agreements with Ghana and Cameroon secure liberalised tariffs for businesses and pave the way for further economic growth as the world seeks to build back better from covid-19. These deals give British consumers access to more products at competitive prices and will see more of the best of British enjoyed by the people of Ghana and Cameroon—something that it seems the hon. Member for Richmond Park is not in favour of.
I can assure the House that we remain alert to human rights and environmental concerns at all times, but we believe—unlike, it would seem, Opposition Members—that encouraging greater trade gives us an opportunity to offer a hand up to those most in need by creating the opportunities and employment they need to rise out of poverty. If we took on the suggestions of Opposition Members, we would do the opposite: we would close the door to those countries and the opportunity for their people to prosper and grow. These agreements are further evidence of global Britain’s determination to champion free trade—something that so clearly does not have many advocates on the Opposition Benches. We will champion free trade around the world that fosters growth, creates jobs, and raises living standards for all.
Question put and agreed to.