Budget Resolutions
Stella Creasy Excerpts(2 weeks ago)
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Claire Coutinho
The public are thinking of a phrase that ends in “you”, but the first word is not “thank”. The Government want to talk about the cost of living, but they are clobbering low and middle earners with tax rises and higher bills. That is why the majority of the country says that this Budget will leave their family worse off. The majority of the country has also said that they think the Budget is unfair. The Secretary of State talked about fairness, but the public do not feel that it is fair, and they are right. All the things that hurt disposable income are up: inflation, bills and taxes are up. The things that help—growth and employment—are down. Household disposable income has been revised downwards because of this Budget.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The shadow Secretary of State wants to talk about fairness. One of the practical consequences of retaining the two-child cap was that in order to be exempted from it, 3,000 women had to declare to a Department for Work and Pensions official that they had been raped. [Interruption.] An Opposition Member is saying “wind up”. Will the shadow Secretary of State clarify why she thinks that measure would be fair?
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Member makes an impassioned case, but why did Government Members not make it at the election? Why did the Government remove the Whip from seven Labour MPs who voted against keeping the cap last year? Why did the Government make all Labour MPs vote to keep the cap, including the Secretary of State? That is the question that Members need to ask. The Government want to be known for having helped people with the cost of living. They must think that the public are stupid. Everyone out there can see that everything that the Government are doing is making the cost of living worse. They do not understand the basics, and the situation is apparently so bad that No. 10 has been giving Back Benchers lessons about Government debt. Given that we have seen Labour Back Benchers cheer at two job-killing Budgets, perhaps the Government need to expand the curriculum.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I commend the skill and courage of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, who has faced the most difficult inheritance of any post-war Chancellor since Hugh Dalton in 1945. I welcome the cost of living measures, the cut in energy bills and the increase in the minimum wage, and the lifting of the two-child cap is very welcome too. In addition, I commend the work that my hon. and learned Friend the Economic Secretary to the Treasury has begun on tackling financial exclusion.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor has been particularly skilled at increasing capital funding, and I will campaign for more of it to be invested in Harrow, not least in council or co-operative housing. Indeed, the lack of new socially rented housing being built in Harrow by the Conservative-run council is a disgrace. Not one new council home that had not already been agreed has been built since the Conservatives took over control, making the housing crisis in my constituency much worse.
More capital investment in schools in Harrow West is certainly needed. After 14 years of Tory neglect, there are classrooms that cannot be used, windows that cannot be shut, roofs that need fixing and sports facilities that need modernisation. Crucially, more investment is needed in our NHS too. Notably, a new intensive care unit at Northwick Park hospital is needed to ease pressure on the A&E unit and improve the quality of care.
I welcome the explicit mention in the Budget of the role of co-operatives in our economy and the publication of the call for evidence on co-operative growth. Co-operatives and mutuals are rarely given the attention they merit, yet the opportunities for growth and, crucially, for the locally owned growth they generate are significant. I hope the Treasury will bring forward its own specific call for evidence on how credit unions, mutual insurers and building societies can expand to play their part in growing our economy.
The standout issue for co-operatives is their ability to issue capital instruments that do not lead to de-mutualisation. This has been done successfully in Australia, where 600 million Australian dollars has already been raised to grow mutuals, notably in the elderly care sector. There is serious interest from co-operatives here in using similar capital instruments to invest in social care. The movement is vital for tackling financial exclusion, and for delivering jobs and better opportunities in our country’s most deprived neighbourhoods.
The banking industry should partner with, and invest in the growth of, credit unions and community development finance institutions. Many British banks do so already in the US, where it is a requirement; they should do so in their own backyard too. The Government cannot double the size of the co-operative and mutual sector of our economy on their own. Businesses in the sector need to do that themselves, but greater interest, imagination and urgency from the Treasury—which, under the Conservative party, paid only passing attention—in tackling the finance, legislative and capacity challenges that the sector faces will be critical.
My right hon. Friend the Chancellor, in the run-up to the Budget, rightly drew attention to the impact of Brexit and the dismal trade and co-operation agreement negotiated by the Conservative party. The OBR continues to estimate that the impact of Brexit has been a 4% hit to our GDP, with sustained damage to our tax revenues, to jobs and to family finances. In short, it has been an unparalleled act of economic self-harm, with the TCA easily the worst trade deal ever negotiated. I welcome the steps that the Government are taking towards a sanitary and phytosanitary deal to lower food prices and reduce border delays, and a youth mobility scheme and energy co-operation make obvious sense too. These will benefit growth, but I believe that we should go further and use the 2026 UK-EU summit to agree on the ambition of a more profound reset. With imagination and sustained business encouragement, a better deal to lower trade barriers could be possible.
The recent EU-Swiss deal is interesting for the greater flexibility the EU has now shown to a close and serious partner. As we rebuild our country’s relationship with our allies across the channel, it is surely time, within our red lines, to be bolder in our ambitions to strip away the red tape that the Conservatives love about trade with Europe, particularly for goods exports. The needless rules, the different standards and the extra unnecessary checks they introduced in the TCA are making it harder for British businesses to sell into the EU. Mutual recognition of qualifications and easing business mobility restrictions are worth exploring too.
Ms Creasy
My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful point about going further on our relationship with Europe. Does he recognise that the OBR says that Brexit, as negotiated by the previous Government, is one of the “structural challenges” facing our manufacturing industry, so perhaps again being part of the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean convention, for example, would be one way to help businesses with all the extra paperwork created by the rules of origin changes?
Gareth Thomas
I understand that the Department for Business and Trade, my former Department, is about to issue a call for evidence on exactly how to negotiate membership of that, and I very much look forward to its happening.
If we are to get faster and more significant growth, we have to take the axe to more of the red tape that Boris’s trade deal introduced, so I urge my right hon. Friends to continue to be bolder and more ambitious for a deeper and more profound EU reset agenda.
Lastly, I think we should consider in the coming months how to rebuild the fiscal space to fund the development assistance that gives us so much soft power. That assistance supports our security needs, and it is vital to the effectiveness of key parts of peacekeeping, global health and the empowerment of those whose prospects are being damaged by poverty, conflict and climate change. I look forward to supporting the Budget in the Division Lobby tomorrow.
State of Climate and Nature
Stella Creasy Excerpts(5 months ago)
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Ed Miliband
The answer, which the hon. Member just does not want to accept, is this—[Interruption.] If he just listens, the answer is this: I believe in British leadership and in Britain’s ability to make a difference. The truth is, as I said in my statement, that when we passed the Climate Change Act 2008, 60 countries followed. When we legislated for net zero, many other countries followed. He talks Britain down; I believe in Britain.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank God there is somebody in this Chamber trying to actually save the planet! Net zero makes good common sense for lots of our constituents when they recognise that this is not just about climate security—those of us who have faced floods in our constituencies know how expensive that is—but about national security and the cost of living. Moving towards sustainable electricity would put both Rosebank and Putin out of business, but the Secretary of State will know that, on current plans, bill payers will be wasting £8 billion a year switching off wind farms by 2030 if we do not take action. How can we stop this transfer of wealth from citizens to corporations, so that we can invest in community energy?
Ed Miliband
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The infrastructure we inherited was in a shocking state, and there was a failure to build grid infrastructure. The best thing we can do is accelerate building that grid infrastructure. If we can do that, we can reduce those constraint payments, and I look forward to support from all parts of the House on this.
Rosebank and Jackdaw Oilfields
Stella Creasy Excerpts(10 months ago)
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Michael Shanks
We are still digesting the detail of the judgment, but my understanding is that, as the right hon. Gentleman puts it, the Supreme Court made it clear that applications should take account of scope 3 emissions. In the process that we put in place, which I will not pre-empt, we will have to justify how the applications have met that requirement. It will then be for the North Sea Transition Authority to make a judgment and the Secretary of State, ultimately, to make a decision. If somebody wanted to take that judgment to a judicial review, they could be entitled to do so, but the right hon. Gentleman is quite right that the decision will be for the Government.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank the Minister for the thoughtful way in which he is proceeding. We all recognise that climate change is a threat to growth rather than a driver of it, whether that is through flooding, fires or the chaos that it causes. It is therefore shocking that the previous Government did not take account of emissions and the impact that they might have on our economy in making the decision to proceed with Rosebank, and it is right that we rethink that.
I recognise what the Minister said about court judgments. May I press him, though? His predecessors had to admit that there was no energy security in proceeding with Rosebank because 80% of the oil and gas that it would provide would not be for the UK market, so it would not drive down British consumers’ bills. Is that still his understanding of the project? Is that not another good reason why we should rethink it?
Michael Shanks
My hon. Friend is right to make the point that climate change is not a future threat but a present reality. This year alone there have been a number of examples around the world of that present reality already having a huge and devastating impact on people’s lives.
On the balance that we want to strike, yes, the oil and gas industry is important to our economy and to our energy mix, but the long-term future requires us to move towards clean power. Even if gas is extracted from the North sea, it does not help with consumer bills in this country, because it is traded on an open market to the highest bidder and sold by private companies. This is not a nationalised industry—it is owned by private companies, and gas is extracted by private companies and sold by private companies—and consumers in this country do not benefit from their gas coming from abroad or from the North sea.
COP29
Stella Creasy Excerpts(1 year ago)
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Ed Miliband
We just disagree on the idea that we should not have taxed the unearned profits of the energy companies, which were paid for directly by the British people. If the hon. Gentleman wants to say that we should not have had a windfall tax on the oil and gas companies, he is way out of line with his constituents.
Ms Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituents are very proud that one of our own, Samia Dumbuya, was part of the Future Leaders Network working with the UK Youth Climate Coalition at Baku. I know that the Secretary of State will agree that young people need to be at the heart of what comes next following COP. They welcome the proposed NDCs, but they now need a direct and dedicated place in making them happen. Can he tell us what formal mechanism for the oversight and delivery of the reduction of emissions by 81% by 2035 he envisages for the young people of the UK?
Draft Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) (No. 2) Order 2023
Stella Creasy Excerpts(2 years ago)
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Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I rise only to ask a few questions, simply because the Minister was so sterling in directing what he was running through that he did not allow me to catch his eye to intervene at the point that his colleagues did. I am sure that was an oversight on my part and that I did not signal strongly enough.
Emissions do not stop at borders, so it is of concern to many of us that the Minister has set out what the SI might do but not clarified how it might interact with other emissions trading schemes, and in particular what the European Union is doing. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, was much more eloquent and patient than I will be about the fact that the EU has its own system of trading and that, clearly, whatever we do will interact with that. Could the Minister set out how those two systems, in particular, will interact? What progress has been made on the commitment in the 2019 TCA that “serious consideration” would be given to linking them? Has he been serious? Has he considered it? The SI does not suggest that, but that does not mean he is not having conversations. Surely he could set that out.
More fundamentally, I wish to speak up for British steel, which will be directly impacted by this legislation; indeed, it has called for the Government to answer questions arising from the SI. I hope that I speak for all of us in the room in saying that we recognise the value to our national security and our climate change objectives of having a national steel industry. I understand the industry’s concerns about this legislation and the fact that, without support, the free allowances will not lead to the sustainability of the British steel industry. I hoped that we might hear some answers today, but the Minister did not mention the word “steel”. I am sure he will wish to correct that in responding to the debate. The industry thinks it will take nine years to decarbonise British steel at this rate; without support, the 2026 deadline could lead to the end of British steel and all the concerns that might arise from that.
In particular, the industry perceives a lack of leadership on the European carbon border adjustment mechanism and how it interacts with the ETS. The Minister did not mention Europe at all. I am sure that was an oversight rather than a deliberate omission. As I said, he did not mention steel either. Again, I am sure that was an oversight rather than a deliberate omission. Will he address both those issues and reassure us that he stands proudly with British steel, just as he recognises that emissions do not stop at borders?
Oral Answers to Questions
Stella Creasy Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Graham Stuart
As the hon. Member doubtless knows, we have conducted a consultation on the use of HVO in heating, and we are determined to ensure that we decarbonise heat in homes, including off-grid homes, in a way that is practical and aligned with minimising any negative impacts on those families.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Claire Coutinho)
The Government have committed £20 billion to support the early development of carbon capture and storage, and £500 million for the industrial energy transformation fund to help industry decarbonise, phase 3 of which is expected to open for applications in early 2024.
Stella Creasy
May I put on the record the thanks of Back Benchers to the Clerk of the House for his work?
Steel accounts for 8% of global carbon dioxide emissions and 50,000 jobs here in the UK. We have no viable alternative to steel, which is why the Government’s decision to go with an electric arc furnace only modelled for decarbonisation does not make any sense. Not only does it put at risk thousands of jobs but it makes the industry vulnerable to changes in steel prices, as the UK will have to import it. The Minister spoke about carbon capture, but can she explain why the Government have not gone for a combination of technologies such as carbon capture, or the retrofitting required for hydrogen-based steel production? That way, we would not only decarbonise the industry but protect those vital jobs and the industry in the UK for generations to come.
Claire Coutinho
As the Business and Trade Secretary set out, the Government’s deal has provided long-term security for at least 5,000 steel jobs. The investment will grow UK domestic green steel production. I gently urge the hon. Lady to look at her party’s plans for industry, which have been described as impossible and decimating the working classes.