Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green) I beg to move, That
this House has considered fossil fuels and increases in the cost of
living. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert,
and to open this important debate on fossil fuels and increases in
the cost of living. As we start 2023, households up and down the
country are facing extraordinarily difficult circumstances, as we
all know from our constituency mailbags, thanks to the cost of
living...Request free trial
(Brighton, Pavilion)
(Green)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered fossil fuels and increases in the
cost of living.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Robert, and
to open this important debate on fossil fuels and increases in
the cost of living. As we start 2023, households up and down the
country are facing extraordinarily difficult circumstances, as we
all know from our constituency mailbags, thanks to the cost of
living scandal that Government policy has too often exacerbated
rather than alleviated. Hikes in energy bills mean that over 9
million people—18% of the population—spent Christmas in the cold
and damp, unable to heat their homes, and facing a new year with
little respite, with experts warning that high gas prices are
here to stay.
At the same time, the climate emergency is deepening and
accelerating. Last year marked a year of extremes. It was the
UK’s hottest on record, with the average temperature topping 10°C
for the first time and the summer’s scorching heat made 160 times
more likely by the climate crisis. It is clear that something is
fundamentally wrong here, yet shockingly, I note that the climate
and energy crises were entirely absent from the Prime Minister’s
priorities that he outlined last week.
Fossil fuels are at the very heart of both the cost of living and
the climate crises, choking our precious planet while subjecting
families to sky-rocketing bills. Weaning ourselves off fossil
fuels holds the key to not just ensuring a safer planet for
future generations but creating warm and comfortable homes,
bringing down bills and guaranteeing a supply of abundant green
energy to deliver the transition to a zero-carbon economy. The
bottom line is that, for a safe and prosperous future, we need to
keep fossil fuels in the ground.
I want to look more deeply at the cost of living crisis that is
facing so many of our constituents. As the Minister will know,
households are already struggling to cope, with almost 60% of
people saying that their financial situation has deteriorated
over the past year. The Resolution Foundation has warned that
2023 will be “groundhog year”, with further cuts to living
standards. Indeed, even with the support announced by the
Government last year, a staggering 7 million households will
still be in fuel poverty this winter, rising to 8.6 million from
April, with the most vulnerable hardest hit.
It is profoundly shocking that one third of people with
disabilities live in cold, damp homes and that a quarter of those
with health conditions that are exacerbated by the cold cannot
afford to heat their homes to a safe standard. This comes with
serious health risks and puts further pressure on our severely
under-resourced health service, which, as we all know, is already
in serious crisis. In my Brighton, Pavilion constituency alone,
there are several thousand people living with a cardiovascular or
respiratory condition whose health is at risk if they cannot
afford to put their heating on. It is genuinely astounding that
the Government are planning on cutting the amount of support
available to the most vulnerable households next year, just when
bills are set to increase again, reducing support by 10% from
£1,500 to £1,350. Will the Minister commit to addressing that
gap? Will he seriously consider providing further support for
those vulnerable households, given that bills are set to increase
by 20% from April?
(Glasgow North) (SNP)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and congratulate her on
securing the debate. I have heard many similar testimonies from
constituents, particularly over the festive period, including
from young people who wrote to me as part of the Warm This Winter
and Parents for Future campaigns. I heard heartbreaking stories
of children seeing their breath in the morning and not being able
to recover from colds and coughs because they cannot keep their
houses warm. I fully agree with the calls she makes. Those people
also recognise in that correspondence the climate crisis and the
need, for example, to not start new oil and gas exploration,
which the Scottish Government have this morning announced a
presumption against. We have to find alternative, cheaper,
cleaner, greener ways of keeping warm.
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and join him in
paying tribute to Warm This Winter, which has done fantastic work
in gathering those case studies and presenting them to us. I
congratulate the Scottish Government on their announcement this
morning about a presumption against more fossil fuel exploration,
because we know that getting more new fossil fuels out of the
ground is driving both the climate crisis and—ironically, at a
time when gas is nine times more expensive than renewables—the
cost of living crisis.
(Bath) (LD)
The Government seem to have no money for working people, yet when
it comes to fossil fuel companies they have been able to
find—from somewhere—£13.6 billion since the Paris agreement. To
give the Rosebank oilfield £500 million in taxpayers’ money is a
disgrace when families face immense pressures. Does the hon. Lady
agree that it is time for oil and gas subsidies to be phased out
once and for all?
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and she will not be
surprised that I entirely agree that fossil fuel subsidies should
go. Indeed, that has been said at several of the big climate
global conferences—the conferences of the parties. There is
supposed to be an agreement on getting rid of the subsidies, but
we are certainly not leading by example, sadly.
I want to speak about prepayment meters, although I will come
back to the subject of Rosebank. One of the ironies about
Rosebank is that most of the oil extracted is for export in any
case; we cannot even argue that it is doing anything to help us
here at home. However, there is something serious going on with
prepayment meters, and I am particularly alarmed by their forced
installation. We have seen stories in the press, for example, of
mothers returning home to find that meters have been installed
while they were out. Locksmiths have come in and people have
forced their way into homes to install prepayment meters. Not
only that, but magistrates have been approving hundreds of
warrants to install meters in just minutes—496 warrants in three
minutes and 51 seconds, to be precise.
Prepayment meters should not be installed by warrant, and they
certainly should not be approved en masse in such a manner, with
no consideration of individual cases and individual
vulnerabilities, but when I asked what assessment the Government
had made of the impact on vulnerable people of the batch approval
of warrants, I was shocked to receive an answer stating that
“the information which must be provided to the court is identical
in each case”.
In other words, it makes no difference whether cases are
considered individually or together, but that represents total
disregard for individual people’s welfare and extraordinary
complacency regarding the failings of the system. Surely the
Minister sees that if magistrates are not provided with adequate
information, they are unable to make informed decisions that take
into account people’s vulnerability.
In answer to another question I asked, the Minister simply tried
to pass the buck to Ofgem, but given that the Government have the
power to implement a moratorium on the forced installation of
prepayment meters by court warrant, that, frankly, does not wash.
The forced installation of prepayment meters is hugely
distressing; it is an invasion of privacy.
Will the Minister commit himself to introducing a much-needed ban
and to putting an end to the intolerable situation in which
vulnerable people are forced on to higher rates, which brings
with it the added risk of self-disconnection? Citizens Advice has
reported a significant increase in the number of people it sees
who cannot top up their prepayment meters each month—from 1,119
in November 2021 to 3,331 in November last year. Forcing people
on to prepayment meters quite simply should not be happening,
which is why the ban is needed so urgently.
I want to emphasise that the difficulties facing households are
not inevitable. Ministers are fond of blaming those difficulties
on President Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, with the
Chancellor pointing to what in his autumn statement he called
“a recession made in Russia”.—[Official Report, 17 November 2022;
Vol. 722, c. 855.]
While that is true in part, blaming it entirely on President
Putin is, frankly, dishonest. The crisis is one of political
choices—choices that have been made not just over the past 12
months, but during the past 12 years of Tory rule. As we now
know, the decision by the Conservatives, under David Cameron’s
regime in 2013, to cut the so-called green crap has added
billions to household energy bills, with installations of loft
and cavity wall insulation subsequently falling off the cliff by
a staggering 92% and 74% respectively in 2013.
Indeed, while there were 1.6 million installations of loft
insulation, for example, in 2012, that dropped to just 126,000
the following year. Installations of cavity wall insulation
dropped from 640,000 in 2012 to just 166,000 in 2013, and in 2020
there were just 72 installations of loft and cavity wall
insulation combined. That is a damning indictment of the
Government’s approach.
The poor state of the UK’s inefficient housing stock meant that
in June last year households at energy performance certificate
band D or below were effectively paying what has been called an
inefficiency penalty of about £900 on average per year. It is
frankly unforgiveable that in response to the current crisis the
Government have once again overlooked and paid insufficient
attention to the importance of energy efficiency. Their own
Climate Change Committee expressed regret in November that it was
now
“too late to introduce new policies to achieve widespread
improvements to the fabric of buildings… this winter.”
For almost a year, the Government refused to act on what was the
cheapest and quickest way to cut energy bills and address the
UK’s notorious leaky houses. This is nothing short of a scandal,
and it is also such a wasted opportunity, because ending our
society’s addiction to fossil fuels also brings with it an
opportunity to create warm, decent homes for everyone, where
households are not shackled to high energy bills or trapped in
dank and draughty homes, unable to turn the heating on.
(Stirling) (SNP)
The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech, as she always does,
and I could not agree more on the importance of energy
efficiency. Does she also agree that those who are off grid and
reliant on heating oil have the most to gain from piling into
renewables and greater energy efficiency, because it would lower
housing costs and increase climate efficiency?
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention and I entirely
agree. I worry that people who are off grid in that way are
essentially being hung out to dry. They are not being given the
support they need, and they are some of the most vulnerable.
I am pleased that the Government have finally seen sense and
committed to £6 billion of new funding from 2025 to 2028, but
this is too little, too late for people who are struggling to
stay warm right now and who will face the same situation next
year. What is more, it is still not clear what that £6 billion
will be used for, so can the Minister explain what exactly it
will be allocated to? Is it for the establishment of new schemes
or the continuation of existing ones such the social housing
decarbonisation scheme?
Will the Minister also confirm when we will get more details
about the energy efficiency taskforce? For months, I and many
others have called for a nationwide, street-by-street, local
authority-led, home energy efficiency programme to genuinely
insulate households from high bills for the long term. It really
is not rocket science. Just last week, the Environmental Audit
Committee, of which I am a member—I am very pleased to see the
Chair, the right hon. Member for Ludlow (), with us this
morning—released a new report calling for what we called a
national “war effort” on energy saving and efficiency, with
upgrading homes to energy performance certificate C or above to
be treated as a national priority.
That would deliver a massive benefit to our constituents.
Citizens Advice estimates that upgrading all UK homes to EPC C
would save households nearly £8.1 billion a year at current
prices. UK homes are notoriously leaky. They lose heat three
times faster than those in other parts of Europe, which means
that our constituents are more vulnerable to high global gas
prices than their neighbours.
(Glenrothes) (SNP)
Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (), I congratulate the hon.
Member on securing this debate. She is referring to the
appallingly bad standard of insulation in the United Kingdom’s
homes. I do not know if she is old enough, but I remember
protesting as a student in the 1970s against a new nuclear power
station at Torness on the east coast of Scotland. Even at that
time, it was identified that if the money that it would cost to
build a nuclear power station had been spent on insulating homes
and buildings, the energy saved would have been significantly
more than Torness could produce. Does she agree that the
short-sighted, almost religious zealot-like fascination with
nuclear power in the United Kingdom has been damaging our energy
prospects for a great many years and has got to stop?
I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, with which I agree
100%. The nuclear obsession is using vast amounts of money,
diverting attention and also sending mixed signals to investors,
who really do not know what kind of energy future this country is
planning for itself. It is a massive white elephant. Nuclear
power stations are not coming in on budget and on time anywhere,
and the idea that we can now achieve that here in the UK, against
all the evidence in so many other countries—and, indeed, against
the evidence here at home with Hinkley, for example, which is
massively over budget and massively late—beggars belief.
(Ludlow) (Con)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate, and
on her important contributions to our deliberations on the
Environmental Audit Committee. Just before getting diverted on to
nuclear, she mentioned the importance of the energy efficiency
taskforce, on which I completely agree with her. Does she agree
that when the Government choose to respond to the report we
published as a Committee earlier this week, which she mentioned,
it would be most helpful if they took this opportunity to clarify
what the taskforce’s terms of reference and primary objectives
will be, so that it can be used as a Government-inspired device
to accelerate this national mobilisation of energy efficiency,
which we all agree needs to be undertaken?
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his
kind words. I absolutely agree: the taskforce has a real
potential to make a difference, but we are still in the dark
about many of the details. If the Government gave us more
information, it would give a lot of comfort to a lot of people to
know that there is a guiding mind that will ensure we accelerate
these urgent installations of energy efficiency.
I turn to oil, gas and fossil fuels. Just as it was political
choices that led to families being unable to heat their homes, so
was it a political choice by the Government to protect the oil
and gas companies, whose profits have grown fat from the spoils
of war. As households struggle to make ends meet and our planet
burns, the Government have chosen to double down on the very
thing that is at the heart of these multiple crises. The UK is
set to grant more than 100 licences to explore for more oil and
gas in the North sea. Although the windfall tax has been
increased to 35%, bringing the total tax on oil and gas to about
75%—I note, in parentheses, that that is still lower than
Norway’s, at 78%—it is genuinely incomprehensible that the
Government have failed to remove what is being called the gas
giveaway, which means that oil and gas companies will still be
able to claim £91.40 in tax relief for every £100 invested. What
is more, from 1 January, a company spending £100 on so-called
upstream decarbonisation—essentially reducing emissions from the
process of extracting oil and gas, which of course then goes on
to be burned—is now eligible for £109 relief on every £100
invested. In other words, we are paying the oil and gas companies
to do the decarbonisation that they should be paying for. They
are not broke; they are literally saying that they have more
money than they know what to do with. I suggest that they start
actually paying their own way.
New oil and gas extracted from the North sea will neither deliver
energy security nor bring down bills, but will inevitably come at
huge cost to the taxpayer. The hon. Member for Bath () mentioned Rosebank, the UK’s
largest undeveloped oilfield. The costs to the taxpayer if it
goes ahead are enormous. At triple the size of the neighbouring
Cambo oilfield, if Rosebank is developed it would produce more
emissions than 28 low-income countries combined, or the carbon
dioxide equivalent of running 58 coal-fired power stations for a
year. It is estimated that if it is developed, its owners would
receive more than £500 million of taxpayer subsidies, as the hon.
Lady said, thanks to the investment allowance—the gas and oil
giveaway—in the energy profits levy. If that £500 million were
not used for those subsidies—subsidies to burn our planet more—it
could be used to extend free school meals to every child whose
family receives universal credit. It could be used to pay the
annual salaries of more than 14,000 nurses or build one new
medium-sized hospital. It is genuinely baffling that the
Government think that that is the best use of £500 million at any
time, let alone now.
The Minister may try to argue that the development is required
because the UK will continue to need gas in the future, but he
knows as well as I do that 90% of Rosebank’s reserves are oil,
not gas, and that it is likely to be exported, given that that is
the fate of 80% of the oil that is currently produced in the UK.
There are currently more than 200 oil and gas fields already
operating in the North sea whose production would be entirely
unaffected if Rosebank were not to go ahead, so this is not about
immediately turning off the taps, as Ministers like to suggest.
It is not legitimate for the Government to justify new oil and
gas licences by saying they are needed. That does not reflect the
reality of the situation. I know that, and I think the Minister
does too.
It is patently clear that a crisis caused by gas cannot be solved
by more gas. As the International Energy Agency clearly states in
its “World Energy Outlook 2022”:
“No one should imagine that Russia’s invasion can justify a wave
of new oil and gas infrastructure in a world that wants to reach
net zero emissions by 2050.”
As a first step, the Government must scrap the so-called gas
giveaway—the huge subsidy to the climate criminals who have
benefited from Putin’s illegal war. Next, they must urgently work
to end the age of fossil fuels for good, because time is not on
our side. The Environmental Audit Committee report, which has
been referred to, recommended that the Government consult on
setting a clear date for ending new oil and gas licensing rounds
in the North sea. Given that we are, in the words of the United
Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres,
“on the highway to climate hell with our foot still on the
accelerator”,
personally I think the time for consultation has gone. Will the
Government explain exactly how new oil and gas licences are
compatible with limiting global temperatures to 1.5°, when there
is overwhelming evidence to the contrary?
The Climate Change Committee noted:
“An end to UK exploration would send a clear signal to investors
and consumers that the UK is committed to…1.5°C.”
Furthermore, now that the Government have resurrected the Energy
Bill, will the Minister use this opportunity to legislate for an
end to the maximising economic recovery duty—a woefully outdated
obligation to maximise the economic recovery of petroleum, which
can have no place on the statute books of a country that has any
real climate ambition? Instead of that duty to maximise the
economic recovery of petroleum, will he look at the need to
effect a real, just transition for workers and an orderly managed
decline of the oil and gas industry? Will the Government also
fully harness the potential of renewables, which at the latest
contracts for difference auction were at least nine times cheaper
than gas?
I welcome the concessions on onshore wind made in the
Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, but the Minister will know
that a number of barriers still remain, not least the lack of
targets and the strategy for this cheap and popular form of
energy. Will he now also address those issues?
The hon. Lady is being generous with her time. I may pre-empt
what she was about to come on to. In concluding her remarks on
alternative renewable energy sources, will she commend to the
Minister the work the Government have already done in allowing
contracts for difference to be available to tidal energy systems,
to provide renewable baseload electricity supply, which at the
moment is a critical shortcoming in the plans?
I certainly welcome that intervention and agree entirely on
welcoming the use of the contracts for difference mechanism.
Tidal has huge potential and that is one way to maximise that. As
the right hon. Gentleman knows, we will be looking this afternoon
in the Environmental Audit Committee at ways in which we can
unblock more solar power, for example, by enabling the batteries,
alongside household solar, to be installed retrospectively at
lower VAT rates. It is odd that, at the moment, there are
reductions on VAT for solar panels but not for the batteries for
households that want to store energy.
On that point, does the hon. Lady agree that the Government
should seek to incentivise further private domestic installation
of solar panels or ground-source heat pumps by considering an
offsetting of the investment against income tax?
I thank the hon. Lady for that proposal, which is not one I have
looked at, but which sounds interesting. I would be interested to
know what the Minister thinks of that.
I will bring my comments to a close simply by saying that, in
responding to the multiple crises that I have set out this
morning, it is important that we do not store up more problems
for the future. Rather than harking back to the fossil-fuel era,
I ask the Minister one more time if he will finally prioritise
the quickest and cheapest way to bring down bills for the long
term, and introduce that desperately needed street-by-street home
insulation programme. Again and again, we have seen Government
schemes that are not working. The green deal scheme and green
homes grant both collapsed and did massive damage to supply
chains, with businesses unable to have confidence in what the
Government were introducing.
We urgently need an end to the fossil-fuel era, which was
kickstarted by coal and colonialism. Instead, we need resilience
for the long term, with good green jobs in every constituency,
warm homes that are not vulnerable to global gas prices, and the
abundance of renewable energy with which these nations are
blessed. Only then can we avoid future energy crises, create a
more prosperous society and ensure that everyone shares in a
transition to a zero-carbon economy.
(in the Chair)
I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called in the
debate.
Several hon. Members rose—
(in the Chair)
Thank goodness, they are. I call .
9.53am
(St Ives) (Con)
Thank you, Sir Robert. I commend the hon. Member for Brighton,
Pavilion () for securing this
worthwhile and vital debate. It comes after a year in which the
Government were exercised about how to address the cost of living
and reduce the demand for energy in our homes. I think we have
the solution here, in this room. I hope the Minister is listening
carefully because I know he wants to do some great work while in
post.
Everyone here, as well as the Government, knows that an effective
way to reduce demand for fossil fuels, reduce both cost of living
pressures and the demand for energy more generally is to improve
the efficiency of our homes. I represent St Ives and when I was
elected as an MP in 2015 I was told I had the leakiest homes in
the UK, possibly in Europe. That came at the time of the Paris
climate agreement, when we ratified our commitment as a nation to
improve all our homes to EPC grade C by 2030.
I had a discussion yesterday with someone who has done research
on how much my constituents pay for energy compared with other
parts of the country. Part of my constituency is the most
expensive place to live in the country because of the energy used
and its cost, so this is urgent. I have raised that a number of
times during my time as an MP, and I believe the solution is
nowhere near as difficult as we make it out to be.
The Prime Minister would be interested in this topic because
fuel-poor homes work against the vision that he set out on 4
January. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion referred to the
fact that there was no mention in his speech about energy and so
on, but he did talk about attainment, and we know that fuel-poor
homes hold back attainment. He talked about the pressure on the
NHS, and we know that fuel-poor homes contribute to poor health
and wellbeing and increased demand on the NHS and social care. He
talked about inflation and people’s incomes, and we know that
fuel-poor homes absorb disposable income from the families that
we have described in the past as just about managing, and we also
know that fuel-poor homes reduce the availability of homes to
rent. I will talk later about why that is.
Before the UK ratified the bold commitment to get homes up or
down to EPC rating C, the need to retrofit homes was well
documented and well understood in this country. ECO—the energy
company obligation—and green deals have, as we have heard, helped
in a significant number of homes, but those are often the
low-hanging fruit, the ones that are easiest to do, but there are
others, such as homes in my constituency and other rural areas,
that need a much more deliberate focus. I ask the Minister to
consider how this year can be spent on a more focused and
determined way to impact on this huge problem.
The rocketing cost of energy to heat our homes must bring this
vital issue to the forefront of the Government’s mind. As we have
heard from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for
Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, work will be done to
help people to reduce the energy demand in their homes. I hope
that that includes a determined effort to understand how we can
do that effectively, quickly, and without wasting huge sums of
money on subcontracts. A company in Scotland, for example—I do
not wish to pick on Scotland; this is an example that relates to
Cornwall—will secure a huge Government contract and then identify
companies further down the food chain to deliver the contracts,
but, unfortunately, not very well. We had a huge problem with
that, with the £2 billion that the Government announced during
the covid time to address problems with our homes. We need, as
has been suggested, a grassroots, street-by-street approach,
perhaps local authority-led, to identify what can be done to
improve the efficiency of the home and then get on and do it
while making sure that the money is spent exactly where it is
intended to be spent.
I do not intend to speak for long, but I want the Minister to
consider the Government’s approach to improving our leaky homes.
I am happy to suggest a pilot in Cornwall. The council has
already suggested a pilot and has identified how much it would
cost. It is quite a lot of money, but it would be good to test
the water to see if that can be achieved.
Can the Minister say any more about what the Government plan to
do to help us reduce the energy demand in our homes? Will that
include support to retrofit and improve the efficiency of our
homes? Can he update the House on plans to modify the EPC rating?
I led a debate last summer on the problem of affordable housing
and why in Cornwall, although this will be true elsewhere, the
energy performance certificate drives landlords to flip their
homes from long lets to short-term lets—not because the law does
not apply to a short-term let, but because it is not properly
enforced, whereas it is much better enforced for long lets.
The problem is not that people do not want to improve the
efficiency of their homes, but the tool we ask people to measure
their homes by is often a case of “computer says no”. It does not
truly achieve what we are trying to achieve, which is to improve
the efficiency of our homes and reduce costs. The current
methodology around EPCs is flawed. BEIS agreed last summer to
review the methodology and look at how we can improve that, so
what progress has been made? If the Minister cannot tell us
today, perhaps he will follow up with a letter.
We know that fuel-poor homes drive out the availability of long
lets. That is exactly what is happening across Cornwall. We are
still seeing landlords who cannot achieve EPC rating E, let alone
C, so they are having to use the house for other purposes. That
needs to be addressed, and quickly.
I thank my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene during his
excellent speech. On the subject of EPCs, in his constituency has
he seen what I have discovered in my constituency? When a social
landlord is faced with renovation costs to make their property
legally lettable at EPC rating E, they discover that the cost is
too great and consequently propose to sell the property and evict
the social tenants. This is happening in a small village
community where there is no alternative provision.
That is exactly my experience, and it has been my experience for
a number of years. It is tragic. Our parish council contacted me
in desperation because it fought long and hard many years ago to
identify sites to build and set aside such homes, only to find
that they are lost, partly for that reason. As a result, villages
are being hollowed out, making it difficult to keep open the post
office, the GP surgery and the local school. We should not reduce
our ambition to improve homes, but there is an urgent need to
understand how we can do that and fund it.
That is the experience I have had in parts of my constituency and
it concerns me greatly, but I am not critical of social
landlords. When I left school I learned to build homes. I built
homes with blocks, cement and sand, and today lots of homes are
built in exactly the same way. The insulation being put in has
improved, but we are making nowhere near enough carbon-neutral
homes. We can get there and there are better ways of building,
but the building trade has not moved on enough to catch up with
what is needed, but perhaps that is a subject for debate another
day.
To touch on the problem of listed buildings, in Cornwall—I am not
sure if this is true elsewhere—we are working hard to improve the
quality of our homes, many of which are listed buildings or are
in conservation areas. Property owners often request double
glazing. Although it is now possible to get double glazing that
is in keeping with such buildings, the flat answer is that it
cannot be done, so we are retrofitting homes but not installing
double glazing in homes that badly need energy efficiency
measures.
Will the Minister provide guidance to local authorities, and
perhaps even to the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and
Communities, about things that can be done to improve the quality
of those homes? We need a better understanding of modern methods
that can be used to achieve homes that people can live in while
retaining their beauty, rather than simply saying, “No, that
cannot be done. You must spend a huge amount of money replacing
your windows with windows that are exactly the same and no more
efficient.”
Finally, will the Minister consider setting up a taskforce to
look at the barriers to households installing renewable energy
and storage infrastructure? Are those barriers the cost to the
household, the red tape put in place by the power distributors or
the restraints of the national grid? I am constantly meeting
people who are frustrated because they want to put infrastructure
in their homes, farms or businesses, but reasons are given about
why that cannot be achieved or the sheer cost is too great. Will
the Minister look urgently at setting up some sort of taskforce
to get to the nub of the issue, in order to unlock the potential
for renewable energy in individual homes? That will address the
cost of heating and energising those homes, as well as reducing
the impact and use of fossil fuels.
10.04am
(Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Robert. I
congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion () on securing this incredibly
important debate.
In common with the hon. Member for St Ives (), I seek reassurance about the
many homes in my constituency that are in conservation areas. I
share his frustration about the “computer says no” approach to
the installation of double glazing, which I have certainly come
across in Lancashire. From Lancashire to Cornwall that is
definitely an issue, and Government intervention could help a lot
of families make their homes more energy efficient.
I will begin by talking about the Prime Minister’s grand five
promises, which he made at the beginning of this month. I was
incredibly surprised and disappointed that the environment did
not really get any kind of mention, and I thought it was quite
irresponsible to prioritise the stopping of small boats crossing
the channel over climate change. Perhaps the Prime Minister has
not heard, but the latest prediction is that we will have over 1
billion climate refugees by 2050, so constantly chasing the
consequences rather than the causes is always going to be to the
detriment of progress.
The Government have managed to use the war in Ukraine and the
pandemic to absolve themselves of responsibility for the energy
and cost of living crisis. There is no doubt that those events
have exacerbated the situation, but the underlying causes of the
crisis have been brewing for a very long time. As the hon. Member
for Brighton, Pavilion said, the Government have had 12 years to
build up our energy security and transition towards a net zero
economy, but instead, they have espoused the rhetoric of
commitment while not doing any of the things necessary to
actually make that happen.
There are very obvious solutions, which have been stressed in
this debate. Household insulation, for instance, has been shown
to be an effective and efficient way of lowering energy demand
and improving energy security, yet the Government have scrapped
their campaign to insulate homes just six months after its
inception. Now that the energy crisis has categorically proven
the necessity of transitioning to net zero, the Government plan
for 130 new licences for North sea oil and gas. That decision is
already being challenged in the courts as being unlawful and
incompatible with the UK’s international climate obligations. The
UK cannot claim to be an international leader on the climate
crisis while moving back towards fossil fuels: this simply proves
the falsity of all Government promises on climate action.
Many of my constituents—I am sure other Members will agree—have
been writing to me in opposition to Government plans to approve
the Rosebank oil field. Quite rightly, they view it as a complete
betrayal of our climate goals and responsibilities to the planet.
When I wrote to the Government on this matter, the letter I got
back from the Minister justified the use of additional oil and
gas fields on the basis that a decline in domestic production
would require us to import more oil and gas, but—as was
eloquently said by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—most of
the gas from Rosebank is actually going to be for export. Given
the wealth of evidence about the potential for clean energy
sources to meet our energy needs, I find that response
incomprehensible.
In my time in this House, I have frequently made the case for
renewable energy projects in my own constituency, including tidal
energy on the River Wyre. A barrage is proposed between Fleetwood
and Knott End, which would be able to produce energy locally, and
we have a number of great academics at Lancaster University who
are working on renewable energy sources and have lots of good
ideas about how we in Lancashire can be part of that energy
solution. The only possible explanation for moving in the
opposite direction to common sense is that a powerful few in the
Conservative party are set to benefit from the expansion of
fossil fuels, keeping Britain stuck in the past, rather than
leading the future.
The Government response to the energy crisis has been short-term
financial support. While that is necessary, it does absolutely
nothing to address the root causes of the problem, nor to equip
the country for success in the future. We need urgent investment
in renewable energy to create the green growth that can save
money on bills, while also equipping us for a future without oil
and gas dependencies.
(North East Fife)
(LD)
Apologies, Sir Robert, for missing the start of the debate. The
hon. Lady is making a very powerful speech about the
contradictions that we are seeing in the Government’s policies. I
felt that very strongly during the energy statement regarding
support for businesses, in that I have a business in my
constituency that is very keen to make energy savings and
efficiencies, but those projects are capital hungry, so without
support to make those green investments, that business cannot
move away from its dependency on fossil fuels. Does the hon. Lady
agree that the Government are being incredibly short-sighted on
this issue?
Absolutely. I was present for that statement earlier this week,
and the point that the hon. Lady raises about businesses
struggling to make their premises more energy efficient ties in
with all of this. Just before I went into the Chamber for that
statement, I received my energy bill for my constituency office,
which is in a very poorly insulated building on Lord Street in
Fleetwood. My prediction is that my energy bill will increase
fivefold in the next year. I am sure that colleagues in the room
will realise that the budgets we get from the Independent
Parliamentary Standards Authority are not the most generous in
terms of being able to deliver a shopfront constituency office,
and the price rise will put me in a very difficult position going
forward.
Returning to the matter at hand rather than the challenges with
my office budget, the support that the Government have needed to
give has been quite poorly delivered. I want to speak on behalf
of many of my constituents, because I have asked the Government
numerous times for exact details and dates of the energy support
payments for those living in park homes, marina boats and canal
boats. The first response was, “In due course.” Then it was,
“This winter.” The latest response was, “From January.” I soon
expect the answer will be “February”, and the payments will come
to an abrupt end in April. Promises of future payments do very
little to placate the real needs and concerns of those who are
struggling now.
High energy prices are also driving record-high inflation. The
public and the planet are bearing the cost, while the oil
companies are still making record profits. People can see it and
they do not like it. We all know that lower-income households are
the most affected by price rises, and we have seen appalling
reports on the record use of food banks and the rising levels of
destitution. It is a policy choice not to treat increasing
poverty with the serious concern and action that it warrants, and
I have been contacted by a number of constituents with particular
concerns about children growing up in poverty. We need to invest
in these children and provide them with the urgent support they
need now, while creating a future of sustainable jobs and clean
energy to ensure that their children do not end up in the same
cycle.
It is often the poorest of my constituents whose homes end up
being flooded when we see extreme weather events. Standing in
people’s flooded living rooms when they have lost so many
personal possessions, and holding them as they cry, has been one
of the most difficult things I have had to do as a Member of
Parliament. It is not something I expected to do when I was first
elected in 2015, but the reality is that, with the increase in
extreme events, it is something that I am likely to have to
continue to do going forward. Indeed, we had a yellow weather
warning for rain in Lancashire yesterday. Thankfully, I have not
yet had any reports of any homes being flooded, but roads are
certainly flooding at the moment. It is a consequence of our
failing to tackle the climate emergency that is unfolding.
The Government are pursuing a strategy that accelerates climate
change, harms our environment and does nothing to meet people’s
energy needs and help them with the cost of living crisis. There
are some very obvious solutions that have been put forward in
this morning’s debate, and I hope that the Minister is open to
considering making this a priority for his Government, meeting
people’s cost of living crisis and stopping the climate
emergency.
(in the Chair)
We now move to the Front-Bench contributions. I call .
10.12am
(Glenrothes) (SNP)
Thank you, Sir Robert. I am pleased to begin summing up in this
debate, and I commend the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion
() again for securing it and
for her measured but still passionate and, as always, very
well-informed introduction.
I have not heard very much in the debate that I disagree with. I
might not entirely agree with everything said by the hon. Member
for St Ives (), but he used a very small and
localised example to highlight what is possibly the biggest
elephant in the room: if we think that we will tackle climate
change and that everything else will continue in the way it
always has, we are deluding ourselves. It is not going to happen.
The hon. Gentleman explained how the social rented housing market
is being disrupted because of steps being taken to improve the
efficiency of buildings. We can argue about where we balance the
various different needs—including the need to provide housing of
some kind, and the need to make sure that housing is properly
insulated—but we will not tackle climate change if we leave the
way we do housing exactly as it is now. It is going to have to
change. We will not tackle climate change if we continue with the
transport provision that we have now. Far too many of us—me
included—feel that we cannot do our job without flying regularly,
but that will have to change.
The first thing that the Government have to do on climate change,
which they have failed to do almost since the phrase was first
used, is to start being honest with people and say, “Tackling
climate change will hurt. It is not going to be easy, and it is
not going to be cheap, but the alternative is even worse.” Far
too often, the Government and their colleagues in the Opposition
in Scotland seem to want to make people believe that there is a
dead easy, quick-fix way out of everything—“If we vote for
Brexit, everything will be great”; “If we vote for one Prime
Minister after another, everything will be great”; “If we could
just stop the boats coming across the channel, there will be
plenty of jobs and money for all the people already here.” None
of that is true. None of the significant issues that the
Government have to face up to have quick and easy solutions. The
Government need to start being honest with people and say, “If we
are going to be serious about addressing climate change and
fixing an energy market that is not fit for purpose, it will not
be easy or comfortable.” It will be extremely uncomfortable for
some of their pals in the City of London, and that is maybe where
they need to start focusing their attention.
I represent a constituency that was one of the most important
economic drivers of the United Kingdom and, indeed, the empire—to
our eternal shame. It was one of the most important coalmining
constituencies in the United Kingdom. Methil docks used to be one
of the biggest coal exporting ports anywhere in the world. That
is all gone. A lot of the traditions and heritage that went with
coalmining are still there, but coal has not been dug out the
ground in Fife for many decades. The constituency also played a
major part in the oil and gas industry. The fabrication yard,
known as RGC in those days, was a major source of the
infrastructure for North sea oil and gas.
Both of those energy booms created billionaires by today’s
standards. Very little of the benefit stayed in my constituency.
We would not need to spend much time walking through places like
Methil and Buckhaven to realise that the economic benefits of the
oil and gas boom and the coal boom went elsewhere. The benefits
certainly did not stay with the people who lived, worked and, in
too many cases, lost their lives to make those industries
effective. However we change the way we do energy in these four
nations, we need to ensure that the benefits that come from being
an energy-rich nation go to the people. I do not just mean a few
directors in boardrooms; I mean the people who actually helped to
produce that massive wealth.
The crisis we are facing has not just happened because Putin
invaded Ukraine last year or because he invaded Ukraine in
2014—although perhaps if the UK and their allies had not turned
the other way in 2014 and had stood up to Putin then, the most
recent invasion might not have happened. The energy crisis and
the cost of living crisis are a result of decades of long-term
failure. It is now creating a day-by-day crisis. People are
freezing in their homes today, so we cannot wait 25 years to come
up with a strategy to fix that. There needs to be significantly
more emergency help going to people now. We need long-overdue
recognition that our entire energy system—from the way energy is
produced, distributed and supplied to the way the price is
controlled, or not—is not fit for purpose. None of it is working
to the benefit of our constituents. It is not working for the
people who rely on it most and the people who cannot afford 100%
or 150% increases in their fuel bills.
Once this—I hope—short-term crisis has been addressed, we need to
start looking at what we can do to change the energy market so
that this can never happen again. Why is it that in a country
such as Scotland, which produces 85% of its electricity need
without gas, the change in gas prices has such a disastrous
impact on electricity prices in Scotland, when very few of my
constituents use electricity that has ever been anywhere near a
gas field? Why is it that in a country such as Scotland, which
exports more gas than it imports, when the price of gas goes up,
our people get poorer? That does not make sense. It does not make
economic sense, and it certainly cannot be morally or ethically
defended.
Since 1990, the Scottish Government have delivered a reduction of
well over 50% in our CO2 emissions. We are more than halfway
towards net zero. Clearly, the second half of the journey will be
more difficult. They are doing that by accepting, and they
formally accepted this in an announcement made over the past day
or two, that oil and gas are not the future. There is now a
presumption in Scotland against any further exploration or
development of oil and gas facilities. There are still
significant potential economic reserves under the North sea, but
the Scottish Government have taken the decision that the price to
the planet of exploiting those reserves is just too high. It does
not take a genius to work out that that is not an easy thing for
the Scottish Government to say. It has not been an easy decision
to take, and it will not be universally popular in Scotland, but
it is the kind of hard decision that we have to be prepared to
take. We have to be prepared to say that there are times when the
economic benefit or certainly the short-term economic benefit, of
exploiting those oil and gas reserves will be outweighed by the
longer-term damage that that does to the planet and, ultimately,
by the longer-term economic harm that that causes.
I will give an indication of how severe the energy crisis has
been in Scotland. Between 1 and 18 December last year, the
Scottish Ambulance Service answered 800 999 calls from people
with hypothermia. Eight hundred people in Scotland were admitted
to hospital because they were literally freezing to death. That
is in a country that has more energy than it needs. How can it be
allowed to happen? How can it possibly be justifiable? I will put
that figure of 800 people into context. At the moment, and as in
England, Scotland is seeing probably the highest levels, or
certainly among the highest levels, of covid hospitalisations
that we have had, almost at any time, and exceptionally high
levels of hospitalisation with influenza. About 1,600 or 1,700
people in Scotland are in hospital with either flu or covid; and
in the space of 18 days, we sent another 800 people in because
they were freezing to death. That is the extent to which the
climate crisis, the energy crisis, is putting additional pressure
on an NHS that does not need additional pressure put on it. As
well as the sheer inhumanity of allowing people to get to a stage
where they are in danger of freezing to death in their own homes,
there is a knock-on impact on public services that are already
under enormous pressure.
I can predict what the Minister will say. I can certainly predict
what he came into this Chamber intending to say; I do not know
whether he will have changed his answer after listening to any of
the arguments made today. The Government will blame the Russian
invasion of Ukraine. Yes, that has had an impact, but it has not
had as big an impact as the Government might try to pretend. The
United Kingdom does not depend on Russian oil or gas to anything
like the extent that some other countries do, and those other
countries are not faring any worse than we are.
The Minister might well throw the barb that was very popular on
the Tory Benches towards the end of last year—that this is all
the SNP’s fault because we will not allow any more nuclear power
stations in Scotland. But apart from the fact that if we started
planning and building a nuclear power station today, it would not
help the 800 people who were hospitalised in December, or the 800
who might be hospitalised later this month if there is another
cold snap, the Scottish Government’s opposition to nuclear power
is because of two facts. In Scotland, we do not need it; and it
is by far the most expensive form of energy that this country or
these four countries have ever used.
Therefore, I hope that the Minister will not demonstrate what I
think the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion described as the
previous “obsession” with nuclear power. Nuclear power has never
been the answer. It is certainly not the answer now. As I
mentioned in an intervention, there have been times when it has
been shown that if, rather than building a nuclear power station,
we had spent the money insulating people’s homes, we would have
got more energy out of it. That is not sexy, and it does not make
anyone look clever in the eyes of the United States if they can
say that they have the best insulated homes anywhere in the
world, but economically it makes a lot more sense than building
nuclear power stations. At the moment, we still literally do not
know how much it will cost to decommission the ones that we
already have, so why on earth would we start to build any new
ones?
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion on
initiating this debate. A great deal more could be said on this
issue. I have no doubt that on a different day, or possibly if we
had been able to get time in the main Chamber, a lot more Members
would have wanted to speak. My single request to the Minister,
and the message that needs to go back to the Government about the
issue, is this: start being honest with people about where the
energy crisis has come from, because if we are not honest about
what has caused the crisis, we will never get any closer to
finding answers to it. I do not want to see another 800 people in
Scotland at risk of freezing to death next time there is a cold
snap. But at the same time, when I move on from here, I want
there to be a world left that is fit for all our families and all
our constituents’ families to continue to inhabit for a hundred
years to come. If we continue going the way we are just now, that
cannot be guaranteed.
10.24am
(Bristol East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Sir Robert. I
congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion () on securing the debate.
This is certainly not a one-off debate on this topic; it is
something that affects us all as constituency MPs, as well as
being very much about the underlying issue of what we do to
tackle the climate crisis.
The hon. Member reflected that very well. She talked about the
global fight and the fact that weening ourselves off fossil fuels
is key to tackling many of the problems that have been flagged up
today, but she also got down to detailed issues affecting her
constituents. She talked about the forced installation of
prepayment meters by court warrant and the consequent rise in
self-disconnection. I am interested to hear the Minister’s
response on that issue, because many of us are concerned about
it.
The hon. Member for St Ives () also talked about specific
issues in his constituency, including retrofitting homes. Again,
I am interested to hear the Minister’s response to the hon.
Member’s criticisms of the energy performance certificate regime
and its impact on the letting market in Cornwall. I will come on
to retrofitting homes that currently do not meet standards, but
another issue is that we are still building homes that do not
meet standards. Since about 2016, more than 1 million homes have
been built that do not meet standards. That seems ludicrous, and
I hope the Minister will address that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood () talked about the impact on people living in park homes
and conservation areas—how it is not always easy for them to
adapt their homes and how sometimes the cost is far greater. I
thought that reflected just how good a constituency MP she is.
Before the debate started, we were talking about farmers as
well.
The most powerful thing that evoked memories for me was when my
hon. Friend talked about the floods in 2015 and 2016, when she
was a newly elected MP. As the then shadow Environment Secretary,
I visited the constituencies of other newly elected Labour MPs,
including my hon. Friends the Members for Halifax () and for York Central (). I saw the devastation
that those floods caused for families. In Halifax, they had been
told that the floods a few years earlier were a once-in-a-century
experience, and that they would never see flooding like that
again. They showed me the marks on the wall to show not just that
the floods had happened again, but were worse than before.
A few years prior to those floods, we had floods on the Somerset
levels. Again, it was seen as an almost freak event. was given—as he usually was—a
taskforce to chair that was going to bring up all the answers.
Then, of course, it dropped off the agenda when we had a few
years without floods. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and
Fleetwood was quite right to warn that we should not be
complacent. That there is a constant fear that flooding could
return, which is very much connected with the climate crisis.
My hon. Friend also pointed out the Government’s ludicrous
argument—I know the Minister is fond of this—that domestic fossil
fuel extraction is somehow a green measure. I think he also tried
to claim the same about fracking during that infamous debate when
we were going to frack and then not frack, and when it was a vote
of confidence and not a vote of confidence. The idea that we can
get around fossil fuel emissions by claiming that there are no
transportation costs associated with imports is silly, especially
when much of what is produced will be exported. My hon. Friend
did flag that up.
Returning to the opening remarks from the hon. Member for
Brighton, Pavilion, she said that last year was very much
dominated by soaring energy prices and a worsening climate
crisis. It exposed our reliance on dirty and volatile fossil
fuels. Gas prices soared to 10 times their level in the first
half of 2021, meaning that the price of gas was nine times higher
than the cost of cheap renewables such as wind and solar. That is
an important message to get across to people. Renewables are not
the expensive option any more; they are way cheaper than the
fossil fuel route.
As has been said, the Minister will mention the illegal war in
Ukraine. Of course, that was a major factor, but it does not
explain why leading economists are predicting that the UK will
face one of the worst recessions and the weakest recoveries in
the G7. According to the OBR—the previous Chancellor and Prime
Minister were keen to avoid telling us what the OBR thought, and
now we know why—the UK has already fallen into recession and is
facing the biggest drop in living standards since records began.
The reality is that we simply were not prepared for the energy
shock that we saw last year, partly because we have had years of
wasted opportunities to develop cheap, clean and renewable energy
sources and to wean ourselves off fossil fuels.
Instead of a green sprint for renewables, the Government launched
a failed attempt to bring back fracking, so that they could
extract the most eye-wateringly expensive gas without considering
the wishes or safety of our local communities. The Government
issued more than 100 new licences for expensive and polluting oil
and gas extraction. On top of that, they attempted to ban new
solar developments and keep the ban on new onshore wind, which
would have blocked the cheapest available forms of energy.
I know that there have been U-turns on quite a lot of
that—although it is difficult to keep up sometimes—but ordinary
households are now paying the price for the dithering, delay and
years of inaction on renewables. New research suggests that
households could have saved £1,750 a year if the Government had
moved faster to reduce emissions through support for renewable
energy, energy efficiency upgrades and other green investments.
For the 9 million households now living in fuel poverty, that
£1,750 could have made a world of difference.
Labour led the way in calling for a windfall tax in January last
year. The Prime Minister, who was then Chancellor, was pretty
reluctant to introduce one. Eventually, he brought in a
half-hearted measure, but even then, oil and gas giants avoided
paying fair taxes due to the huge investment allowance loophole
that was snuck into the tax. I read recently that Shell is paying taxes
this year for the first time in something like five years.
Clearly, something is very wrong. The loophole, which applied
only to polluting fossil fuels and not to cheap renewables,
allowed fossil fuel companies to avoid paying any windfall tax on
91p of every £1 they made.
The Chancellor has now confirmed that support with energy bills
will reduce from April next year. That means that households,
many of which are already at breaking point—not just because of
energy bills, but because of increases in rent, mortgages, food
prices and interest rates—are expected to suffer another increase
in energy bills from April.
Labour has been clear that the only solution to the cost of
living crisis is a green one. We talked a bit about retrofitting
homes; it is estimated that 9 million homes could have been
insulated since the Government scrapped home insulation support
schemes in 2012, a decision that is now costing households up to
£1,000 on their annual energy bills.
Yesterday, I met a range of people involved in the housing
sector, from people running housing associations to people from
building societies. They are crying out for certainty. They want
to invest in retrofitting loans, green mortgages, or whatever we
want to call them, and they want to renovate properties. We have
seen an absolute shambles from the Government over the past
decade or so, with things such as the green homes grant being
dropped and cowboy builders moving into the market. Unless the
Government provide certainty, consumers and the companies that
will need to deliver the retrofitting programme will not have
confidence. We need a clear sense of direction. That is why
Labour has promised a decade-long programme that would invest in
insulating 19 million homes, with £6 billion invested over that
decade to give that sense of certainty.
Labour would also double down on cheap, clean renewable energy
through our pledge to achieve a clean power system by 2030. That
would mean doubling onshore wind capacity, tripling solar
capacity and quadrupling offshore wind capacity. We would achieve
that goal by establishing a publicly owned renewable energy
generator, GB Energy, so that the profits of those investments
actually benefited the British public.
That is a clear, long-term strategic plan. We are not hearing
anything like that from the Government. I hope that today we will
hear a serious response from the Government setting out not just
how we will tackle the cost of living crisis in the short term
and help people with their energy bills, but how we will put
fossil fuels to bed once and for all and support the sprint
towards green energy.
10.34am
The Minister for Energy and Climate ()
I congratulate the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion () on securing this important
debate and I thank the other hon. Members who have taken part for
sharing their constituents’ thinking on fossil fuels and the cost
of living.
However, listening to quite a lot of the contributions to the
debate, I felt as if we were in some sort of parallel universe,
away from the reality of the world we live in today. Three
quarters of our energy comes from fossil fuels. That is the
reality now. The cost of living crisis is driven by a global
shortage of fossil fuels, which is driving up their price. We are
moving faster than any other G7 country to decarbonise, which no
one would have understood from listening the contributions from
those on the Opposition Benches. We led the world in passing
legislation for net zero, and in putting in place the Climate
Change Committee and the rest of it to keep the Government honest
on the route to getting there, which is a tough one.
The reality is that this economy, like every developed economy,
is dependent on fossil fuels today, and it will be all the way
through to 2050 on net zero, when we will still be using a
quarter of the gas that we use today and we will still need oil
products. That is the context, which people just absolutely would
not have got a glimpse of from the contributions by Members on
the other side of the Chamber today. We heard them all pat each
other on the back on their ideological opposition to nuclear and
their objection to a source of baseload energy that is clean—for
what reason? We heard an absurd world view, co-ordinated between
the SNP, the Greens and His Majesty’s Opposition. Frankly, it is
bizarre. Get real about where we are actually at.
To talk, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes () did, about the crisis and its
impact on the most vulnerable people in his constituency and not
be honest about the context or the need for oil and gas in the
meantime, and not to engage with the fact that producing oil and
gas from our own waters with ever-higher efforts to reduce the
emissions from that production, is simply wrong. And for the hon.
Member for Bristol East () to say that it is laughable
to suggest that burning domestically produced gas with much lower
emissions attached to it, when we must burn gas and we will be
doing so under net zero in 2050, is somehow not the right thing
to do is, again, frankly absurd.
I hope to return to my actual speech, but I must address the
reality of the impact on ordinary people and the most vulnerable.
Those people are ill-served if we do not recognise the actual
realities of the economy and society that we live in today and,
instead, just pose to the public in a kind of virtue
signalling.
The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood () totally condemned every action by this Government, as
though nothing the Government have done has helped in the journey
to net zero or in tackling climate change. This Government have
done more than any other and taken action on the woeful situation
on energy efficiency in homes. We are still way behind where we
need to be, but where were we in 2010? I will tell people where
we were: just 14% of homes had an energy performance certificate
of C or above. If people want something risible or laughably
poor, that is it. What is that figure today? Forty-six per cent.
We heard nothing but condemnation from the hon. Member for
Bristol East, who spoke for the Opposition, about the “shambles”
of this Government’s policy. Well, under our policy, we have
moved from 14% to 46%.
This Government are committed to setting up an energy efficiency
taskforce—further details will be coming soon—precisely to deal
with the points that my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives
() was so right to raise. His
contribution was grounded not in the unreal parallel universe
presented by Opposition Members but in a real understanding of
his constituents in Cornwall, their homes and the rules and
barriers that stand in the way of those people being able to have
more energy-efficient homes. Those rules and barriers need to be
identified and removed to ensure that those people who can and
will invest themselves to green their homes are better able to do
so.
That is what we need—practical, focused, real and honest
engagement with the challenges. People have to accept the wider
context, and they have to recognise what this Government have
done after the woeful performance previously, which can be seen
in all the numbers. Where were we on renewables in 2010?
Practically nowhere. Where are we now? Leading Europe. I did not
hear that in a single contribution from the Opposition Members
who say they care so much about this issue, but care
insufficiently to share any of the vital facts.
I thank the Minister for giving way. I want to say how utterly
disappointed I am by the tone that he has taken. I think that we
have all been pretty constructive this morning. We have given the
Government credit where some progress has been made, but the
Minister cannot stand there and pretend that either the green
deal or the green homes grant were successful—we know that they
were a disaster. He cannot keep going back to 2010 and suggesting
that somehow history was frozen at that point. Any other
Government would probably have done a hell of a lot more than
this Government have since then.
The suggestion that we are virtue signalling, when we are the
ones who are saying that our constituents are living in freezing
homes right now—some are actually dying from hypothermia—in a
country that exports more energy than it uses, is intolerable.
Why is the Minister suggesting that we are on the wrong side when
we say that gas is eight or nine times more expensive than
renewables? That is what is hurting our constituents. Will he
really stand there and defend the Rosebank oil development? That
is for export; even if we do get more oil and gas out of the sea
ourselves, it does not necessarily get used here, and Rosebank
certainly will not be used here. Will he address that point and
some of the other real points that we have been making this
morning?
I thank the hon. Lady. The cost of living crisis is because of
the global position on the price of gas, driven by supply and
demand, as every market is. She speaks as if there is a switch,
and a wilful failure by people in my position to press the button
that ends all fossil fuel. We hear careless suggestions—“From
your friends in the City of London to your friends in the oil and
gas industry”—as if there is some button we have not pressed.
That is not true. This economy, like every developed economy, is
dependent on fossil fuels, and it is a transition to get out of
that. Pretending it is not does not serve those people who are
suffering as the hon. Lady said.
The Government are driving a reduction in our demand for fossil
fuels, and we have achieved a lot on our road to net zero
already. Between 1990 and 2019 we grew the economy by 76% yet cut
our emissions by 44%, decarbonising faster than any other G7
economy. But oil and gas will remain an important part of our
energy mix, and that needs to be recognised. People should not
suggest that there is some button that we are wilfully failing to
press. We cannot switch off fossil fuels overnight and expect to
have a functioning country. If we do not have a functioning
country, we will have more people who cannot afford to heat their
homes properly. That is the reality, and I do not think that has
been properly reflected by Opposition Members today.
Supporting our domestic oil and gas sector is not incompatible
with our efforts on decarbonisation when we know that we will
need oil and gas for decades to come. What is laughable is to
suggest that it is somehow morally superior to burn liquid
natural gas imported from foreign countries, with much higher
emissions around its transportation and production, than gas
produced here. Why would we want to do that?
rose—
There are 120,000 jobs, most of them in Scotland, dependent on
oil and gas. I was delighted to witness the signing of a
memorandum of understanding with three major oil and gas
companies looking to decarbonise their operations west of
Shetland and bring down their production emissions. Emissions
from oil and gas production in this country—remember how fast it
is waning—are still around 4% of our overall emissions. The idea
is to incentivise companies that are massively taxed to invest in
electrification of their production. We need oil and gas for
decades to come. If we can, we should produce it here rather than
import it from somewhere else, and we should incentivise and
ensure that production here is as green as possible. That is why
it is not incompatible.
rose—
We are a net importer of oil and gas, and we will continue to be.
New licences simply help us manage a fast declining basin. Even
with new licences, the production is falling by around 7% a year,
and I think the IEA suggested that it needs to fall by 3% to 4%
globally.
It is a bizarre argument made by the Scottish nationalist party.
The hon. Member for Glenrothes is right to say that it is not
popular. It is not popular in Scotland because it is insane. It
does not make any sense for us to import oil and gas, because we
are going to be burning it. There is no button to stop us burning
it. If we are going to keep burning it, we should burn oil and
gas that we produce here if we can, and we should incentivise our
producers here to operate to the highest environmental standards.
That is the right thing to do morally, for the environment and
economically, and it makes sense. That is why the SNP’s policies,
as re-announced this morning, are so completely out of kilter
with reality.
I am grateful to the Minister for finally giving way. I tactfully
point out him that that he has seriously misrepresented the
position of those of us on this side of the debate. Nobody is
suggesting that we should turn off oil and gas production
immediately. What we are saying is that we have to stop the
headlong, insane rush towards more and more oil and gas
production.
I also remind the Minister that his country is a big importer of
energy and my country is a big exporter of energy. On that point,
will he answer this question? How is it that a country that has
more gas than it needs—a country that is an exporter of an
increasingly scarce, and therefore increasingly valuable, natural
commodity—is becoming poorer when something that we have an
excess of has become more valuable?
As we know, the price of oil and gas has gone up, and hopefully
it will go down again and become more affordable. Scotland is an
integral part of this United Kingdom, which is why the hon.
Gentleman is present in this United Kingdom Parliament. That is
why we are in it together. That is how we are able to support
Scottish households and families through the power of the
Exchequer and the Treasury of this country, which, as he knows,
provide much higher levels of public expenditure and support the
Scottish nationalist party to take credit for every single penny
spent, a large part of which is able to be spent only because of
Scotland’s participation in this United Kingdom. We are in this
together.
Hon. Members raised the idea that oil and gas firms are being
subsidised, but we have raised the level of tax. I think £400
billion has come so far from the oil and gas companies. They are
not being subsidised when we encourage them—
Of course they are.
A reduction in tax from a level that is way above that which any
other type of company pays in this country is not a subsidy, and
anyone who suggests it is is dealing in semantics and not
helping. Hon. Members can say they want to tax those companies
higher, and they can say, “I absolutely do not want to encourage
them to electrify their operations offshore and reduce the
emissions around their production,” but they cannot say we are
subsidising them.
Even when our net zero targets are met in 2050, we will still
need a quarter of our current gas demand. As we have seen,
constrained supply and dramatically increased prices do not
eliminate demand for oil and gas. We will still need oil and gas,
so it makes sense for our domestic resources to retain the
economic and security benefits. Most importantly, hon. Members
should look at what we are doing in the North sea basin. We are
transitioning, but we will need all that offshore expertise. We
need the engagement of the major oil players, which have now made
commitments to their journey to net zero. We want them to produce
the oil and gas that we will be burning for decades to come here
in a green way.
We want to retain those 120,000 jobs. We want to retain the
people with subsea and platform knowledge, because we will need
that for carbon capture and storage, hydrogen and the transition
to the green economy. Again, it is an absolute betrayal not only
of the interests of those workers in Scotland and elsewhere but
of our transition to suggest that there is a kind of brake. It is
a transition, and we are moving through it. Thanks to the Climate
Change Act and the carbon budgets, we are on track to reduce
demand.
That is another point: hon. Members talk as if oil and gas
exploration drives the world’s use of oil and gas, but it does
not; the demand side does that. Petrol cars need to be filled,
which is why we are encouraging electric cars. Methane-burning
boilers demand gas, so we need to replace them with heat pumps
and green our electricity system. It is the demand side that we
need to focus on. I just think the whole conversation nationally
has been focused on how oil and gas exploration drives usage, but
it does not. Putting the price up massively and having a shortage
does not massively drop usage because we are so dependent on this
stuff. We are moving as fast as we can to get ourselves off that
dependency, and we are leading the world in doing so.
Through our COP presidency, we have encouraged the rest of the
world to follow us. Just 30% of global GDP was covered by net
zero pledges in 2019, when we took on the COP presidency, and it
is now 90%, so the world is following us. We are leading on those
policies. We are a world leader in tidal, which was mentioned. I
am delighted that we have now been overtaken by China in offshore
wind, but we are the leader in Europe. We transformed the
economics of it thanks to our contracts for difference—the
mechanisms that this Government put in place. The truth is that
this country has done comparatively a fantastic job. The data
shows—notwithstanding the sometime mis-steps in energy
efficiency—that, overall, our performance compared to what came
before has been transformative,
I look forward to the energy efficiency taskforce, my colleague
, and a co-chair who will
soon be announced taking these matters forward and listening to
colleagues’ practical, proper suggestions on everything from
getting the right balance between conservation and installing
energy efficient windows to looking at issues such as solar
installation on homes, planning and other aspects. We are working
together on all those things and also ensuring that we take an
holistic approach around our coast as we make plans and aim to
ensure that we have a strategic spatial understanding of the
North sea and its role in the transition.
This country is doing a fantastic job, and the vision for the
future is that we should be an exporter of electricity. I hope to
see us being an exporter of hydrogen. I see us as being
potentially able to export, as it were, our carbon storage
capability to our European friends and allies, and recently I was
delighted to witness the signing of a memorandum of understanding
on North sea co-operation with all the other countries involved
in the North sea. That shows that we are working constructively
with our EU allies.
On so many fronts, this country—and this Government, I am proud
to say—is doing a brilliant job in leading the world in
understanding the importance of getting to net zero, in tackling
the reality of the transition from our dependence on fossil
fuels, and on the need to keep producing those things in the
greenest manner possible while doing everything we can to drive
down demand, because it is the demand signal that we need to
eradicate, rather than worrying about whether Rosebank, Cambo or
anything else goes ahead. We have ensured through the climate
change checkpoint that we look closely at that, and I am
confident that our approach is compatible with the journey to net
zero.
Several of us around the Chamber have said that the vast majority
of the energy extracted from Rosebank is for export, so will the
Minister stop pretending that it will somehow address any of the
crises that we face in the UK? He has painted a picture
suggesting that none of us on this side of the Chamber has talked
about the demand side. The vast majority of what all of us have
been talking about has been energy efficiency, which is precisely
about reducing demand. Will he start to address some of the
points that I made in my speech, and which many other hon.
Members did too?
For example, will the Minister address the issues around
prepayment meters? Will he address whether there will be a much
ramped-up energy efficiency programme? Will he address the
questions I asked about how the £6 billion will be used? Will
there be more money coming? Lots of questions have been asked in
a constructive spirit—believe me, we could have been an awful lot
less constructive if we had chosen to be—and I would be grateful
if the Minister did us the courtesy of answering them.
rose—
(in the Chair)
Order. The Minister will complete his concluding remarks and the
hon. Lady will get a few minutes at the end of the debate, which
I am sure she will wish to use.
To deal with prepayment meters, which the hon. Lady raised, Ofgem
has rules in place that restrict the forced fitting of prepayment
meters on customers who are in debt, except as a last resort, but
prepayment meters do have a role to play in helping people to
ensure that they do not go into debt. There are strong rules
about that, and Ofgem is engaging with, and has done a review of
the performance of, suppliers in supporting vulnerable customers
and seeking to ensure that those suppliers fulfil their licence
requirements.
In 2021, the Government published a progress report on the
delivery of the EPC action plan. We aim to complete all actions
by the middle of this year, following necessary amendments to
legislation. That, to answer the point made by my hon. Friend the
Member for St Ives, is in hand. On the issue that came up around
warrants, clearly, the legal side of that is a matter for His
Majesty’s Courts Service and the Ministry of Justice, but
following the debate I will raise the matter with colleagues at
the Ministry of Justice, ask them to look at it and go from
there.
On the energy efficiency taskforce, we will come forward—I hope
pretty soon, in answer to the hon. Member for Brighton,
Pavilion—with the terms of reference, the membership and so on.
Things will then become clearer. We do not want to prejudge how
the taskforce will inform policy making in order to deliver the
best use of the additional £6 billion, which I am sure Members
welcome, in addition to the £6.5 billion being spent on energy
efficiency in this Parliament.
I will make a final point and then sit down before you force me
to, Sir Robert. We need top-down, we need the high-level policy
and we need the funding. We have that from His Majesty’s
Treasury, and we have the commitment on the energy efficiency
taskforce, which has a positive role to play, but it also needs
to look at how we galvanise the real will and desire there is
across different parties running councils across the country, in
different communities, to have a bottom-up approach to empower
and enable communities and regions to do their bit to tackle net
zero. A big focus of their work will be energy efficiency,
understanding and surveying their housing and other building
stock to come up with plans to build the required skills base,
ensuring a career for people who enter that world. Through that,
we can make a real difference.
At Government level, local government level and local community
level working together we can accelerate the reduction in demand.
Hon. Members did not mention the Chancellor’s announcement
setting a target of reducing energy demand by 15% by 2030. I
hoped that might have been commented on and welcomed; I certainly
welcome that.
10.56am
I thank hon. Members for their contributions to the debate. I
also thank the Minister, although for most of his response he
misjudged the tone of the room. We were genuinely trying to find
areas where we can move issues forward, particularly as they
affect our constituents.
On energy efficiency, we know it is win, win, win. It gets
people’s fuel bills down, addresses the climate emergency,
creates jobs and, as many have said, it would also solve many of
the health problems faced by people living in cold and damp
homes. I hope the Minister will take away serious acknowledgement
of the fact that the Government need to do more on that
subject.
He prayed in aid the Climate Change Committee several times. It
was that Committee that expressed regret last November that it
was now too late to introduce policies to achieve widespread
improvements in the fabric of buildings for this winter. On the
points he made about fossil fuels, we are not going to agree but
it would help if we spoke the same language. For example, the
Minister spoke about us making up the idea that the Government
subsidise fossil fuels. If he looks at the definition of a
subsidy used by the International Monetary Fund and the OECD, he
will find that what the Government do is classified as a subsidy.
We can have that debate, but to suggest that we are simply barmy
for suggesting that that is a subsidy is not helpful.
The Minister talked of our better standards when extracting our
oil and gas. He will know that most of our imported gas comes
from Norway, which has lower production emissions than the UK. A
bit more honesty about the situation would go a long way. No one
is suggesting that we turn off any switches or buttons on oil and
gas overnight. We recognise that cannot happen. We also recognise
that, for as long as the Government have a duty to maximise
economic recovery of oil and gas, continue to subsidise oil and
gas, and plan 100 new programmes in the North sea, the problem is
exacerbated not addressed. I urge the Minister to look seriously
at some of the proposals that many of us have put forward this
morning and to act on them.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered fossil fuels and increases in the
cost of living.
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