Barry Gardiner
MP for Brent West · Labour · United Kingdom
“Sir Desmond, imagine that the top brains in the country’s security and intelligence community produced a report that told you how to save the world. You would want to see it, right? Well, the report we are discussing is not about how to save the world; it is about what happens if we do not.”
“The nuclear threat will rise as clashes between nuclear powers become more frequent. Those are the cold assessments of the Joint Intelligence Committee. The Government were right to think that those assessments might scare people—they scare me—but they were wrong to think that they could hide them from the public.”
“The Minister will know that the grant structure on which UKRI is based gives out grants for a maximum of three to five years. Very few are for five years—most are for three years or under—yet the sort of long-term scientific development that my hon.”
“My hon. Friend is making a superb case for the importance of funding for her deep earth facility. I had the privilege of going to the National Oceanography Centre’s deep oceans facility, and the innovative science there on carbon sequestration is superb.”
“The Prime Minister has spoken powerfully about the devolution of power and giving back control. Will he therefore ensure that the proposals for commonhold and leasehold reform, for which 5 million leaseholders in this country are waiting with bated breath, do give that power and control back to those people, through the right to enfranchi…”
“We know how much land there is in the UK, and we know the extent of our inland waters and seas, so we can know how much we have to do to protect them, as we are required to do by target 3 of the global biodiversity framework.”
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“Extraordinarily, the Bill also proposes that the Secretary of State should have the power by regulation to “amend, repeal or revoke provision made by or under primary legislation” in this House. So statutes passed by Parliament can be amended by regulations drafted by the Minister without full parliamentary scrutiny. In a recent report by a Committee of the House of Lords, “Democracy Denied?”, their lordships state: “A substantial groundswell of concern is developing about the shift in power from Parliament to ministers.” This Bill is perhaps the most egregious example yet of a measure brought forward by an increasingly autocratic Executive to strip Parliament of its role in determining what, for many of us, is a critical area of employment and human rights. It gets worse.”
“I therefore want to put forward an argument against the Bill that I believe they both can and should accept: it is damaging to our constitution and to the Union. The reason the Bill is so short is that it delegates to the Secretary of State the power to set out all the relevant law in regulations through statutory instruments—regulations which receive only the most minimal scrutiny in this place and cannot be amended. So it is the Secretary of State, not Parliament, who will make regulations to determine the levels of service in relation to strikes, who gets to define the nature of the services to be provided, the number of people who are to provide them, the time at which they are to be provided and the manner in which they are to be provided during a strike.”
“I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a proud union member. The Bill is an affront to Parliament. It will not protect the public, it will worsen industrial relations and it will undermine the unity of the United Kingdom. It should be voted down tonight. There has been much heated argument about the provisions in the Bill. On all the moral and pragmatic arguments, I stand firmly on the side of working people and their right to withdraw their labour, and against what the Government seek to do in the Bill. However, I do not consider that those moral and pragmatic arguments are likely to change the minds—or more importantly the votes—of Conservative Members.”
“Under the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992: “No court shall…compel an employee to do any work or attend at any place for the doing of any work.” However, once the union is notified of the identity of the workers to be requisitioned, the Bill requires the union to take “reasonable steps” to ensure that all its members identified in the work notice comply with it. It is ironic that, under the Bill, the same trade union may be required to discipline or expel—”
“That is quite simply because they are introducing a party political measure that is designed to provoke this House. I call on all Conservative Members, if they care about the Union at all, to vote against this wrecking ball of a Bill, which will only provide succour to those voices seeking to destroy our constitutional settlement and our United Kingdom. Under the Bill, the employer has the unilateral right to identify in a work notice the individual workers required to operate the MSL. A worker who refuses to comply after having been requisitioned in this way will lose unfair dismissal protection. The Government are thus authorising employers to do what not even a court in this country can do.”
“The Minister will know that under this Bill it is possible for the Government to designate workers to perform under a contract when they have voted to go on strike. Will he at least give an assurance that there will be no attempt by any Secretary of State to designate a union official to break a strike that they have encouraged their union members to be involved in?”
“I am very grateful to the Minister. I listened carefully to what she was saying about global economic circumstances, in particular Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the effect that that has had on people in this country through their energy bills. She will know that the Government set a target for a 78% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2035. To achieve that, will she consider looking at whether stamp duty might be raised up or put down in accordance with the energy performance certificate ratings of properties, perhaps providing a way for households to benefit financially but ensure that they meet the Government’s target?”
“Can the Minister clarify a point? When my hon. Friend the Member for Luton South was talking about the Secretary of State not objecting, she was referring to new regulation 3, under which it would be possible for the Secretary of State to object if a late appeal was made, but also possible for the pensions appeal tribunal to then overrule that, in effect, and make its own judgment. I just wanted clarification from the Minister, who was absolutely right in saying that the Secretary of State could not do that to date, but would be able to under the new regulations. Therefore, the clarification that my hon. Friend sought is still needed.”
“Will she set out clear UK staging points against transparent baselines, and does she accept that the Paulson report on the financing of nature says not that £30 billion is required, but that £711 billion is required?”
“I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the UK’s officials for what they have achieved in the negotiations in Montreal, and, indeed, to David Cooper, who, as deputy executive secretary, has worked tirelessly for many, many years. She knows that, despite 28% of England already being designated as protected areas, scarcely 4% is actually being protected. The target of 30% of our planet to be protected by 2030, however desirable, is just that—a target. It is nothing without a programme of implementation for the protective measures to restore those eco-systems and stop the extinction of species. That programme needs interim deliverable goals, yet in the written ministerial statement last week, the earliest interim target, against which the Government’s performance can be measured, is 2037.”
“I really hope—not only for climate change purposes, but because of the wider biodiversity impact—that they will think very long and very hard, take notice of what the hon. Member for North Devon and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North have said today, and just say no. We have to transition away from burning trees. It is a damaging way of using forests, and it cannot be sustained.”
“It is time that the Government distanced themselves from that lie. The company says it uses some logs to make wood pellets, but it claims that it uses only ones that are small, twisted or rotten. I do not know whether Members have ever seen the process of gathering and taking logs from a forest. The idea that somebody is checking whether they are small, twisted or rotten and that only those are taken back to the power station is complete nonsense. However, when the logs get there, they can be sorted, and surveys at the pelletisation destinations show that only 11% of logs delivered to plants in the last year were classified as twisted, rotten or of the lowest quality, and could be used. I am sorry the Government are now considering a further proposal from Drax.”
“However, the fire spreads quickly; it does not kill the tree, but it does bring about new growth. The trees on the entire area covered by the second Drax logging licence have now been cut down. It is simply not the case, as the company said, that the forests have been transferred to other logging licences. It said it does not hold those licences anymore. Again, that was a lie. “Panorama” checked that claim by going to the Government of British Colombia, who confirmed that Drax does still hold those licences. I understand how things progress, and I have no doubt that the company was set up to try to do good. We all thought at that stage that this was really going to be a sustainable way of tackling climate change, but Drax has got further and further into a reality that is now simply leading it to lie to the public.”
“We need to transition away from biomass; I do not think we can simply stop it, and I am not saying that the contract should immediately be cut, but it is certainly not right for the Government to provide the £31 billion of additional subsidies entailed by what is now proposed over the lifetime of the project. Drax says that its responsible sourcing policy means that it avoids damage or disturbance to primary and old-growth forest. That is not true, and the “Panorama” programme ably exposed the fact that it is not true. Drax said that many of the trees it had cut down had died and that logging would reduce the risk of wildfires, which shows just how little it knows about biodiversity, because many forests, particularly on the western seaboard of North America, require fire as a stimulant to the germination process.”
“They will say that if we can capture those carbon emissions, that will make it all right. However, only 44% of emissions released at the Boundary Dam project in Canada were captured. The Government have not been prepared to say that they would hold Drax to what Ember, at least, has said should be the target—95% of emissions captured. I want to focus on some of the key lies being told by Drax. I say that advisedly, because I have been to Drax and debated many times with its scientists. Over the years, I have tried to listen carefully to what they have said, and I have given them the benefit of the doubt on occasions.”
“More than that, it cannot be utilised because of the water resource required to produce the pellets for Drax. The Department has been asked what the natural absorption rate of the emitted carbon would be if we replenish those lost resources—that is, if we replace those trees to absorb the emitted carbon. It gave an answer—it was, “We do not hold this information.” Well, other people have calculated it, and it is 190 years. We have seven years left until 2030, when the whole world must be on a declining pathway of emissions, and 27 years until 2050, when we have to achieve net zero. So the timescale—even accepting the principle that this is only about carbon emissions and that this is a cycle—is just too long. The Government will no doubt talk about how CCS can be married up with BECCS.”
“The Canadian Government should look at that carefully because we are talking not just about the case—ably made by the hon. Member for North Devon and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols)—for looking at what this practice is doing to increase emissions and at whether it can be sustainable in terms of the lifecycle of the trees, but about what it is doing to the wider environment and biodiversity. That is what is so terrifying. The hon. Member for North Devon was right to speak about our inability to keep on using land in this way to feed a power station such as Drax. She spoke of an area 1.5 times the size of Wales; the figure I have is three times the size of Wales. Whatever it is, it is clear that this biomass cannot be sourced domestically, if this is to go on.”
“It is a pleasure to join in the debate, and I pay tribute to the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby) for introducing it. I feel for her: about a decade ago I was in exactly the same position as a Back Bencher trying to tell my Front Bench team that they were mistaken in going down the biomass road. I think the Government are at the point where they will listen; indeed, I hope that is the case because, if they do not, it will make a mockery of all that we are doing on not only climate change but biodiversity. I say that in the week that COP15—the Convention on Biological Diversity—is due to meet in Montreal. That is significant because the Drax power station is consuming whole trees from primary forests in British Columbia, in Canada.”
“Would my hon. Friend also accept the distinction that a managed forest for production timber and biomass has nowhere near the biodiversity that there is in the primary forests that we have been talking about? It is a matter that we cannot look at simply in terms of carbon emissions; we have to look at it in terms of wider sustainability and the biodiversity of species.”
“I am sorry to interrupt the Minister in his rhetorical flow, but does he accept that two of the licences that Drax has utilised in British Colombia were for areas of primary forest that have been destroyed? Those areas—in one case, more than one square mile of primary forest—have been clear-felled, and Drax has denied it.”
“The Minister has been generous in giving way, and I appreciate that. Will he address an issue that many Members have raised, which is the payback period and the cycles not being short enough to achieve the emissions reductions in the timeframe that the climate will allow?”
“That the UK is reducing emissions faster than other countries may be true, but it is not sufficient to meet the timescale within which we have to reduce emissions globally to realise 1.5°. Will the Minister tell me today what she is doing in terms of putting new money into that loss and damage fund, and to identify the new money? Much of what she has identified so far has been pre-announced—it is old money. Will she also tell me what she is doing to ensure that the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero will be adequately funded not only by the UK, but by other countries?”
“In a survey of retailers earlier this year, 56% of companies said that inflation had allowed them to raise prices beyond what was required to offset increased costs. Some 63% of larger companies reported that they were using inflation to “boost profits”. BP’s chief executive has referred to his business as a “cash machine”, and BMW’s chief financial officer has said that the company has “a significant improvement in pricing power”. When companies themselves tell us that they are ripping us off, it is time for politicians to listen and to act. Ordinary families should not have to pay the price.”
“No wonder P&O, under DP World, is now back in the container business. That brand is so well-known in Parliament for the disgusting treatment of its own workers, and its directors’ total disregard for the law. When Members speak of the cost of living crisis, attribute it all to Putin and covid, and attempt to blame ordinary working people for fuelling inflation, they should understand that it is a perfectly reasonable request for ordinary people to say that after 12 years of declining real wages, they should not lose out yet again when inflation is at a 40-year high. Our Government, and more especially those on my party’s own Front Bench, need to be making the case that workers are not causing this inflation spiral. They need to listen to what some of the companies themselves are saying.”
“Remember that in the UK we have approximately 2.5 million children who have been using food banks, and then ask why the four giant agribusinesses managed to increase their profits by 255% compared with pre-covid levels. Probably the most blatant example of profiteering and gouging, though, comes from the container shipping industry. The sector is dominated by three alliances of major multinational giants and, together, they control 85% of the world’s container trade. Some might call that a cartel. Only eight of the top 10 container companies have yet reported their latest profits. They are not up by 200%. They are not up by 2,000%. Their combined profits are up by 20,650%, compared with pre-pandemic levels. No wonder they managed to pay out £4.7 billion to their shareholders last year.”
“This Government are presiding over a system that is happy to see companies grind down workers’ wages to funnel more and more public money through universal credit into shareholders’ dividends. It is obscene. What about the food manufacturers? They made a profit of £22.9 billion after the pandemic. Nestlé alone showed a profit of £13.7 billion, more than £4 billion more than its pre-pandemic level. Yet in July, after a two-month strike at its east London factory, Nestlé agreed to settle with its workers for a miserly 4%. The workers had asked for 7.5%, which, as we now see, would still have meant a real-terms cut in their living standards. It is not workers who are being unreasonable.”
“When so many companies are making record profits at a time of soaring inflation, the logical expectation is that they should be able to pay their workers at least enough to maintain their standard of living, yet employers and the Government insist on wage restraint, by which they mean workers accepting wage settlements that are a cut in real terms. They think that is the key to managing inflation. I say again that wage demands have not and are not driving inflation. Food prices are causing real misery in the UK. Food price inflation is running at over 16%, yet Tesco, Sainsbury’s and Asda increased their combined profits, compared with pre-covid levels, by a staggering 97%. Many of their customers—even their own workers—earn so little that they are on universal credit.”
“In April, Sainsbury’s reported a record profit of £730 million. The supermarket insisted that it was not price gouging, but it was not above accusing its competitors, which were making even higher profits, of doing precisely that. Sainsbury’s chief executive Simon Roberts said: “We are inflating behind the market, our direct competitors are inflating ahead of the market.” I take that to mean: “We are only profiteering because we don’t want our share price to decline against our competitors who started profiteering first.” As protestations of innocence go, that one does not really go far.”
“In fact, profit margins for the UK’s biggest listed companies on the FTSE 350 were 73% higher than pre-pandemic levels. When companies raise their prices to cover their increased costs, that is justifiable; when they increase their prices by more than their increased costs, that is gouging and it gives them a boost in profit. The trouble is that this can then create a second, third and fourth wave of inflation as companies along the supply chain all follow suit. This is the real inflationary spiral. Workers’ wage demands are not driving it; they are following it and responding to it in desperation, as workers see their living standards eroded first by genuine inflationary pressures and then by profiteering. Many companies respond badly to the accusation that they are price gouging.”
“I would like to start on a note of agreement—because I probably will not end up on one. The supply shocks after the covid pandemic, followed by the war in Ukraine and Putin’s weaponising of the gas supply to Europe, are the primary reasons for inflation and the cost of living crisis. But they are not the whole story. Analysis of data from company accounts and the Office for National Statistics suggests that there is an additional level of profiteering that the Government have failed to address. Let me substantiate that claim. If companies were simply passing on increased supply chain costs, we would expect company profits to be broadly static, or even slightly reduced, given that low wages have been unable to keep pace and therefore would have reduced demand.”
“When the Prime Minister met Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman earlier this week, did he challenge him on the way Saudi Arabia has been blocking the proposal at COP27 for the phasing down of all fossil fuels?”
“In the London Borough of Brent, 320 hours of safer neighbourhoods teams’ police time has been abstracted in the past three months. The figures are not routinely made public, but it is important for communities to have access to that information because they need to know that their safer neighbourhoods teams are there to act for them. Will the Home Secretary undertake to publish abstraction figures as a matter of routine?”
“T8. The Minister accused this side of the House of misrepresenting the figures on climate change, but it is the independent Climate Change Committee that says that the Government are not on track to achieve net zero and that 61% of their own targets for emission reductions have no credible plan in place to achieve them. Is the committee also misrepresenting the facts?”
“Since the mini-Budget, thousands of my constituents have been in mental anguish and despair. I recognise that the Prime Minister has faced a week of mental anguish and despair herself. People have been angry with her and people have mocked her. Having had that experience, what will she now do to improve the mental healthcare for people in this country, so that the anguish that they face in the coming months is properly responded to and dealt with?”
“I genuinely welcome many of the announcements that the Chancellor has made today and the stability that they will produce, and I wish him well for all our sakes in his new role. I want to focus his attention back on the young couple seeking to purchase their first home. They fear that the housing shortage means that the cut in stamp duty will not benefit them, but will simply raise the price of property and benefit existing homeowners—or have he and his party managed to abolish the law of supply and demand in the last 24 hours?”
“The Committee on Climate Change wrote to the previous Chancellor—when he was the previous Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy but one—saying that he should support a tighter limit on production with stringent tests and a presumption against exploration. He took no notice, and the measures in this Bill are the consequences of the Government’s now being forced to protect consumers and business from their past failure to invest in renewables. Last year, energy prices meant that an average family was paying £1,100. After the windfall tax and the unfunded borrowing, that will now be limited to an average of £2,500. The cost would, for the two years, be £31 billion, but given the statement from—”
“The Minister must explain why the Government are compensating these companies for the windfall tax, and also why the renewables companies—which are the ones we really need to incentivise to invest in more capacity—are being hit by this revenue cap, while not being given a similar investment allowance. Before the temporary windfall tax the UK levied the lowest tax take from its oil and gas producers anywhere in the world, and even with the temporary windfall tax it still taxes a full 6% below the global average. If the UK taxed these companies even at the global average, it would recover an extra £13.4 billion for the Exchequer each year.”
“Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), told the Select Committee the other day that this was not a windfall tax, his official tried to persuade us that it was simply a reframing of the regulations, but in fact the Government are trying to force those companies into a retrospective contract for difference, and they should be honest about it. But look who benefits! The Government continue to allow the oil and gas companies to make excess profits from the global crisis, and also give them a way to claw back the windfall tax under the investment allowance scheme by claiming as a tax break 91p in every pound they invest in more production in the North sea.”
“If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it is a duck; and if it looks like a tax and takes money like a tax, it is a tax. This Bill introduces another windfall tax, not on the oil and gas producers but on the renewables producers. It is in the form of a cap on the revenues that renewable and nuclear companies can make. The electricity price is set on the basis of the wholesale gas price, and when the gas price went up companies saw an increase in the price they were paid for the electricity that they produced, although they did not have to pay the increased gas prices to produce it. When the Minister for Climate, the right hon.”
“I agree about the difficulties under clause 16. Does my hon. Friend share my suspicion that, actually, the designated companies are precisely those renewable and nuclear generators that have not previously entered a contract for difference? This is simply intended to be a stick to force them into a voluntary contract for difference with the Government.”
“The cost of that over the two years would be £31 billion, but now that the Chancellor has introduced the welcome Treasury-led review after six months, that would be simply £7.5 billion for the period in question. That is just about half a year’s worth of taxing the oil and gas producers at the global average level. I welcome the Chancellor’s statement announcing the Treasury-led review, and urge him to ditch the investment allowance subsidy and adopt a tax rate that the rest of the globe considers fair and equitable.”
“That means that the Government are seeking to ramp up our dependence on fossil fuels at precisely the time they are diminishing and becoming more expensive, and are set to leave us with stranded assets and liabilities. Investment should be going into reducing demand, providing onshore wind and solar and creating the new jobs that will accompany such investment. I set out in my speech on Second Reading the basis on which the oil and gas producers are and should be contributing to the measures in clause 1. Last year, energy prices meant that an average family were paying £1,100. After the windfall tax and the unfunded borrowing, that will be limited to an average of £2,500.”
“The truth is it will not, not just because the wholesale market is an international market, rather than a domestic one, but because the North Sea Transition Authority is clear that the average time to production of any new facility is five years. Anything we do now to expand exploration licences cannot begin to have even the marginal impact that the minute percentage increase in global supply would predicate until 2027. Moreover, in its analysis of production projections the North Sea Transition Authority has set out that the North sea basin will see annual declines of 9% and 6% respectively for gas and oil production out to 2050.”
“Energy efficiency and renewable energy were regarded, in the words of our Prime Minister—that is, three Prime Ministers ago—as “green crap”. The truth is that, if we had rolled out a comprehensive programme of renewables and energy efficiency measures over the past 12 years, that stuff would now be regarded as green gold and there would be scant need for the provisions of this Bill. Our failure should teach us another lesson. The way to become more energy secure and less reliant on fossil fuels is not to double down on them and devise new subsidies for fracking and new fields in the North sea, but to ramp up investments that will transition our economy from the fossil-fuelled past to the clean energy future. The Government claim that we have to expand our oil and gas production and that that will make our bills cheaper.”
“That is why this summer E.ON and EDF called for the Government to double the energy company obligation scheme and for an expansion of the eligibility criteria to include 150,000 more homes. I hope that, under clause 22—under the powers to intervene that the Secretary of State is giving himself—the Government will use those powers to expand the ECO scheme precisely as those two major suppliers have requested. While failure to address the demand side shows that the Government should have been investing in a comprehensive retrofit scheme over the past 12 years, it also highlights their failure, until Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine, to understand just how essential energy security is to our national security.”
“The chief executive of E.ON, Michael Lewis, has pointed out that a sustained programme of energy efficiency could have reduced the amount of energy used in UK homes by 25%—the equivalent of six Hinkley C nuclear power stations. The cheapest energy is the energy that we do not use, and the fact that 59% of homes in England are rated D or below for energy performance is a major factor in the desperate need of many families for support with their bills. A simple uprating of a home from energy performance certification D to C would save a home £500 a year—and that is on the basis of energy prices in April this year, before the latest spike. There would be even higher savings now.”
“The Minister began his speech by saying that the energy crisis is a global crisis. That is true. It grew out of the surge in global demand after the pandemic and it has certainly been compounded by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, it has been entrenched by the complicity of those countries in OPEC that have steadfastly refused to increase production and which the Government still count as close allies, including Saudi Arabia, on which much greater diplomatic pressure should be applied. The hon. Members for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan) and for Hexham (Guy Opperman) alluded to the way in which the Bill looks predominantly at the supply side. It should also look at the demand side.”
“On a point of order, Mr Evans. Will you confirm that when a Minister, or indeed, any Member of Parliament, refers by name to another Member, it is courtesy and normal practice to allow them to respond to the point that was made? Indeed, in this case, the Minister talked about me doing more, as a Minister in the Labour Government, on ensuring that we had insulation. However, he seems to forget that in 2013, his Government cut that by 92%—”
“What was the earliest date on which a whistleblower or member of a family contacted either the Department or the CQC? With respect to what the Minister said about the CQC, given that we have repeatedly seen such degrading behaviour at Winterbourne View and other places, what confidence does he have that it can assure the public that care is being given at the quality that is required?”
“Some 15,626 families in my constituency are dependent on means-tested benefits. Failing to uprate benefits in line with prices may save the Government £3 million, but it will put those families in Brent North and millions like them across the country into deep debt and despair. Will the Leader of the House arrange for a debate in Government time on benefits uprating and on poverty this winter?”