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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“I am grateful for that clarification. Will the Minister agree to provide a summary of the legal advice, or indeed the legal advice itself, so that we can see it and have the confidence he has that there could be no positive legal challenge?”
“The Opposition would prefer to go with the recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change. We will therefore oppose the order.”
“At a time of increased uncertainty since Brexit, we need every assurance that the Government’s actions will not undermine ambition or the energy investment that the Minister and I were saying was so required in the earlier Committee that considered the carbon budget. The Government should surely now be building certainty about upholding their commitments and delivering on their domestic targets. The legislation allows us to use the ETS allowances for the traded sector in place of actual emissions, in accounting for our net carbon budget, so flexibility is already built into the system. There is serious uncertainty, which I have already flagged up to the Minister, about the UK’s future participation in the ETS. I trust that he will try to resolve that uncertainty as quickly as possible.”
“According to the Committee on Climate Change’s 2016 progress report to Parliament, our average annual emissions are already below the level needed to meet the second and third carbon budgets up to 2022. The Department of Energy and Climate Change’s impact assessment of this legislation notes that using credits “could lead investors to expect that policy would target a slower rate of domestic emissions reduction in the near-term. This could affect investment decisions in low-carbon infrastructure and supply chains, although this impact is likely to be minimal.” That is the Government’s own impact assessment.”
“We are already below the level that has been set, and unless the Minister knows of any reason why our energy policy should start to increase emissions dramatically, it is almost inconceivable that we will need the flexibility that the order allows. The chief executive of the Committee on Climate Change said to the Environmental Audit Committee earlier this month: “The committee has always been very clear that, unless there are exceptional and unpredicted circumstances, international offsets should not be used as a reason not to act domestically.” The Minister needs to challenge his officials a little bit more strongly on the issue of domestic action.”
“Why is this Committee being asked by the Government to go against the independent advice of the Committee on Climate Change on this matter? The Minister stated—I do not know whether this was justification or explanation—that the Government were following the precedent from last time. Indeed they were, but again on that occasion the Committee on Climate Change had recommended that they should not use the flexibility of these credits, and the committee was proven right because the credits were not needed—as indeed on this occasion the Minister believes, I think, and I believe that they will not be. They should not be required.”
“It is, once again, a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Sir Roger. Just for the sake of good order, I again welcome the Minister, given that this is his first day in the job. I do so just in case anyone reading Hansard would think that I was rude not to, even though an hour ago we spent the same time in another statutory instrument Committee congratulating each other. The order does indeed do what the Minister said. These offsets are separate from all the traded credits that we might accrue through the EU emissions trading scheme, and the order allows 55 million international carbon units to be used as offsets against domestic action. That amounts to 2% of flexibility on domestic carbon reductions for the third carbon budget. There is really only one question that the Minister must answer, and he attempted to do so in his remarks.”
“The Minister and I are agreed that there is little likelihood of the credits being required. The key thing here is whether one follows the advice and whether one sets a precedent. He knows that the really difficult budget is the fourth carbon budget, not this one. Therefore, he has beseeched precedent by referring back to the previous carbon budget, saying, “Well, we allowed it there, so we should allow it here.” That is exactly the precedent that needs to be nipped in the bud because we need to send a strong signal to investors that the fourth carbon budget, which will be difficult to achieve, must be achieved through domestic action.”
“Can the Minister name any other swindle of such enormous magnitude where the Government would simply say, “It is the customer’s fault. People should have shopped around and switched to another provider”?”
“I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd) and congratulate her on her appointment as Home Secretary. Under her charge, the Department of Energy and Climate Change played an important role in securing the Paris climate agreement, and she was a strong and enthusiastic champion for it. Only two weeks ago, some might have suspected that today she would be more likely to be standing at the Dispatch Box saying goodbye to me, but in this place we are beginning to learn to expect the unexpected. She was always courteous and often actually helpful in our exchanges, and we wish her well in her new role. The CMA report states for the past five years the big energy companies have been overcharging customers by more than £4,657,000 every single day.”
“The hon. Lady said that she was going to be meeting the industry and the big six. The Government’s own figures state that in England 2.38 million households are living in fuel poverty. Her Department could today take action to force—not to talk to, but to force—energy companies to pass on changes in wholesale prices immediately to customers through their tariff structures. In that way, customers would benefit directly from the drop in wholesale prices. Why is she failing to do this?”
“I am always happy to abide by your ruling, Mr Speaker. One year ago, DECC’s estimate for the total lifetime cost of the nuclear power station at Hinkley Point C was £14 billion. Recently, that estimate was revised to £37 billion. Following the referendum vote, the Government’s expert adviser has said that Hinkley C is extremely unlikely to go ahead. Does this mean that the Minister now does not have to worry about justifying the extra £23 billion cost to the Treasury, or does she just feel that she does not need to explain about the additional burden on taxpayers?”
“Smart meters can reduce our energy usage, but there were 43,900 excess winter deaths last year and a “Panorama” investigation revealed that more than 9,000 of them were directly related to living in cold and poorly insulated homes. Will the Minister explain why there has been an 80% drop in the installation of major energy efficiency measures in British homes over the past four years, and will she agree to have urgent talks with Lord Adonis to ensure that energy efficiency is a top priority for the National Infrastructure Commission?”
“Some 23,000 businesses in the UK have solar panels on their roofs. If proposals in the current review of business rates go ahead, instead of paying £8 per kW, those companies could end up paying between £43 and £61 from next April. Up until last week, the Minister’s Department did not even know about that. Will she find out why her officials have been sleeping on the job, and speak to Ministers in the Department for Communities and Local Government to get this mess sorted out?”
“Lady said that security obligations are taken “very seriously”. I wrote it down; she said it. If my surmise is correct, it would appear that that statement is actually far from the truth.”
“It is deeply troubling that it appears that this statutory instrument is being used to close the door after the horse has bolted. Of course, the exchange of materials to which the hon. Lady alluded will have value and import and be worth while. I do not think that any of us would wish to resile from that. However, none of us would wish to entertain those exchanges being carried out, whether by air or not, without the appropriate regulatory oversight, which this statutory instrument would appear now to be trying to put in place. Many communities will be deeply troubled if the implications of the Minister’s words and of my own surmise are in fact the case, and these transportations by air have taken place without the appropriate regulation and safeguards being in place. The hon.”
“The Department says that it cannot reveal—the hon. Lady was clear in her remarks—the timings or details of future moves of the transportation of civil nuclear material. I am glad that she put in the word “future”, because the question that I wish to ask her is whether such movements have taken place by air in the past. I do not need to know the specific details, but I ask whether they have already taken place and whether the UK was therefore in breach of its obligations. I ask in particular about a possible breach of article 4(1) of the CPPNMN, which states: “Each State Party shall not export or authorise the export of nuclear material unless the State Party has received assurances that such material will be protected during the international nuclear transport at the levels described in Annex I”.”
“Lady’s explanation that, in 2003, it was not envisaged that transport would be made by air and so the 2003 regulations did not include that provision—despite the fact that the convention, which we adopted in 1980 and which entered into force in 1987, did require security to be guaranteed for international transport, including air travel. It is of concern that, since 8 May—when the amendment to the CPPNM took effect—we have been in breach of our duties to ensure a competent authority has fully implemented our obligations under the CPPNM. If we were legislating on a purely academic basis, to cover all the bases, that would be one thing, but I am even more concerned to read in the explanatory memorandum that the transport of civil nuclear material by air is “uncommon”. That means that it has actually happened.”
“As always, Mr Turner, it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. The statutory instrument does exactly what the hon. Lady has said it does. A number of questions are raised by her comments, and I move to those straightaway. The threshold for bringing the amendment to the CPPNM into force was reached on 8 April 2016. The amendment to the convention was secured on that date. It is now 12 July. Will the hon. Lady confirm that we are in breach, and what the effect of that might be? Since 2003, the Nuclear Industries Security Regulations, which this statutory instrument seeks to amend, have been the primary means under which we have kept to our obligations. The 2003 regulations should of course be updated to include transport by air. I am grateful for the hon.”
“The hon. Lady has explained that this took place in 2010, and I am grateful for that clarification. The obvious question that follows is this: why has it taken five and a half years, given that she said the Government wanted to plug that gap as soon as they found out they were in breach? They must have known five and a half years ago that they were in breach. Again, the reassurances that the hon. Lady is giving us do not necessarily match up with the facts that she is telling us.”
“Surely the point is that this statutory instrument, if passed, will give the authority the regulatory powers. The hon. Lady gives us a partial reassurance that it supervised what happened, but the point remains that it did not have regulatory powers at that stage, because that is what is being granted here today—if it is. Therefore, I am indeed surprised that it has taken five and a half years for the Government to wake up to the fact that they conducted this transportation of civil nuclear material and were known to have done so by an authority, but not by a competent authority. In knowing that it was not a competent authority, why were those regulations not then put in place?”
“It is indeed the case that the convention, when it entered into force in 1987, stipulated that it required security to be guaranteed for international transport, including air travel. Therefore, will the hon. Lady do two things? Will she enlighten us as to whether the movement that took place in 2010 was international travel and will she tell us—I think she owes us this at least—the date upon which it was realised that these regulations needed to be updated in this way? That is so that the Committee can make a judgment for itself as to whether the Government acted in a timely fashion.”
“Investors were told that the Government were simultaneously incentivising new unconventional gas and phasing out unabated coal by 2025, yet the £1 billion still remaining for the development of carbon capture and storage was cut just four weeks before the final bids were to be made, with the consequent announcement by Drax of the abandonment of the White Rose CCS project and the announcement by Shell that it no longer saw a future in the near term for the Peterhead project. The Secretary of State’s energy reset speech last November ended up leaving us the equivalent of 54 million tonnes of CO 2 further from achieving the fourth carbon budget.”
“Before the referendum vote, the Government were already facing major problems securing the energy needs, emissions targets and environmental protections that the UK requires for the 21st century. These problems were mainly self-inflicted: an energy policy that left companies and investors confused, with feed-in tariffs for solar changed retrospectively; an effective moratorium on onshore wind power, despite its being the cheapest form of renewable energy; the subsidy for offshore wind cut; and the Government failing to indicate what would happen to the levy control framework beyond the cliff edge of 2020.”
“I beg to move, That this House recognises the uncertainty created by the result of the EU referendum for the protections currently in place for the UK’s energy security, climate change commitments and the natural environment; notes that the discussion leading up to the EU referendum made little mention of environmental protection or climate change and considers that regulations and ambitions in those areas should in no way be diminished as a result of the outcome of that referendum; has serious concerns about the signals being sent to investors in those sectors by continued uncertainty; and therefore urges the Government to identify and fill any legislative gaps in environmental protection that may arise from the removal of EU law. The motion stands in my name and those of other right hon. and hon. Members in the shadow Cabinet.”
“I must, reluctantly, agree with my hon. Friend. This is not good news; it is really bad news for all of us. The investment climate in the UK is in a really dire state. In fact, the UK has now fallen from eighth to 11th to 13th in the Ernst & Young index of the best countries for investment in low-carbon technology, when we have previously never been outside the top 10. These are really worrying matters.”
“What an excellent point my hon. Friend makes. She knows, as I do, that the Secretary of State was someone who saw the value in the UK’s staying in the European Union and in all the directives and regulations that came from Europe, which afforded the sort of environmental protections and energy policies that would secure our future. No doubt the Secretary of State will respond responsibly to today’s brief, but I think she will feel a great deal of sympathy both with the remarks that my hon. Friend has just made and indeed my own remarks from the Dispatch Box.”
“The hon. Lady, whom I regard as an hon. Friend, particularly on these matters, speaks with great knowledge. She is absolutely right about the Green Investment Bank, which was set up for a particular purpose: the Government recognised that there was a market failure. It was quite right of the Government to put the Green Investment Bank in place, but unfortunately the borrowing powers did not come quickly enough, and I think it is a huge mistake now to privatise the bank. It is a matter of deep regret to all who work in this environment. As for the hon. Lady’s remarks about the European Investment Bank, I shall come on to that subject later in my speech.”
“My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour has run a superb campaign on fuel poverty. She makes reference to the £1.7 billion that the Competition and Markets Authority report showed UK bill payers were being overcharged—overcharged by quite obscene amounts. It is, of course, right for the Government to come up with clear proposals about how to tackle that abuse, without just saying, as they have to date, that people need to be enabled to switch more easily.”
“The IIGCC—Institutional Investors Group on Climate Change—a group of institutional investors representing over €13 trillion in assets, said in the aftermath of the vote to leave that it had brought “considerable uncertainty and market turmoil.” That only goes to prove that the art of litotes is not yet dead!”
“Before the Secretary of State does so, however, perhaps she will confirm whether she instructed her Department not to prepare in any way for a leave vote, as the Prime Minister apparently directed. If that is so, can she explain why, because that is what business leaders out there are asking? It seems incomprehensible to them that the Prime Minister took such a gigantic risk with their future—a risk that will increase their cost of capital and the cost of energy to bill payers, both corporate and domestic alike—yet made absolutely no preparations for what might happen when that risk went the wrong way.”
“I always try to look at the motion in front of me on the Order Paper and make a judgment on it when I see what it says. I have done so for the past 19 and a half years, and I suspect I shall probably do it for the next few years as well. Even the Government-dominated Select Committee has warned that what it calls the “hiatus” in project developments could threaten the UK’s ability to meet its energy and climate security targets, so when the Department’s own figures show the need for £100 billion of investment by 2020 to make our electricity infrastructure fit for purpose, the Secretary of State really does have to explain where she believes that investment is going to come from, given that investor confidence in her Department is at an all-time low.”
“Bloomberg New Energy Finance was not scaremongering when it said of the upcoming Brexit negotiations that they were “likely to cause project investors and banks to hesitate about committing new capital, and could cause a drop in renewable energy asset values”. That was an authoritative, independent commentator telling the unvarnished truth.”
“I must say that for all the talk from the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), about the “sunlit uplands” of the post-Brexit world, there is really no use in the Secretary of State trying to pretend that she thinks the vote is anything but a disaster when she herself is on record quoting the analysis of Vivid Economics warning that the result of an exclusion from the EU’s internal energy market could cost the UK up to £500 million a year by the early 2020s. The stock response of the right hon. Lady that Labour Members should not “talk Britain down” will simply not serve, given that these quotations come from her own advisers, industry leaders and, indeed, her!”
“My hon. Friend, who takes a consistent and committed interest in these matters, is absolutely correct, and the precise intention of this motion is to flush out those issues and ensure that the Government do precisely as he says. In the aftermath of the leave vote, the Government’s own external adviser has stated that a future for the Hinkley C nuclear power station is now “extremely unlikely”. Vattenfall has said it is now reassessing the risk of working in the UK, which could jeopardise its plans for a £5.5 billion wind farm off the east coast of England, while Siemens has announced that it is putting a freeze on its future—not its current—clean energy investments in Hull as a result of what it called the “increased uncertainty” from the leave vote.”
“Perhaps the Secretary of State could do the same as Bloomberg in telling the unvarnished truth, and inform the House what assessment her Department has made of the increased price of imported energy as a result of the falling pound. I will happily give way to her if she wishes to do so.”
“I understand that there is a need to move on, and the hon. Gentleman is right to say that we must now look to the future, but I think that if he bears with me, he will find that that is what I am trying to do. Yes, I am critical of where we are, but the criticisms that I have adumbrated so far are not my own. They are criticisms made by the Government’s own advisers, they are criticisms made by industry itself, and, indeed, they are criticisms made by the Secretary of State. I am not talking the UK economy down; I am trying to set out the present situation with clarity, and then see whether we can move on from it.”
“Perhaps, then, the Secretary of State could tell us what assessment her Department has made of the price premiums on loans that will be demanded by investors in energy infrastructure to cover the cost of political uncertainty. Is it 1%? Is it 2%? Again, I will happily give way to the Secretary of State if she wishes to inform the House what assessment her Department has made of those matters. No? In that case, I will give way to the spokesman for the Scottish National party.”
“However, new evidence released today by the Committee on Climate Change renders starker than ever the threat to British households and businesses from a failure to manage climate change. Its published estimates show that, without increased Government action on climate adaptation, the number of homes at high risk from flooding will rise to well over 1 million even if we meet our current climate targets.”
“I believe that that is now due to happen on Monday, which would make it only 18 days beyond the legal statutory limit. Last year, the Environmental Audit Committee gave the Government a red card for their record on managing future climate change risks. The chair of the Infrastructure Operators Adaptation Forum concluded: “we simply do not know the capability of the vast majority of stuff out there for current weather, never mind the future”. The National Security Risk Assessment cites flood risk to the UK as a tier 1 priority risk, alongside terrorism and cyber-attacks, and, of course, it is our most deprived communities that face the greatest increases in flood risk.”
“The vote to leave was not a vote for blackouts and soaring energy bills; it is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that those things do not happen. The Committee on Climate Change, which has a statutory duty to advise the Government on the most cost-effective route to decarbonisation, has always made it clear that early action is cheaper action. As its chief executive warned us last week, leaving the EU calls the mechanism of how we reach our targets into question. The Government’s policy failure has created a 10% gap in emissions projections towards our legally binding climate target for the mid-2020s, and they are nearly 50% short of meeting their intended target for 2030—that is, if the Secretary of State ever gets round to actually complying with her statutory obligation to set the target.”
“Lady can explain—after the failure of the green deal, and after acknowledging that neither the warm home scheme nor the energy company obligation is sufficiently well targeted to reach those most in need—precisely how she proposes to address energy efficiency and tackle the fuel poverty experienced by 2.38 million of our fellow citizens. Let me correct that, Mr Speaker: 1 should have said 2.38 million households, in England alone. Perhaps the right hon. Lady might also explain why National Grid warned on Friday that the lights were kept on only by emergency measures last year. The fact is that the Government’s energy policy has pushed us further towards energy insecurity. Our purpose in securing this Opposition Day debate is precisely to ensure that the Government cannot ignore such pressing concerns following the referendum.”
“Lady can tell us what will happen to the four clean energy projects that are currently being assessed by the European Fund for Strategic Investments. She knows that the European Investment Bank has been the UK’s biggest clean-energy lender, having put €31 billion into clean energy over the last five years. Has she identified a replacement source of funds for such projects? Perhaps the Secretary of State can explain why, last week, the Government pulled their funding for the only large new gas plant that had managed to secure finance under the capacity market scheme after Carlton Power was unable to secure the investment that was needed for the Trafford plant. The capacity market has resoundingly failed to secure the new gas build that it was introduced to incentivise. Perhaps the right hon.”
“The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is clear from what the Committee on Climate Change has said that the area in which the United Kingdom is falling behind most badly is not the power sector, but the transport and heating sectors. Of course, dealing with that does not rest solely with the Secretary of State; it also rests with her colleagues in the Department for Transport and the Department for Communities and Local Government. Perhaps the Secretary of State would find it easier to explain how the UK might continue to benefit from the EU internal energy market—or does Brexit mean Brexit in this regard as well? We really do need clear answers to all these questions. Perhaps the right hon.”
“I say in all seriousness that, following the devastation of communities and cities around our country by recent floods, this new assessment requires a new response from the Government. Cuts in the budgets, and in the staffing capacity of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency, have left the UK increasingly vulnerable, and the Government must take responsibility for that. The UK’s ability to face up to energy and environmental challenges—more than almost any other area of policy—was strengthened by our EU membership. Given that the Treasury’s principal response to the leave vote so far is a U-turn on the Chancellor’s core election pledge to balance the books by 2020—”
“I am sure you are correct, Mr Speaker, in referring to “his preliminary remarks”. I am happy to explain that relationship. Unless we have clarity about the post-Brexit scenario, unless we know where we will be able to secure funds to replace all the funds that fell within the common agricultural policy to finance measures to mitigate flooding, and unless we are able to deal with land management in the way that was allowed by the European Union, we will not have clarity on these matters, and clarity is vital to adaptation. We are living at a time of increased risk, and robust planning is required to limit harmful impacts on British communities and businesses.”
“The Government need to explain to the House if they will incorporate the provisions of the clean air directive into UK law and then begin to comply with its provisions in a way that they have, tragically, failed to do for the past six years. The birds and habitat directives may well already be fully transposed into UK law, but we need to know if our beaches will still be protected from sewage by the bathing water directive or whether swimming through sewage will once again become a feature of a day at the seaside. We need to know which elements of the waste and electronic equipment directive were not transposed into UK law under the 2013 regulations and what the impact of leaving the EU might be for our recycling industries and our commitment to the circular economy.”
“The clean air directive has been strenuously opposed in Europe by this Government, who tried to water it down for years; indeed our own Supreme Court has now found them to be in breach. I pay tribute to ClientEarth and its work in holding Government to account for the 52,500 excess deaths every year as a result of polluted air in the UK, and I pay particular tribute to Sadiq Khan as Mayor of London who used the 60th anniversary of the Clean Air Act 1956 to unveil a new clean air programme. The Government must remember that they have a job to do, and that includes taking concrete action to meet the legal air quality standards as ordered by the UK’s Supreme Court.”
“I think you would like me to press on, Mr Speaker, so I will not. I have, I think, been most generous in giving way. Given the Treasury’s response, it would be helpful to hear from the Under-Secretary, when he winds up the debate, precisely where he proposes to find the additional resources that are required for adequate flood defences to meet the new assessment. Last week, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs told the House: “It is absolutely clear that it is business as usual while we remain members of the EU.” —[ Official Report , 7 July 2016; Vol. 62, c. 1030.] Perhaps she will understand that what concerns many of us is that, as soon as we are no longer members of the EU, many of the protections the UK natural environment currently enjoys will fall away.”
“Ministers must urgently identify any legislative gaps in environmental protection that may arise from the removal of EU law, and develop plans to replace any protections so that the UK does not become a riskier, unhealthier or more polluted place to live in or do business in.”