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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“It must be your benign supervision, Mr Walker, but every debate that I attend when you are in the Chair involves a remarkable degree of consensus. This debate has been good natured and exceptionally well informed. I put that all down to you, sir. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) on securing this debate about an industry that has been in decline for far too long. I pay tribute to the courage and sheer hard work of our fishermen, who brave the dangers of the coastal seas and the open oceans to bring fish to our tables. No one present can remember the time when our fish stocks were at their most productive. Old postcards show harbours crammed with fishing boats, about which the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous)—for Lowestoft—and my hon.”
“In the infrastructure debate, the Government promised they would safeguard our groundwater and sites of special scientific interest from the dangers of fracking. These promises have now been abandoned. The Government now permit fracking in SSSIs, and four out of five of the old water protection zones are no longer frack-free under the new water protection areas. Was the Secretary of State consulted by her Cabinet colleagues about this U-turn on fracking in protected areas, and if so, why did she agree to downgrade these important protections?”
“The Prime Minister has said that Britain will take in 20,000 refugees over the next five years, but he has paradoxically said that we will not accept them as refugees—they will not be given refugee status. He said they would be given status as being under humanitarian protection. As he knows, that is a discretionary leave to remain that does not entitle them to settlement. These are people who desperately need security and stability in their lives. How is he going to reconcile that with the status that he is proposing to give them?”
“Primary schools in Brent regularly have classes of 29 children with 21 different mother tongues. How is it possible that a fairer funding formula can discount against such schools relative to others that do not labour under such difficulties?”
“On the five occasions when the deployment of embedded UK personnel was approved, which Minister or Ministers, including the Prime Minister, were aware and gave such approval? What is the point of requiring ministerial approval if it is always granted even when Parliament has expressed its overwhelming view that such deployment should not take place, and is it not the case that the Government always disagreed with Parliament’s view and were happy to see it circumvented in this way?”
“The Minister will know of the report that was submitted to the Economic Sub-Committee of the Cabinet which showed that the cost to our economy of air pollution from diesel and other vehicles was between £9 billion and £20 billion. When considering low emissions, will he take into account particulate matter—the PM 2.5—and nitrogen dioxide?”
“The third international conference on financing for development, which took place in Addis Ababa last weekend, made it clear that aid donor countries received five times as much in illicit financial flows as they gave out in aid—for every $1 in aid, they received $5 in illicit financial flows. We have not had a statement on the conference, which has been some surprise, but will the Leader of the House make time for a debate on what this country is doing to stop such illicit financial flows from flowing back from the developing world into the UK?”
“And if that sounds like a Labour policy, then so much the better!”
“The current system subsidises a tiny elite, precisely encouraging them not to make their land available for housing until public demand has ramped up its price. Breaking that perverse cycle is a key way of resolving the problems of “generation rent”—the housing problems my hon. Friend was speaking about—but it is also a way of raising significant revenue. A land valuation tax is a levy on the value of the land unimproved by buildings or other enhancements. The principle is simple: that because the value of the land has been created by its proximity to the infrastructure paid for by the community—the schools and hospitals, the roads and railway stations—that value should be captured by the community to be reinvested in public good, rather than appropriated for private profit.”
“Most people are surprised to find out that the myth of the crowded little island is just that—a myth—but not as surprised as when they find out that the people who currently pay land tax, some £35 billion of council tax and stamp duty, are the 99.4% of us crowded on to the 4 million acres, while the 160,000 families who own the remaining 41 million acres receive from the public purse a subsidy of about £3.5 billion every year. That is about £83 an acre every year from us, their fellow citizens. Yet these fellow citizens are the very ones that my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford) was talking about, who cannot afford to buy a home of their own because land is released slowly and selectively on to the market precisely to restrict supply and artificially inflate prices. The landowner benefits twice over.”
“Land is a very odd commodity. Take an unattractive piece of agricultural land worth about £5,000 an acre and give it planning permission. Suddenly one has an asset that is worth more than a hundred times that amount. An acre of development land can fetch between £500,000 and £l million. Of course, we all know that land is scarce on this crowded little island of ours—only we are wrong, and it is not. In fact, of the UK’s 60 million acres, only about 4 million are actually used to house our 61 million-strong population. It is true that about 15 million acres could not be used—not everybody wants to live on top of Cadair Idris—so we have to exclude the forests, lakes, rivers and mountains, but that still leaves 41 million acres of good land.”
“Public demand for better services requires increased revenue, but international market competition for capital and labour drives down the ability of any country to raise either corporate or personal income tax. For any political leader, the issue of tax rates has become a straitjacket. The obvious answer has to be to raise revenue some other way. What is needed is a commodity that cannot be concealed or moved offshore. If it could help to establish a political narrative around fairness and equality, so much the better. Instead of hitting the working poor by removing working tax credits, perhaps the Chancellor should have considered taking a leaf out of the SNP’s book and taxing land, the possession of which is one of the defining indicators in our country of the divide between rich and poor, and between powerful and powerless.”
“What we called academies were those schools in difficulty, which were not doing well by the children that they were serving, and we put extra money into those schools and allowed them the freedom to try to do better. What the Conservatives called academies were excellent schools doing tremendously well, which were allowed to have that freedom and leave the system, taking with them money that was in the pot for those needing special educational assistance or free school meals. It is the opposite of rebadging: something different is called by the same name as something else. It does not fool people for long. The Chancellor hit the wrong people, and he did so because of a genuine political problem that faces all modern Chancellors.”
“I start by welcoming the announcement about the living wage. I would feel a good deal happier about doing that if I had not noticed the guilty, sideways glance that the Chancellor gave immediately after he had made his announcement. It reminded me too much of Draco Malfoy. It set me thinking: what is the living wage in London at the moment? It is £9.15. The Chancellor said that it would be £9.35 by 2020. I thought, “Hang on. Is it really going to increase by only 20p in the next five years?” Then I realised what is really going on: one calls the thing by the same name, but changes what it is. We have been there before. We know very well that the practice exists. We remember the Chancellor’s colleague used it when we were given academies. Of course, those academies were not academies.”
“The Economic Affairs Cabinet Committee, which the Chancellor chairs, received a report over a year ago saying that the cost to our economy of air pollution from existing vehicles from the 29,000 premature deaths it causes, was between £9 billion and £20 billion lost to our economy each year. A strong Budget would have mitigated those costs by tackling the problem at source. The Chancellor talks about hypothecating vehicle excise duty to a road building programme, but he does nothing to put any money behind the electrification of those same vehicles to deal with particulate matter and nitrogen dioxide, which the committee says is costing so much every year. In this Budget the Chancellor failed to manage the natural asset base and failed to manage the environmental risks.”
“To do this, they need to set a clear carbon target for the power sector by the end of the next decade, and extend the funding under the levy control framework to match project timelines out to 2025 with annual rolling updates. In his Budget speech today the Chancellor steadfastly refused to do so, against his own independent advisers. In the built environment the report calls on the Government to “develop plans and policies that deliver low-carbon heat and energy efficiency”. Nothing! A strong Budget would have strengthened and implemented a zero carbon homes standard. It would have driven investment in low-carbon heating. A strong Budget would have provided increased support for electric vehicles, as well as pushing for stronger 2030 EU CO 2 targets for cars and vans.”
“The jobs, the growth and the international exports that could have come from it have just been thrown away to raise £3.9 billion for the Exchequer. It is a dereliction of duty as a manager of risk. The Committee on Climate Change says that the Government must do much more to support private innovation to develop the future technologies that still need research, development and demonstration. These are technologies such as electric vehicles, carbon capture and storage, and offshore wind turbine technology, that can help us meet our 2050 targets. They are also the new green industries that can bring growth and high-skilled jobs. Specifically, the committee’s report called upon the Government to “ensure the power sector can invest with a 10-year lead time”.”
“The committee criticised the fact that many low-carbon policies have no investment certainty beyond the next few years. That, it says, is preventing efficient investment in low-carbon technologies and their supply chains, which often have long lead times. To bring those investments on stream the Government should give policy certainty and clarify ongoing funding commitments beyond the cliff edge that is currently 2020. What did the Chancellor announce? He removed the exemption for renewables from having to pay the climate change levy. Instead of incentivising investment and stabilising the low-carbon industries, the Chancellor put a £3.9 billion tax on renewables. It was very softly spoken in the Budget, but at a stroke he killed off our chances of developing this growing green economy.”
“Natural capital valuation is a powerful tool for policy making and policy delivery, and it is entirely absent from this Budget. So much for managing the assets. But what about managing the risks? This Government have identified the risk of climate change. With considerably less clarity they have identified the risk of a linear economy. However, as Peter Young, the chair of the Aldersgate Group, said only a few weeks ago: “The UK is a world leader in environmental science and in writing policy; it is not a world leader in taking subsequent action.” Just over a week ago the Government’s independent advisers on these matters, the Committee on Climate Change, set out the key actions that Government needed to take if they were to respond appropriately in managing and mitigating the risks.”
“What sort of economic managers do we have who fail to quantify an asset base of such magnitude and such importance? The IMF has calculated the cost of the financial crisis at $11.9 trillion. Each year, the degradation of natural capital around the globe erodes our natural asset base by more than that. Our natural environment as represented in our natural capital stocks and flows faces a bigger crisis every single year than the world faced in the 2008 global financial crisis, yet the crisis of the environment is invisible. We were prepared almost to bankrupt ourselves to save our economic system. Our natural capital debt is, arguably, a much more urgent issue than our financial debt, yet this Budget does nothing—nothing—to reverse the decline of that asset base.”
“Dr Richard Spencer of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales has put the case for valuing our natural asset base most succinctly: “The argument for natural capital accounting is that measuring nature makes its contribution to the economy and our wellbeing visible and allows for effective decision making.” Global businesses extract an estimated $7 trillion from the environment each year. That $7 trillion does not appear on balance sheets; it consists of free goods—externalities as classical economics prefers to call them. No Government account exists that charts their contribution to the national wealth. Globally, they represent the annual income from a gigantic asset base that is, quite simply, the precondition of all other economic activity.”
“One would not—should not—have any confidence in a management team that did not know the value of its asset base, and one would not have any confidence in a management team that either failed to properly quantify its strategic risks, or that, having quantified them, failed to take appropriate action to mitigate them. Yet we have a Government who have no proper account of their natural capital asset base, and although they have identified the risk of climate change and the linear economy as a real threat to growth, they are failing to take the necessary steps to mitigate those risks adequately.”
“I am so glad I took that intervention, because the hon. Gentleman makes an extremely important point—one that I totally agree with. The amount of tax raised could be substantial: an annual tax of just £200 per acre could raise £9 billion—more than by putting an extra penny on income tax. The unpopularity of raising corporate or personal income tax has been a straitjacket. If the Chancellor feels comfortable wearing it, he may be madder than I think. For 10 years, I ran my own business in the City of London. I focused on two things: first, manage your assets; secondly, manage your risks. The same is true for Government.”
“I am pleased the hon. Gentleman responded in the way he did to the hon. Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon); he is absolutely right. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the Environment Agency did offer the local authority money for dredging—I am not sure of the figure, but I think it was about £7 million—but the local authority rejected it?”
“It is the duty of Government to provide strong leadership and the investment that is required to ensure that all parts of the country and all sectors of the economy adapt effectively to climate change. Coastal flooding is not a stand-alone risk; combined with fluvial and surface water flood risk, the effect can be devastating. The Government have not risen to the challenge of matching the risk that we face.”
“When will the Government release the findings of the national resilience review that was launched in response to the 2013-14 floods? Only two of the six wetland priority habitat types currently meet the 90% target for being in a favourable or recovering condition. The Minister will know that, as well as being extremely important for wildlife, those habitats play an important role in buffering sea defences from waves and storm surges. Only 37% of floodplain and coastal marsh is in favourable or recovering condition, and there is currently no process for reporting progress against the Government’s target. That should be a priority for DEFRA from the point of view not only of flood risk, but of habitats and the wider environment. Does the Minister expect to meet his 2020 targets in those areas?”
“Some ports, having participated in the first round of reporting under the compulsory adaptation reporting power, have decided not to provide an update as part of round 2. Will the Minister confirm which ports have not reported in round 2, but did report in the first round? Why was the risk of coastal erosion not mentioned in the Planning Inspectorate’s assessment of the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station? Coastal defences can fail, as we saw during the 2013-14 winter storms at Dawlish, which has been mentioned in the debate. Projections suggest that the length of the rail network exposed to coastal erosion will increase from 11 km to 38 km by 2050 and to 62 km by 2100. What are the Minister’s colleagues in the Department for Transport doing to address that?”
“Since 2001, 27% of floodplain development—that equates to 68,000 new homes—has been in areas with a one in 100 or greater annual chance of flooding, and about 23,000 new homes have been built in areas with a high likelihood of flooding; that is a one in 30 or greater annual chance of flooding even where flood defences are in place. Can the Minister explain why all the Government’s planning assumes that that development is not taking place? That is their own stated assumption behind their figures. Ports handle 95% of the country’s imports and exports by volume. Half of the UK’s port capacity is located on the east coast, where the risk of damage from a tidal surge is greatest. However, it is not clear what improvements in flood protection have been made, or are planned to be made, to Britain’s ports.”
“The Committee on Climate Change has identified that the Government have no plan to reduce flood risk to properties already protected by coastal defences. That means that as sea levels rise because of climate change, the chance that those defences will be overtopped or fail is increasing. However, the Government are focusing only on improved emergency evacuation planning. Why have the Government not informed coastal communities that they should be prepared for increasingly frequent evacuations as flood risk increases because of climate change?”
“Against that evidence, can the Minister please justify his insistence and that of ministerial colleagues that flood risk has been reduced over the past five years? He will know that the only way in which that claim can in any way be substantiated is through the fact that those at low risk and very low risk of flood damage have been taken out of the equation, but those at significant, high or very high risk of flooding have seen that risk increase. Only 77 local planning authorities out of 340—23%—have local flood risk plans. Of the 20 local authorities in England that have the highest number of households at risk from river or coastal flooding, 17 do not have adopted plans in place under the national planning policy framework. What is the Minister doing to ensure that all local planning authorities have those plans in place?”
“Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), is no longer in his place, because I want to rebut his words specifically. He said that there had been an increase in investment under the last Government. There was not. Over the past four years there has been under-investment totalling more than £200 million. The graphs are there for all to see in the report by the Committee on Climate Change. I counsel the Minister to have a look at those graphs; the graphs and the bar charts showing what was spent are all there. The committee states: “Due to this underinvestment, expected annual flood damage will be higher now than it was in 2010.” That is a direct quote from the Committee on Climate Change.”
“The fact is that defences protecting thousands of homes and critical infrastructure, not to mention much of the city of Hull, almost failed. The Committee on Climate Change addressed a couple of simple questions on climate change adaptation. First, is there a plan? The answer that the committee gave was yes, but that it is inadequate. Secondly, are actions taking place? The answer was yes, but they are not time-bound and most are not being measured. Thirdly, are those actions reducing the risk of failure of our critical infrastructure and loss of life? Answer: no. That is the view of the Government’s independent Committee on Climate Change, set up to advise the Government on these matters. Over the past four years there has been under-investment in flood and coastal risk management. I am sorry that the former Minister, the hon.”
“Tens of thousands of homes, critical energy and transport infrastructure and many towns and cities in England are located on the coastal floodplain. The Government’s failure to take adaptation seriously is an insult to all of them. We know that our efforts to reduce flood risk in the past have saved the lives of those who live on the coastal floodplain, as well as billions of pounds potential damage. No one died as a direct result of the 2013 tidal surge event, whereas the tidal surge of a similar magnitude in 1953 killed 307 people. Improved flood defence structures and reliable early warning systems protected hundreds of thousands of homes and ensured that 18,000 people were evacuated. However, many coastal communities were balancing on a knife edge during the 2013-14 winter floods.”
“I will get to the committee’s findings in a moment, but first I want to raise two points that appear to me to show the Government’s disregard for their responsibility to protect our economy and wellbeing from the impacts of climate change. First, the Government were asked to put up a Minister to speak at the launch of the committee’s two progress reports. They chose not to. Secondly, no Minister currently has responsibility for climate change adaptation. The role has been handed to a part-time Lord and DEFRA “spokesperson”, whatever that means. It certainly does not mean a Minister of the Crown. The Conservative-led coalition removed climate change adaptation from DEFRA’s priorities, and this Government have removed ministerial oversight. That is serious.”
“The risk has risen because of human activity, but until recently people acted in ignorance, and therefore innocence, of the effects of their action on future generations. However, our failure to act today, with the full knowledge of the cost of our inaction, is, in the words of the Pope, “a sin against ourselves”, a sin against the world. That other fine Catholic in another place, Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change, has pointed out that it is unnatural for us to act like ostriches, but it is also irresponsible and immoral. The committee’s first statutory report to Parliament on the Government’s progress in preparing the UK for the impacts of climate change was published last week. It shows that the Government have taken the ostrich approach.”
“This makes the region unique in its training provision.” Paragraph 6.9 of the report shows that the Ministry has examined the possibility of locating the training facility elsewhere, but that “capital costs and compulsory purchase issues aside, this size of space cannot be replicated in another part of the UK, simply because an area the size required to translocate these facilities…is not available.” Sea level rises and the increasingly severe and frequent extreme weather in the UK show that climate change is an issue not just of national wellbeing but of national and global security. The threat that climate change poses to our ability to live well is growing in many parts of the UK, particularly on our coasts.”
“A report released under freedom of information regulations states: “The MOD estate will be exposed to greater risk as a consequence of climate change…Many sites, both inland and coastal, are vulnerable to flooding...Climate change and sea level rise means that defending coastlines is becoming more costly and technically difficult. The increasing cost of maintenance means that existing defences may be abandoned in areas with low population or fewer tangible assets.” The Hythe and Lydd ranges, known as DTE SE—defence training estate south-east—form “the principal area for operational training. The range complexes comprise the most extensive collection of urban training facilities in Europe and extremely varied terrain.”
“I might think that it is a shame that that Department is the Ministry of Defence and not the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and as a former distinguished Chair of the Defence Committee the Minister might feel that that is a point of welcome contact between us and that we can work from there. The Defence Estates special focus investigation on flood implications for MOD locations set out plans to abandon the Hythe and Lydd ranges, valued at £200 million, which are next to the flood-prone Romney marshes on the south coast.”
“Sir Edward, it is always a great pleasure to speak in any debate chaired by you, given your wise counsel, but today I specifically thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), not only for raising a very important subject but for doing so with great aplomb and the sort of attention to detail that I imagine will endear her to her constituents for many years to come. I am keen to get off to the right start with the new Minister, so I begin by saying that it is really good that there is a Government Department that takes coastal defence risk seriously.”
“I will try to be brief, but I want to enlighten the Minister on the question of funding. Simply, the projections are based on the peak year of 2010, after which there was an initial cut of some £200 million in the following two years. The Government then amended that figure for restoration, which was emergency funding. The bar charts and graphs produced by the Committee on Climate Change show that that funding bumped the figures above the original projected gain line. The Environment Agency has put in two new lines below that level, but those lines are deemed to be “best possible” and “rather optimistic” scenarios by the Committee on Climate Change. I recommend that the Minister looks at the reports and graphs by the Committee on Climate Change because they explain the situation in some detail and show exactly what the hon.”
“The Secretary of State has insisted that the Conservative party does not break its manifesto commitments, but it would appear that it is quite happy to get somebody else to pay for them. Given that the BBC is going to have a reduced income as a result of his announcement today, will he say how much that reduction will be and what discussions he has had with the Foreign Secretary about whether it will affect the World Service, which many of us care deeply about?”
“Will the Chancellor remind the House of the amount of money that this country made available to the IMF as part of its assistance package to Greece? He has reasserted today that no country has ever lost money by lending it to the IMF, but of course the IMF has said that it believes that a serious restructuring is required for Greece to get through its current difficulties. That implies that the moneys owed to the IMF will not be repaid.”
“The increase in carbon emissions from any airport expansion will have to be contained within the overall carbon budget set by the Committee on Climate Change. What discussions is the Secretary of State having in Cabinet about offsetting from other areas of his portfolio to ensure that those emissions caps are not breached; and what discussions is he having at European level to ensure that a European emissions cap is put in place, as this country has unsuccessfully argued for previously?”
“London is the sixth richest city in the world and it produces a fifth of the GDP of the United Kingdom; yet four out of 10 of its children are in poverty. Does the Secretary of State accept that businesses recognise those facts by paying a London weighting? Is it time that he considered a London weighting both in relation to the minimum wage and the benefits cap in London?”
“My hon. Friend is being most generous in giving way. Does she share my disappointment that, rather uniquely, the debate has twice as many women MPs in the Chamber, listening to her excellent remarks, as men? There are only half as many men in the Chamber.”
“My hon. Friend will know that Northwick Park hospital in my constituency has had some of the worst waiting times in the country over the past year. Does he understand, and will he address in his remarks, the fact that the ageing population—those over the age of 80—in Brent has increased by 50%, yet the funding available to cope with that increase has been reduced by 25%? It means that, of the 250 people who attend A&E each day, 100 are dementia patients who become bed blockers because the integrated care package is not in place and is not working.”
“By ending support a year earlier than the right hon. Lady’s Department promised only eight months ago, the Government are sending yet another message to investors that the UK is not a stable regulatory regime in this area. Does she accept the calculations that show onshore wind is not only the cheapest form of new low carbon energy, but that for every pound of development cost, 98 pence is spent creating new jobs in the UK—jobs that were projected to double to 37,000 by 2023 had that support continued?”
“I, too, welcome the Minister to his place. Last year, the Government wrote a letter to all local authorities, trying to blame them for the 29,000 deaths that air pollution is causing every year in the UK and saying that any fines imposed by the EU for failure to comply with the air quality directive would have to be paid by them. Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that it is the Government who are solely responsible for compliance and any fines arising, will the Secretary of State write again to all local authorities to accept her responsibility and overturn her previous threatening letter?”
“The Woodland Trust has identified 43 ancient woodlands that are threatened by HS2. Will the Secretary of State advise the House of the measures he will take in the ambitious infrastructure roll-out programme he talked about earlier to protect further bodies of ancient woodland?”
“The under-10 metre inshore fishing fleet in coastal communities around England is urgently waiting to know when the Leader of the House will lay before Parliament the proposals in the Conservative manifesto to reallocate fishing quotas towards the under-10 metre fleet. When will this be coming forward?”