Graham Stuart
MP for Beverley and Holderness · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I hope and expect that we can move forward in the right way and get the balance right between being overly prescriptive to the banking industry and setting a clear sense of direction to make sure that no one is left behind, as so many Members have set out.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate.”
“Is my hon. Friend as astonished as I am that the Minister—I know she is new to her post—has come here to propose a six-month extension of the movement of costs from bills to the Exchequer and cannot tell the Committee how much money that will cost?”
“The Minister is being most generous again. I did not ask her about protecting consumers from energy price shocks; I asked about a clear, unequivocal manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills by £300. She, like her predecessors, refuses to address it directly. It was a clear promise.”
“Banking hubs themselves came out of an industry response from the NatWest executive. Does the Minister agree that we must present the information from the Lloyd review to the banking groups, be clear about what we want, and give them the opportunity to respond and provide a solution, as they did with banking hubs, so that we can perhaps a…”
“I am pleased to say that Lloyds listened and, as of this morning, people can deposit cheques at those places. These issues being raised by Members across the House today are important. I trust that given the timing of the Richard Lloyd report, the Minister in her seat will make sure that they are be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
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“The Government have approved the fifth carbon budget—the framework of all frameworks. That is the why people should be optimistic. That is the message that needs to go out from this place to investors. That is where we are headed—to 2050, with the Climate Change Act 2008 intact and supported by the Government and the Labour party. It is important that we do not send out a message or a tone from this place that suggests that investors should not be confident. There are quite a number of ways in which we can all boost confidence. We are in a time of change, and I hope we will never again have a Chancellor of the Exchequer who says we do not want to lead in this area. We should lead in this area, not least for the reason pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat)—inconsistency elsewhere.”
“On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Just before the debate finishes, the shadow Secretary of State said that investment in Hull by Siemens was “on hold”—I think those were the words—but investment there most definitely is not. He might want to make that clear, unless I misheard what he said. That investment is very important in our local area and that investment is continuing.”
“There is a provision. People do not have to apply for planning permission, but they do have to get prior approval. Has the hon. Lady considered that? Does she think it is inadequate, or has she just ignored it?”
“I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman would not pass over the merit order effects quite so quickly, and I encourage the Minister not to do so, because understanding the trade-off between the subsidy and the effect of taking the merit order out of the equation at any one time for the more expensive sources of production is an important component of understanding the real costs involved in subsidising something such as solar.”
“The Minister is right to highlight the Government’s record, which is tremendous. In 2010, only Malta and Luxembourg had fewer renewables than this country. The Government truly have been the greenest Government ever. To what extent is the Government’s approach to the LCF and capping informed by an understanding of the merit order effect? That subsidy is not all that it seems. In fact, the costs to the consumer are a great deal less than would be apparent purely looking at the LCF total.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. The wholesale price is so much lower than I think the Government predicted. Perhaps she can confirm that. Therefore, in a sense, the cost to the consumer and the merit order effect are such that the low cost of renewables has dragged down the wholesale price of energy. That is why no one at the moment will put any form of new generation into place, without some sort of support. That is because renewables have lowered the wholesale price. Therefore, one must offset that against the subsidy if one is to have a true picture of what the consumer is paying towards greening our energy supply.”
“I am sure that that report, like any other, will not have the entire truth in it and there will need to be further balancing, but, as I quietly and loyally support the order, may I make a plea to the Government that they look to come forward with a more sophisticated assessment—perhaps they have it already and are not sharing it with us—of the overall net position of the costs on both sides so that we can make a better informed decision and ensure that when we meet in a Committee Room such as this, we are better able to scrutinise the decisions they make, I am sure with the best of intentions?”
“Remember what Good Energy said about the £1.12 billion—58% less—in 2014: “The value of the Merit Order Effect will increase with further renewable deployment…the current level of savings suggest that, if renewable support was viewed in net terms”— I suggest that it should be— “the projected future overspend of the Levy Control Framework may not be a reality”. It may not be a reality. That, it seems to me, is the central challenge to the proposal. Those are my concerns.”
“There will be counter-costs, but on something like the measure we have before us today we need net figures. We need the Government’s estimate of what the real costs are on the consumer rather than just the headline figure, which is over what we budgeted, not mentioning the fact that the wholesale price, if I am right—someone correct me if I am wrong—is actually a lot lower than the Government budgeted. Therefore, the cost to the consumer, far from being massively boosted, is not boosted. We then risk cutting the very technologies that are contributing to those reductions, or at least netting off a very great deal. At the same time, they are much cleaner and help us meet our carbon targets. On the face of it, there are some issues there.”
“However, in a report on the merit order effect, Good Energy stated: “In net terms, the cost of supporting wind and solar generation in 2014 was £1.12 billion—58% less than the cost reflected in the Levy Control Framework. The value of the Merit Order Effect will increase with further renewable deployment”. In other words, the more renewables we have, the more the cost will be dragged down. According to that economic analysis, the idea that renewables are a chronically expensive, bill-boosting form of energy generation is not entirely correct. I am sure there are other aspects to this, so we need to add it all up. Perhaps we need to add up the additional costs per unit of generation of that plant in my constituency, which is not running so many hours a year.”
“It seems to me that if my cap ex had been repaid, I would still want to sell at the market price, regardless of my cost. In a normal market, the market price is the market price: the cheapest producer—the most profitable company—makes its profits and is very happy; it does not drop them. Why has the wholesale price been dragged down? It is because of the merit order effect, which sounds terribly technical and distant but basically means that when our renewables—solar and wind—are going, they have to generate, which has helped to squeeze out the more expensive generators and has lowered the cost. In many ways, the renewables have made a significant contribution to lowering costs for consumers. I have not done the maths, so I am not suggesting that that entirely counteracts other factors.”
“Friend the Member for Corby that prices are spiralling, wholesale prices are at a remarkable low—far less than anyone in gas, wind or any sector can currently afford to commission new generation for. Why is that? It is rather weird that, when there is a capacity market auction, the Government end up being alarmed that the prices that the system pays for the capacity they ask for turn out to be far less than would allow the commissioning of new plants. That is why the Government will doubtless come forward with new ways to ensure that we get a new generation system. Why is the wholesale price so far below the price of new generation? People might say that it is because cap ex has been exhausted—an awful lot of plants have been going for a long time and can therefore produce cheaply. That argument does not entirely persuade me.”
“I have some concerns about cuts and about the direction we are going in with solar and onshore wind deployment while diesel generators are being commissioned as part of the capacity market. It is fair to say that the Government are taking action to ensure that that does not happen again, but none the less it has happened recently. However, my biggest concern is around the levy control framework—the idea of capping spending and viewing how much it is in static terms. When the LCF was put in place a few years ago, what wholesale price did the Government predict? I am not sure, but I am pretty sure that their predicted price was a great deal higher than the price today. Contrary to the suggestion made by my hon.”
“Mitsubishi, one of the major suppliers, has entirely changed the cost system for supplying parts; the system has responded, to try to allow Saltend cost-effectively to provide generation that switches off and on. Those four technologies are developing day by day and getting better, just as is happening in my constituency. That gives us all the more reason to be optimistic that the system will be more flexible over time and that traditional fossil fuel systems such as gas, which might previously have seen themselves as base-load suppliers, can be flexible suppliers, providing energy where it is needed. With storage, demand management and the interconnector in place, the requirement for them to do that—and the requirement for the fossil fuels themselves—will, I hope, reduce over time and eventually disappear.”
“The third technology is interconnectors, which the Minister has played a big role in promoting and supporting. Having more interconnectors with our neighbours provides us with another flex in the system, because our peak is at a different time from our neighbours’ peaks. The fourth technology that helps to provide flex in the system is flexible generation. The gas-fired power station at Saltend in my constituency was built for eight closures a year, if I remember rightly: it has four turbines, which have two maintenance closures each a year. But last year it shut down hundreds of times, precisely because work has been done to turn it into a more flexible generator.”
“There is a big hope that storage could start to play an increasing role, and if we look at an online meter that shows where we get our energy from, we will often see that storage is playing a part already. The second technology is on demand management. We are seeing significant efforts by National Grid to provide seedcorn for that market, in order to get people to start looking at whether they can switch off their systems, lower their energy use at key times in an affordable way and find out the price for that. That will develop over time as it becomes more transparent, and people may design major energy-using systems precisely so that they can easily be switched off cost-effectively at peak times, thus contributing to the system.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward, and to participate in today’s debate. Going forward, our aim should be to have a completely different energy market—not so much one characterised by base-load and then some flex, but as flexible a market as we can have, so that we can take on board renewables, with their intermittencies, and balance that by having flexible production. One reason we might hesitate before curbing deployment of renewables is that there are four technologies that can help to provide flex in the system. One is storage, to which the Minister referred. Huge technological developments are afoot in storage. As we have seen with solar and wind, so we see with storage: prices are coming down, investment is going in and technology is being harnessed to lower costs.”
“I think you have had your question. May I join colleagues in congratulating the Secretary of State on her statement and on the way in which she has engaged with colleagues on both sides of the House? The Education Committee described the healthy tension between local authority schools and academy schools, which has contributed to 1.4 million fewer children being at weak schools. Does the Secretary of State agree that if local authorities that do manage to deliver outstanding schools and excellent overview and intervention, they can continue?”
“My hon. Friend is right. The funding system we have today, handed over from the previous Labour Government, is broken in London and in urban and rural areas alike, and needs to be fixed. On additional costs in London, no proposal that I have seen from anyone, including F40, suggests anything other than that London would continue to have significantly more money per head than other areas.”
“It is worth saying that it is important to have a fair system across the country. Certain parts of London—and it is only parts—have disproportionately benefited. A Lambeth school can have more than £1,500 a head more—for a class of 30, that is £45,000 more—than a school half a mile away in Croydon. We have a broken system, and we need to fix it.”
“One way to do that—it is only one way; money is not everything—is by making sure we have a system that is truly fair. I hope that, across the House, partisan voices will not stop us coming to a fair and consensual conclusion.”
“However, the Labour party is committed to no such thing and neither is the Conservative party. Even if the budget for this broken inequitable system was increased, we would still have to sit down and seek to ensure that the needs of every single child, regardless of disability, race or geography, were met. The hon. Lady was right to say that we should have a system based on needs. That is precisely what the Government have consulted on. Whatever they come up with will doubtless not be perfect—nothing ever is—but to question the motive, when the Government are setting out to introduce a fairer funding system with the support of Labour Front Benchers, is beneath the hon. Lady. To say that London education will be decimated is so far from the truth. We need every area of the country to enjoy the improvements that have happened in London.”
“Other major northern cities would be beneficiaries, too. If we created a fairer system, other northern cities would lose out, because what we have now is erratic, irrational and bears no examination. I beg Opposition Members in particular not to use the language that the hon. Lady used. The Government have set out a consultation on the principles. She did not itemise a single principle in the consultation with which she disagreed; she simply asserted that it was some sort of appalling assault on London to reverse the progress that has been made. Nothing could be further from the truth. There are limited resources; that is recognised by those on the Front Benches on both sides of the House. Talk of levelling up is all very well, so long as the hon. Lady’s party is committed to the vast budgetary increases that that would require.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on leading it. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow (Rushanara Ali), although I must say from the outset that I did not agree with the tone of her speech. The Labour party is committed to the fair funding formula. The one we have now is broken and it is broken in London. I described the difference between Lambeth and Croydon, but we can find examples all over London. Schools hundreds of yards apart have differences in funding of up to tens of thousands of pounds per classroom. The current system is completely broken and wrong, and it is wrong across the country. The biggest gainer from the F40 proposals would be Barnsley.”
“Again, that is beneath the hon. Lady who brought the issue up and it is beneath other Labour Members—including the highly distinguished figure of the right hon. Gentleman, to whom I am happy to give way.”
“My hon. and learned Friend is absolutely right. We heard language about dividing communities. With respect, the only person attempting to do that today is the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Bow, who used inappropriate language. No one is seeking to divide communities. We have a broken system. If anyone would like to make the case that the current system is fair, reasonable and just, then please do so. But if it is not—and it is not—then we have to redistribute. Making pernickety points about the manifesto, which says that the Government are going to protect the amount of money per child—which they are— [Interruption.] To the point where we cannot redistribute from someone who is grossly and unfairly funded in one place to another person somewhere else who is on the other end of the spectrum? That is ridiculous.”
“What we should be talking about now is what emphasis we want to be placed on deprivation, for example, or population movements. Those things are all reflected in the proposed formula. The Government have touched on all of them. I do not see how it is acceptable to say, “We have a problem with a lot of people for whom English is a second language”, when that features in the formula. It is the same with deprivation needs in London—that, too, is in the proposed formula. The truth is that we have the ingredients for a fair system.”
“The right hon. Gentleman is incorrect. I want a fair system based on principle in which need is assessed, and where the money follows the pupil and that need. That is precisely what all of us should want. Given that the Government have set out, in a transparent way, how to bring about this fairer funding formula, the suggestions that have been made are for political purposes; I know there are elections for London Mayor tomorrow. The House should rise above that. If the details come out and they are found not to fit with the principles, they will be worthy of criticism, but right now, such criticism cannot be made. When we have a badly broken system, the failure to demonstrate how it should be changed is not good enough.”
“What we need is a system that is fair to all.”
“As ever, the hon. Gentleman makes an interesting and well-informed point. Westminster has been mentioned, so let us look at that as an example. People in very expensive properties are paying council tax rates that are absolutely on the floor; their rates should be compared with those paid by my constituents living in homes worth a tiny fraction of the value of those in Westminster to see how much more those constituents are paying. It does not wash to suggest that a fairer funding system is undermined because people paid more or less council tax in the distant past. The truth is that there are very high levels of council tax in many of the areas, including my own, that have the lowest funding, while there are very low levels of council tax in some of the richest and most prosperous parts of London.”
“The money needs to be distributed fairly. I think the most important thing we should do today as a House is to say that we want a system that is fair to all. We should be discussing the principles and ensuring that the Government do not wriggle on any them for their own partisan or other interests. That is quite right, but let us not scaremonger. Let us not send out messages about dividing communities when the aim of fair funding is right and supported by everyone—including the Labour, Conservative and other major Front-Bench teams. I shall end there.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are all sorts of boroughs across London, and some areas are funded to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds less per classroom than one that might be just a short distance away, yet they are in exactly the same market for teachers—the vital ingredient for raising educational standards. Despite that, when it comes to improving standards, outer London has been part of the London educational transformation. The suggestion that moving from a situation of gross inequity to one that is fairer to all will undermine quality, when those who have suffered that inequity, such as the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), have none the less managed to improve standards, proves that the issue is not just about money.”
“Does the Minister agree that one of the most egregious elements of today’s unfair and broken school funding system is that which affects children with special educational needs, and will he confirm that, like the schools block, the special needs block will be part of the review, so that we can have a transparent and fair system for all children?”
“T4. According to Ofsted, the best educational settings in the country are maintained nursery schools, of which 58% are “outstanding” and 39% are “good”. Remarkably, they perform just as well in poor areas as they do in less affluent areas. What consideration has the Minister given to allowing them to become academies if they wish to do so, in order to ensure that these great institutions continue their work?”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful and well-informed speech. Does he agree that although we are ending the subsidy for onshore wind, there will still be a role for it? We must continue to make sure that, while it is not subsidised, onshore wind does not lose out in comparison with the strike prices granted to other technologies.”
“As long as communities have the final say on whether new wind farm capacity is brought into their area, and as long as onshore wind is treated no differently from other technologies, including fossil fuels such as gas, that is the situation we need to bring about.”
“Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), I want to make this point. Given that we now have an energy market in which the price producers charge for energy is far less than that at which anyone can afford to commission new production, we have a rather artificial market. I hope and expect we will make sure—I know Ministers are looking at this—that future regimes, for contracts for difference or whatever else, do not artificially block onshore wind from getting access to the market because of how pricing within that market operates. It is perfectly possible to ensure that there is no subsidy for onshore wind while ensuring that onshore wind alone is not deprived of access to the mechanisms that drive new commissioning for every other technology. I hope that Members on both sides of the House can agree to that.”
“We have ended up in a position in which the party that won a majority at the general election stood on a manifesto promise to end this subsidy. The Government have made provision to ensure that onshore wind, where it goes ahead, has the support of the local community. I have said previously in the House, so I will not go on about it at too much length, that that issue should have been sorted out. If it had been sorted out sooner, we might not have had the backlash that has found its form—not least through the agency of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—in saying, “We feel that this subsidy regime is imposing these turbines on us.” The permissions, not the subsidy per se, was the central issue, but we are where we are. Further to my intervention on my hon.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, in which there have been interesting speeches by Members on both sides of the House. On ending the subsidy for onshore wind, the whole aim of subsidy regimes for renewable technologies is to encourage costs to fall and to drive them down over time to the point at which they no longer need a subsidy. The Government put that in their manifesto. I think a lot of this is down to Labour Members, because they would not listen to communities, such as my own, which felt that wind farms were being imposed on them that blighted their view of the landscape. The sense of a loss of control, even more than the imposition of the turbines themselves, created a great deal of resentment.”
“I agree that there are such issues. In his speech, my right hon. Friend did not reflect on the success of the Government. I know he is sceptical about both climate change and the Government’s approach to this over the years, but what is undeniable is the way in which the cost curve has accelerated downwards. We were previously in a situation in which clean energy was ridiculously more expensive than fossil fuels, which poison the air and also have climate risks attached to them. We have therefore seen a real driving down of that cost. Onshore wind is now in a position where it should be able to compete on a level playing field with new gas-fired power stations; we will not of course see any more coal-fired ones.”
“The hon. Lady is making a powerful case and her point about the gap between Yorkshire and London is valid. She cites the evidence, but will she join me in agreeing that having 1.4 million fewer children in underperforming schools is a significant national improvement, although, as we will be discussing tonight, we need to ensure that that success is everywhere and not just concentrated in some areas.”
“I ask colleagues on both sides of the House to celebrate the fact that the Government are moving towards a fair funding formula that will mean that a rural school in the east riding or an inner-city school in Bradford can expect to have a formula that is transparent and that reasonably seeks to provide fair funding for everybody. With that, I am pleased to bring my remarks to a close.”
“The Government have resisted that, but we need by every means, from status to pay and any other structures we have, to level the playing field so that we encourage people to go where they are most needed. I must touch on fair funding, which is one of the most significant issues. The hon. Lady mentioned London, which receives significantly more funding in general—inner London certainly does—than the rest of the country. The Association of School and College Leaders found that the top 10 local authority areas in the country get an average of £6,300 per pupil, and the bottom 10 get £4,200. That is based not on need or deprivation, but on historical anomaly. Therefore, I must again congratulate the Government on grasping that.”
“Ministers deserve credit for addressing that issue and tackling the perverse incentives that deterred good leaders from taking on some of the toughest challenges. We also need to boost effective partnership working between schools, as the hon. Lady said, something that can be a particular problem in a large, sparsely populated rural area such as the east riding, with significant distances between schools. If I was to draw a circle around some of the schools on the coast in my constituency, I would of course find that half the area from which they might seek support or collaboration is in the North sea, and they are unlikely to get any help from that direction. School leaders could be encouraged to sign up to partnerships by introducing Sir Michael Wilshaw’s proposed “Excellent Leadership” awards.”
“Because in our high-stakes accountability system, a headteacher working in a successful school in a prosperous area has long been less likely to be fired, found wanting or publicly criticised than one who opts to work somewhere such as Knowsley, where not a single secondary school was rated good or outstanding in 2015. That is why I am so encouraged that the new White Paper, “Educational excellence everywhere”, proposes the introduction of “improvement periods” during which schools under new leadership will not be inspected by Ofsted. For schools that have been judged to require improvement, new heads will have a grace period of around 30 months before inspectors visit again, and the same goes for new academy sponsors.”
“By the end of this Parliament, it will see 1,500 of the country’s best teachers assigned to the schools that need them the most. To support those teachers in their new roles, a package of incentives is being offered, including help with relocation, assistance with commuting costs and access to prestigious leadership development programmes, as well as great mentors. Underlying this, there is also a pressing need to ensure that our education system is structured so that it does not conspire to drive talented individuals away from underperforming schools. There are many idealistic teachers and leaders who want to help at the educational frontline, but for too long they have been incentivised to teach elsewhere. Why?”
“As if that was not important enough, Professor Hanushek has found that the effects of high-quality teaching are especially significant for pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, who do not have the other support and succour to help them make up for an inadequate teacher. These findings not only underline the importance of good recruitment and teacher training models, which are critical, but show that we need to ensure that the best teachers work where they are needed most. Academies’ flexibility to design attractive packages to recruit and retain good teachers has the potential to help here. I also believe that the new National Teaching Service—the hon. Lady referred to it—which will be piloted in the north-west this autumn, could make a significant contribution once it is rolled out to our area.”
“It is shocking how much difference there is between how much a child learns in the classroom of a teacher at the 90th percentile compared with how little they learn with a teacher at the 10th percentile. Hanushek has calculated that one of the teachers at the top will give their students an entire year’s worth of additional learning in one year, compared with those near the bottom in teaching quality. That is, they advance their pupils’ understanding 150% compared with what might be expected from an average teacher in that time, while their least talented counterparts help their students to make only 50% of the progress that would be expected.”
“As Sir Michael also said in his speech in December, “we should not waste time in tendentious arguments about the relative merits of academies but rather on how we can make them work. Academies, like all schools, work if they have good leaders and good teaching. If they lack them, they do not.” Sir Michael is absolutely right. It cannot be emphasised too often that the key to raising performance and narrowing the attainment gap between rich and poor lies, as the hon. Lady rightly said, in the quality of teaching, and that is what we need to focus on. One of the best sources in this area is the work of Professor Eric Hanushek of Stamford University.”
“There has long been a divide. We need to find a way— ideally, in education policy—with the maximum consensus possible, of creating a framework of incentives to get the best teachers to the places where they are needed most, and which can transcend any general election, regardless of who wins it. Without that, the divide will continue and there will be unnecessary tinkering and disruption of improvements to the education system. With that in mind, it would be unfortunate if the 2022 deadline for total academisation of schools led our energies to be deployed debating that rather than how to improve teaching and thus standards of education. Whether such a policy was necessary or wise I will not debate today, although I note that many colleagues have already expressed some doubts.”