Damian Hinds
MP for East Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“There are moments in debates like the one we have had today that are difficult to sit through and listen to, but it is the most immense privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to hear some of these testimonies.”
“Today is once again a day of heavy responsibility for all of us to decide on what we in this House call “conscience issues”. Many of the people who we represent hold strong and immutable views, and we hear from them. However, we represent many others who hold much more nuanced views and we are less likely to hear from them.”
“Members who support the Bill should not have their motives questioned, Members who oppose the Bill should not have their motives questioned, and Members who have reached a different conclusion from one they reached at an earlier stage should not have their judgment questioned either.”
“We have heard from royal colleges and other professional bodies, many of whom have a neutral stance on the principle but raise significant questions about particular aspects. We know from Ministers that there would need to be some reprioritisation of NHS resources, but we do not know the extent.”
“If there is the prospect of the Parliament Acts being used, that would increase the importance and the salience of the text as it is now. Today, it is reasonable and entirely in order for hon. Members to consider information that is available now that was not available in those previous parliamentary deliberation.”
“The Government have said, rightly, that the time taken to implement other schemes is not directly comparable, because none are as in this Bill. This is a free vote on a matter of conscience—there is no party line on either side of the Chamber. No one, I suggest, finds this issue easy.”
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“In 2018, the UK was the second-largest market in Europe for ultra low emission cars and the fourth-largest market for electric cars, and one fifth of battery electric cars sold in Europe had been made here in the UK. For actual sales as a percentage of the total car market, we were above France and Germany but, as colleagues will know, we were below some of the very high-percentage countries, particularly the Scandinavian nations and others such as the Netherlands. It is the growth curve—the year-on-year growth, albeit from a small base—that is particularly encouraging. Alongside changes in electric vehicle technology, a lot of other relevant changes are happening in society and the economy.”
“Steel is of great importance, and the hon. Lady knows better than most people how important it is to our industrial base. It is also important to the development of many green technologies. As she knows, steel has its own challenges. It is a very energy-intensive sector; in time, hydrogen technologies and others might help in that regard, and we need to ensure that we maximise our efforts towards them. We now have over 22,000 public charging points for electric vehicles. There is a particular concentration in London, but also in places such as Dundee. We have 125 rapid charge points per 100 km of highway, compared with the EU average of 25.”
“As an aside, although scientists would say that there is no benefit to having a spare battery, and that we should just make a bigger battery, I wonder what the psychological effect might be of having one. The third perfectly rational worry is about the car’s residual value, particularly as a result of battery degradation. That is particularly rational, given what we have been told over the years about mobile phone and laptop batteries— we have been told, “This is the generation that will not lose any of its performance,” and it has never turned out to be true. Again, if the car is not owned in the same way, that worry should be somewhat dissipated.”
“There is a gap between the cost of electric vehicles and the cost of internal combustion engine vehicles. Although that gap is narrowing all the time, however, I do not think that, in general, the sector or the public sector has yet made the clear and compelling case for how close those costs are—looking not at the purchase price, but at the total cost of ownership over the car’s lifetime—as well as it could have been made. The second challenge is so-called range anxiety—“What happens if I leave home and can’t get back again because the battery runs out?” That is a perfectly good, rational fear, part of which will be addressed by improvements in infrastructure.”
“As ever, the hon. Member makes an important and incisive point. A modal shift is clearly part of the response to this issue, but it will not be the whole response. As I mentioned earlier, buses are an important factor too, but there will always be a need for domestic passenger transport—cars, as we tend to call them. In a constituency such as mine, which is very rural and spread out, people need cars if they want to go to work. Making cars as environmentally friendly as possible, in terms of both carbon emissions and air quality, is an important goal. It feels as though we are on the cusp of some quite significant change or what might be called a watershed moment. With the conversion to electric vehicles, however, we are up against some quite significant challenges from a consumer perspective. The first is cost.”
“The experience from elsewhere shows that if subsidies are suddenly withdrawn, there tends to be a massive spike in demand just beforehand, followed by a return. That is obviously not good for meeting production schedules. On the infrastructure network, there is a lot that the Government can do through a mixture of regulation and their convening power. We need to do better and go further on full roaming and interoperability. We can do a lot better on the visibility of charging points. There has been a lot of focus on visibility to users of electric cars, but I am actually less worried about them right now than everybody else. The point is that to get consumer acceptance, non-users of electric cars need to know that there are plenty of places to charge them.”
“The shift in the way people own cars, towards personal contract hire, is a great opportunity to convey how the whole-life cost compares for different groups of consumers, rather than comparing the sticker price of one car against another. It is also a way of allaying fears about residual value and battery performance. Allied to that, when it comes to cost, it would be helpful—I realise this is not in the Minister’s gift—for the Treasury to give a clear forward view on the vehicle excise duty regime so that people can project into the future. Clearly, these technologies eventually have to be subsidy-free. It has to be business as usual, so subsidies will have to be withdrawn, but doing so smoothly will be of great benefit to the industry and the consumer.”
“That is perfectly worth while and reasonable. In preparation for this debate, I looked at countries such as Norway and other Scandinavian countries. It is usually instructive to start with the more comparable countries—those of a similar size and complexity, with a similar industrial base, traditions and so on—but the hon. Gentleman is quite right to identify that Norway in particular has a high penetration rate of sales, which is also linked to very high differences in the taxation regime. I want to talk briefly about the shift to electric vehicle technology and what I would say is overwhelmingly a consumer acceptance challenge.”
“That is absolutely right, and showing it on sat-nav tech is important. There are some good sat-nav applications, such as Zap-Map, but it is difficult to guarantee that such things are absolutely comprehensive. There is some old-fashioned technology that could be improved, such as common signage. National brand partnerships mean that people know that whenever they go to any branch of supermarket X, if it has a car park, they will always find a minimum of x number of charging points.”
“My hon. Friend is not only an advocate for walking and cycling but, in his high-vis jacket, a very visible advertisement for it. He is absolutely right, and that is another type of modal shift. Holland is in a slightly different position, in that it is a lot flatter than this country, which makes a huge difference. That should not take away from the fact that there are plenty of places in this country—London is one of them—that are pretty flat, and where there could be more cycling. Throughout our country, there is an opportunity for more walking and cycling. Those things have great benefits beyond decarbonisation, in terms of health, fitness and being outdoors.”
“We should also think, perhaps less ambitiously, about the role of the dealer. We have concentrated an awful lot on manufacturers and consumers, but we have not thought much about the car salespeople.”
“I also hope that he will say something about electricity tariffs and ensuring that all domestic consumers can benefit from lower-cost electricity overnight, when the market rate is cheaper, in order to charge vehicles. I think this is outside the remit of the Department for Transport, but if fleet buyers create an extra surge of demand for electricity in one particular area, who bears the cost for upgrading the kit? Most important of all on the issue of consumer acceptance is the fact that the product has to be in the consideration set. Whatever other cars consumers look at buying or hiring, they should at least think about an electric vehicle. Therefore, just getting people behind the wheel of one of these cars to try them out is a great opportunity. I wonder about the potential of a mass test-drive campaign across the country.”
“Actually, I think there is an argument the other way: places that already have quite a high concentration of charging points benefit from network effects, and we could concentrate on building up the number of electric vehicle users there. They are in very different types of places. London has a significant concentration, but so does Milton Keynes, Dundee, Oxford, West Berkshire and South Lakeland. A wide variety of places have relatively high concentrations of charging points relative to the population. On regulation, I hope that the Minister will be able to say more about the required availability of charging points in new-build homes.”
“I will let that point hang in mid-air because, like the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), it is spot on. Those things are all part of the mix. On electric vehicles and the infrastructure network, there is quite a spread in the concentration of publicly available charging points in local areas. That is partly because some areas have more on-street parking than others. Some have more off-street parking, and we would expect more private charging points there. The conventional wisdom would suggest that we should look at the places that have a low concentration and try to get them up.”
“I am not sure how many colleagues intend to speak, but I have taken quite a few interventions and did not plan to go on quite so long. I will take my cue from Ms Nokes, but am very happy to give way.”
“We should recognise success in decarbonisation in the UK, while acknowledging that we need to step up our efforts. We must never underestimate the scale of what we need to do—I doubt that anybody here in Westminster Hall is likely to do so—but we should not suggest that nothing has been achieved, because if we do that, people begin to feel disheartened and we will lose public confidence and engagement.”
“Like colleagues in the Chamber, I have local groups in my area that show remarkable leadership, starting with children. I am always impressed that schoolchildren are showing thought leadership on climate change. We have great local groups, such as the Alton climate action network and, soon, the Petersfield climate action network. The greening campaign began in my constituency back in 2008, and was all about helping individual families and households to know what simple and practical things they could do to help tackle climate change. The campaign eventually spread to 100 towns and villages far and wide. Colleagues may disagree, but in terms of civic society action on climate change, East Hampshire is perhaps the most active area in the country. Members of Parliament can play a really important role to make those things happen.”
“Our massive network of post office retail outlets has potential as a hub and spoke system for home shopping purchases to be dropped off and collected, which also bring much-needed business and footfall to post offices. That was slightly off-topic, so I will return to the broader point. This country has an important and special role to play in decarbonisation. As well as domestic action, we have a role through international development and climate finance. We showed great leadership in Paris for COP21, and we have in COP26 another great opportunity to convene and make global progress. So much can be done locally. Many councils are doing innovative things, including my own in East Hampshire, with walking and cycling initiatives, plans to plant a tree for every resident and local housing development, particularly in the town of Bordon.”
“Evidence from consumer surveys suggests that it is much easier to persuade someone to get an electric vehicle as the second car in a two-car household than as the first car—we need to think about that. The requirements of commuting and the school run, for example, are very different. I have spoken for longer than I anticipated, but I will briefly mention something slightly off-topic that could reduce the overall number of journeys. In the last few years, there has been a big growth in home shopping, with vans driving around delivering parcels, some of which are very small, to people’s homes. I welcome the e-cargobike initiative, which seeks a modal shift to electric bikes for the last mile of deliveries, but I wonder whether we could be more ambitious. Amazon lockers are fine for Amazon, but they are a proprietary facility.”
“The hon. Lady tees me up with precision and grace. I was just coming on to the role of Government and the wider public sector. The Government car service has bought a lot of electric vehicles. Something of premium significance is what I would call totemic fleets. Seeing police officers driving electric vehicles has quite an effect on people’s perceptions of the performance of those cars. Most of all, we need debate, conversation and analysis centred not on the machine and the technology, but on people and the different segments of the population whom we need to persuade to take up electric cars. We need to think about who the first target is and, although fleet buyers are an obvious and important segment, beyond that, should the target be drivers who have the highest mileage per year, or drivers who change their car most often?”
“I am sorry, I had better not. People need to know that there is a big problem, but we are making progress and need to accelerate that progress. They need to know that we can and will do what is necessary. Ultimately, countries like ours need to do more than our fair share because people look to us for leadership. We had our industrial revolution first, so it makes sense to have our decarbonisation revolution first too. Transport must be at the heart of that.”
“I welcome my hon. Friend’s clarification of the need for this reforecasting. May I invite him to restate the Government’s total commitment to a universal credit arrangement that simplifies the system? It means dealing with one Department rather than three, it combines six benefits into one, it helps people to get into work more quickly, and it smooths their transition into work thereafter.”
“I commend my right hon. Friend for both the content and the measured tone of his statement, which was in some contrast to the words of the shadow Foreign Secretary. This plan is clearly not a final outcome, but it is a proposal. It is not a question of whether we endorse it, but progress needs proposals, and we should welcome it for that reason. Will he confirm that the British Government will do everything they can to continue to help facilitate progress based around the principles he set out and the two-state solution?”
“UC smooths the transition into work and it smooths progression in work. Since it became the default benefit for newly unemployed people, we have had month after month after month of positive employment news. Is it not bizarre that Opposition Members want to scrap that system and return to the Labour system that saw millions of people either trapped in the 16-hour economy or shut out of work altogether?”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that, with the Government’s important commitment on starting salaries, the new early career framework and finally some good news, as he mentioned, in the autumn on teachers’ workload, now there is a positive proposition to be made for people to join this the most noble of professions?”
“The shared rural network will be welcomed in East Hampshire, but what my constituents will most want to know is when they will see things improve in their area.”
“On one of those areas, air quality, the World Health Organisation target is more exacting than the UK target; in future we will have the opportunity to follow it. The Government have said that it is technically feasible for us to do that at some point, but it has to happen at a credible pace. We cannot just will the thing to happen. I hope that, during the passage of the Bill and beyond, we can get more detail on how the Government envisage that happening.”
“] The evidence for that—as she knows, despite her shaking her head—can be seen in, for example, what has happened on climate change, with our leadership on offshore wind, with this country being the first major nation to set an end date for unabated coal and, of course, with our legislating for net zero. These are all things that happened over and above EU frameworks—and all things, by the way, that happened with a Conservative Prime Minister. There were concerns in 2016, quite justifiably, but they centred on the fact that EU monitoring and enforcement mechanisms would obviously be going and on the environmental principles underpinning legislation. This Bill addresses those points and sets the framework to go further.”
“I support this Bill. It is ambitious in its scope and its aims, and it starts, quite rightly, from the viewpoint of natural capital—the realisation that natural assets underpin all other types of productive capital, whether manufactured, financial, human or social. In a sense, the Bill builds on, and is analogous to, the successful Climate Change Act framework, with the environmental improvement plans and the Office for Environmental Protection. This Government are determined to have a green Brexit. Notwithstanding what the hon. Member for Wakefield (Mary Creagh) said, it is nonsense to suggest that the European Union is the only thing that will keep this country on a path to a better, greener future. [ Interruption.”
“I pay tribute to local groups doing practical work: those doing litter picks and sorting litter to help to educate the public; the schools in my constituency that provide recycling for crisp packets; the repair cafés we have seen across the country, and so on. I welcome the principles and so many aspects of this Bill: those on resource efficiency and recycling; the single-use provisions; the deposit return scheme and the measures on waste crime, those on biodiversity and net gain; those on tree cover; and those on the most fundamental, elemental things of all—water and the quality of the air we breathe. If given an opportunity to vote this evening, I will be proud to vote for the Bill.”
“My local council has committed, over time, to planting one tree for every resident in the district, and I wonder what incentives can be given to others. On engine idling, I know that the Department for Transport is currently reviewing its guidance on enforcement, but what more can be done on public information to persuade people not to idle their engines, particularly outside schools. On electric vehicles, I hope the Minister will continue to work strongly with the DFT, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and others to make sure that the improved performance of electric cars and the way the costs have come down are more widely understood.”
“If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will not give way because of the number of speakers. I have a few asks of the Minister, not all of them legislative, some of them complementary to the legislation. The first is on fly-tipping, which has a huge cost for my constituency, in terms not only of the responsibility for landowners, who have this stuff visited upon them, but, increasingly, of the cost of putting in place gates and other infrastructure to try to prevent it. I hope we can see higher financial penalties and greater risk for the perpetrator, including the seizing of vehicles. Trees stand at the intersection of what we are trying to do on climate change and on clean air, and the importance of the physical environment. I very much welcome the Bill’s provisions on street trees, but we can do so much more.”
“To accelerate take-up, first, we need to have more people having an electric vehicle in their consideration set, so alongside communications to consumers can the Minister look at the pivotal role played by dealers in getting more people to take a test drive?”
“I sometimes hear people talking about change for them versus system change, as if system change has no effect on individual families and companies, but it does: it affects the rate of economic growth, which in turn affects jobs and wages, and of course it affects the taxes people pay. We must focus in particular on what can be done, especially in transport with electric vehicles. I join others in paying tribute to those who are doing great work locally. In my area, that includes the climate action network and the work the council is doing to plant a large number of trees. This is a global problem, and every nation must play its part, but we, in our individual communities, can make a difference.”
“It is natural that other countries want that development too, and we must help them to have clean growth. We need a bipartisan approach. That has been a great strength of the approach to tackling climate change in this country. It is tempting to say we must always do more and we must do it sooner. As with international aid, there are two aspects to this: first, what we do ourselves; and secondly, how we can leverage our position internationally. However, leveraging our leadership is helpful only if what we say is credible—if we say not only that we are going to do something but that we absolutely will do it. If we are going to say we must do this bigger, better and faster, we must be honest with people about the implications of that.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth mentioned retrofitting homes. The two biggest things alongside that are energy generation and transport, particularly domestic transport. Those two massive areas are dependent on the development of batteries. The third ask is that we go with the grain of people’s lives. It is a hard sell to tell people that they cannot go on holiday, they will be cold when they are sitting at home and they must become vegan. It is a much easier sell to say that the electric car is now as high-performance a vehicle as a petrol car, and that we can be warmer at home and it can be cheaper to heat our homes than it was in the past. That becomes even more important when talking about developing nations. We have had our industrial revolution and we have all reaped the benefits.”
“That’s not what I keep reading.” Other countries do look to us, starting with our framework of the independent Committee on Climate Change, the periodic carbon budgets and the rest of it. In international studies we are ranked among the top 10 nations for our performance on tackling climate change. We have made huge progress on renewables, specifically offshore wind, where we are a world leader, if not the world leader. We have also set an end date for unabated coal. Our role at COP 21 was pivotal, as was our role in showing leadership in setting the net zero target. Our international work on climate finance through the Department for International Development is pivotal, too. The second ask is that we prioritise and triage, because we cannot just tell people that everything must change at the same time. Some things must be prioritised.”
“I have asks of the Government, which I will come to in a moment, but, first, I have asks of the wider sector—everyone who has an interest in this vital subject. First, we must acknowledge progress. My right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) touched on this. There is a difference between saying that more must be done and saying that nothing has been done. It can become debilitating to think that no progress has been made and nothing has been achieved. I first came across that when I was a junior Minister at the Treasury and I would meet Finance Ministers from other countries, and we would talk about climate change. They would say, “Of course, you in the UK are leaders,” and I would say, “We are?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) on securing this important debate. We all know the scale of the challenge and the imperative it entails. Declaring an emergency comes easy and “net zero” trips off the tongue, but in reality, these things are difficult. To achieve that requires a per annum reduction in our emissions 30% greater than we have achieved on average since 1990. That is why the Committee on Climate Change said that a 2050 target was the latest that our country could credibly maintain our status as a climate leader at the same time as being the earliest at which it would be credibly deliverable alongside other Government objectives.”
“Building up savings can be truly transformational. The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 allowed for prisoners’ earnings to be paid into an account. I encourage my hon. and learned Friend to look at that provision again and enact the regulations, as part of her wider work on meaningful paid work.”
“Gigabit fast would be fantastic, but a bit fast would be great for many East Hampshire homes and businesses. What comfort can my hon. Friend give to not just the hardest-to-reach 20% and 10%, but the hardest-to-reach 5% and 3%?”
“I join colleagues from across the House in congratulating you on your decade, Mr Speaker. On the subject of nice round numbers, we are on track to create 1 million new places in schools this decade, primarily through building free schools and encouraging existing high-performing schools to expand.”
“My hon. Friend has been a strong and consistent champion for his constituents and their education. Lancashire has been allocated £140 million over 2011 to 2021. In his constituency of Morecambe and Lunesdale, the proportion of schools rated good or outstanding has increased from 64% to 86%.”
“Yes, indeed. We work with local authorities to make sure that we have up-to-date assessments and projections of the need for school places, and we fund to those projections to make sure that there is the right number of places. We are absolutely focused on making sure that we are doing that by expanding existing good and outstanding schools and putting in good new provision, which also improves diversity and choice.”
“I do recognise, of course, that that school and all schools need the right resources. I am also very happy to join the hon. Gentleman in his congratulation and commendation of Ms Clifton and all the staff, pupils and parents at the school.”
“I am not sure what the dismissive guttural noises from our friends in the SNP were all about. I share my hon. Friend’s regret about the decline in maths and science, and I am pleased that he and colleagues both here and in the Scottish Parliament are holding the Scottish Government to account.”
“Of course, we have regular contact with the different devolved Administrations on a range of matters, not only because there are always things that we can learn from each other, but because we have many shared interests and interdependencies, and education is yet another area where we can work better together as one United Kingdom.”
“May I start on the happy note of joining the hon. Lady in congratulating Mr McSorley on his upcoming retirement and wishing the best to the pupils and staff at schools across Scotland as they move towards their holidays? There are more years of compulsory education in England than there are in Scotland. As for permanent exclusions, of course I regret it when children have to be expelled, but sometimes it is necessary, and necessary sometimes because of the other 27 children in the class. In fact, the rate of permanent exclusions that we see in schools today is lower than it was a decade ago when the Labour party was in government.”
“Assessment means that we can ensure that pupils everywhere are getting the standard of education that they should. Of course we want pupils to do their best but that should never be at the expense of their wellbeing.”
“I am not just saying this, but as it happens I last did one of the SATs papers—SPAG, or spelling, punctuation and grammar—on Thursday or Friday last week. As I said in an earlier answer, the point of the assessments is to assess schools and make sure that wherever children grow up they get the standard of education that they deserve. The SATs are not about testing children, and they are not public exams that will stay with children into their adult life. They are not like GCSEs: nobody in a job interview will ever ask, “What did you get in your SATs?” We trust schools and teachers to administer SATs in an appropriate way so that stress is not put on to children. I meet many teachers who do exactly that.”