Claire Coutinho MP: speeches

Speeches

• 2 Jul 2025 · Heathrow Substation Outage: NESO Review · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I feel older, wiser and significantly more sleep-deprived. I thank the Minister for advance sight of his statement. I also thank NESO for its rapid work. The report is clear that there have been serious failings by National Grid to fix an issue that it knew about for seven years. The Minister is right; that is unacceptable. What is most important, though, is what happens now. I have some questions for the Minister. First, who at National Grid made the decision to defer critical maintenance of the transformer in 2022? He said that he would hold them accountable, so how will he do that? He spoke about breaching licence conditions. What are the penalties for doing that and what accountability mechanisms will he use? Secondly, the report says that the North Hyde site did not meet modern standards on physical barriers between transformers. Can the Minister confirm he has asked National Grid to review substations with transformers built before the current standards were put in place? Thirdly, what steps will he take to look at the resilience of our energy system, particularly in the light of the heightened geopolitical risk that we all face? The key message that we should take from the report on the Heathrow blackout is the importance of critical national infrastructure to our energy security and our national security. In that regard, it is the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change who is playing with fire. A week after the blackout hit Heathrow, Spain and Portugal gave us a stark warning of what happens when countries fail to protect their energy security: public transport down, payment systems down and millions of people unable to cook, travel or contact their families. Tragically, people lost their lives. In the case of North Hyde, the blackout affected schools, the London Underground, Hillingdon hospital and 70,000 customers, some of whom had to move out of their homes. That is the price we pay when we do not take energy security seriously. It is not a nice-to-have—energy is a basic need—and yet this Government are putting our energy at risk. The national security strategy that the Government published just last week included 12 mentions of climate but not a single mention of the risk that China poses to our energy system. Last year, our intelligence services warned that Chinese state-sponsored hackers were working to disrupt and destroy critical infrastructure in the event of conflict, and yet the Secretary of State is rushing to make Britain dependent on Chinese solar panels, Chinese rare earths and Chinese batteries in just five years’ time. We have just seen China limit the export of critical minerals in its trade war with the US. We have seen kill switches found in Chinese inverters. The US intelligence services have warned us about the risk of surveillance devices in Chinese wind turbines. I first wrote to the Secretary of State eight months ago, asking him to publish an assessment of what his targets mean for our reliance on Chinese imports. He has not even bothered to reply. If the Secretary of State wants to hand over the keys of our energy supply to the Chinese Communist party, he should come to this House and explain why. We are lucky enough in this country to be surrounded by our own gas fields, but the Secretary of State does not care. This is a man who would rather import gas from Norway, from the very same fields in the North sea that he is banning Britain from using; who is pouring concrete down our gas wells; and who is blocking off any contingency plan that Britain might need in a crisis. I do not say this lightly, but this is a man who is putting our national security at risk. Today we are talking about the first transformer fire in a decade in this country and he did not even bother to turn up. That is the problem. The Secretary of State might prefer to be in Brazil, Baku, Beijing or wherever he is today, but he should be here to explain himself, because as the former head of MI6 said, he is pursuing an energy policy that is “completely crazy” when it comes to national security. I want clean energy from nuclear, from small modular reactors and from the next generation of British innovation, but first and foremost I want energy that keeps the lights on and keeps bills down. This Government are going to leave us completely reliant on foreign imports: from China, from Norway, from Qatar—from anywhere as long as it is not Britain. NESO and Ofgem will do their work, but the Minister must do his work too. Alongside the work of the North Hyde report, can he confirm that he will come back and update the House on his plans to protect the energy resilience of this country?

• 18 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Turning a blind eye to the risks faced by vulnerable people in the name of inclusivity is anything but compassionate. We know that cousin marriage significantly increases the risk of birth defects and locks women into coercive relationships. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Holden) has tabled sensible legislation to ban this practice. Why will the Government not support it?

• 18 Dec 2024 · Discrimination Against Ethnic Minorities · Hansard source

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  The Minister for Women and Equalities has said that background should be no barrier to success, but what message does it send to our young people when they are told that there are some job opportunities they cannot apply for solely based on the colour of their skin? Equality in this country must mean equality of opportunity, not putting some people in society on a pedestal above others, so will the Minister write to all public bodies to make it crystal clear that the state should not be sanctioning race-based hiring policies?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  That is not my figure; it is a figure from industry—£12 billion in lost North sea tax receipts, in addition to £8 billion for an energy company that will not generate energy, and at least £200 billion for a 2030 target that we now know will not cut bills. Is it not true that pensioners will be sitting in the cold this winter to pick up the bill for this Secretary of State?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  Labour’s policy on the North sea will cost the country £12 billion in tax receipts, which would be enough to cover the winter fuel payment for many, many years. Pensioners will be in the cold this winter, and this is a policy that no other major economy is pursuing. How can the Government possibly justify it?

• 17 Dec 2024 · Great British Energy: Job Creation · Hansard source

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  The Labour party promised 650,000 jobs through Great British Energy, but the Secretary of State has endorsed a carbon tax of £147 in 2030—double the Department’s current forecast. It would be the highest carbon tax in the world, and devastating for British industry. Can the hon. Lady confirm how many British jobs would be lost as a result?

• 26 Nov 2024 · COP29 · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I echo his comments on Storm Bert and thank the emergency services for all that they have done to help those in need. I start by passing on my personal condolences to the right hon. Gentleman on the passing of John Prescott. I know that he wanted him to lead the Paris accords in 2015, having admired his work in Kyoto, and I believe that, at the time, he described John as good at “bashing heads together”. I hope that, as the Secretary of State’s opposite number, I can achieve some of that head-bashing that he so clearly valued in John. In that vein, the Secretary of State has talked a lot about regaining global leadership, but I fear that he is stuck in 2009. He may not want to acknowledge this, but for the past 14 years, we have been a global leader. We are the only major economy to have halved carbon emissions since 1990. In that same time, America’s emissions have stayed the same and China’s have tripled. However, we have seen that countries are not persuaded just by Britain going further, faster; they are persuaded by prosperity, and by living standards. We account for 1% of global emissions, and I fear that if he continues down the path that he has set out, our country will face hardship, and there will be no point in being world-leading because nobody will want to follow our lead. He would make us a warning, not an example to others. Let us start with what the Secretary of State announced at the conference of the parties. He has set out a new target of cutting our greenhouse gas emissions by 81% by 2035. However, what we did not hear in his statement is how much this will cost the British people. The independent Climate Change Committee says that that target will require people to eat less meat and dairy, take fewer flights, and swap their boilers for heat pumps and their petrol cars for electric vehicles at a pace that will require taxes and mandation. Even the Chair of the Select Committee has acknowledged that people will be forced to change their lives. But the Secretary of State says not to worry, as he will deliver all the savings through energy policy, and those plans will lead to higher growth, a cut in bills, job creation and stronger national security, but when it comes to his plans, none of those things is true. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has already said that his climate plans will not lead to growth. The National Energy System Operator’s report shows that his rush for clean power in 2030 will add eye-watering costs to our energy system, and that despite those very expensive costs, it would still leave gas pricing the system around 50% of the time—or it would leave the equivalent of millions of homes in the dark waiting for the wind to blow. I do not think that that is anybody’s idea of energy or national security. The Secretary of State does not have to take my word for it. The head of offshore wind development at RWE, one of the country’s largest wind developers, has warned that the Secretary of State’s rush to meet his 2030 target will lead to price spikes, with consumers losing out. The chief executive of Octopus has warned about the £6 billion in costs that consumers will have to pay, because the right hon. Gentleman wants to build renewables without reforming the grid. The former head of MI6 has warned the Secretary of State— [Interruption.] This is worth listening to. He said that from the point of view of national security, the Secretary of State is pursuing “a completely crazy energy policy”. The Secretary of State’s plans to make our energy expensive and unreliable will see jobs fleeing to more polluting countries, because it is cheap energy and innovation that matter in the race for jobs. We need only ask China, which dominates clean tech supply chains and is the world’s largest polluter. That is where billions of pounds of our taxpayers’ money will be going to pay for his rushed transition—from our country, with all the investment that it has made in clean power, to a country still 60% powered by coal. We are talking about low growth, high bills, jobs lost and even blackouts, for more carbon in the atmosphere. That is the opposite of what he has been promising. In Baku, while the Secretary of State was signing us up to these targets without talking about what they will do to the lives of British people, he was also signing away billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. He signed us up to a $300 billion annual climate finance target. I am afraid that it is not credible to say that taxpayers will not have to pay more. They will have to pay more, and they deserve to know how much more. Will he tell us today what that new target will mean for British taxpayers? Considering the increase in the target, the public will rightly question why countries such as Russia and particularly China, now the world’s largest polluter and second largest by historical standards, will not be obliged to pay a penny—I think he tried to insist that they would, but it is very clear that they will not be obliged at all to pay in—while Britain, which has invested billions in cutting its emissions and accounts for only 1% of global emissions, will have to pay more. Will the Secretary of State also set out an assessment of the impact of increased reliance on coal-powered Chinese imports for his 2030 zero carbon plans, and of what that means for global emissions? The Secretary of State is not being honest with the British public. He promised them £300 off their energy bills by 2030, but just weeks ago, he whipped his Labour MPs to vote down that pledge. He took away the winter fuel payment, despite promising that the elderly would be looked after under his energy policy, and he now says that he can achieve stronger climate targets in a way that will require zero cost from the public. This is not a recipe for climate leadership, but a recipe for higher bills and lost jobs, and it will be a disaster for the British public.

• 13 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  During the election campaign, the Conservative party committed to clarifying the definition of “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 to protect women’s rights. At the end of this month, For Women Scotland v. Scottish Ministers will be heard in the UK Supreme Court. The case will have far-reaching consequences for sex-based rights, so can the Government assure the House that they are now clear that the definition in “sex” in the Equality Act 2010 means biological sex?

• 13 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I am honoured to take on the role of shadow Minister for Equalities and I pay tribute to my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), who will be at this Dispatch Box shortly. The equalities brief underpins values that I cherish: fairness, freedom, meritocracy and equality under the law. I believe people should be judged by the content of their character, not the colour of their skin or any other identity characteristic. Does the Secretary of State agree that equality is not about group identities or placing one section of society on a platform above another, but about individual freedom and responsibility?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Point of Order · Hansard source

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  On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Ministers have repeatedly said today that the NESO report shows that their plans will lower energy bills, but page 78 of the report makes it clear that no such thing will happen. If Ministers read their own report and realise that they have misled the House, would it be appropriate for them to come back and apologise?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Clean Energy by 2030 · Hansard source

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  This is the ministerial team who told the electorate they were going to cut their bills by £300, without doing any homework to find out how those plans would work. They voted against our amendment to hold them to account on their own pledge just two weeks ago, and now they are trying to claim that the NESO report shows that their approach will lower bills when in fact it shows in black and white that the system will be much more expensive. Does the Minister not see that if they follow this plan, we will be a warning, not an example, to the rest of the world and that the British people will be colder and poorer as a result?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Clean Energy by 2030 · Hansard source

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  Last week, the National Energy System Operator published a full systems cost analysis of the Secretary of State’s flagship project to carbonise the grid by 2030. This morning, the Secretary of State said on several media outlets that the report shows that his plans will lower bills. I remind the House that the report assumes that gas prices are 40% higher than the Department’s own estimates, that the price of carbon price is at least double what it is now, that the Government can commission more offshore wind in the next two years than in the last six combined without moving prices, and that they can build the grid at a pace we have never seen before in this country, without any delays. Even if all that is achieved, page 78 of the report shows that the cost of the system will be higher. For clarity, would the Minister like to repeat at the Dispatch Box the Secretary of State’s claim that the NESO report shows that Labour’s system will lead to a lower cost of electricity?

• 12 Nov 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Prime Minister is set to announce at the conference of the parties that he is making the UK’s already stringent carbon emission targets even higher. That is despite the fact that we contribute only 1% of global emissions, while the leaders of the world’s highest-emitting countries—making up over 60% of emissions—are not attending. The Climate Change Committee has said that this target will require, for example, an accelerated shift away from meat and dairy, less travel and a gas boiler ban for the British people, yet the Government’s approach would see our reliance on imports from China—which is 60% powered by coal—go through the roof. Does the Minister agree that an approach that is asking for more sacrifice and hardship from the British people, in return for more goods from one of the world’s largest carbon emitters, would mean fewer jobs in Britain and more carbon in the atmosphere?

• 29 Oct 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  I suggest the hon. Gentleman does some homework. We do not get our oil and gas from Putin. Instead, some 50% of our domestic gas supply comes from the North sea, which the party in government is trying to shut down. If he wants to talk about energy markets, he should do some reading about how they work. On that note, I commend our amendments to the House.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  It is nice to be back discussing Great British Energy, and on the day before the Budget, too. I am sure that Labour Members are worrying about what kind of horrors they will be forced to defend next. They will have had a miserable summer trying to explain to their constituents why they are scrapping the winter fuel payment for pensioners in poverty, just weeks after a general election in which no mention was made of that. They will have spent the last few weeks explaining that the term “working people”—the people they promised to protect in their manifesto—does not include small business owners, or employees with savings, and that their use of the term “national insurance” does not prevent a national insurance rise for employers. They will be getting a bashing from companies, who were told that Labour would be pro-business, yet have been clobbered by post-election announcements of tax rises and trade union charters, and who have a Prime Minister with an optimism about Britain that puts him on the charts somewhere between Eeyore and Victor Meldrew. And tomorrow Labour Members will have to explain why the Chancellor who said before the election that any change to the fiscal rules would amount to fiddling the figures is now changing them to open the door to billions of pounds of borrowing. This is a timely return to the Great British Energy Bill. Our amendments today will give Labour Members an opportunity, which I am sure they will welcome, to hold their leadership to account for at least some of the promises that they were told to go out and sell. Let us take a look at a few of the promises that Labour Members made during the election. The hon. Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) wrote on her website: “We will set up Great British Energy…cutting energy bills by an average of £300 a year.” The hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) posted on Facebook: “Why am I backing Labour’s plan to set up Great British Energy? It will save £300 off average household energy bills in the South East by 2030.” The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) said on Facebook: “everyone in the east of England will get £300 off their energy bills…no ifs, no buts, no maybes, these will be measurable and you will be able to check our progress at the end of the next Parliament.” At least 50 MPs made similar claims. Why were Labour candidates up and down the country saying these things? Perhaps they were simply listening to the Cabinet. The Science Secretary said on “Good Morning Britain”: “I can tell you directly…by the end of this Parliament that…energy bills will fall by up to £300.” The Work and Pensions Secretary said: “Great British Energy will get people’s bills £300 a year lower.” This is my personal favourite: the Chancellor—the woman of the hour—said, “Great British Energy, a publicly owned energy company, will cut energy bills by up to £300.” These were not one-off promises; it was the party line, as dictated by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. These promises are still up in writing. In fact, the Labour party website still says that its energy plans will cut bills by £300 on average. Oddly, Ministers now do not seem so keen on that pledge. We have asked them about it in this House, as have the media, but the number seems to have vanished. They have even taken down the Great British Energy website, and the newly appointed chair even said in Committee that cutting bills is “not the scope of Great British Energy.” –– [ Official Report, Great British Energy Public Bill Committee, 8 October 2024; c. 6, Q5.] This is not trivial; these are promises that people care about. Every single Labour Member will have had constituents vote for them because they believed that Labour’s promise of £300 off their energy bills would make a meaningful difference to their lives. Amendments 6 and 7 in my name will hold the Government to account on their election promise to cut bills. Our amendments would give Great British Energy a strategic priority to cut people’s energy bills by £300 by 2030, and would require Great British Energy to produce an annual report on progress towards meeting that target. Surely all Labour Members who made these promises and kept them up on their social media accounts will want to track the Government’s progress on this important issue for their constituents. Well, tonight is their chance. But £300 off bills was not the Secretary of State’s only promise at the election. He also claimed that Great British Energy would create 650,000 new jobs, but he did not mention that figure on Second Reading, and the Energy Minister, the hon. Member for Rutherglen (Michael Shanks), did not mention it in Committee. It does not appear in Great British Energy’s founding statement, nor does it appear in the Government’s explanatory notes on the Bill. The only detail we have heard about the number of jobs to be created by Great British Energy came from the Secretary of State’s hand-picked chair of that body, who said that “hundreds” of people will be employed at its Aberdeen headquarters. We have since found out that the chair himself will be based in Manchester. It is a funny kind of headquarters if the head will not be based there, but that is the kind of sophistry that the public are starting to expect from this Labour Government. More importantly, those few hundred people will hardly make up for the 200,000 jobs this Government are putting at risk through their plans to shut down the North sea, or the missed opportunities for jobs thanks to their go-slow on nuclear. On the Secretary of State’s watch, we have already seen thousands of jobs in industry lost. The Secretary of State can talk about skills passports and Government transition projects all he likes, but the truth is that they do not pay the bills. He likes to say that we need to cut carbon at an extreme pace, faster than any other major economy, in order to show climate leadership and save the planet, but if our gas production, steelmaking or energy-intensive manufacturing moves to Asia, which is still powered by coal, he will be adding to emissions. That would mean more carbon in the atmosphere, and would be devastating for the hundreds of thousands of people who would lose their livelihoods here in Britain. I say that as someone who, before entering Parliament, worked on regenerating some of our most deprived communities once the jobs were gone. As with our amendments on the Government’s £300 pledge, amendments 8 and 9 in my name would give Great British Energy a strategic priority of creating 650,000 new jobs by 2030, and would require an annual report to Parliament on progress towards this aim. That is important, because even the trade unions that normally support Labour have warned the Secretary of State and his team that his plans will lead to the mass deindustrialisation of Britain. The general secretary of the GMB has said that the Secretary of State’s plans are “hollowing out working class communities”, and will amount to “decarbonisation through deindustrialisation.” He said that importing more from China is “bad for communities, not great for national security and it makes no sense in terms of the environment.” He also said, and I hope the ministerial team are listening closely to this one: “Our message to Ed Miliband is very clear: We are worried about a lot of promises that are not being delivered on jobs.” Those Labour MPs who are members of the GMB, including the Energy Minister, have the opportunity tonight to hold the Government to account by voting for annual reporting on the jobs being created. The question is, will they listen to the general secretary’s concerns? The next promise was that Great British Energy would turn a profit for the taxpayer. The Secretary of State admittedly got himself into a mess on this one. He has never had to make commercial investment decisions, and neither has any of his ministerial team, which is why they have been caught out promising the British public that they can turn a tidy profit, while at the same time telling multimillion-pound energy companies that they will take the least attractive parts of their investments off their hands. That is important, because the Secretary of State has written this Bill to give himself powers of direction. That was not the case for the UK Infrastructure Bank, and there was a recurring question in Committee about how much independence the supposedly independent Great British Energy will have. This is my proposal: if the Secretary of State wants the power to meddle, he should be duty-bound to report the results of that meddling—its profits and losses—to this House. Amendment 10 in my name would require Great British Energy to produce an annual report on the performance of its investments, including its in-year return on investment and a forecast of the following year’s expected return. That is the bare minimum we can expect, so that British taxpayers can see what he is doing with £8 billion of their money. I tabled clause 1 because it is crucial that we have proper oversight of the wider activities of Great British Energy. New clause 1 would require the appointment of an independent reviewer to assess Great British Energy’s effectiveness in achieving its objectives and strategic priorities. In Committee, the Energy Minister said that the Government want Great British Energy to be “accountable, transparent and clear about how it is delivering on its objectives.” –– [ Official Report, Great British Energy Public Bill Committee, 15 October 2024; c. 168.] I agree, and that seems a perfectly good reason to support new clause 1. As I have said previously, Great British Energy is pretty much a carbon copy of the UK Infrastructure Bank, which was set up to provide loans, equity and guarantees for infrastructure to tackle climate change, backed by £22 billion. No Minister has been able to tell us the real difference between Great British Energy and the UK Infrastructure Bank, or why the taxpayer has to pay for two headquarters, two chief executives and so on. The one difference appears to be that Great British Energy will mean additional powers for the Secretary of State. If Labour Members are so intent on handing this Secretary of State billions of pounds to gamble with, I expect they will also want to replicate the independent review enacted by the United Kingdom Infrastructure Bank Act 2023. New clause 1 would provide that scrutiny and, although I intend to withdraw it this evening, if the Minister would like to table a similar amendment in the other place to follow the precedent set by the Act, I assure him of our backing. The Secretary of State and his ministerial team have made big promises. It is crucial that this House can hold them accountable, as the consequences could not be more important for people’s energy bills, people’s jobs and businesses’ ability to succeed. As the respected energy and climate economist Dieter Helm has said, the risk is that this Government will head towards a 2029 election with industries lost and bills higher—exactly the opposite of what the electorate has been promised. The Government’s refusal to publish evidence for their claims, to set out the details of their plans or to engage in any meaningful policy discussion outside their normal slogans and mantras means that their policies are more likely to fail. For example, the Secretary of State has said that this Bill and Great British Energy are part of his plan to ramp up renewables at breakneck speed because every wind turbine and every solar panel constructed will lead to cheaper energy and greater security, but that is simply not true. First, it depends on the price we pay for them. Expert analysis by Cornwall Insight found that the contracts for difference round that the Secretary of State bumped up, and that he now boasts about, will actually increase people’s bills by £5. Moreover, he has advertised to the multimillion-pound energy companies that he will buy whatever they sell, no matter the cost, up to 2030. People do not need a business background to work out what that will do to prices. Secondly, if we are building renewables faster than we can connect them to the grid, the constraint payments needed by 2030 could add hundreds of pounds to people’s bills. Then there are the network costs, the green levies and the cost of dispatchable power. If the Secretary of State wants to replace gas, which is our main form of dispatchable power, he should set out the cost of what will replace it. The options in this country are coal, which I assume Labour Members do not want, biomass, carbon-capture gas or unproven technologies, none of which will make our system cheaper. All the signs are that, far from making energy cheaper and more secure, this Secretary of State and his ministerial team will send people’s bills through the roof, and more and more people are sounding the alarm about whether he can even keep the lights on. Perhaps that is why he never commissioned an accurate assessment of his plans. Labour Members had 14 years in opposition, 14 years hankering for the jobs and the responsibilities they now have, but when we asked for the full-system cost of the Secretary of State’s approach, he could only say that it will be published “in due course.”

• 29 Oct 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  I also thank the Minister for his work in Committee, but I am afraid we are not reassured. Labour Members have a clear opportunity to prove to their constituents that they will stick to the promises they made just a few months ago. They promised to cut energy bills by £300 and to create 650,000 jobs; if Labour Members do not vote for amendments 6 and 8 this evening, we will know that they never had any intention of delivering on those promises. With the leave of the House, I will seek to withdraw new clause 1, which stands in my name, but we look forward to dividing the House on amendments 6 and 8. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause. Clause, by leave, withdrawn. Clause 3 Objects Amendment proposed : 4, page 2, line 18, at end insert— “(e) an emergency home insulation programme with targeted support for people on low incomes, and (f) the expansion and development of renewable energy and technology.”— (Pippa Heylings.) This amendment would set objects for Great British Energy of facilitating, encouraging and participating in an emergency home insulation programme with targeted support for people on low incomes, and the expansion and development of renewable energy and technology. Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 29 Oct 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  When we said that we could not support the Bill in its original form, it was because we had no detail to justify giving this Secretary of State a blank cheque for £8 billion of taxpayers’ money. In the intervening two months, I am afraid that we have not learned anything to give us confidence. We have not seen a business plan, a framework agreement or an explanation of how this is different from the UK Infrastructure Bank, which was set up to do exactly the same thing. We know that there will be a headquarters in Aberdeen, with a head who will be based 360 miles away in Manchester. We know that that same head does not think that the scope of Great British Energy includes reducing bills. I remind the Secretary of State that, in an interview in June, he said not only that he was ready to launch Great British Energy within days—so he should have this information—but that it would lead to a “mind-blowing” reduction in bills by 2030. Now he has completed the embarrassment of the bright-eyed MPs behind him by forcing them to vote against their own election promises. Tonight, Labour Members have voted against holding Great British Energy accountable for cutting people’s energy bills by £300 and for creating 650,000 jobs. The Secretary of State talks about hanging things around people’s necks. Well, he made his colleagues repeat those promises over and over again during the election, and we will see what the electorate remember. These are not trivial matters. This is about people’s energy bills, people’s jobs and businesses’ ability to succeed in this country. The risk is that this Government are heading towards a 2029 election in which industries have been lost and bills have gone up—exactly the opposite of what the electorate have been promised. That is not just my argument; it is the argument of the respected energy and climate economist Dieter Helm. The Secretary of State, whether he is talking about Great British Energy or his plan for a zero-carbon grid by 2030, likes to talk in slogans and political mantras, but he does not deal in detail or fact. He knows that Great British Energy does not have the power to reduce household bills, which is why he has refused our attempts to hold him accountable for his own promises. The Secretary of State argues that ramping up renewables at breakneck speed will lead to cheaper energy and greater security—I believe he just said that—but the latest renewable auction, which he bumped up, will increase people’s bills by £5. He has advertised to multimillion-pound energy companies that he will be buying whatever they are selling, no matter the cost, until 2030—he even named a few and said that they welcome his approach. I can understand why! I know that he does not have a business background, but he does not need one to understand what kind of signals he is sending. The Secretary of State has not modelled the cost of constraint payments, network costs or green levies. He has deprioritised exciting new technologies such as small and advanced modular reactors, which will come online after 2030, and he refuses to address the question of dispatchable power. If not gas, what is he arguing for in its place and how much will it cost? Far from making energy cheaper and more secure, he will send people’s bills through the roof. And more and more people are sounding the alarm about whether he will even be able to keep the lights on, which we were able to do even during the height of an energy crisis. Tonight, Labour Members have shown their true colours by voting against making their own energy company accountable. If the Secretary of State cannot even back up his own election promises, why should we back him on this Bill? Question put, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

• 8 Oct 2024 · VAT: Independent Schools · Hansard source

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  One in four pupils in Surrey go to an independent school, including more than 4,000 pupils in my constituency, and many of those pupils have a special educational need. We have had an increasing rise in the diagnosis of conditions such as autism. The proposal is being pitched as a fundraising measure, but I do not think anybody on the Labour Benches came into Parliament to raise funds from pensioners in poverty and families of children with special educational needs. I will come on later in my speech to whether this will raise any money at all. In his wind-up, I hope the Minister will address this point: what justification can there be to an immediate exemption of specialist schools from the tax? On 11 September, Opposition Members representing Surrey constituencies wrote to the Chancellor to make that point. In response to a survey in my constituency— 1,200 parents responded nationally—87% of parents with children at independent schools said that they would have to consider sending their child to a state school. Some spoke specifically of the anguish they faced, having spent years trying to find the right placement for a child who might have ADHD or autism and having finally got them settled, now having to consider moving them again. Some Labour Members have asked why those children could not be served by the state sector. We increased funding for the SEND sector by 70% over the last few years, but you cannot magic up 99,000 places overnight. A teacher at Moon Hall in Reigate said that 70% of their pupils were on EHCPs and 30% were not, and that all those children would suffer. The other point is that the state sector will have larger class sizes, so rather than improving the state sector, all children in the state sector will suffer. They will all have worse outcomes. The Secretary of State for Education should care about outcomes, not ideology, but it is clear that she does not because we have seen teachers’ unions warning about the impact on the state sector. The Government have not published an impact assessment. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ report that Members have been quoting, we do not know how much money will be raised due to the uncertainties over children with special educational needs. I appeal to all Labour Members to ask themselves and their consciences why we cannot exempt children with special educational needs from this tax? It will not raise any funds. It will increase class sizes in the state sector and affect the outcomes of all children. It must be reversed.

• 8 Oct 2024 · VAT: Independent Schools · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Member give way?

• 8 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  There we have it: no apology; no recognition that it is the right hon. Gentleman’s Government’s decisions that are going to leave pensioners in the cold this winter. He has to acknowledge this: from the trade unions to the CBI, from blue Labour to Blairites and from the left to the right of his party, people are sounding the alarm that his ideological approach will see jobs lost and bills go through the roof. Even his old pal Ed Balls does not think that GB Energy is going to deliver the green transition, and I read this morning that the Prime Minister’s brand-new chief of staff is a sceptic of the Secretary of State’s approach. The Secretary of State is increasingly isolated in his party, so when will he do the decent thing and set out the full systems cost of his approach, so that the British public can see what he is going to do to their bills?

• 8 Oct 2024 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State promised in the general election to cut everyone’s bills by £300 by 2030—a pledge he will not repeat now that he is in office. In fact, one of his first acts has been to snatch the same amount away from millions of pensioners in poverty. The right hon. Gentleman likes to preach, to politicise and, dare I say it, to patronise, but I have one simple question for him. To the millions of pensioners who are worried about their heating bills this Christmas, will he apologise?

• 7 Oct 2024 · Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for giving me advance sight of his statement. While I welcome the news today, I am saddened, if not surprised, that he has not had the grace to acknowledge the work of the last Government in getting us to this place. I know that his opinion is not that of the many partners who have come together to get this project over the line, and it does a huge disservice to his officials, who have worked so incredibly hard over the last couple of years to get us here. As far as I can see, the only positive investments that the Labour party seems to have made in its first 100 days—the Blackstone artificial intelligence data centre in Northumberland, the sixth assessment report and now this—were negotiated under the Conservatives. This is what the right hon. Gentleman’s party has turned into reality: it has crashed business confidence, and overseen £666 million of assets from UK-focused equity funds fleeing the country. No wonder it has had to have a change of management. In 2022, in the Energy Security Bill, we set out £1 billion of investment and the business models to support the CCUS market. Our aim was to have four industrial clusters by 2030. I must pay tribute to all who have worked together on those plans, including BP, Equinor, Eni, and all those involved with HyNet and the East Coast Cluster. The brilliant Mayor of Tees Valley, Ben Houchen, has been a leading light in this regard for many years. I noted that the Secretary of State did not mention him, which was pretty graceless, but I am sure that he would like to welcome his work. I must also mention the former Chancellor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Godalming and Ash (Jeremy Hunt), who first announced Government support for carbon capture technology amounting to £20 billion last year. That, ultimately, was the breakthrough step that got us here. The Secretary of State says that CCUS was not funded. Let me remind him of the extent to which he is resting his laurels on a set of draft policy statements for nuclear from back in 2009 that had no Treasury funding attached. I had agreement that at least £20 billion would be spent following the next spending review. The Secretary of State is a former Treasury spad, so he knows what that means. As always, it is the cheap politics that he reaches for. He is, I am afraid, the ultimate career politician. In fact, the funding that we had announced, which would run for 20 years, was about £200 million more per year than what he has set out today. Can he confirm that the projects have not been scaled back, and if they have been, will he tell us where the losses will be? We have also had no word on the track 2 clusters, Acorn and Viking, on which we were due to make progress over the summer; they were conspicuously absent from the Secretary of State’s statement. Many people will be deeply concerned, so can he update the House on those two projects? More widely, while his announcement rightly drew attention to the importance of British industry, both the TUC and the GMB have warned repeatedly about his net zero plans and what they will mean for British industry. In the words of Gary Smith, the leader of the GMB, the Secretary of State’s approach has been to export jobs and import virtue. Let us look at what has happened on Labour’s watch. At Grangemouth, 400 jobs are at risk, with nearly 3,000 potentially affected. At Port Talbot, 3,500 jobs are under threat, and at Scunthorpe, there is the potential for 2,500 job losses before Christmas. Moreover, Labour are putting 200,000 jobs at risk through their plans to ban new oil and gas licences and to make the UK regime the most punitive fiscal regime for the sector anywhere in the world. When will the Secretary of State publish an assessment of the impact that his plans for the North sea will have on jobs, and on investment in clean energy? After all, this carbon capture investment today would not be possible without Eni, Equinor and BP—companies using the stable finances of their oil and gas businesses to invest in clean energy. The Secretary of State has talked about the importance of UK decarbonisation in tackling climate change, but will he acknowledge that his plans to target UK production will not mean that we use less? They will just leave us importing more from abroad—importing more oil and gas from the United States and the middle east, and importing more steel from China, which is still 60% powered by coal. Will he acknowledge that both those developments will actually increase global emissions? It would be carbon accounting gone mad. It might leave some in the green lobby cheering at our reduced emissions, but overall there would be more carbon in the atmosphere and fewer jobs here in Britain. Is the Labour party seriously going to be responsible for the end of steelmaking in the UK, with the added cost of the loss of more than 10,000 jobs in our most left-behind communities? The Secretary of State must acknowledge that a better balance has to be found. The Secretary of State has still made no comment on, and no apology for, promising the British public at the general election savings of £300 on their energy bills by 2030. Will he finally give an answer to his Back Benchers, the House and all our constituents, and explain what has happened to that pledge?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  I am sorry, but I will make some progress. Finally—this is really important—the Secretary of State pays lip service to nuclear, but we know that when Labour was last in power it did not start a single nuclear power plant in all its 14 years. All summer, there has been an eerie silence. On the capital raise for Sizewell C, which should be out by now—nothing. On the small modular reactor competition, which should be deciding its final projects now—nothing. We committed to a third large-scale nuclear power plant at Wylfa—again, nothing. We wrote to the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for Rutherglen, but once again he has refused to confirm any detail or, with regard to Wylfa, whether those plans are even in place. Can the Secretary of State say whether the creation of GB Energy is slowing down those projects and causing the timetable of these programmes, which will provide clean, cheap energy, to slip?

• 5 Sept 2024 · Great British Energy Bill · Hansard source

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  I will give way in a second. The Secretary of State is setting up a new body when our energy sector is not short of state-run bodies. We have Ofgem, the National Energy System Operator, the Climate Change Committee, Great British Nuclear and, of course, the UK Infrastructure Bank, with £22 billion to provide debt, equity and guarantees for infrastructure finance to tackle climate change, set up by the former Prime Minister. At this point, the taxpayer might well ask why they are coughing up twice for programmes that do the same thing. Here is why. When I read the Bill, tiny as it is, it rang a bell and, lo and behold, it is a carbon copy of the Infrastructure Bank legislation, so why do the same thing again? Well, there are a few important omissions and tweaks. First, while the Infrastructure Bank legislation sets out directions for governance by directors and non-executive directors, the Bill does no such thing. While the Infrastructure Bank legislation appoints an independent person to carry out a review of the effectiveness of the bank in delivering its objectives, the Bill does no such thing. Lastly, while the Infrastructure Bank legislation gives special powers to direct investments to the Treasury—to independent civil servants—the Bill gives powers to the Secretary of State, who, as far as I am aware, has no investment background and no financial training and whose only period in the private sector, if I have this right, was as a researcher at Channel 4.