Deirdre Costigan MP: speeches

Speeches

• 1 Jul 2025 · Clean Energy: Funding · Hansard source

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  Although my constituents in Ealing Southall are no doubt sweltering in today’s heat, they are worried that come winter, they will again face eye-watering energy bills to heat their homes. The previous Government left us with the leakiest homes in Europe, slashing grants for loft and cavity insulation. Can the Minister set out the work that this Labour Government are doing not just to support the clean energy sector, but to upgrade my constituents’ homes to take that clean, cheap energy and bring down bills in Ealing Southall?

• 1 Jul 2025 · Clean Energy: Funding · Hansard source

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  6. What steps she is taking to help increase funding for the clean energy sector.

• 19 Jun 2025 · Warm Home Discount · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s statement. This announcement will mean that over half a million more Londoners will benefit from a £150 discount on their energy bills this winter. Does she agree that along with our free breakfast clubs, the £1,400 per year increase in the minimum wage and free childcare in schools, today’s announcement shows that Labour is putting money back into the pockets of working people in Ealing Southall and across the country?

• 18 Jun 2025 · Future of the Gas Grid · Hansard source

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  I wish my hon. Friend a happy birthday. My constituency has very small houses with not much space, and heat pumps might not always be an option. There are lots of flats with no outside space. Does he agree that other technologies, such as heat batteries, might also be an option, and that it would be worth the Government’s considering whether they should be included in the boiler upgrade scheme and assessing whether the current VAT situation is the most useful?

• 11 Jun 2025 · Sustainable Aviation Fuel Bill · Hansard source

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  I support the right of my hon. Friend’s Stockton North constituents to go on holiday to Alicante. Equally, in my Ealing, Southall constituency, 53% of people—including me—were born in a different country. Does he agree that they have the right to go home and visit family and friends, so it is important that we accept the reality of air travel and focus our time and energy on realistic plans, such as the one before us, to invest in sustainable air fuels?

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I am afraid that the glass industry is perpetuating some of these untruths, and it just needs to get on board with the policy—it constantly wants to delay, but we need to make EPR happen now. The glass industry says that it does not support the policy and that glass is more recyclable than other products. Let it tell that to my constituents, who see glass bottles in black sack fly-tips in parks, or dropped in little piles on streets where people have been street drinking, every day. In fact, just 43% of glass is recycled back into bottles. The glass industry also says that glass is being treated unfairly compared with plastic and cans, but plastic and cans will be included in the deposit return scheme, as we have already heard. Glass had the opportunity to be part of the scheme and the industry lobbied hard not be included. I congratulate it—it did a good job—but it cannot get off scot-free. It is either part of the reverse vending machine plan or part of the “polluter pays” system that we are talking about today. It has to be in one or the other—it creates litter and it must pay for the cost of clearing it up. Council tax payers cannot be left to continue picking up the tab. The glass industry also says that it is being charged more than it should be, because the fees are based on weight. As I have said, weight is important: the heavier a product is, the more it costs to transport for recycling. It is also breakable, which increases the cost further, and glass costs a lot more to recycle, both in money and in carbon, as the heat has to be so high. Recycled glass bottles use 75% of the energy needed to make new bottles, compared with just 15% for reuse. The charges in the plan are based on the estimated costs to councils of recycling glass, and the industry needs to understand that. Glass really does need to come up with a sustainable plan for reuse, rather than arguing against the tide of the “polluter pays” principle. I know the published fees are still in draft so that the Minister and her Department can ensure they are fair and based on actual costs. I have a lot of sympathy for the pub and restaurant businesses that might be affected, but the Department is looking in detail at some of the points raised, so I am sure a sensible solution will be found. It is important to emphasise that clean streets are vital for pubs and restaurants—they will not make money if no one wants to go to their mucky town centre. The final argument from the industry is that it does not think the fees it pays will be spent on waste and recycling. I have heard that a lot, but already my local council in Ealing is making plans to spend some of the money on cracking down on fly-tipping. It will use CCTV by Southall common and treat fly-tipping as an environmental crime with police tape and a cordon, based on work by Keep Britain Tidy. Ealing council also has plans to open a new reuse centre in Acton. There are calls from the glass industry, as we have heard, to delay the “polluter pays” levy, but I strongly urge the Minister to resist those calls. The previous Government delayed taking action, which led to rubbish on our streets increasing by more than one third on their watch. People in Ealing Southall want cleaner streets. They are sick to death of bottles, cans, cardboard, mattresses, sofas and all the rest of it blighting their community. The Government have already shown they are deadly serious about making local areas feel loved again. Let us get on with sorting out the mess and bring in the new law to clean up our streets.

• 14 Mar 2025 · Arm’s-Length Bodies (Review) Bill · Hansard source

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  In light of what the hon. Member is saying, will he support Labour’s Planning and Infrastructure Bill, which takes away Natural England’s power to delay or stop the building of vital infrastructure, including energy and rail infrastructure and the 1.5 million homes that we need in this country?

• 25 Feb 2025 · Warm Home Discount · Hansard source

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  The previous Conservative Government abjectly failed to insulate our leaky homes and get our home heating systems ready to take advantage of the cheaper, clean energy that Labour is now creating. In addition to the very welcome discount that the Minister has announced today, does she agree that Labour’s plan to upgrade hundreds of thousands of homes with heat pumps and better insulation next year is a vital part of this Government’s commitment to lowering household bills?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Warm Homes Plan · Hansard source

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  The previous Government were content to sit back and allow developers to build homes that have locked people into years of expensive and dirty gas heating. How will the Minister ensure that the 1.5 million new homes the Government will deliver will not keep people dependent on outdated and costly gas heating systems?

• 21 Jan 2025 · Environmental Protection · Hansard source

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  As chair of the Tidy Britain all-party parliamentary group, I want to thank you for allowing me to speak in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. The APPG and Keep Britain Tidy have worked on this issue for years, including under the chairship of my hon. Friend the Member for Spen Valley (Kim Leadbeater). It is exciting to finally see change being delivered in today’s regulations, and I congratulate the Minister on her speedy and no-nonsense approach to making this happen. I frequently visit local schools and when I ask the children what they would like to see changed in Ealing Southall, they always say they want less litter on the streets. Adults complain about litter all the time, of course, but I had not realised how much children were disturbed by it. Litter makes places feel unloved and it makes the people who live in those places feel unloved too. It makes it embarrassing to ask friends around to your house, and it is a daily reminder that your street and your family just do not matter. Over the last 14 years, the amount of litter on our streets has gone up by a third: a tsunami of litter created by the previous Conservative Government, who slashed the funding for local councils to the bone. Councils such as my own in Ealing were left having to spend about two thirds of their budget on adult and children’s social care, with very little left for anything else. They had to make impossible decisions: spend money on potholes or libraries; on playgrounds or parking; on street sweepers or youth workers. They were left to rely on local volunteer litter pickers such as LAGER Can in Ealing, who do an amazing job, but they cannot do it alone. It is great that this new Labour Government have increased funding for local councils, and I am confident that the Chancellor’s spending review in the spring will allow councils to plan services better, but let us be honest that picking up litter after people is a total waste of money. That money could be much better spent on more playgrounds or youth clubs. The real solution is to stop the litter in the first place. What if people were rewarded for recycling their litter instead of dropping it on the street? What if they got money back? That is exactly what this Labour Government are doing today. We are making recycling pay. These new rules mean that shops across the country will be fitted out with reverse vending machines that give people money back for their used plastic bottles and cans. I have tried out the machine in the shop beside my mum’s house in Ireland, and it is simple and easy to use. People feed in their empties, and they get a voucher for their money back. Since being introduced in Ireland in February last year, reverse vending machines have already increased recycling and reduced litter on the streets. Right now, bins in streets, parks and beaches across the UK are chock-full of empty plastic bottles and cans. Think what a difference it would make if all those bottles and cans went back to the shop instead. We would end the problem of overflowing bins on the high street forever. In Ealing, a massive 41% of all reported fly-tips are black sack fly-tips containing household waste such as empty plastic bottles and cans, so making recycling pay would also reduce fly-tipping. The previous Government knew that this made sense as long ago as 2017, but they dithered, delayed and fought among themselves. Today, we have seen a total U-turn, with Conservative Members fighting against their own policy. Again, they prove that they are on the side of the vested interests, the polluters and the litter bugs. Two schools in my constituency came to see me this week, and they said that this makes sense and will reduce litter on the streets. Even the children know that this is the right thing to do. Today we are ending the Conservative record of dither and delay, and their deplorable refusal to do anything about so many communities that feel neglected and uncared for. The only way to get rid of litter on our streets is to stop people dropping it in the first place. This new plan to make recycling pay will help clean up our streets and parks, our rivers and beaches, and put money back in people’s pockets.

• 14 Jan 2025 · UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue · Hansard source

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  Will the Chancellor confirm that, for her, growth must always go hand in hand with economic security? That is a lesson that the previous Conservative Government refused to learn when they left 85% of us dependent on expensive foreign gas to heat our homes this winter.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  We do not have solar panels feeding into our energy system to that much greater degree because of the last Government; it is as simple as that. I will continue with the changes that I would like the Minister to consider. Lastly, I would like her to think about heat pumps and heat batteries and the way they both currently use electricity. Electricity can make them more expensive than gas boilers, which is one of the big barriers to consumers. It sounds strange, but because of the way the market works, the price of electricity depends on the price of gas. It is surely unfair that a levy is paid on the electricity used by heat batteries, but those levies are not paid back when and if they feed back into the grid. We need to look at the electricity market to see if there are ways of splitting off the price of cheaper renewable energy from the price of gas to reflect the true value of energy storage. I hope to hear more from the Minister on that point, as part of the review on the electricity market that she has committed to undertake. Every family and business in the country has paid the price of Britain’s dependence on foreign gas markets. Retrofitting homes with the help of heat batteries is just one of the range of actions we need to take to bring down bills and keep Britain’s leaky homes warm. In just six months, the Government have already made huge advances in increasing our energy security, and I look forward to hearing more from the Minister on her plans to harness new technologies to protect the cost of heating our homes from decisions made in other countries.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for his support for Backbench Business in this place, which is very much appreciated by all Members. I certainly agree on the need for financial support; I will touch on that point later. I expect the Minister will too, as there has been a significant move forward over the past six months. As I have explained, we have become addicted to gas over a number of years, which is why my constituents in Ealing Southall are consistently paying higher energy prices and struggling to heat their homes. We should have started work years ago on breaking our addiction to gas by investing in our own renewable energy and upgrading our homes to use that energy, but the previous Government never had the bravery to take action at the scale that is needed. Instead, they stopped us producing cheap British-made energy by blocking the building of onshore wind farms and by cutting funding for solar panels. The previous Government also stopped us upgrading our homes to protect them from the rising cost of gas. They slashed grants for loft and cavity wall insulation and scrapped the zero-carbon homes standard for new homes. As a result, more than 1 million new homes have been built with lower energy efficiency standards, and people are paying higher bills than they should. We continue to have the leakiest homes in Europe, with just 12,000 homes insulated last year, compared with up to 2.5 million a year under the last Labour Government. The Carbon Trust estimates that those decisions by the Conservative Government have added at least £3 billion to UK gas bills. That is why my constituents are paying through the nose to keep warm today. What can we do about that? Thankfully, the new Government are already taking action to wean us off gas. We have set up Great British Energy, ended the block on onshore wind farms and kick-started plans to become a world leader in floating offshore wind. These are the brave steps needed to ensure that by 2030 we become fully energy self-sufficient and that 95% of the power we generate is clean energy, ending our reliance on gas and on decisions taken in Moscow. When it comes to weaning our home heating systems off gas, the recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step towards the new Government’s warm homes plan. As a start, 300,000 homes will benefit from upgrades next year, with grants for heat pumps and support for renters and low-income households.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  As I have laid out, the Government have already taken steps to increase the funding to transition to heat pumps. I am sure the Minister will have more to say on rural communities and the particular barriers they face. Although heat pumps are extremely important in the move to wean us off gas, they do not work for every home. An estimated 20% of homes are unsuitable for heat pumps. We need to do more to break down the reasons why people can be reluctant to choose them. Air source heat pumps need outdoor space. Many of my Ealing Southall constituents live in small terraced homes or flats and do not have much outdoor space, so a heat pump is not a viable or attractive option. Many people have repurposed the space that used to house their hot water tank. That is where innovative British firms such as Kensa in Cornwall and Tepeo in Reading come in. Both companies use heat batteries, using the same science that is behind hand-warmer packs, to store thermal energy until it is needed. Tepeo’s zero emission boiler, ZEB, uses a heat battery that automatically buys energy at cheaper times of day and releases it when required, reducing energy bills. Users do not need an outside pump; they just need a box about the size of a gas boiler. Because of their small size and their ability to plug and play without needing to do replumbing, heat batteries are a good solution for heating homes in built-up urban environments like London, including parts of Ealing Southall. Kensa uses shared ground source heat loops that are connected to whole streets or blocks of flats. The energy is connected from the ground, is produced in networked heat pumps in each of the linked houses or flats and is then stored in Kensa’s Sunamp heat batteries. No outdoor space is needed, and it replaces the need for a hot water tank.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I am sure that the Minister will have more to say on that when she responds. Heat batteries in the UK currently face a significant disadvantage compared with heat pumps as they are not eligible for a grant under the boiler upgrade scheme. I know the Minister is continuing to look at how she can maximise the benefits of the scheme and I hope she will also look at whether new technologies such as heat batteries can also be supported. Unlike heat pumps, heat batteries are not on the list of energy-saving materials that qualify for VAT reductions, so extending VAT relief to heat batteries would help to heat the 20% of homes currently missing out. I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury to ask him to consider reducing VAT for heat batteries, and I hope the Minister might work with him on that. There are barriers to installing networked ground source heat pumps that use heat batteries, including planning considerations and the need to adopt a street-by-street approach that can upgrade hundreds of homes in one go. The Minister has already committed to changing planning rules for air source heat pumps. I hope that she will consider whether changes also need to be made for networked ground source pumps and that she will include networked heat pumps allied with heat batteries in the forthcoming low-carbon flexibility road map she is working on. To give certainty to British businesses investing in innovative technologies such as heat batteries, we need to ensure that there are consistent heating requirements for new homes being built. The Minister will shortly be bringing forward the new future homes standard to end the scandal of gas boilers still being installed in new homes. I hope the standard will include heat batteries and other emerging technologies.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I am well aware of the company he mentions and will talk about it later in my remarks. It is a great example to build on. We need to wean our home heating systems off gas, in the same way that we need to wean the country off gas when it comes to renewable energy. The recent Budget invested £3.4 billion as a first step in the warm homes plan. Heat pumps, which will benefit from some of that money, are a great way to wean us off gas. They use electricity rather than gas, so they can be fed from home-grown energy from our wind and solar farms. Just 1% of UK homes use a heat pump, compared with 60% in Norway. That is a real indictment of the previous Government’s inaction. It is fantastic that this Government are systematically removing barriers to heat pumps. We have increased funding for the boiler upgrade scheme by £30 million this year and will be doubling it from April. We are removing the need for other home upgrades before households can get that funding, and we are changing planning requirements and the 1 metre rule so that heat pumps are easier to install.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered decarbonising homes and heat batteries. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McVey. My constituents in Ealing Southall regularly speak to me about the cost of heating their homes. Gas bills have risen astronomically over the past few years, and in freezing weather like this, people are often afraid to turn up their heating in case they are hit with a massive bill. Indeed, research by the House of Commons Library confirms that the annual increase in gas bills in October 2022 was the largest ever recorded, based on records going back to 1970. How did this happen, and what can we do to reduce people’s bills? There is one reason why bills have increased to such a degree: we have become almost completely dependent on Russian gas—on gas internationally, in fact. When Russia, a huge gas supplier, invaded Ukraine, it disrupted global gas supplies. Prices shot up across the world. As a country, we have put all our eggs in one basket. Some 23 million homes have gas boilers, and 85% of us depend on gas to heat our homes, so we had no option but to pay higher prices. It is a basic mistake that anyone can see if they think about it. For years we lived off cheap gas, until we were addicted to it. Then, when supplies were disrupted, we were left at the mercy of higher prices.

• 8 Jan 2025 · Heat Batteries: Decarbonising Homes · Hansard source

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  I absolutely agree, and I will come on to exactly those points. Kensa’s approach also uses ground source heat technology, aligned with heat batteries—a cheap and efficient way of rolling out heat pumps at scale. My hon. Friend mentions a visit he made; another example is that Kensa has replaced direct electric heaters with shared ground loops alongside heat batteries in more than 270 flats across three tower blocks in Thurrock. Residents’ bills have reduced by more than 60%, which is a huge saving. Both those technologies can wean us off gas. They are examples of the kind of British manufacturing and innovation that we need to support to create good-quality jobs. However, barriers remain, and I hope that the Minister will consider ways of addressing them.

• 7 Jan 2025 · Workplace Pay Gaps · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brent East (Dawn Butler) for securing this important debate. I declare an interest as vice-chair of the Unison group of MPs. We have had gender pay gap reporting since 2017. Although it was a very welcome first step, it has proved to be too weak on its own to fully level the playing field between men and women at work. Women are still being paid significantly less than men on average. Gender pay gap reporting relies on a name-and-shame approach that means that employers can continue to report paying women less, year after year, without having to take any action at all to change this. It is great news that the new Labour Government have already taken decisive action by bringing forward the new Employment Rights Bill. The new law will mean that employers have to publish an action plan setting out how they will take tangible steps to reduce gender pay gaps and discrimination in the workplace. Finally, employers will be held to account to ensure that they pay women fairly. Today, I want to focus on disabled people in particular. Disabled workers are paid an average of over £2 an hour less than non-disabled workers. That is thousands of pounds a year that disabled workers are losing out on. Disabled women experience one of the worst pay gaps as a result of double discrimination: not only do they suffer the gender pay gap, but they experience the disability pay gap, which has barely moved over the past decade. There was no progress at all under the previous Government, and disabled workers are still losing out. I am delighted that the new Labour Government announced straight away in the King’s Speech that we would bring forward a new equality Bill that will ensure a full right to equal pay for both disabled and black and Asian workers. The new law will finally extend pay gap reporting to disabled workers and will mean that employers with more than 250 staff must publicly account for the difference in how much they pay their disabled staff. However, as the gender pay gap has shown, we will still need to do more, and the groundbreaking disability employment charter outlines some of the solutions. The disability employment charter is a list of nine demands of Government that will break down the barriers for disabled people at work. It was put together by organisations such as Scope, Disability Rights UK and Unison. Over 220 employers have already backed the disability employment charter but the previous Government failed to act on any of its recommendations. One of the charter’s key demands is for disability pay gap reporting alongside employment gap reporting, because too many employers just do not employ disabled people in the first place, let alone pay them properly. I hope that the Minister will consider mandatory publication of the level of disabled staff at larger employers so that an employer’s commitment to treating disabled people fairly can be properly assessed. Disabled workers are twice as likely to be unemployed than non-disabled workers. That is caused by discrimination in recruitment, but also by workers being hounded out due to bullying and harassment, or a failure to provide reasonable adjustments. Disabled workers are entitled by law to reasonable adjustments—often small changes that can help them do their job—but research by Unison found that a quarter of disabled workers have waited over a year for adjustments to be put in place and many never hear back from their employers at all. They get ignored and the current law is not strong enough for them to do anything about it. No one can do their job properly if they do not have the tools to do it, so of course those disabled workers lose out on promotion and get stuck on the bottom rung of the pay ladder. That is a key cause of the disability pay gap. Without the right help, many disabled workers are in pain each day at work, or struggle to perform. The next thing they know, they are out of the door: an outcome that could have been avoided with changes to hours, additional breaks, or with, for example, speech-to-text software. That is a massive waste of talent, which has led to a disability employment gap of 30% and nearly 3 million people stuck at home on long-term sick leave when many of them want to work. The disability employment charter calls for a new right to a two-week deadline to get at least a reply to requests for reasonable adjustments. Currently, there is no deadline for a response—unlike, for example, flexible working requests, to which the employer needs to respond in eight weeks. I gave evidence on that point to the Lords Public Services Committee in my previous role with Unison and I welcome the Committee’s recommendation of a four-week deadline for responses to requests for reasonable adjustments. I know the Minister will consider that issue as she works with colleagues, including the Minister for Social Security and Disability, on proposals to help to reduce the disability employment gap and the pay gap. Disabled people are full of talent and creativity. For too long they have been pushed out of jobs that they love because of discrimination, bullying and a simple refusal to give them the basic help that they need to thrive at work. The solutions outlined in the disability employment charter, including mandatory publication of the disability pay gap and the employment gap, and a deadline for responses to requests for reasonable adjustments, will help to finally unleash that talent. I look forward to this transformative Labour Government taking forward this vital work.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Electricity Grid Upgrades · Hansard source

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  I want to bring the Minister’s attention to issues being faced in west London. He mentioned data centres; we recently had confirmation of a great investment from CyrusOne, but it has to get power from Enfield because there are huge constraints on the energy system in west London. Does the Minister agree that we need to ramp up the work on connecting these new investments to the grid? We must not allow the tactics of the Opposition, which are about delay and going back 14 years to decisions they should have made but never did. Now is the time to take action; people should not be required to pay higher energy fees than they should, which is another aspect of this issue.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Electricity Grid Upgrades · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman mentioned protecting landscapes. Does he agree that it is rather audacious for those in his party to refer to that, given that after 14 years they have left us with nature targets that they failed to achieve, still drilling for oil and gas, with backing for fracking for a significant amount of time, sewage in our rivers and seas, and plastic bottles across the country because they refused to implement environmental schemes on that front? Does he agree that he has a cheek to mention protecting the landscape? Furthermore, does he agree that many of his arguments today are a delaying tactic? We need that power in west London.

• 26 Nov 2024 · Electricity Grid Upgrades · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 26 Nov 2024 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  I very much appreciate the opportunity to have this debate. I completely agree with my hon. Friend about raising fines and reviewing magistrates court decisions in this matter, but does he agree with me that the simplest, easiest and cheapest way to deal with fly-tipping is to take the waste out of the system in the first place, and therefore looking at mandatory take-back schemes, whereby people bring back their goods when they are finished with them and get money back, and at genuinely recyclable products, is the way forward? Therefore, does he welcome the Government’s steps to bring forward the “polluter pays” principle in the extended producer responsibility regulations that are currently being laid, and also the deposit return scheme for glass and plastic bottles, which will help to reduce fly-tips that are in black sacks?

• 10 Sept 2024 · COP29: UK Priorities · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention; he makes a good point. As I said, we had a Conservative Government who made promises that they had no intention at all of keeping. I am confident that this Government will come to an agreement that we will stick to and deliver in full. The climate emergency is not something happening to other people in faraway places. If we do not act now, more people will be killed by flooding, drought, wildfires and extreme heat than by war. Millions of refugees will pour across borders as cities and whole nations become uninhabitable due to rising sea levels. Our entire economy will be destroyed, and life as we know it will be changed utterly, as we lose access to basic commodities like food and water. That is the worst case scenario, if we do not take action. It is a scenario that the Conservatives were content to sleepwalk us into. Under this new, Labour Government we have already shown that we can be world leaders in undoing the harm of climate breakdown and preventing further damage. If we get our priorities right, then this COP29 climate conference is our chance to fearlessly lead the way to a better future, both at home and abroad.

• 10 Sept 2024 · COP29: UK Priorities · Hansard source

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  Thank you for your excellent chairship of this debate, Dr Huq. I also thank all the Members who spoke in the debate for their valuable contributions. I do not have time to respond to all the points made, but I will pick up on a couple. I was very interested in the remarks by the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) on moving away from fossil fuels. I wonder, however, if she has spoken to her co-leader of the Green party, the hon. Member for Waveney Valley (Adrian Ramsay), who says he is in favour of clean energy and wind energy, but wants to block the only viable way of bringing that clean energy on to land and to the homes that need it. I would also like to respond to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), and thank him for his helpful words. He said at the beginning that people had voted the Conservatives out of power because of their lack of action on climate. That was refreshing honesty, and I thank him very much for it.