Seema Malhotra MP: Climate-Related Speeches In Parliament

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Seema Malhotra's Speeches In Parliament Related to Climate

We've found 25 Parliamentary debates in which Seema Malhotra has spoken about climate-related matters.

Here are the relevant sections of their speeches.

• 18 Apr 2023: Renewable Energy Projects: Connection to the Grid

  8. What assessment his Department has made of the adequacy of lead times for connecting renewable energy projects to the grid. ( 904477 )

  [Source]

  It is a disgrace that while energy prices rocket, huge delays to grid connections are holding back the supply of renewable energy to UK homes and businesses. Wind farms coming online today were approved when Gordon Brown was in power. Even now, energy companies are having to wait for 13 years, until 2036, for connections for some projects. How on earth did it get this bad? Is it not true that the Tories have taken their eye off the ball on the National Grid, and it is now costing British families and businesses dear?

  [Source]

• 15 Mar 2023: Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

  15:24

  We know that it is the Government working in partnership with industry that will help British businesses to thrive, grow and invest if we are ever to achieve any of our goals, whether they are making all parts of the country better off or getting on track for net zero. The investment that businesses undertake to develop products and services, increase productivity, and create jobs is the most crucial ingredient.

  There has not been nearly enough of such policies. Last September, over 200 leading businesses and financial institutions wrote to the then Prime Minister, saying that they were committed to protecting and restoring nature and delivering a net zero economy in support of the UK’s targets, with delivery mechanisms strengthened across the whole of Government. However, the steps announced today are yet again a poor imitation of where Labour has been, and it has taken the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders to say:

  When I recently asked the Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, what programmes were available for SMEs looking to transition to net zero, he cited the boiler upgrade programme. However, the scheme’s own impact assessment says that the impact of the scheme for small businesses is “negligible”. The latest data released from the scheme shows that 0.4% of all installations in the scheme have been for SMEs. So the evidence is clear: the Government are simply not serious about helping SMEs transition to net zero or about supporting them at all.

  [Source]

• 24 Feb 2023: Electricity Transmission (Compensation) Bill

  12:45

  We are in a race against time to improve our energy stability and security for the sake of our businesses and the planet. That is why the Opposition have been setting out our plans, and right hon. and hon. Members will have heard the Leader of the Opposition make a speech yesterday. We believe that we need to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030. That is relevant to the subject of this Bill, because we should be in no doubt that achieving the urgent mission to have clean power requires us to have a revolution in green energy technologies, to establish storage capacity, to manage peaks in energy demand, to develop new ways of balancing the grid, and to deliver comprehensive improvements to our energy infrastructure in order to expand the grid to new sources of energy.

  As a result, we are not fully convinced that this legislation is necessary, or that, if implemented in a particular way, it would not hinder the Government’s own express mission to expand the electricity infrastructure to enable greater use of low-carbon technologies. I would be grateful if the Minister commented on that. At a time of crisis in our energy supply and in tackling climate change, I am sure that balancing all these considerations will be at the top of his mind as well.

  In conclusion, while the Bill clearly has positive intentions, I must question whether it is necessary to bring it forward in the way that is currently intended. None the less, the work of the taskforce will be important. It does not need me to say this, but the Government have failed on a multitude of fronts to get to grips with energy security and in tackling the climate crisis. I do hope that there will be ways that we can move forward in the interests of our nation to look at the speed of how we decarbonise our economy, and of how we ensure that we realise the opportunities and ambitions of the nation in going green. I finish by urging the Minister to follow Labour’s lead and to match our ambitions to make Britain a clean energy superpower by 2030 and secure our energy security once and for all.

  [Source]

• 7 Dec 2022: Employment and the High Street

  17:13

  They do not come anywhere near to making up for 12 years of local authority underfunding, let alone a strategy for regenerating our high streets and supporting businesses to achieve net zero.

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• 14 Nov 2022: Draft Subsidy Control (Subsidies and Schemes of Interest or Particular Interest) Regulations 2022

  16:41

  Finally, I note that we have no idea what the Government’s overall plan for business support and industrial strategy is. The 2019 Conservative manifesto was full of promises and ambitions, but nearly three years later what do they have to show for it? The Industrial Strategy Council has been disbanded. There has been a succession of Secretaries of State, most of whom have fallen out of favour. There is still no sign of the Government living up to their rhetoric on levelling up or any sign of the investment we need to put us on track for net zero.

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• 7 Sep 2022: Financial Services and Markets Bill

  16:02

  Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this important debate about these very significant issues of structural reform in our financial services, the accountability of our regulatory bodies and consumer protection. I am pleased that we have started to have some debate on the net zero policy and regulatory principle, and I want to endorse all the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) in her important opening speech on green finance. Unfortunately, the Bill does fall short of what I believe is needed to protect consumers, and I want to speak about three key areas: first, access to cash; secondly, and briefly, mutuals and co-operatives; and thirdly, action for mortgage prisoners.

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• 11 Jan 2022: Reducing Costs for Businesses

  18:50

  Covid is not over, however, and businesses need clarity on how to plan for the future. We believe in a strong private sector where investors and entrepreneurs are rewarded fairly. We believe in an economy where companies are good corporate citizens, sharing wealth, engaging communities, paying their fair share of tax and treating their employees with dignity and respect; in a national economy that is anchored in every part of the UK, every region and nation, with no locations left behind; in prosperity that is shared evenly, bringing security, dignity and respect to families across our country; and, most of all, in an economy that moves smoothly towards a low-carbon economy, with a plan for how businesses move to net zero and, as part of that journey, our businesses doing well as they do good.

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• 16 Nov 2021: Clean Steel Fund

  Will the Secretary of State tell us today whether he will back Labour’s plan for a £3 billion steel renewal fund to achieve near-zero-emissions steel production by 2035 to secure UK steel’s future? If not, why is he so content to see British industries lose out, more British businesses go under and more British jobs lost?

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• 28 Oct 2021: Subsidy Control Bill (Third sitting)

  12:45

  “(c) the United Kingdom reaching its net-zero commitments.”

  I have not heard from the Minister a strong argument as to why we would not want public authorities granting subsidies using public resources to ensure that beneficial effects outweighed any negative effects on the UK’s achieving its net zero commitments. That principle is significant, and it should be in the Bill, so I will push the amendment to a vote.

  “(c) delivering the UK’s net-zero commitments.”—( Seema Malhotra.)

  This amendment would ensure that subsidies related to energy and the environment incentivise the beneficiary to help deliver the UK’s net-zero targets.

  [Source]

• 27 Oct 2021: Budget Resolutions

  16:50

  With a week to go until COP26, the Government have also failed to match their climate change rhetoric with action, as shown by the Climate Change Committee predictions that the Government are on course to miss future carbon budgets. A recent British Chambers of Commerce survey found that just 11% of small and medium-sized enterprises are aware of how to measure their carbon footprint.

  How much of the increased R&D investment, which is so critical to supporting innovative businesses at the cutting edge of the new economy, is going to support small businesses on their transition to net zero, and how is that going to be enabled? How are these announcements going to be delivered and translated to outcomes on the ground that make a difference in the recovery of local communities such as Hounslow—being an aviation community, we were hit very hard by the covid slowdown—with tremendous green growth ambitions?

  I, too, want an optimistic Budget—we all want an optimistic view for our country—but why did today’s Budget not make a clear, unequivocal commitment, with clear messages about our direction, such as Labour’s call to invest £28 billion every year until 2030 to tackle the climate crisis so that we can protect the planet and secure jobs in the UK? Businesses want to be certain about our vision and direction. They want a clear view of where they should invest. They want to know that if they make an investment today, they will get a return on it in five years’ time, and that there will not be another sudden change of strategy. The Chancellor has been talking to businesses; he will have heard the same message that I have.

  [Source]

• 22 Sep 2021: Subsidy Control Bill

  15:40

  First, there are huge gaps in the Bill and crucial aspects are yet to be defined. The Bill may establish a regulatory framework of subsidy control, but it fails to provide any clear indication as to how and where the Government plan to see those subsidies being spent and at what scale. Labour is in favour of a subsidy system that backs British businesses and our economy, but it must operate in the context of a strong UK-wide industrial strategy, which for all intents and purposes is not nearly where it needs to be. Furthermore, there is no clear plan for how the new subsidy control regime will be used to support national priorities such as net zero. Much more needs to be joined up and coherent in the new regime.

  We want to see well-designed, proportionate subsidies as part of the wider industrial strategy that we need to grow the businesses and industries of the future and to invest in our transition to net zero. Labour has also said that we must buy, make and sell more in Britain, as called for by our shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves). That is part of how we can ensure resilience in our economy—the need for which has been highlighted only too starkly by the gas-price challenge and the CO 2 challenge of the past week.

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• 5 Jul 2021: Financial Assistance to Industry

  18:05

  The motion authorises support for the development of an electric vehicle supply chain to be delivered through the automotive transformation fund. This is part of the significant transformation of the automotive sector that we need as it makes its transition to zero-emission vehicles. We understand that this programme will support late-stage capital and R&D investments in the UK in strategically important technologies. The Minister outlined quite a lot of these, but it is important that this should cover a much wider area of technologies than batteries, including cells, battery management systems, electric machines, drives, integrated power, electronics, fuel cells and so on.

  Labour has also set out why, alongside that, we must make electric vehicle ownership affordable. We have called for interest-free loans for new and used electric vehicles for those on low to middle incomes, removing the upfront cost barrier and trialling a national scrappage scheme. We would also make it easier for people to drive an electric vehicle wherever they live, accelerating the important roll-out of charging points on streets and targeting areas currently left out, such as Yorkshire, the north-west and many parts of the west midlands. We need an electric vehicle revolution in every part of the country to boost the car manufacturing industry, create jobs and make only zero-emission vehicles the option for all. For that, we need a strong domestic battery supply chain to remain competitive, build our position as a leading electric vehicle producer and sell to the world. We cannot afford to be in the slow lane. If the batteries are not made here, the danger is that the cars will not be either. We need to back our ambition with the policies that will fulfil that ambition.

  The Climate Change Committee tells us that for a smooth transition to 2030, 48% of new sales need to be electric by 2023. To reach that level, we come back to the point that electric vehicles must be affordable for lower income families. That is why the Government should not be cutting the plug-in grant. On supply chains, the intended investment from the fund in the development of electric vehicle supply chain in the UK is important. That development requires strategic interventions—something on which the Government do not have the best track record.

  This is an important strategic agenda and a vital step in accelerating the shift to zero-emission vehicles that we need to see. The areas I have raised are in the interest of being constructive, because Labour wants to ensure that everyone in the country can benefit from the electric vehicle revolution, instead of baking in unfairness. While it is right that the Government have said that the sale of new petrol and diesel cars will end, they are wrong to impose a massive transition on our manufacturers from Whitehall without integrated and full support. It is also important to think about the vehicles that small businesses rely on, such as light vans and small vans, and how they will also make the transition.

  [Source]

• 9 Jun 2021: UK Steel Sector: Supply Chains

  10:30

  UK steel is at a turning point. A lack of strategic focus from successive Conservative Governments has inevitably resulted in reduced resilience against external shocks and fierce international competition. Our shared goal must be a sustainable future for UK steel and its supply chains, and we need the Government leadership that that demands. Steelmaking must decarbonise, and the long-term future of the industry is in supporting green jobs at the core of low-carbon economy. Steelmaking is a highly-skilled industry and a national asset, and it has a clear opportunity for continued growth, with procurement policies that could also help to increase the contribution of UK steel to UK manufacturing, products and infrastructure.

  Currently, 60% of steels are imported, and there is no assessment of the carbon footprint of those imports. Across the UK, there are around 1,100 businesses in steel and around 75,000 jobs, whether directly supported or in the supply chain. Those jobs are at the centre of our economies. In my speech, I will say a few words about supporting our steel industry today, about the need for a vision and plan for the future, and about ensuring a fair and just transition.

  We urgently need a truly ambitious vision for the sector that puts the UK at the cutting edge of green steel-making technology, and we need a plan to go with it. We need to see better progress on the industrial decarbonisation strategy and the acceleration of the clean steel fund. That £250 million fund was announced in 2019, but the spend from it is not set to start until 2023. I would be grateful for clarity from the Minister about why there is a delay.

  The UK seeks to decarbonise by 2050, but blast-furnace investments operate on a 20 to 25-year timescale, so we need a clean steel innovation programme now. As the Materials Processing Institute highlights, delaying until 2024 shows a lack of co-ordination between the Government’s timetable and the reality of the industry’s investment cycles.

  Although we accept that it is necessary that UK steel continues using coking coal for the next decade until technology is in place to provide for decarbonised steel, with the right strategy, investment in renewable technologies can create three times as many jobs as those in fossil fuel industries—jobs that are long term, highly skilled and high wage. Hydrogen could also play a huge part. Trials of direct reduced iron technology are already happening in Germany, Sweden and China. The Government should act quickly to prevent the UK from being left behind with this technology too.

  As the price of energy hinders progress, we need a clear industrial plan. We have heard how the gap between German and UK electricity prices is placing an extra £54 million a year additional cost on the UK steel sector. As the sector seeks to decarbonise, the price disparity is a major barrier to transitioning. All low-carbon options available are much more energy intensive. The Government have always said that the EU is a barrier to action. Now that we have left, they must take decisive action to address that price disparity.

  [Source]

• 8 Dec 2020: Future of Pensions Policy

  15:39

  I return to climate change, which is a very important area for future pension policy. The investment decisions taken by pensions involve trillions of pounds—the kind of money that can catalyse significant change when used responsibly, from investing in infrastructure to green technologies. Labour’s amendment to the Pension Schemes Bill sought to ask pension funds to demonstrate how they are helping us get to net zero emissions. It is hard to see how the Government can achieve their own climate goals while excluding trillions of pounds of British capital from those efforts. By voting against our amendment, we believe the Government missed a chance to mobilise pension funds to protect the planet and support the drive to net zero. This is despite the fact that there is clear public support for such a move. The Government must use all the tools at their disposal to channel pension funds into investments that benefit people and the planet.

  [Source]

• 19 Nov 2020: The Future of Work

  16:04

  Yesterday, the Government announced an additional £8 billion for green funding for the future. That is welcome, but it does not remotely meet the scale of what is needed to tackle the climate emergency and is far smaller than the €27 billion pledged by France or the €38 billion by Germany. That is why Labour has launched its own jobs-rich green recovery action plan, which includes action to recover jobs, and investment and co-ordination to secure up to 400,000 good, green additional jobs; to retrain workers by equipping them with the skills needed; to deploy the green technologies of the future; and to rebuild business with a stronger social contract between Government and businesses to tackle the climate crisis and ecological deterioration, while promoting prosperity and employment.

  In conclusion, future generations will judge us by the choices we make today to support livelihoods and businesses, tackle the unemployment crisis, and face up to the realities of the climate emergency. An economic plan needs a jobs plan, and a jobs plan needs a skills plan. A credible green recovery with sustainable jobs—something that people across the world are looking to—requires co-ordinated action across Government, harnessing investment and regulation, working alongside local government and the private and voluntary sectors to deliver system-wide change right across our country. We cannot let the failure to address pre-covid inequalities, laid bare by this crisis, now be an injustice that we allow to be passported into the future.

  [Source]

• 18 Nov 2020: Aviation Industry

  14:56

  I want to make a few points. First, we urgently need a plan for aviation, including a plan for passenger testing, to help get planes flying safely, inbound and outbound. Secondly, we need a realistic, targeted support package to tackle the impact of the pandemic in the medium term on jobs, businesses and aviation communities. Thirdly, we need to plan for the future and invest more, not less, in the pace of decarbonisation in the sector.

  Finally, on plans for the future and decarbonisation, we know that progress on decarbonisation has been painfully slow. We welcome the jet zero plans and the work going on in government on the aviation sector in that regard. More of that will be debated at the important conference, which the Minister is aware of, hosted by West London Business this Friday on “reimagining our global hub”, looking to the future of aviation and transportation, and our leadership in the UK and across the world.

  [Source]

• 3 Mar 2020: Low-Carbon Industries

  In 2018, investment in acquisitions in the UK’s solar dropped to just £0.3 billion, from £1.6 billion in 2015. Should the Government not be doing more to support renewable power, in the light of the net zero target—which the Secretary of State mentioned—and the closure of the feed-in tariff, especially given that German, Italian and Spanish companies are now investing over six times more than UK companies in low-carbon technologies?

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• 29 Apr 2019: Oral Answers to Questions

  I am grateful to the Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation, the hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), for visiting Space Studio West London in my constituency to see young people making robots and getting involved in other engineering projects such as sustainable energy. My mobile phone was charged wirelessly this morning by an invention of theirs.

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• 6 Nov 2018: Renewable Energy

  15. What recent assessment he has made of trends in the level of public funding for renewable energy since 2010. ( 907484 )

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  It is very surprising that the Chancellor’s Budget did not make any new commitments on renewable energy. Even worse is the fact that that comes with slashed grants for electric vehicles and plans to remove support for small-scale renewables. This was described by RenewableUK as a major blow to the sector. It also comes with the pursuit of fracking at any cost. On one of the greatest challenges we face today—clean, low carbon sustainable energy sources—why are the Government rolling back the clock?

  [Source]

• 7 Nov 2016: Exiting the EU and Workers’ Rights

  20:59

  Over the summer, along with my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), I wrote a piece proposing a six-point Brexit plan to help to support our prosperity and security. We said we believed that the UK needed to remain a member of the single market, although some reform of the market might be necessary if it were to do so. We recognised that the Tories’ 2015 manifesto promised to safeguard Britain’s interests in the single market. We called for, and understood the need for, greater controls over freedom of movement, on which, in my view, we should seek to negotiate with other countries. We said that we should protect our financial services sector—for example, through passporting rights—and keep up with the EU in respect of measures to tackle tax avoidance. I believe—I shall say more about this shortly—that we must keep our stake in the European Investment Bank. We said that we must shadow the EU’s environmental legislation, and must not become the weak link in Europe when it comes to tackling pollution and climate change. Vitally, however, we need to shadow the EU’s employment legislation: that, I believe, is absolutely crucial.

  [Source]

• 20 Oct 2016: Heathrow (Southern Rail Link)

  17:00

  It is clear that any significant growth in this area would require new transport infrastructure to be both viable and deliverable. The Government therefore have a golden opportunity to deliver a step change to Heathrow’s accessibility from the south, and to help to unlock the potential for up to 13,000 new jobs and more than 7,000 new homes on London’s borders. The Minister will also be aware of the need to curb emissions around the airport in order to combat climate change and improve air quality. The newly elected Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has championed the need to improve air quality, even during his first few months in office. Heathrow’s submission to the Airports Commission argued that this proposal would also reduce road journeys to the airport by 3%, improving air quality and reducing congestion.

  [Source]

• 11 Apr 2016: Finance (No. 2) Bill

  20:26

  Where in the Finance Bill is a clause to reflect the Government’s other U-turn, which was on VAT on energy-saving materials? The Government accepted our amendment to the Budget resolution, which allowed the Government to legislate on the matter in the Finance Bill. The lack of legislation and the contradictory and noncommittal answers from Ministers are causing uncertainty in the industry. We simply call on the Government to make a commitment that they will not include a VAT rise for solar or other green energy measures in this or future Finance Bills.

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• 1 Dec 2015: Oral Answers to Questions

  Will the Chancellor outline what measures he introduced in the autumn statement to support the UK’s renewable energy businesses?

  [Source]

  What did we actually get from this Chancellor last week? The £1 billion to develop carbon capture and storage was cut; feed-in tariff subsidies for solar panels were cut by 87%; we heard not a mention of national projects such as the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon; and we had Britain at the bottom of the European league for renewables. Does he agree with companies such as Tesco, IKEA, Vodafone and Unilever that his renewable energy cutbacks now pose a risk to UK businesses and undermine confidence in investment?

  [Source]

• 18 Nov 2015: The Economy

  15:55

  In his 2011 Budget, the Chancellor promised to rebalance our economy. What has happened? Manufacturing employment has decreased by 10% since he has been Chancellor. He is hurting not helping our renewable energy industries. The Chancellor’s Britain is out of touch with other nations. This is the only country cutting the support for renewables in favour of non-renewables. The Chancellor is hurting not helping Britain by cutting research and development investment. The last Labour Government had a target to increase private and public sector R and D to 2.5% of GDP by 2014. The latest official figures show that it is at 1.67%, which is behind the OECD and EU averages.

  [Source]

• 25 Apr 2012: Civil Aviation Bill

  17:45

  Turning to the amendments that deal with environmental issues, let me be clear what I would like to see. I would like to see lower emissions at every airport in the country. Some of that can be done technologically. Planes are coming out that are more and more efficient, which I very much welcome. I have mentioned some of the excellent work being done by Rolls-Royce, and some research has been done in my constituency specifically to enable that, which I very much welcome. I would also like to see more public understanding of the effects of climate change, and of what aviation does and how it compares with other things. I would also like to see some certainty that airports will be able to reclaim when they implement environmental measures—a point that was made very clear to me by AirportWatch, along with others concerned about a lack of certainty.

  “First, it does not mention what the shadow Minister himself mentioned at the beginning of his speech—the Committee on Climate Change. It is a great shame that the amendment does not talk about working with it; it advises the Government on setting and meeting carbon budgets and has already done a huge amount of work.” –– [ Official Report, Civil Aviation Public Bill Committee, 28 February 2012; c. 117.]

  The hon. Gentleman went on, rightly, to congratulate the Committee on Climate Change. I am sure that most Members would do the same. I would have hoped that our new amendment 3 would adequately address the points that the hon. Gentleman was raising.

  A key recommendation of the Committee on Climate Change’s report on international aviation and shipping, which was published this month, states:

  “Our report concludes that international aviation and shipping emissions need to be formally included in carbon budgets. Emissions from these sectors were initially left out of carbon budgets…when the Climate Change Act became law. However, they have been informally included in the 2050 target…Under the Act, a decision on the inclusion…is required by the end of 2012. Formal inclusion of these emissions will ensure a more transparent, comprehensive and flexible accounting framework under the Climate Change Act and provide more certainty for the future.”

  I would have hoped that amendment 3, which now makes reference to the Committee on Climate Change and to greenhouse gas emissions, would cover the points that the hon. Gentleman was unhappy with in Committee. Amendments 4 and 5 cover issues similar to those that were so ably raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra).

  [Source]

  18:30

  ‘(ea) the need to work with NATS, the Secretary of State, the Committee on Climate Change and air transport service providers towards meeting the United Kingdom’s greenhouse gas emission reduction obligations as set out in the UK’s Carbon Budget, including the UK’s share of international aviation emissions’.— (Jim Fitzpatrick .)

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See all Parliamentary Speeches Mentioning Climate