14:29 Peter Kyle (Labour)

Microsoft alone is investing £5 billion in capital expenses worldwide to build data centre infrastructure, which gives us an idea of the scale of the transformation that is yet to come. Advances in nanotechnology, 3D printing and renewable energy are opening up a multiplicity of opportunities for medical, academic and industrial research. Our universities are rising to the challenge. Next year, for example, the University of Sussex will open a new £10 million centre for computing, robotic electronics and mechatronics. I would welcome an intervention from the hon. Member for Havant to tell me what “mechatronics” means; perhaps we can visit the University of Sussex and discover that together.

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14:46 Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)

Renewable energy will be a major component of Scotland’s future technological innovation. Inverclyde would be well placed to take advantage of these developments. Inverclyde is one of the few areas with the geography to utilise nearly all forms of renewable energy. We have a coastline and can therefore contribute to tidal power, and we have enough rural space and hills to facilitate wind farms. The burns that run off those hills can power hydro schemes, as they did in the past, and while solar will never fulfil all our requirements, it could be a valuable contributor. Further, we are already a producer of biomass fuels, and wood chips produced in Inverclyde are being used all over Scotland. Inverclyde has a large amount of unused industrial land, and these sites could be centres of manufacturing once again, while our port facilities mean that we are able easily to export the completed products to their required destinations. Every renewables business that we establish would result in associated benefits for suppliers and other local businesses.

The hon. Gentleman was not in the Chamber yesterday afternoon when I spoke in the climate change debate, so I thought I would inform him that through employing some of these new technologies, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust in London has been able to install in a hospital a combined heat and power system that saves it £2 million a year on its operating costs. It has done that not through Government promotion but because the technology is there and it has sought to adopt it, and it is doing immediate good for that public service.

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14:54 James Heappey (Wells) (Con)

Speaking twice in 25 hours is a record for me, and I am grateful for the opportunity. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Havant (Mr Mak), who has secured a worthwhile debate and opened it brilliantly. I apologise for being late, but I was working on the Energy and Climate Change Committee’s paper on renewable heat and transport targets, which will be released this evening. I commend it to the House: it is probably one of the most insightful Select Committee reports that Members will read all year. Indeed, all of our Committee’s reports are insightful.

The other area that I want to touch on was the electrification of the transport system. I had to check very carefully with the Clerk of the Energy and Climate Change Committee about when I would find myself in contempt of Parliament, but I understand that if I draw on the evidence rather than on the report itself, it is fine. This is a hugely exciting opportunity for us to employ electric cars and electric haulage systems in the UK. The problem is that I am not sure that we yet have the infrastructure in place to support them, and I am not sure that we have the right fiscal structure to support them either.

Mr Deputy Speaker, you encouraged us to keep within 10 minutes, so I will summarise, rather than go into the many more examples that I am itching to provide. The bottom line is that, while we will focus very much on our digital infrastructure with broadband and 5G mobile phones and we will worry very much about the preparedness of our airports and air routes, as well as of our roads and rail, the energy infrastructure is just as important. In my view, alongside the broadband and mobile phone networks, the three sets of infrastructure of telecoms, broadband and energy will drive the fourth—or third—industrial revolution and allow us to harness all these fantastic technologies. We should seek to do so not just because we are seeking to arrest climate change, but because it is cost-effective, makes business sense, will increase productivity and, ultimately, will be great for our economy.

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15:26 Stephen Kinnock (Labour)

The subject of today’s debate was the subject of this year’s Davos meeting: the fourth industrial revolution, an industrial revolution that will be characterised by new forms of renewable energy and the exponential outward expansion of technological innovations, driven by the internet. It is a revolution that will take place as we face severe challenges to our economic future: seemingly ever-increasing inequality; the worst productivity crisis and trade deficit in our country’s history; greatly reduced job security; over-concentration on London as the predominant source of wealth and growth, at the expense of other regions; and over-reliance on the services industries, with manufacturing accounting for an unprecedentedly low share of GDP. Manufacturing is crucial to broadly shared wealth, but we have seen manufacturing as a share of GDP drop from over 30% 40 years ago to under 10% now. That lies at the heart of many of the difficulties—the unbalanced nature of the British economy.

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