17:35 Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)

On the environment, in May 2010 in the coalition agreement, the Government committed to encouraging community-owned renewable energy schemes, and that is being delivered with the launch of the Department of Energy and Climate Change’s community energy strategy. However, the reduction of energy and climate change duties, set out in clause 28, appears specifically to contradict that commitment and undermine the recent statements supporting community energy made by Ministers.

The Government seem to be ignoring business representatives speaking out in favour of strong regulation. I have mentioned the Aldersgate Group a couple of times. In 2011, it warned that the drive to cut regulations on business could threaten the economic recovery. In a report launched here in the House of Commons, it stated that Government initiatives such as the red tape challenge that threaten “to rip up” vital green legislation would lock in polluting industrial processes for decades to come, jeopardise future competitiveness, and damage the UK’s attractiveness to green investors. It questioned whether measures such as one in, one out rule made sense, and would address pressing environmental challenges such as climate change. That is just one example of a market failure that requires more, not less, regulation to safeguard the environment and drive development in new industries.

The Government’s ‘war on red tape' must not become a crusade that threatens regulatory outcomes such as protecting the environment. Even the threat of deregulation on the Climate Change Act and renewable energy support is massively eroding investment and making growth more difficult.”

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18:11 Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)

The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the right hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon), who is also a Minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, told the Joint Committee:

I have two other points to make outside of clauses 61 and 65. The Bill proposes to remove the commitment to promote sustainable communities from general local government responsibilities and to reduce the requirement to consult generally over local government initiatives. We have already heard from the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) about the importance of consultation and the links with the Aarhus convention. The measure could lead to any proposal from local government being about only economic growth, ignoring environmental and social considerations. We agree to that at our peril, and I hope that it will be examined closely in Committee. The misfit in relation to sustainable development also appears in the proposal to lower or even to remove any obligation on local governments to cut down on carbon-based energy use and to reduce or to remove the scope of micro-generation. Those are valuable planks in the shoring up of the low-carbon future for local living, striking at the heart of the recent advice of the Committee on Climate Change.

The Environmental Audit Committee, in its report on carbon budgets, found that the Government’s voluntary approach to securing local emissions reductions was insufficient. We recommended that local authorities should set emissions reductions targets with progress reports to Ministers each year. Not surprisingly, the Government disagreed with that, but they did commission the Committee on Climate Change to provide advice. The CCC’s advice was to strengthen incentives for local authorities to act. It recommended that a statutory duty be placed on them to draw up low-carbon plans to include a high level of ambition for emissions reductions and increased funding to go with it. That advice has not been recognised.

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18:35 John McDonnell (Labour)

And so we move on from “Cash in the Attic”. I apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, as although I was present for the beginning of the Minister’s introductory statement, I had to leave the Chamber to attend a sitting of a statutory instrument Committee, which went on for a fair period of time. I was going to speak about the point raised by the National Union of Journalists about the security of sources, but I believe it has been said that that will be reviewed by the Government, so it is clear that I am more effective out of the Chamber than I am in it. I wholeheartedly support my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) in her expressions of concern about the overall nature of the Bill and how deregulation in a range of areas will impact on key policies to which the Government have signed up, but from which they now seem to be resiling, especially regarding environmental protection and tackling climate change.

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18:58 Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)

I note with some concern, given my own involvement in it, the provisions that would repeal certain sections of the Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Act 2006, which, the Minister may recall, I promoted as a private Member’s Bill. Indeed, he and I co-operated on many aspects of it. Perhaps I should at this point declare an interest as an unpaid board member of the Edinburgh community energy co-operative. The Act has a number of measures to promote sustainable and renewable energy and action on and awareness of climate change. I fully accept that many of the Act’s measures have been taken on board elsewhere since it was enacted, including by the Climate Change Act 2008. However, not all of the 2006 Act’s provisions have been taken on board elsewhere, so I would be concerned to see them removed to the extent proposed by the Bill.

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19:26 Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)

The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion spoke about several aspects of the Bill but focused on the scrapping of environmental regulations that apply in England. Thankfully, much of the Bill will not apply in Wales, as the National Assembly for Wales is sovereign in those and other areas. However, some of the more pernicious aspects of the Bill certainly do apply to Wales. The Bill is so far-ranging and a real hotch-potch of ideas—some bad, some made and some just plain ugly—but I will focus on just some aspects, particularly those relating to health and safety, employment tribunals, civil liberties, housing and the scrapping of energy and climate change obligations.

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20:27 The Minister without Portfolio (Mr Kenneth Clarke)

Another measure that all Opposition Members tried to make a mainstream political point about is the growth duty we are putting on non-economic regulators. I am not a climate change denier; the Government are in favour of environmental protection, and the conservation of our habitat and essential national heritage is a perfectly important objective of the Government. It is completely over the top to describe the changes in the Bill as sometimes threatening all that. We are saying that the various non-economic regulators should have regard to the desirability of the growth of the economy while carrying out their other duties. That was described as a mad dash for casino growth and likened to our casting away of regulation on bankers, which we did not do—it was the previous Government who did that. I would have agreed with the hon. Member for Bassetlaw had he cited that example, as it was a good example of the importance of regulation and the pathetic inadequacy of the Financial Services Authority when the then Chancellor gave it that responsibility. In this case, all that we are doing is saying that while it remains liable to follow its existing guidance—it has been pointed out that it is supposed to regulate only where necessary and proportionate—it is supposed to have regard to the impact on individual businesses, and it should have regard to the growth of the nation. Serious conservation in a highly developed, advanced economy like ours and the protection of our natural environment have to take account of the fact that at the same time, we hope to be a growing economy and a powerful, modern, industrial nation. It is a question of balance, judgment and common sense between the Government’s economic interests and our desire to conserve what is best in our heritage. Describing the Bill as an attack on that is absurd.

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