15:09 Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)

The big problem that we face is the obsession with front-loading on to the steel industry the general problem of climate change. I am talking about steel, but I am not excluding other industries. I am sure that hon. Members with connections to the glass or ceramics industry, or to other high-energy-using industries, would make the same point on their behalf. There has been a culture, not necessarily under this Government, of saying, “Heavy industry bad; anything else good.” Well, I am sorry, but we are not going to move away into an economy of which steel does not remain an essential component. Steel is vital, sometimes in very small elements, whether it be in our cars, our mobile telephones or the planes we travel in—modern steel, high-tech steel, flexible steel. Steel is also a huge recycling industry. It is not generally understood that steel production is based on gobbling up and reusing old, unused steel that would otherwise have to go into landfill or clutter up the landscape.

I plead with the Government—the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department of Energy and Climate Change—to rethink their policies. They can, by all means, insist that we reduce CO 2 emissions. However, they should not use methodologies and prices that are changing so rapidly that they will do damage when rigidly applied. Believe me, when civil servants want to apply something rigidly, they do. On the whole, Ministers, however well-intentioned they are, are not across every detail of such decisions. Without it being an intended consequence, if we allow the present structure of carbon reduction through price support mechanisms to continue, we may face serious damage to our steel industry.

Last night, I had the most extraordinary exchange with Mr Nigel Farage on LBC. His new term for the Prime Minister is a “warmist”. I had never heard of warmism before, but in the lexicon of the UK Independence party, it is apparently used to denounce people who like renewable energy and wind turbines, and who think that we are facing global warming. Mr Farage obviously knows better that global warming is an EU conspiracy to undermine Britain. He thinks that the louder he calls the Prime Minister a warmist, the more people will flock to vote for UKIP. I do not know whether that is the case.

“did little to ease the additional unilateral energy costs that UK industry must bear. The benefits to industry pale into insignificance against the costs imposed on them from existing energy and climate change regulations, which are rising alarmingly in the UK.”

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15:48 Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)

An historic event occurred on Tuesday this week. A freight train carrying full-scale lorry trailers from the continent through the channel tunnel arrived at a freight trans-shipment terminal at Barking, on the north of the Thames and to the east of London, for the first time. This was a simple demonstration of what should be the future for the millions of tonnes of freight that are carried every year on our roads. They can and should be carried by rail. The train that arrived at Barking could carry those lorry trailers no further, however, as the loading gauge on Britain’s rail network is too small to accommodate such traffic. We shall not see that massive modal shift from road to rail until trailers on trains can be carried the length and breadth of our country. I should point out that carbon dioxide emissions from heavy road freight are 12 times higher per tonne-mile than those from rail.

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16:22 Martin Vickers (Conservative)

The arrival—soon, we hope—of a new Tesco store and the associated regeneration of the shopping centre will provide a major boost to an area that has an extremely bright future if the new developments associated with the offshore renewable energy sector can be successfully established in northern Lincolnshire. On that matter, I once again stress the urgent need for statutory agencies to work at the pace required by the commercial demands of potential investors. Much has been done and I appreciate the Government’s changes to the planning system, but time is of the essence if the UK is to attract the investment that multinational companies could easily direct to our continental neighbours.

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