13:41 Rachel Reeves (Labour)

The Chancellor is failing to tackle another huge issue of the day: adapting to climate change. Adapting to climate change presents opportunities—more jobs, lower bills and cleaner air—but only if we act now and at scale. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, failure to act will mean public sector debt explodes later to nearly 300% of GDP. The only way to be a prudent and responsible Chancellor is to be a green Chancellor: to invest in the transition to a zero-carbon economy and give British businesses a head start in the industries of the future. But with no mention of climate in his conference speech and the most passing of references today, we are burdened with a Chancellor unwilling to meet the scale of the challenges we face. Homeowners are left to face the costs of insulation on their own. Industries like steel and hydrogen are in a global race, but without the support they need. In the week before COP26, the Chancellor has promoted domestic flights over high-speed rail. It is because of this Chancellor that in the week when we are trying to persuade other countries to reduce their emissions, the Government cannot even confirm that they will meet their 2035 climate reduction target.

There is an alternative. Rather than just tweak the system, Labour would scrap business rates and replace them with something much better by ensuring online giants pay their fair share. That is what being pro-business looks like. We would not put up national insurance for working people. We would ensure that those with the broadest shoulders pay their fair share. That is what being on the side of working people looks like. We would end the £1.7 billion subsidy that the Government give to private schools and put it straight into our local state schools. That is what being on the side of working families looks like. We would deliver a climate investment pledge of £28 billion every year for the rest of this decade: gigafactories to build batteries for electric vehicles; a thriving hydrogen industry creating jobs in all parts of our country; and retrofitting so that we keep homes warm and get our energy bills down. That is what real action on climate change looks like.

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14:00 Mel Stride (Conservative)

My right hon. Friend has an even tougher job as he looks to the future, now having to deliver sustainable economic growth and ensure that the public finances are on a sustainable trajectory, as well as meeting all the other objectives the Government rightly have on levelling up, net zero and so on.

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14:16 Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)

More fundamentally, COP26 kicks off this weekend. What on earth are we doing? When we are saying to the rest of the world that we are trying to engage other countries to step up to the plate with their climate obligations—the Prime Minister has spoken today about the importance of 1.5°—the Chancellor wants to cut air passenger duty on domestic flights. [ Interruption. ] I can see him nodding his head. He is increasing air passenger duty on long-haul flights, admittedly, but the fact is that carbon dioxide emissions per mile are much higher for domestic flights than for long-haul flights.

The Chancellor who once promised to do “whatever it takes” is now a very distant memory. The true test of this Budget was whether it would act radically and tackle the cost-of-living crisis, the Brexit crisis and the climate crisis, and it has failed that test on all three fronts. Instead of doing “whatever it takes”, the Chancellor has done as little as possible. The Tories’ half-hearted rhetoric about fairness has predictably only produced half-measures when it comes to soaring household bills and the crippling cost of inflation.

As we know, this Budget comes a matter of days before COP26. Keeping the target of 1.5° alive depends on a Government commitment to embrace the green economy, but let us be honest: this Budget today does not help. The fact that this crucial conference is happening in Glasgow is a chance to show moral leadership, but it is also an opportunity to grasp the opportunities that the green economy can provide. Moving to a just transition from oil and gas is essential to capture the economic opportunities of the new energy technologies and to support people into new jobs. The depth of anger felt in the north-east of Scotland at this Government’s decision to renege on their promise to ensure that we have carbon capture and storage in Scotland obviously has not hit home on the Government Benches.

If this Chancellor was— [ Interruption. ] Chancellor, this is really important. This is about our ability to get to net zero, and it is about the fact that the Treasury has blocked carbon capture and storage in Scotland. I say this directly to the Chancellor: perhaps he will meet me in the coming days to ensure that the Scottish Acorn project is put back on track and that we increase the number of carbon capture and storage projects from two to three, for the simple reason that we need that to deliver on our net zero targets and to deliver 15,000 jobs in Scotland for that just transition.

I say to the Government directly: let us ensure that we give some hope to the north-east of Scotland, because £350 billion of tax revenues has been taken out of the North sea. We need a helping hand to deliver that just transition, and I need the Secretary of State for Scotland to stand up for us—to stand up for Scotland and ensure that we get that just transition.

Let us be real about this— [ Interruption. ] It is really important that the Chancellor listens to this debate. It is his debate. We are serious about the opportunities— [ Interruption. ] He can point to the clock all he likes, but we are talking about the future of the renewable energy industries in Scotland, and about paying attention to what the industries are saying.

We know about the breakthroughs in technology, and we know that the Royal Society has painted a picture of an industry that could represent 20% of our electricity needs throughout the United Kingdom, but it needs to be kick-started with financial support. However, when we were all talking about our responsibilities to net zero, it is the UK Government who are standing with their foot on the brake preventing this industry from getting off the ground and delivering for people— not just in Scotland, but right across the United Kingdom.

There is also no commitment to match the Scottish Government’s £500 million investment for a just transition in the north-east of Scotland. Now that the Chancellor has blown up the idea of a Boris bridge across the Irish sea, he should have plenty of spare money to invest. On that point, can I ask him whether the estimated £20 billion cost for that cancelled bridge will now be ring-fenced for future transport projects in Scotland and Northern Ireland? Or is that just one more promise that will be broken—just one more example of Westminster holding back Scotland’s green future?

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14:53 Mrs Theresa May (Maidenhead) (Con)

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way and even more grateful that she is mentioning the whole issue of the climate emergency and green skills. It felt like the Chancellor was skating over that vital issue—I do not think he got the memo on the climate emergency. Does she agree that if we had much greater investment in the net zero review, we would be able to scale up the jobs at the level she is describing? At the moment, we have a pitiful amount going into that net zero review. We have a Budget that is making more car driving more likely. It is making that cheaper. It is making short-haul aviation less cheap. So it is sending out the wrong messages at the wrong time. We need a test that would make sure that every single spending decision is measured against its climate impact.

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15:03 Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)

Finally, the greatest question facing our country and the world at large is climate change, and the prospects seem absolutely terrifying. I wish the Government well with COP26 and taking the issues forward internationally. Are we going to get there? I share the concerns and worries of, frankly, every thinking Member of this House. It is essential to the community that I represent that the Government do get there and that we are able to carry international partners with us. The Government’s proposals include industrial jobs—jobs that we could do in the north-east of England and projects that our communities could bid for. We want to play our full part in taking a green industrial strategy forward.

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15:16 Chris Grayling (Epsom and Ewell) (Con)

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown). He is right that many of us share common ambitions across the House—ambitions for COP26, and to bring better jobs to his constituents and constituents across much of the country in areas where such jobs have not necessarily been in the past.

I have two final points, briefly, because I know we are short on time. First, I welcome the return to 0.7% because we must help countries around the world to deal with the challenges they face, particularly around energy and climate change, but also in something that I feel passionately about—the protection of the natural world and habitats. Deforestation happens for a number of reasons, but one of them is simply that people cut down trees to make charcoal to cook their food. I want to see more support provided for the creation of proper sources of renewable energy in the developing world so that that element of deforestation no longer happens. There is a huge amount that we need to do in tackling climate change, but looking after the natural world is one very important part of that.

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15:54 Angela Eagle (Labour)

The combined Budget and spending review comes at a pivotal time for the country. That is partially a result of grim circumstance, which is beyond the control of any Government, as we have heard today—the pandemic and the challenge of the transition to net zero—but it is also the result of the Government’s serious mistakes and self-inflicted wounds. The botched Brexit deal has caused chaos at the borders, soaring prices and shortages, and the Government’s deadly complacency about the virus has resulted in one of the biggest economic hits and one of the largest per capita death tolls in the developed world—failure piled upon failure.

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16:13 Christine Jardine (Liberal Democrat)

The Government could have provided the £150 billion green recovery plan we are calling for to insulate people’s homes and to protect our natural environment. They could have seized the opportunity afforded by COP26 to lead the way on protecting the planet. Instead, the Chancellor has slashed air passenger duty on domestic flights and admitted that overseas aid will not be restored to the legal target of 0.7% until at least 2024. What kind of signal does that send to our international partners ahead of next week’s crucial climate summit in Glasgow? Then again, the word “climate” did not appear anywhere in the Chancellor’s statement.

It is clear that this is the Budget of a former hedge-fund manager, but we cannot run a country like a hedge fund. There is no column in a spreadsheet for people’s dignity and no formula for investing in our children’s future. Today’s Budget promises a future bitter with the consequences of the Chancellor’s inaction—bitter with the betrayal of future generations. It is a Budget that handcuffs us to the consequences of climate change, fails to invest in our children’s education and hammers families with tax hikes instead of helping them with the cost-of-living crisis. What has it all been for? The suspicion remains that the Chancellor is using old data from the Office for Budget Responsibility so that he can save some spending for later in the Parliament. That is the reality: pain for ordinary families now, but a tax cut before the election to help Tory candidates. The Budget should have been about ordinary people’s jobs up and down this country but was instead all about one person’s next job—the Chancellor’s.

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16:50 Seema Malhotra (Labour)

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.

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17:13 Richard Thomson (Gordon) (SNP)

The most pressing crisis of all is the environmental crisis. The Scottish Government are set to invest more than half a billion pounds in a “just transition fund” to benefit the north-east of Scotland, and have challenged the UK Government to match that, but I am sorry to say that nothing I have seen in the Budget so far suggests that the UK Government are doing so. In fact, what they have done this week is scupper the Acorn project in Peterhead for carbon capture and underground storage, which was the only scheme in the mix that was scalable and deliverable, using an existing infrastructure, and which could have benefited clusters in south Wales and around the Solent because of its ability to accept imports of carbon dioxide. The contrast is striking, and my constituents will see it very clearly: the UK Government roll out the pork barrel for the north-east of England, while sticking two fingers up to the north-east of Scotland.

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17:30 Andrew Mitchell (Conservative)

Secondly, moving from the parochial to the national and, indeed, the international, as we look toward the COP that is coming up shortly it is clear that the Government are doing extremely well on the UK’s climate strategy. The report published last week sets out the importance of our reaching net zero emissions by 2050; how the UK will be powered entirely by clean energy by 2035; the subsidies for replacing domestic boilers; the incentives to switch to electric vehicles, which is incredibly important in the west midlands in respect of Jaguar Land Rover, which will make only electric cars from 2025; the quadrupling of offshore wind; and the significant advances in carbon capture and storage. Of course, the agenda will also unlock 500,000 new jobs, as well as huge private sector investment. Those are important matters on which Britain is leading and clearly setting the right example, which is very good. By contrast, I am keeping my fingers crossed that the Prime Minister’s unique boosterism will pull a rabbit out of a hat for the COP, because as he himself has said the approach to the COP is challenging.

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17:39 Greg Clark (Tunbridge Wells) (Con)

No one can be in any doubt about the central importance of science, innovation and technology to the future wellbeing and prosperity not just of this country, but of every country around the world. Yesterday, my Committee —the Science and Technology Committee—was privileged to hear from Professor Sir Andrew Pollard who, with Dame Sarah Gilbert, was one of the scientists who developed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine against covid. Their work is saving millions of lives in this country and around the world, and allowing life here and around the world to resume. The vaccine would not have been possible had it not been built on sustained research conducted by world-class scientists in Britain over many years. It is not just in vaccine development, but in almost every field of human endeavour that research and science are transforming the world, from battery technology and energy storage, as we move to net zero, to the role that satellites play in monitoring agricultural matters from space to get the best crop yields around the world.

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18:02 Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)

As the fuel poverty charity National Energy Action points out, an across-the-board scrapping of VAT is not necessarily the best way to support those most in need of help with rising fuel bills this winter. I ask the Chancellor to look at using the estimated £100 million additional revenue from the VAT receipts on rising energy prices, and perhaps some of the additional £1 billion the Treasury is gaining from the rising carbon tax revenues due to gas price hikes, to concentrate on a winter fuel payment to vulnerable working-age households, providing direct relief to help with energy bills this winter. We also need to be able to help those who are not working families and who will not benefit from the changes to universal credit.

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18:33 Mr Tobias Ellwood (Bournemouth East) (Con)

I was also pleased to see that effort had been put into the net zero strategy. I wish COP26 well, but we can only expect other nations to agree to reductions in CO 2 emissions if we lead by example. We have done well to cut our emissions to date, and I welcome other initiatives such as investment in electric vehicle technology, efforts to insulate homes better, and the carbon capture and storage programmes, but in my view this is not enough if we really want to move the scale. I strongly urge the Government—and I am pleased to see the Chief Secretary in his place—to advance the modular nuclear reactor programme, which is something in which we excel across the world: this is what Rolls-Royce does. The reactors cost about £2 billion per unit, and one can be made in a factory every six months. We can not only reduce the CO 2 emissions in this country but help other countries around the world, including our Commonwealth friends, who may find it very difficult to reduce their CO 2 emissions.

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