12:33 Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)

The truth is that the leader of the Labour party, when he was Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, did start to tackle the discussion about the energy market. He said that we should have a pool, and that was in our manifesto. He also undertook to look at better ways in which we could provide for energy efficiency, and I will come to those shortly. In government, we had a good record of helping people with their bills. Millions of people were helped by Warm Front and millions of pensioners were helped by the winter fuel payments. What are this Government doing to help people with that? [ Interruption. ]

The last time we debated this matter, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), said:

We do know that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle, had a meeting with all the big energy companies on 1 February this year. We also know that the energy companies are lobbying the Government to relax the obligations on them or to push back the deadline. The Minister refuses to tell us what exactly was discussed at the meeting, what was agreed and whether he has caved in to the companies’ demands. Why will he not tell us that? He will not share with us—

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We have tabled parliamentary questions and used parliamentary procedures to get information, because Ministers at the Department of Energy and Climate Change are not especially forthcoming off their own bat. In response to my question, what did the Minister say? He said that he would not tell us, and I quote— [ Interruption . ]

Warm Front has collapsed. The Government are not standing up to the energy companies. A lot is resting on the green deal. We want the green deal to work. It is an idea on which the leader of the Labour party worked very hard; it was included in our manifesto and the pilots started under our Government. The truth is, however, that unless Ministers want the green deal to be a good deal, it simply will not work. Time and again, in debates in this Chamber and in Committee, we have proposed improvements, but the Government have refused to listen. Last year, the Government said that the green deal would help 14 million households to improve their energy efficiency, but today their impact assessment forecasts that the programme will reach fewer than 4 million. Even the Government’s own advisers think that is optimistic: the Committee on Climate Change now thinks it will help only 2 million or 3 million households. The Government claimed that the green deal would help to create 100,000 jobs, but today that estimate has been halved to just 60,000—[Hon. Members: “That’s not half.”] I said nearly half. It is still nothing to be proud of.

The truth is, even when times are tough and money is in short supply there are still things that a Government can do to help families and businesses. I know that the Government are short of ideas. At one of my speeches earlier this year, no fewer than 18 civil servants were on the attendance list, including five from the Department of Energy and Climate Change alone. If the Secretary of State is in the market for good ideas for his energy Bill, here are two that I offer him.

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13:38 Malcolm Wicks (Croydon North) (Lab)

I will not get too cross with the Secretary of State for saying, as a bit of political knockabout, that the last Labour Government made no strategic decisions at all. Empirically, that is incorrect, as I think of the formidable legislation on climate change, which was supported throughout the House. For the first time, Parliament—the Labour Government were in power—decided to legislate to reduce carbon emissions. That is probably the most radically ambitious piece of legislation ever to go before this House. As I recall—I do not work for News International, so I do have a memory—it was also the Labour Government who set renewable energy targets, although they were more than just targets. [Interruption.] I hear a Member mumbling “Europe” at me from a sedentary position. I do not know whether it was a Eurosceptic, but yes, of course Europe is relevant; our party believes in Europe. We subscribe to European targets and during the period of the Labour Government we became the biggest country in the world in terms of investment in offshore wind. So much for us not having any strategic direction!

As a Government, we also tried to push forward carbon capture and storage—a formidable endeavour, and I congratulate the Norwegians on the progress they have made. It would be good to hear from the Government at some stage where they think we are on CCS because it is a vital part of our low-carbon objectives, given that despite renewables and nuclear, we will continue to invest in and use a great deal of fossil fuels in the future.

I am a kind person, and I suppose it was major until recently. That party was adamantly opposed to nuclear energy. I ask the Secretary of State whether he has now made a strategic realignment in his own mind to support nuclear energy. I hope he has. I think the fact that the Prime Minister has appointed Liberal Democrat Members to this important role of Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change shows that he maintains a sense of humour—one that he will need in the weeks and the trials, which is a term I use in the generic sense, to come.

While I am speaking about energy policy rather than family policy, which I shall come to in a moment, I want to emphasise the importance of the global context. We cannot discuss this issue only domestically. If I am right, the International Energy Agency projects in one of its central scenarios that global energy demand, mainly from non-OECD countries, will rise by about 40% by 2035. We must view our issues within that global context, we have to take energy security seriously and we have to build up what I have always called home-grown energy as much as we can, alongside reducing energy demand—hence the importance of nuclear and of renewable energy.

To rewind, let me say that the Climate Change Act 2008 was an excellent Act, and it had cross-party support. I am delighted that it was enacted. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that Governments have to take a lead in showing that they can use less energy? He will remember the 10:10 campaign, designed to persuade people across the country to reduce their energy usage by 10%. Does he regret the fact that his Government voted down a Liberal Democrat proposal that the entire Government should sign up to that? Will he congratulate this Government on signing up to it and on reducing energy usage by 14% in their first year?

A very senior Liberal Democrat Member says that nuclear will not happen, while the Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change says that it will. I suspect that there may well be more rows in that party in the weeks and months to come—for other reasons, too—but an interesting divide has been opened up.

I have been listening closely to the right hon. Gentleman’s speech. Before I became Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change I was in charge of employment relations in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and, indeed, did the work that took place before the announcement in the Queen’s Speech of legislation on flexible parental leave, and I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that that legislation will deliver many of the developments for which he is arguing. For instance, it will ensure that dads and members of extended families can be more involved. Shared parental leave, the extension to all of the right to request flexible working, and an increase in unpaid parental leave will tackle all the issues that he has raised. Those are the most radical proposals that have been made in this area, and they derive from the best practice in the world, which I believe is found in Sweden and Germany.

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14:09 Edward Leigh (Conservative)

In the most recent global competitors report by the World Economic Forum, three of the four biggest problems facing UK businesses were identified as tax rates, tax regulations and inefficient Government bureaucracy. Let me set out what I believe we should have in the Government. Apparently we are going to have a reshuffle soon. What we need are Ministers—the Prime Minister has to check on their performance—who are, like a non-executive director on the board of a private company such as Tesco, obsessed not by policy but by efficiency. We have three excellent Ministers sitting on the Front Bench—the Secretary of State for Transport, the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) and the Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns)—as well as our Whip. I am sure they are doing these sorts of things every day, but much more could be done. I hope the Whip is listening to all the kind comments I am making about the Ministers. I sincerely believe that this is one of the most important things the Government could do.

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14:47 Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)

Let us consider the railways, as the Minister suggests. We know about the cuts. The length of our railway network has halved since 1950, but ever since 1980 the number of people using the network has doubled, resulting in a crippling downward spiral in which fare rises have been used to prop up a creaking system while services have declined. British railways are now 30% less efficient and 30% more expensive than their European counterparts. Under Labour, fares rose significantly above inflation year on year. The shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change did not seem to know the figures when I challenged her on this earlier, so let me give them to the shadow Secretary of State for Transport. Rail fares during Labour’s 13 years in government went up by 66%—inflation over that period was 17% in real terms—which is a huge increase. Even now their policy has not changed; it is still to have rail fares going up above inflation. Even the amendment to the motion calls for rail fares to go up 1% above inflation.

We all know that our roads are utterly unsustainable. We have not yet managed to decarbonise our cars adequately. We failed to support the basic principle that road users should have to pay to use the roads, and the tax system has problems. Treasury Ministers are already nervous about how they will fund road infrastructure in future as we manage to reduce the use of fossil fuels.

We have heard much from the Opposition about the lack of a Bill in the Queen’s Speech to deal specifically with the cost of living, but we have heard also from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change about the steps being taken with the Bills that are in the Queen’s Speech, and in any case the Opposition should know that it is not necessary to announce a Bill in a Queen’s Speech in order to help with the cost of living. Not everything needs legislation.

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15:40 Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)

Let me move on to energy and electricity market reform. I support reform in principle, although we do not know the details, so it would be a little naive to support it fully until it is implemented. I am a member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, and we have looked at the principle of electricity market reform. We produced a report highlighting some of our concerns. There has been a White Paper for a long time, but we are only going to get pre-legislative scrutiny. We need to know what is in the Bill in order to deal with the issue properly and provide the certainty needed to invest in our infrastructure.

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16:21 Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)

I heard that there was to be a draft water Bill and that we would be focusing on electricity market reform, on which the Energy and Climate Change Committee has done a lot of examination, and as a member, I am particularly interested in that. The draft Groceries Code Adjudicator Bill has also been announced. Those measures represent the three biggest bills regularly faced by my constituents, and where the Government can actually have an impact, so they have decided to focus on them in their second Queen’s Speech.

The water Bill is in draft form, but I was pleased to hear during the Budget debates that the south-west is to have a dispensation on water bills. There will be an obligation on the regulator to secure social tariffs. The water system will be under more stress. We have had drought alerts over the past couple of months, and those problems will not go away. I find it extraordinary that, as I understand it, the regulator cannot take into account issues of climate change when a water company puts forward a proposal to build a reservoir. We need a total review of what Ofwat believes its priorities are, and we must make sure that the water Bill ensures that the overall water system delivers sustainability and good pricing, plus a strong responsibility to work with consumers to protect and conserve water.

Earlier there was discussion of the proposed energy legislation. Members of the Energy and Climate Change Committee from all parties have been persistent in pursuing consumer issues in relation to the energy market, such as the retail market review that Ofgem is putting in place, which is crucial for consumers. We have doggedly pursued the issue of mis-selling. Doorstep mis-selling has been going on for years and it is only in the past year or 18 months that the public have received recompense from the companies that were putting many of my constituents under pressure.

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16:39 Tim Farron (Liberal Democrat)

That highlights something that this Government and all Governments have failed to do—set out a coherent food production strategy for the country. As my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet said earlier, over the next 40 years the population of planet Earth will increase by about 50%, but the demand for food will roughly double. If we as a country preside over a 25% drop in our ability to feed ourselves, as we have over the past 30 years, it is completely witless and massively damaging. The food crisis—I say that with no exaggeration at all—that the planet faces and that this country will face is at least as big a concern as climate change and, dare I say it, is a bigger concern than the economic crisis.

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17:41 Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)

Investing in green energy and the low-carbon economy is one route to lower fuel costs in the future, because of the disaggregation of fuel costs and world mineral energy prices. We can keep getting indigenously produced and stably priced fuel in the future. Investing in energy efficiency in homes and offices—using less energy more efficiently—is a no-brainer, as has been said. Lower energy usage will bring smaller bills. The best method for combating fuel poverty is to fuel-poverty-proof UK homes.

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18:16 Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)

The impact of climate change means that water resources will become more and more scarce. The recent droughts and floods could be an indication of what is to come. What needs to be done to ensure that water remains affordable for hard-pressed bill payers in the long term? Since the botched privatisation in the early ’90s, water bills have increased year on year. We could take urgent action on abstraction—taking water out of the natural environment—but the Government have promised no legislation until 2015, and they do not propose to complete that process until 2030.

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