15:40 Pete Wishart (SNP)

Apparently, we will get to net zero more efficiently by taking more carbon out of the ground, burning it and then releasing it into the atmosphere. No one believes that sort of bunkum science other than the Tories. This Government have already watered down the climate targets, pushing back the deadline for selling new petrol and diesel cars and the phasing out of gas boilers. By far the best way to improve energy security, cut bills and support workers is through investing in more renewables.

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15:52 Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)

Another ambiguity is the new licensing regime to extract oil and gas from the North sea. While totally sensible, punitive taxes are hardly going to encourage companies to take such a risk. To secure investment, countless jobs and our energy security, the industry urgently needs low taxes. Oil and gas will continue to play a role in our economy for many years to come. To deny that will condemn the country to abject misery. Why was there not a Bill to redraft the Climate Change Act 2008, which will simply impoverish us, and scrap all the green taxes? I am all for reducing carbon emissions, but not until the renewables are reliable and affordable. And let us not forget nuclear, which will be a crucial part of the mix.

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16:40 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

The Government are out of ideas and without direction, either unwilling or unable to make the big decisions to give us a brighter future. What a wasted opportunity, especially when it comes to action to tackle the nature and climate crisis. What better opportunity was there to empower communities and businesses to break down barriers to tackle the biggest issue of our generation? I am pleased that the Government announced recently that they will introduce a nature GCSE, but considering the abysmal nature of what was in the King’s Speech on tackling the climate crisis, it seems to me that the Prime Minister should be the first person to take it.

Climate education should not stop with schools; local authorities could organise citizens’ assemblies, as we have proposed many times. There are so many opportunities to educate people about the dangers of our not getting this right and failing to reach our 1.5° target by 2050, but those on the Government Front Bench continue to ignore them. They continue, too, to ignore the opportunities that would arise from a green transition. A nature or climate GCSE could grow the careers and skills we need to tackle the climate emergency and get to net zero, but this Government’s attitude is that everyone except them must meet their commitments.

Rather than protecting our children’s future, the Government are protecting the interests of the fossil fuel giants. How can they seriously claim to be leaders on net zero action while introducing legislation to hold annual oil and gas licensing rounds? That is particularly shocking when compared with their unforgivable failure to allocate a single new contract for difference for onshore wind farms in the recent auction round. I would like to hear how the new legislation will bring down energy bills for a single one of my constituents. Research from Uplift confirms that most of the oil produced at Rosebank will be shipped abroad and sold on the global market to the highest bidder; it will secure the future of the oil and gas giants, but not the UK’s energy supply.

When will this Tory Government embrace the clean, green energy of the future and stop delaying our path to net zero? We need more grid capacity and more Government action to capitalise on green jobs and technology. New green jobs do not fall out of the sky; they start with proper career options for young people that they can start now so that we can see the energy transformation we need.

There are so many untapped opportunities. UK solar power deployment is already significantly behind target. The smart export guarantee should incentivise households to invest in solar panels by allowing them to sell the excess electricity they produce back to the grid at a better price and recover the cost of their investment much faster. Again, educating householders in how they can invest in the net zero transition is an important part of the puzzle. If we do not communicate properly with our citizens about what they can do to tackle the climate crisis, where will we be?

Under the current system, it takes decades for householders to break even. Householders are confused, and we need to ensure that there are trusted sources where they can obtain information about how to tackle the climate crisis and break down the barriers that we are discussing today. There must be that change to bring about the revolution in rooftop solar that carries so many benefits for people and the planet. The cheapest energy is the energy that we do not use, and reducing energy waste will lower bills and cut carbon emissions. We urgently need to upgrade our housing stock to guarantee warm and comfortable homes for everyone, long into the future.

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16:56 Jim Shannon (DUP)

I am a great believer that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is better together and, for me, it is important that we all feel the benefits of the King’s Speech by making sure that Northern Ireland plays its part in the economy of this great nation. It is about building a Northern Ireland supply chain, and Northern Ireland’s desire to contribute to the Government’s net-zero target and to reaching that target together equally across this great kingdom. It is about jobs. It is about science, technology, engineering and maths opportunities for ladies and women. It is about new skills, as the Education Secretary said, and it is about Northern Ireland’s desire to be an integral part of providing support for low-carbon delivery across the four nations of this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

I know the Government intend to commit over £1.6 billion to the green climate fund—the biggest single international climate pledge that the UK has ever made—yet I feel there is a barrier within the UK, which can be brought down to help achieve our climate pledge while improving the local economy in Northern Ireland. Extending contracts for difference to Northern Ireland is an essential component of that work, and I hope Northern Ireland’s barrier to opportunity will be broken down. Green energy can deliver job opportunities, so we must break down that barrier.

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17:11 Jim McMahon (Labour)

As Labour’s sister party for almost a century, co-operators believe in enterprise, grassroots organisation, and that the wealth and value we create together can and should be used to build stronger communities and stronger economies that we can all share in. We believe, too, that ownership matters, because it drives decision making and ultimately determines where the dividend is returned. On energy, for instance, the Labour and Co-operative parties together have a shared commitment to bringing back community energy as a blueprint to safeguarding energy security and investing in cheap, clean renewable energy that is produced and owned right here in the UK. Instead of investing in non-renewables that help only multinational oil and gas giants, the Government should be backing local communities to produce and own their own renewable energy. Labour’s local power plan sets out how to do that, with a bold ambition for 1 million new owners of energy producing 8 GW of energy by 2030.

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17:19 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

Doubling down on fossil fuels is not the answer. Clean, cheap home-grown energy is the only way to make us energy secure. As the Prime Minister stumbles in the starting blocks in the race for net zero, or indeed seems to be going backwards, Labour stands ready to lead the sprint for renewables with all the opportunities that they will bring—whether it is green jobs in communities that are making the transition away from dirty fossil fuels; whether it is community power, which we have heard about; or whether it is economic regeneration and technical advances. There is so much potential.

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17:27 Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)

We could have had a King’s Speech rooted in prosperity, rooted in resilience, rooted in that word that the Conservatives love to use: aspiration. We could have had a King’s Speech about tackling the big challenges of our time and seeking consensus for the long-term structural changes needed to take on those policy challenges, whether they be improving living standards, which our constituents are desperately crying out for—our living standards are falling massively behind those of our western European counterparts, and the Government do not even seem to recognise that, never mind have a plan to deal with it properly—or our decaying national infrastructure and public services. The Conservatives have managed to turn climate change into a culture war issue, with all kinds of nonsense on the issue of the net zero transition coming not just from some junior Parliamentary Private Secretary, but from the Prime Minister himself. Look at global affairs and international security.

I am not a conservative, but we need a Conservative party that is at least rooted in the real world. There are many good Conservative Members, some of whom I have personal friendships with, and there might even be one or two here right now—let us not overstate it, mind you—but I say to them: “Take your party back from this madness, because it drags the entire political country into the sewer, and we all deserve much better than that.” All this nonsense about homelessness being a “lifestyle choice”, and wanting to attack charity workers who hand out tents to give people a semblance of shelter from the rain and the cold. What is this rubbish? They have the cheek to call themselves Conservatives, but they have contempt for institutions, contempt for the law, contempt for norms. Conserve what exactly? A Conservative party utterly unrecognisable to its own traditions—many of which are fine; many of which I do not agree with—and massively out of control. Think of the challenges we face—climate change, technology, ageing populations and all the rest of it—and the institutions we need in order to meet those challenges. In, I think, a report for a think-tank, the former Cabinet Secretary Mark Sedwill said recently that Palmerston would recognise many of the institutions that exist on Whitehall today.

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17:36 Janet Daby (Labour)

Because of 13 years of Conservative Government, we have seen multiple failings. To name a few, we have seen a failure to tackle the cost of living crisis; the shameful watering down of net zero targets; the mishandling of the covid-19 pandemic; the personal protective equipment scandal; partygate; the wrecking of the economy through an unfunded mini-Budget; constant incidents of sleaze; and court delays and backlogs. We have already heard about many of those issues in the Chamber today. We have also seen high mortgages and rents; school buildings crumbling; sewage pouring into our streams and rivers, while water companies are allowed to get away with paying large bonuses; long NHS waiting lists; a shortage of doctors and nurses; and an inability to get GP and dentist appointments.

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18:10 Mark Hendrick (Labour)

What was known as the Queen’s Speech, now the King’s speech, was seen as an opportunity by the incumbent Government to lay out an ambitious policy agenda for the future. What we have seen from this King’s Speech, at what many might call the fag end of this Government’s time in office, is anything but ambitious. It is a collection of measures to try to cause division in the country. This Government do not want to fight the next election on their record in office, so they will fight it on what they say Labour will do. They will try to describe what is mainstream as extreme in order to promote their right-wing agenda as moderate—for example, by watering down our climate change commitments.

I will go even further and suggest that the Government want to placate even more of the Prime Minister’s right-wing colleagues by bringing about the notion of climate scepticism, as though our nation’s fears and worries about climate change are overblown and unfounded, when in fact the evidence of excessive flooding and heatwaves has appeared before our own people’s eyes. The use of the word “scepticism” is designed to conjure up a vision of the past, where Euroscepticism appeared to vanquish those who wished to remain in the European Union. Well, we have all seen how that played out. If climate scepticism catches on in the UK, it will do the same damage to our emissions targets and our reputation that Euroscepticism did to our trade, our economy and our reputation.

This Prime Minister, in order to try to distance himself from the previous Conservative incumbents in No. 10, is now trying to make out that he is a break from the past, where there was once cross-party consensus, through environmental measures and the likes of the cancellation of HS2. He is trying to dissociate himself from 13 years of Conservative Government failures, and to present himself as something new. The trick that he is trying to deploy is to bring forward measures that I would describe as counterintuitive. By playing down the need for strong environmental protective measures and the need for HS2 to go to Manchester, he is being different for difference’s sake. Climate science tells us that cleaner cars and well-insulated homes will save energy and help the progress towards net zero. Economists do not just look at the cost to the nation of HS2; they look at the best estimates, which by the Government’s own analysis suggest that the completion of HS2 to Manchester would have brought £24 billion a year to the north’s economy and created 96,000 jobs. It would have improved capacity and connectivity and closed the productivity gap with London.

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