11:09 Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)

Thursday 16 September—General debate on the role and the response of the devolved Administrations to COP26, followed by a general debate on proposed reforms to the criminal justice system to respond better to families bereaved by public disasters. The subjects for these debates were determined by the Backbench Business Committee.

The historic tall ship Glenlee is of great cultural importance to Glasgow and, indeed, Scotland. Although it sits in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), all of us Glasgow MPs know how important it is to the citizens of Glasgow. As the Glenlee sits within the COP26 exclusion zone, it has been forced to close for not just the duration of the conference but a number of weeks before and after. As such, it is missing out on lucrative business opportunities that would quite literally help to keep it afloat. Will the Leader of the House please issue a Government statement on how businesses such as the Glenlee are going to be compensated for COP26?

Obviously, when the Government do things that prevent business from taking place, a responsibility falls on the Government to ensure that businesses do not lose out. COP26 ought, though, to be a huge success for Glasgow, attracting many visitors to go there and a considerable amount of expenditure, and I hope that the overall economic benefit will be good. This is a further example of the benefits of the United Kingdom, because COP26 is taking place in Glasgow because Scotland is part of a strong and powerful United Kingdom.

Rather than investing in green hydrogen, the Government are loudly promoting blue hydrogen made from natural gas, which will never get us to net zero. The Government say that green hydrogen is too expensive. May we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on the long-term cost differences of investing in blue hydrogen versus green hydrogen, and on whether the Government are considering setting an end date for blue hydrogen?

The hon. Lady raises an important and interesting issue. The technology is developing and evolving. It seems to me that one of the fundamental things we should say in the argument about getting to net zero is that we want to improve people’s living standards—we want people to have a better standard of living, with economic growth—and we can do that by technological innovation. Hydrogen is such an exciting part of that, because if we have cars running on hydrogen, we no longer need to be so mean to the motorist, to make it so difficult for them and to put in all those roadblocks and tiresome things that some local councils are doing—the hon. Lady will know of a local council that is currently doing just that. We will be able to get back to allowing people to do more of what they want and in a green and friendly way. Technology will be the solution to that.

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