Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate Budget Resolutions.
17:24 Ed Miliband (Labour)
What is the Conservatives’ policy? They want to rip up the Climate Change Act 2008 and abandon net zero by 2050, which was their legacy. As a result, they have been roundly condemned by British business. Energy UK says that abandoning that target will scare off investors. The Confederation of British Industry says that it is a “backwards step”, because the Climate Change Act is
“in my party, it’s all about bashing the green agenda, and personally I don’t think we’ll get elected on…saying what rubbish net zero is.”
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17:32 Claire Coutinho (Conservative)
Labour promised £300 off energy bills, but bills have gone up by £200 instead. Going by his own election promise, the Secretary of State owes the public a £500 cut. Why have those bills gone up? It is because of the costs introduced by the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. Hon. Members do not have to take my word for it—they can just listen to Martin Lewis, who says that wholesale prices have plummeted but energy bills are up because there are countless costs landing on those bills thanks to the Secretary of State— [ Interruption. ] The hon. Member for Bracknell (Peter Swallow) wanted to talk about Martin Lewis a second ago but he does not want to hear about him now.
Among those costs are the cost of backing up wind farms and switching them off when it is too windy, all the grid costs that are multiple times higher because of the system that Labour is creating, the warm home discount that everyone is paying for through their bills, the carbon tax that has gone up by 70% this year, and the tax on gas to pay for hydrogen that is coming in January. I am not sure whether Labour Back Benchers know about all these costs, but they add up to hundreds of pounds extra. No wonder the Secretary of State never did a costing; he did not want anyone to know the truth. He is piling hundreds and hundreds of pounds on to energy bills, and now he wants a round of applause for this £150 off them.
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Lloyd Hatton (Labour)
Does the right hon. Lady not share the concerns already articulated by the Confederation of British Industry that simply to scrap the Climate Change Act and the important work of this Government in pursuing net zero targets would be a “backwards step”? That would actually be to the detriment of people’s energy bills and inward investment into our economy and would kill off jobs. Those are the words of the CBI, after all.
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17:45 Rushanara Ali (Labour)
More widely, in less than 18 months this Labour Government have secured three landmark trade deals, with £150 billion of inward investment from US companies, which is a solid vote of confidence in Labour’s economic plans; investment in the jobs of the future, in AI and green technologies; and clean energy projects set to create 400,000 jobs by 2030. That is thanks to the work of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, who has led the way on this agenda, in the last Labour Government as well as this one. We should be proud of the five cuts in interest rates since Labour came to power, and for the first six months of the year the UK was the fastest-growing economy in the G7.
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Gareth Thomas (Labour)
Lastly, I think we should consider in the coming months how to rebuild the fiscal space to fund the development assistance that gives us so much soft power. That assistance supports our security needs, and it is vital to the effectiveness of key parts of peacekeeping, global health and the empowerment of those whose prospects are being damaged by poverty, conflict and climate change. I look forward to supporting the Budget in the Division Lobby tomorrow.
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18:02 Gavin Williamson (Conservative)
I was not going to start by saying this, but I agree with the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, when—and I may misquote him slightly—he spoke about “decent jobs at decent wages.” I absolutely agree, and that is what we all want to see in every one of our constituencies right across the country. However, I do not believe that this Budget goes any way towards delivering those decent jobs at decent wages, and certainly not in Staffordshire.
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18:00 Callum Anderson (Labour)
It is a pleasure to contribute to this third day of the Budget debate, and a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), and I associate myself with the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas).
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero gave a tour de force on the various measures we are taking to reduce the cost of living, certainly with regard to energy bills and rail fares. My constituents in Buckingham and Bletchley will benefit from frozen fares, whether they travel from Bletchley or Milton Keynes to London Euston or to elsewhere in the country. When I was out knocking on doors with my right hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Emma Reynolds) on Saturday, people on the doorstep particularly welcome the frozen prescription charges, as well as the broader investment in the NHS. In Milton Keynes we have seen lots of investment over the past few years, enabled thanks to the fiscal responsibility of this Labour Government, such as the £500 million investment in the new hospital in Milton Keynes. Just last week the Milton Keynes University hospital confirmed the construction of two new operating theatres, beginning early next year, all thanks to a Labour Government.
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18:19 Katie Lam (Conservative)
On Wednesday, the Chancellor said that energy prices were one of the greatest drivers of the rising cost of living. She accepted that the cause of high energy bills must be tackled at source—in other words, at the supply side—and she recognised that the rush towards net zero is driving up energy bills for the British people. Thus far, the Chancellor and I are in agreement—stranger things have happened—but none of that seems to inform the Budget she actually served up. She promised to cut energy bills by shifting certain so-called green levies from bills on to general taxation, but that does not change the fact that the British people will still bear the costs of this Government’s net zero delusions. It is an attempt to hoodwink the public by shifting the costs from energy bills on to general tax bills.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho) has repeatedly made clear, the answer is not to rearrange how those costs fall, but to stop imposing those costs altogether. The pursuit of net zero is sadly leaving this country worse off and is making almost no impact on global emissions, as countries such as China and India race ahead to open more coal-fired factories. Even those who have supposedly done everything right are still being crushed. One business in my constituency has invested £1 million in renewables, but it has still seen its energy bills triple. For far too many businesses, those sorts of rises in their energy bills will be the final nail in the coffin.
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18:16 Katie Lam (Conservative)
The Chancellor gave no clear verdict on the nuclear regulatory review. Instead, she promised that the Government would set out their plans in three months’ time. That means more delay and uncertainty for companies that might want to invest in British nuclear, and ultimately more delay in reducing the bills of British families and British businesses. This is not a Budget that will make any improvement to the lives of ordinary, hard-working people. It is a Budget that bakes in net zero, which means more taxes on the British people, more businesses forced to close their doors, more reliance on other countries to keep the lights on, and more emissions exported to countries like China.
No country has ever succeeded without cheap, abundant energy. For businesses, high energy costs can be the difference between success and bankruptcy. For people working hard to make ends meet, high energy costs can be the difference between having money to set aside at the end of the month or needing to dip into savings. Punishing those businesses and those people even more in pursuit of arbitrary net zero targets is profoundly cruel. The immense damage wrought by the cost of living crisis cannot be overstated. High energy bills mean families forced to cut back on after-school clubs for their children, businesses forced to cut back on staff, and young people forced to delay buying their first home even further.
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18:18 Iqbal Mohamed (Other)
Does the hon. Lady agree that it is the linking of electricity prices and of renewable energy prices to gas that is creating these high energy prices, and that de-linking them would immediately cut prices for the consumer?
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18:18 Katie Lam (Conservative)
The Conservatives’ cheap energy plan will save households hundreds of pounds and offers a much-needed lifeline to British industry. I very much hope that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero will adopt at least some of its measures.
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Chris Coghlan (Liberal Democrat)
I urge the Government to invest £5 billion in public R&D in our leading industries, such as finance, film, defence, healthcare and renewable energy. Then it might be possible to turn our country into one of the fastest-growing advanced economies in the world.
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Barry Gardiner (Labour)
As a result of those emissions, global mean temperatures have risen by nearly 1.5°C. That is the level that we know gives us only a 50% chance of avoiding dangerous climate change. What does dangerous climate change actually mean? It means the systematic collapse of our economy. It means refugees fleeing parts of the world where life has become impossible because of temperatures persistently above 40°C, drought and failing crops. It means unprecedented societal chaos as supply chains fail and competition for food turns to violence. It means war.
What the Government have failed to understand is that they cannot weigh up the cost of addressing climate change against the cost to the economy, when the whole economy depends on keeping climate change under control, so the first budget we need is a global carbon budget that sets the quantity of CO 2 that we can emit if we are to meet our Paris temperature agreements. If we are to stay below the 2°C threshold, we have only 530 billion metric tonnes of CO 2 that we can release into the atmosphere. That may sound a lot; in fact, it is only 13 years of emissions at their current rate. The budget to stay within 1.5°C is a lot worse: just 130 billion metric tonnes, which is just three years of emissions at today’s level.
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18:48 Barry Gardiner (Labour)
The Budget should have been bold. It should have put our country on a wartime footing with a national programme of retrofit, no new build that is not net zero in its embodied and operational carbon, a huge roll-out of public transport and a major programme of electrification. We have a huge majority, yet we act as though we are afraid of the power that we spent 14 years seeking.
Today, the green economy is growing three times faster than the rest of the UK economy. If growth truly is our ambition, it is in that clean, affordable and secure future that we should be investing. People often talk of a just transition. I prefer to talk of a bloody marvellous one. What’s not to like about warm homes with affordable energy; comfortable, efficient, speedy and reliable public transport; the creation of thousands of new jobs; decent air quality; a secure food system with reliable supply chains; and a stable geopolitical world? We live in an age of public sufficiency and private luxury, as Professor Kevin Anderson said last week at the national emergency briefing. A Budget that was adequate to the challenge we face would have turned that on its head, creating a society where every private home had what was sufficient and every public domain was one of luxury. That would be the just and equal society I came into the Labour party to create.
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Harriet Cross (Conservative)
One of the most incoherent, damaging and destructive decisions that the Government took last week was not to scrap the energy profits levy. The levy will destroy our oil and gas sector, as the Government have been told by so many sources, including the industry itself, the renewables industry, the unions and Offshore Energies UK. The Government know exactly the impact that keeping the EPL will have on jobs, investment, our supply chain and our transition to cleaner renewable energies.
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19:40 Rebecca Long-Bailey (Labour)
The same forward-thinking approach is needed on energy policy. Removing green levies from bills will bring welcome relief, but families still face high costs, while energy giants have made more than £125 billion in profits since 2020. The Government have an opportunity to ensure that the energy system works for the public good, and to consider windfall taxes, fair pricing and even forms of public ownership. A resilient, affordable green energy system would strengthen the whole economy.
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Graham Leadbitter (SNP)
On both those points, I absolutely do. The previous Government introduced the climate change targets, and they have now withdrawn from those. That is the last thing that the energy sector needs; we need investment in renewables.
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20:12 Grahame Morris (Labour)
I associate myself with the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster North (Ed Miliband) about the potential of the renewable energy sector. I want to give a shout-out to Power Roll in east Durham, and draw the House’s attention to how important it is that that business is supported to move into volume production, which could create many hundreds of jobs.
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20:15 Grahame Morris (Labour)
My hon. Friend is characteristically generous, and I appreciate his warm words. Many MPs representing coalfield constituencies will have cause for celebration. As chair of the coalfields group, I thank my right hon. Friends the Chancellor and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury for taking the time not only to listen but to understand the nature of this campaign over the past year. I also thank the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Chris McDonald)—he is a good friend—and his predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), for meeting coalfield MPs, trustees and dedicated campaigners over the past year and for understanding the strength of feeling on this issue.
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20:19 Seamus Logan (SNP)
Just today, there have been a further 100 job losses at Harbour Energy in Aberdeen. People I know in my constituency are going abroad to get contracts because they lost their jobs in Scotland. Ninety thousand oil and gas workers in the north-east are bitterly disappointed. Why? This Budget was a chance to secure their jobs and to secure £50 billion of potential investment supported by the renewables sector, which needs the skills base of our workers. The hon. Member for Salford (Rebecca Long Bailey) talked about banking. The four big banks made a £44 billion profit last year, and there is not a word about a windfall tax on them. This is the politics of madness. Forget investment in a just transition; this is industrial damage on a grand scale.
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Tom Collins (Labour)
I chair the all-party parliamentary group on hydrogen, and I welcome the climate change levy changes in this Budget that support hydrogen production, an area that is ripe for growth and well suited to the UK’s strengths, both industrially and geographically. In recent years, we have led the world technologically in this space. It offers real opportunities for us, if we have an ambitious plan. UK industry is not confined to city regions and clusters; it is in every town and every region. The UK energy system is being reconceived for resilience and sustainability, but we need new energy storage at large scale, and we will need much higher levels of dispatchable power than we have today. An ambitious vision for hydrogen, in which the Government directly invest in hydrogen, and actively lead a strategic roll-out of its storage and transmission, is a prerequisite for an industrial renaissance that the UK could have and deserves to have, so I look forward to the publication of the upcoming hydrogen strategy.
We cannot ignore the major disruptions sweeping the world. The climate crisis is a global emergency that demands urgent and assertive action, but there is also digitalisation. I cannot overstate the impact that the digital revolution is having. Debate on the Budget now takes place not only in echo chambers of opinion, but in echo chambers of reality, and people have completely different understandings of what is happening in our world and how it works. This new digital world means that our children are unsafe, and that all of us are unsafe from harmful or traumatic images and narratives, from addictive user interfaces in apps or websites, from personified artificial intelligence that encourages attachment —we cannot imagine the harms that could cause—and from algorithms that curate news, views and the voices that we hear, which reinforce bias and present misinformation as fact. These represent a fundamental societal threat that we can and must address in the same way that we address the risks of physical products. The Budget rightly increases taxes on online gambling, but we must do much more.
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20:54 Bobby Dean (Liberal Democrat)
Ultimately, this Government lack the ambition to rewire our economy. We need to stop capital pouring overseas by changing the incentives to invest in this country. We need to look at corporate governance and make sure that it serves the British economy well. We need to look at devolving real economic power, not a reorganisation of local government, and we need to stop triangulating between the people who think net zero is a good or bad thing and ensure that Britain can be a green superpower in the 21st century.
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Ellie Chowns (Green)
Analysis from the New Economics Foundation shows that, because of the Government’s decisions regarding the energy company obligation and the warm homes plan, the poorest households living in the coldest homes have now lost two thirds of the support they were due to receive for energy efficiency upgrades. When the UK has some of the worst-insulated homes in western Europe, we should be scaling home insulation up, not down, and using progressive taxation to pay for it. I am delighted that the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero is back in his place to hear me make these arguments.
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Ruth Cadbury (Labour)
I have some questions for the Secretary of State. What measures has the Department taken to assess the overall effectiveness of its EV policies? What impact assessment has been carried out in respect of EV taxation and subsequent displacement? How is the measure consistent with the Government’s agenda to decarbonise private transport? Is the Secretary of State planning to introduce a simple odometer check, which will carry with it all the risk and problems associated with fuel duty, or will she look at satellite-based tracking, which is more accurate and is based on equity, and which better manages the demands on our roads? It could be introduced for all vehicles on a non-mandatory basis, just as water metres were originally not mandatory.
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