Debate on the Address

That is an excellent point. Aha! I think my main point stands, in terms of that dramatic front page in The Independent. I cannot understand why the Prime Minister has chosen to isolate himself on this point on a measure on which, presumably, he is trying to generate cross-party consensus given its importance. Certainly that has been the rhetoric. I am interested to see whether the rhetoric on this will match that on other policy issues and the Government's attitude to other matters. Let us take for example globalisation, for which the Prime Minister is a huge enthusiast, as is the Chancellor. I have here a press cutting which describes what is happening at present in Annan in south-west Scotland. Young's Seafood is cutting 120 jobs in a processing plant. It processes Scottish langoustines—prawns to the uninitiated. We are now calling them Scottish langoustines because they command a substantial premium in the French and Spanish markets. The proposal is to send 600 tonnes of langoustine each year to Thailand, where they will be processed, and then sent back to Scotland for packaging and sent to France or Spain and other lucrative markets. That is the impact of globalisation and the fact that people in Thailand are paid 25p an hour. The carbon impact of what seems a crazy policy is that 47,500 tonnes of carbon dioxide are produced by each shipment that goes across the planet and back again to be re-exported. I have this question for the Government. In their enthusiasm for globalisation, it should be accepted that some aspects of globalisation will conflict with carbon emissions targets aimed at saving the planet. And in a market that is created—[Interruption.] I can hear another correction coming from the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West (Rob Marris). And in a market that is created in these matters, the Government must have some kind of—in the Prime Minister's old phrase—joined-up government. I want to offer a couple of additional illustrations of this point. The hon. Member for West Bromwich, West spoke about the carbon market and carbon abatement. At present there is the potential for the north-east of Scotland, and indeed the north-east of England, to lead technology on carbon capture and carbon abatement. At Peterhead we have a billion-dollar project that is just awaiting the signal on how carbon reduction will be treated within the climate change or other legislation. That is a project for the separation of methane and carbon dioxide into hydrogen, with a hydrogen clean-burn power station—not a hydrogen nuclear station but a hydrogen gas station: the onset of the hydrogen economy. The carbon dioxide would then be put back into an oilfield in the North sea, getting 20 million barrels of extra oil out of the oilfield. It is a billion-dollar investment that would impress even the hon. Member for Wolverhampton, South-West. That project is available, awaiting a signal. It is world-leading; and perhaps, because carbon capture offers immediately huge substantial gains in terms of carbon reduction, it might even be planet-saving. I just hope that the policy of climate change is carried through into all aspects of Government policy. Presently, for example, Ofgem charges for electricity connections to the grid—we are not talking about transport costs—at the rate of £20 or more a kilowatt in the north of Scotland where the opportunities for alternative renewables and carbon capture technology are huge. In inner London, where the opportunities for windmills and other alternative energies might exist but are much fewer, there is a £6 a kilowatt subsidy because Ofgem is keen to encourage new power stations in inner London, despite the fact that resource economics tell us that vast opportunities lie elsewhere. It is another example to show that, if we want to seize the opportunities, Government policies must be connected or wired up properly.