Energy and Climate Change and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

It is a privilege to participate in what has been a popular and very interesting debate. I begin by trying to strike a note of empathy and understanding with the Government Front Benchers, because the past 12 years have, indeed, thrown up a complex, dynamic and changing energy scenario to which Ministers, policy makers and regulators have had to respond. At times, the challenges have appeared extremely difficult, and the UK faces a number of specific and profound tests. In an excellent speech, the former Minister, the right hon. Member for Croydon, North (Malcolm Wicks), described very well one of the biggest shifts in the past 12 years. He explained how the UK has moved from being largely self-sufficient in energy to being increasingly reliant on imports. I shall not rehearse all the data to which he referred, but he described them very well. I shall, instead, draw the House's attention to the change in the gas situation, because the move to import reliance has been very pronounced, and this year the UK will probably rely on imported sources for about 30 per cent. of its gas requirements. The UK relies on imported sources for about two thirds of its domestic coal requirement. Linked to increased import reliance is, of course, energy security, and in this country that issue has received more attention in recent years than at any time since the pre-North sea oil days. The right hon. Gentleman's speech typified how, for some, energy security has a strong geopolitical dimension: it is about Russian pipelines and the stability of fuel supplies from the Gulf region. However, I urge caution on that paradigm. The former Minister described imported gas from Norway as good, democratic, human rights gas. He did not describe what imports from Russia or Qatar would be, but the House understood the implication. I urge caution on automatically regarding as inherently unstable imported energy from any country other than a stable western European democracy. The House should not forget that during the deepest, darkest days of the cold war, when millions of troops and missiles faced each other across central Europe, the USSR still supplied gas for central and western Europe. In fact, Russia, formerly as the Soviet Union, has proved itself to be an extremely stable supplier of gas, notwithstanding the recent dispute with Ukraine, which has more to do with internal politics going back to pre-Soviet Union days than with Russia's wider approach to using its domestic energy resources for geopolitical gain. Much more immediately, energy security is about the resilience of the UK's downstream infrastructure. It is about the vulnerability that was highlighted in 2000, and at intervals since then, in supplies of refined products as a result of blockades or industrial action at oil refineries, leading to panic buying and shortages of petrol and diesel on forecourts. It is about the resilience of the supply network in the face of events such as the explosion at the Buncefield depot, although the supply network coped very well with that disastrous event. More fundamentally, it is about human error and technical failure. Keeping the lights on is as much about bringing new capacity on stream in a timely way as it is about geopolitical developments. Of course, energy security is also about how well the internal EU gas market functions. Recent cold winters have demonstrated that it does not currently function in a way that is particularly helpful for the UK. The Government should be disappointed that they have not achieved more in encouraging European counterparts to move forward faster with liberalising the gas markets. The most profound shift that has occurred during the past 12 years in the lifetime of these recent Labour Governments has been the emergence of the climate change agenda—a game-changing issue—and the rise of the imperative to reduce the growth of, and if possible reverse, the amount of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. That has been a major shift in the backdrop against which Ministers have had to frame policy. I empathise with and understand the challenges that Ministers have been up against, which include dealing with the drivers of energy policy, market efficiency, security of supply, climate change, and fuel poverty. Those elements do not always hang easily together, and sometimes they conflict, so coherent policy making in this environment is no easy task. However, there my sympathy with Ministers ends. As my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) said, some of the changes that we have been discussing were entirely predictable; indeed, they were predicted many years ago. A more purposeful and courageous Government could have made much more progress on these issues during the past 12 years. During that period, what was required was stable, coherent policy making, strong departmental leadership, and clear and predictable signals going to the marketplace and to industry. What have we had instead? We have had 15 Energy Ministers averaging a span of nine months each in office. We have had two White Papers and a huge number of consultations and reviews. We have had departmental changes, with the alphabet soup of DTI, DBERR and DECC. We have had spectacular policy U-turns, most fundamentally on new nuclear build and on whether new coal-fired power stations should be given the go-ahead without being carbon capture ready. The past 12 years have been wasted, characterised by delays, policy confusion, and the lack of courage of a Government who have at times talked the talk, with good language about the need for diversity of energy supplies and the need for a strong domestic production component. The fruit of those 12 years of dithering and confusion is that we are becoming more reliant than ever on imported natural gas. In his excellent speech, the former energy Minister, the right hon. Member for Croydon, North, warned about over-reliance on gas. Can he not see, however, that everything that has happened in the past 12 years—the delays, U-turns and policy confusion—has helped to bring about and exacerbate that situation? I remember a debate that we had last year on a similar set of issues in which he described energy security as""an increasingly important aspect of national security."" He said that he was not""relaxed about the national security implications"" of growing reliance on imports and that""the geopolitics of energy are not reassuring…That is why we need to be bold."—[Official Report, 22 January 2008; Vol. 470, c. 1461.]" But where is the boldness? If there had been boldness, we would be much further ahead on the new nuclear programme, we would see a much more balanced portfolio of renewables in the UK energy mix, with more wave and tidal power, and we would be much further ahead as regards gas storage. For the past four years I have tabled written and oral questions, and I have had a Westminster Hall debate on gas storage to try to tease out where the Government's thinking was going and what a sufficient level of gas storage would be for any given level of import reliance. If we are to be 50 per cent. reliant on imported gas, what is a prudent level of gas storage? I have not been able to get clear answers. I have been trying to find out whether the Government believe that the extra storage that we need can be delivered through the marketplace and through normal price signals, or whether we need non-market intervention through a supply stocking obligation. We are no further forward on that. If there had been boldness in the Government's approach to energy policy, we would be much further ahead on carbon capture and storage. I read the press release that the Department for Energy and Climate Change put out on the day of the Queen's Speech, stating that the Energy Bill would put the UK "at the forefront" of CCS development and that the UK would "lead the way". The Secretary of State said today that "already" funding had been allocated to the first project. It is actually European, not Westminster, funding. Frankly, I rank those statements alongside those that we have had from the Chancellor of the Exchequer about Britain leading the world out of recession. They are frankly delusional. We can look around the world and see what other countries have been doing on CCS technology. The hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) mentioned Total's work in Pau in France and the work in China, and we could mention what Exxon is doing in Wyoming in the USA. The Government should be far more modest and say that we need to work in partnership with other countries to bring forward CCS technology and make it commercially viable. We are in no position to say that we will be leading the way, because we will need to work in close co-operation with other countries. The very first parliamentary briefing note that I read after being elected in 2005 was one produced by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology on CCS. It had been published in March that year, before I was elected. It stated that it had been the subject of many Government reports and would be included in the forthcoming DTI carbon abatement technology strategy. That was five years ago—it has taken that long to get the first piece of legislation on the matter. We should be much further forward. I would have liked to speak about the future of the UK oil refining industry, but I have already written to your office, Mr. Speaker, to request time for a debate about that. I have severe concerns about some of the pressures on the nine remaining oil refineries in the UK, but we will leave that matter for another time.