Joy Morrissey

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Western; you were a wonderful shadow Minister, and it is fantastic to see you here today. I praise the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) for securing this debate. Hon. Members will rarely hear me heap praise on another political party, but at the risk of sounding as if I am working cross-party, I commend her for her excellent points. I do not think any of us can argue with some of the points highlighting the exorbitant cost of electricity bills here in the UK, and I find the regressive levies on electricity bills quite shocking. I thought the hon. Member’s innovative and positive policy solutions for reducing the cost of electricity bills were a welcome breath of fresh air; I hope that we can have further debates to bring forward those important points. I am more on the side of scrapping the levy, but I think we could come to a compromise about how to move forward. Many Liberal Democrat Members brought up the importance of community-owned energy schemes, and I advocate for Marlow community energy. It is important that hon. Members on both sides of the House are advocating for community energy schemes; that theme ran through most hon. Members’ contributions and is an important aspect of energy to take forward. It was wonderful to hear contributions from the hon. Member for Horsham (John Milne) about the great Horsham energy scheme and from the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) with his expertise in energy. It is always welcome when people bring their professional expertise to the House. We have also heard about the challenges in the highlands; I am sure that the Minister will be able to give further explanation about the plans and challenges for the highlands. Although they are producing renewable energy, and will probably produce even more, it will be interesting to see what capacity they will have. Of course, I would be remiss if I did not comment on the wonderful hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and everything that he contributes to this House—his wonderful contributions and his praise for Members across parties, not only in this debate, but in every single Adjournment debate. We are lucky to have such a wonderful and hard-working Member. The cost of energy affects every aspect of our economy; few things are more important for our economic success than the cost of energy. It affects the global competitiveness of our industries and therefore the number of jobs and our constituents’ energy bills. The new Labour Government promised to cut energy bills by £300 by 2030—we are still looking forward to that—to create 650,000 jobs from the £8 billion that they are taking off taxpayers for Great British Energy, and to launch the era of clean, cheap, home-grown power. After more than six months in Government, however, it is clear that they will make energy more expensive, with bills going up, not down, and that they risk shutting down swathes of British industry, with jobs lost to more polluting countries. In short, their energy plans will result in lower growth, fewer jobs, higher energy bills and more carbon in the atmosphere. We are constantly told by Ministers that renewables like wind and sun are the cheapest sources of energy, but that does not take account of the huge hidden costs of increased reliance on renewables. Again, I thank the hon. Member for Bath for bringing the important aspect of renewables to the forefront of the debate. Industry has already warned that trying to quickly produce a record amount of renewable capacity to meet the Government’s 2030 target will push up the price and cost to consumers. The cost also depends on the generating capacity that we need to have in the background to kick in to keep the lights on when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine.