Caroline Lucas: Will the Secretary of State give way?
Caroline Lucas: Will the Secretary of State say a little about hydrogen? As he will know, there is real concern about putting a hydrogen levy on household bills at a time when so many people are already struggling to pay those bills. Will he look again at where to put the funding for hydrogen? Secondly, will he accept that using hydrogen for households—for home heating—is very inefficient? It is...
Caroline Lucas: The Minister just said that the right to peaceful protest is sacrosanct and no one would seek to undermine it, but I put it to him that that is exactly what his Government have just done: Ministers are criminalising protest. Just because some people were allowed to protest, that does not mitigate against the fact that a number were not. Let me just correct him: those who were arrested and...
Caroline Lucas: This Government’s vile and immoral refugee ban Bill and the toxic language coming from the Home Office are not even dog-whistle politics; they are a giant hard-right foghorn, blasting out a poisonous “them and us” narrative. The Government plumbed new depths last week when the Minister for Immigration claimed that people trying to come to the UK “tend to have completely...
Caroline Lucas: The complacency that the Secretary of State is displaying is frankly shocking. Not one English river is classed as being in a healthy condition, none meet good chemical standards and few meet good ecological standards. The Conservatives have been in power for 13 years. That is a record of failure. In addition, dividends now average £1.6 billion a year, which is money going out of the system...
Caroline Lucas: The Minister is very generous in giving way again. I simply want to make the very obvious point that simply because oil and gas are extracted from the North sea, there is no guarantee that they will be used by people in the UK. They get sold on global markets at the highest price, so the argument that this is the best way to reach energy security is flawed. The best way to reach energy...
Caroline Lucas: I am delighted to have the best part of an hour and a half to talk about the electricity generator levy—[Interruption.] No, not really. I rise to speak in support of new clause 11, which would require the Government to conduct an assessment of the impact of the electricity generator levy on investment in renewable energy in the UK, exactly picking up on the point that was made by the...
Caroline Lucas: I am so fed up with this argument from the Government, because nobody is talking about turning off oil and gas tomorrow. We are talking about whether the world can sustain more new oil and gas, particularly from a country such as the UK, which is so blessed with alternatives. We were also one of the first countries to industrialise, so we have a greater responsibility to take a real lead on...
Caroline Lucas: Will the Minister give way?
Caroline Lucas: I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, which stands in my name and addresses the decarbonisation allowance first announced by the Chancellor in the autumn statement and now legislated for in this Bill. Although in principle the decarbonisation allowance may sound innocuous or even useful, it is in fact an outrageous subsidy that sees the taxpayer paying companies to decarbonise their...
Caroline Lucas: As well as the economic cost of the way that the windfall tax has been designed, does the shadow Minister agree that it has a massive climate cost, in the sense that we are incentivising oil and gas at exactly the time when we need to make the transition to green energy technologies?
Caroline Lucas: On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. At the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero oral questions this morning, the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) claimed that the Scottish Green party Minister Patrick Harvie had said: “oil and gas workers in Aberdeen should simply get on their bikes...
Caroline Lucas: indicated assent.
Caroline Lucas: One of the most effective and long-term ways of getting people’s energy bills down would be to invest in a comprehensive, street-by-street home insulation programme, which this Government are still failing to do. Research by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit shows that delays to legislating for minimum energy efficiency standards for the private rented sector could cost renters in...
Caroline Lucas: Just a week ago, the UN Secretary-General said we needed a “quantum leap” when it comes to climate action. This Government have laboured and, frankly, brought forth a mouse. There is no new funding, no street-by-street home insulation plan, no mandatory rooftop solar and no unblocking of onshore wind. Instead, Ministers are gambling with technologies that are slow and costly at best, and...
Caroline Lucas: What steps she is taking to improve public access to nature.
Caroline Lucas: As the Minister knows, goal 10 of the environmental improvement plan is to enhance engagement with the natural environment. Saving historic footpaths is a vital way of doing that, so it is a bit bizarre, given there is already a backlog of more than 4,000 applications waiting to be processed to save those footpaths, that the Government have reneged on their promise to scrap the deadline in...
Caroline Lucas: The hon. Lady is making an incredibly powerful case against this, frankly, rotten and disgusting Bill. Does she agree that without her amendment 186, clause 2 effectively shuts down pretty much the whole UK asylum system? It captures nearly all asylum applicants—not just those who come by boat but the nearly half of all people who do not arrive that way. Without her amendment, the asylum...
Caroline Lucas: Poole harbour is a haven for wildlife and is home to rare species, so this spill is incredibly saddening. The Minister says she wants to ensure the disaster is not repeated, but she must know that where there is drilling, there is some spilling. There have been a staggering 721 oil spills in the North sea alone over the past three years. Just last month, the Planning Inspectorate overturned...
Caroline Lucas: I go back to the fuel duty issue, because I know the right hon. Lady has been concerned about climate change, at least in the past. The freeze in the fuel duty has meant that emissions have gone up by 5%, while the Treasury has lost out on billions in funding. If she really wants to help hard-pressed drivers and others, why not look at a wealth tax, for example? A wealth tax on the 1% richest...
