Source: BBC Radio 4: Any Questions
URL: N/A
Date: 22/11/2013
Event: Sarah Wollaston: "we are losing many people around the issue of green subsidies"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4
People:
Jonathan Dimbleby: Could we go to our next, please?
Adam Clements: Adam Clements. David Cameron once campaigned under the slogan "Vote Blue, Go Green". Has he just gone yellow?" [Audience applause.]
Jonathan Dimbleby: He is alleged to have said, by a leading Conservative - but the term is not recognised at No.10 - "We've got to get rid of all this green " - and the word he used, it's after, well, it's coming up to 9 o'clock - "all this green crap", in quotes. Um, Steve Webb.
Steve Webb: When they said this about "Vote Blue, Get [sic] Green", someone pointed out that the only way to make the blues green is to mix in the yellows. And that's what happening in the Coalition, at every point of crunch. You've got - I suspect, when David Cameron was hugging huskies, he kind of meant it. But there are so many in his parties [sic] who don't, you know - climate change deniers, whatever you call them - and that is why, you know - people sometimes say "Okay, you've got two different political parties in a Coalition - give me an example of a difference the Liberal Democrats make". And this is the classic issue, whereby a straight Conservative government would have been rowing back from almost all green initiatives, would at the first sign of protest, would have been pulling back from this stuff. And it's absolutely vital that we don't do that.
And, on the specific issue of the green element in fuel bills, there's two separate issues. There's: should we be spending money on insulating people's homes, giving us some renewable infrastructure? Absolutely. Is the only way to do it flat-rate increases on everybody's fuel bills? Probably not. So if we can pay for it in a different way, a fairer way, so that it's not the same amount for a poor pensioner and a rich banker, then that's fine by me. But we have to spend that money, because without it, what future do we have?
Jonathan Dimbleby: Are you saying that - the Labour Party is offering, when it's come to power, a freeze on fuel bills - are you saying that that element which is green in those fuel bills should be taken out and paid for by taxation?
Steve Webb: So if we can find a way of spending that money on those vital things, and doing it in a more progressive way, I'm all in favour of that. But, in a sense, the so-called "20-month freeze", whereby the energy companies jack up their prices beforehand and jack up their prices afterwards, I don't think fools anybody.
Jonathan Dimbleby: George Monbiot.
George Monbiot: Well, now of course there's some dispute about whether he actually said it or not. But it's one of those phrases which, whether he said it or not, actually encapsulates the drift of government policy, which has slowly been picking apart all of its green pledges. And it's been done in the most disgracefully underhand way. I mean, I know he's been holding the line against a bunch of really quite Neanderthal climate change deniers on the backbenches, and to some extent it's been surprising how long this process has taken. But George Osborne has made it absolutely clear that whatever Cameron - whatever words Cameron uses, Osborne wants to get rid of what he thinks of as "all that green crap". He just doesn't get it at all. And I don't think Cameron really gets it either.
And let's - you know, let's take a look at what he has slagged off, in Parliament - you know, he didn't use those words, but in Parliament he made it perfectly clear that he is against those green components of energy bills. Well, they are just 10% of the rise in bills this year has been caused by the green taxes within the bill. And yet we see the Conservatives - you know, and not always fought off successfully by the LibDems - concentrating on that 10%, which is the only 10% which actually does anyone any good, except for the fat cats who are running the energy companies. And, rather than focusing on the 90%, which is caused by having this tollbooth economy, where you've set up these private oligarchies where companies, very few in number, are allowed basically to put a turnpike across public services and to say "Unless you pass by this turnpike and pay us this vast amount of money, you're not going to get them". Instead of focusing on that -
Jonathan Dimbleby: You don't buy into the fact - the claim - that, first of all, their shareholders are only getting 5% - a) - and b), that the money that they are - as it were, in your terms - raking in is required, if there is going to be investment in any form of energy that will keep the lights on, in the years ahead.
George Monbiot: It's not - it's not justified. The price rises that we've seen, with the big energy companies, are simply not justified by the actual costs that they're paying out, either in investment, or in the wholesale price of gas, or especially for the green costs. And what's being done, at the moment, is that these green costs have been singled out in order, it seems to me, to partly to appease those backbenchers but partly also in the cause of shifting the blame away from this situation, which both the Labour government and the Coalition government have effectively endorsed, which is to allow this small number of private companies to put an essential public service under lock and key.
Jonathan Dimbleby: Sarah Wollaston.
Sarah Wollaston: Well, I'm very proud to represent a constituency in Totnes which was the home of the Transition Towns movement, and so I'm not a climate change denier, I think not only have a problem with climate change, long term we have a problem with peak oil, and fracking will only be a temporary relief for that. But the point is, we have to take the public with us. And I think that we are losing many people around the issue of green subsidies, where it's seen to be distorting, where, for example, people tell me that they see that if they're in fuel poverty, they're subsidising wealthy people, because they can afford the infrastructure and get the benefits. And also I'm having communities in my constituency, like a very small community called Diptford, surrounded on all sides by really unpleasant industrial-scale, acre upon acre of solar farms, really just industrialising the countryside. And again, that's perhaps where the subsidies are distorting what people intended to happen, from green energy. But I'd say: judge us on our record. In 2010 we were generating 6.8% of our electricity from renewables, that's now 11.3%, with record investment in the sector.
George Monbiot: But you're still missing the targets by a mile.
Sarah Wollaston: But the point is that there has been record investment, but we have to take people with us. And if we lose the support of people on this, because they see that their communities are just being surrounded by industrial-scale developments, where all the profits for that are going offshore, I'm afraid we lose people. And so there has to be a balance. And I, like Steve, feel eventually I'd like to take it out of consumers' bills and actually fund it in another way, because I think at the moment there are many people in fuel poverty who feel that the way these subsidies are working is unfair. So let's get it right, let's take people with us.
George Monbiot: Sarah, you're not going to take people with you. You're not going to take people with you if the Prime Minister is using the ECO part of the fuel bill as his way of deflecting attention from the energy companies, which is what's happening at the moment.
Sarah Wollaston: I don't - you know, I'm sorry, I really disagree with you there. And I think the point is that the main part of your fuel bill is the international - the international cost. And for it to - for there to be this implication that you can somehow say that doesn't matter -
Chris Bryant: It's not, Sarah. It's not.
Sarah Wollaston: We know it's a big con, it's an absolutely outrageous con.
Chris Bryant: It's a virtual cartel.
Sarah Wollaston: And I say let's shift it out of those green subsidies, let's take that out of energy bills so it stops that distorting effect on on the fuel-poor. Let's take people with us, on this. But let's not pretend that you can direct the international energy markets to [inaudible] crisis [?], it can't happen.
Jonathan Dimbleby: Leave aside, leave aside for the moment, Chris, if you would there. Do you accept - we know that you've got a different policy - do you accept that it's better that the green levy should be in general taxation rather than in the bills, so that it is, in Steve Webb's view, more progressive?
Chris Bryant: Well, it depends what you're cutting elsewhere, in what other budget you're going to cut, isn't it.
Jonathan Dimbleby: Yeah, but his own turf [?]. If it was, as it were, was cost control -
Chris Bryant: Well, I don't think you can ever do that. I don't think you can ever take one policy without considering in relate- basically, saying you're going to take several million pounds out of some other budget, where you're going to find it from somewhere else. So you're making it a greater priority than something else. And my concern is if you get - if you get rid of the system that we have at the moment, which means that money is put into insulation and energy conservation in some of the poorest houses in the land, there's a real danger that you'll completely undercut that industry, you'll destroy it - it's having a difficult time, as it is - and, on top of that, you'll make life more difficult for some of those people who live in the most difficult-to-heat homes. So I'm not convinced by that argument, but I think there's a bigger problem here, which is that people like Sarah and David Cameron are trying to blame it all on these taxes, and then, by implication, trying to say that's all Labour's fault, because we did this, and, frankly, it's all a terrible mistake -
Sarah Wollaston: You [?] didn't invest at all.
Chris Bryant: The bigger increase - the bigger increase has been - by virtue of these, the green taxes - has been since 2010, since the ones that were introduced then. But more importantly, I just don't think the industry works in the interests of ordinary people. It is a virtual cartel.
George Monbiot: So why don't you - and Chris, Chris, so why don't you do, in that case, what 70% of the people in this country want you to do, which is to say -
Chris Bryant: A price freeze.
George Monbiot: No, no, no. Which is to say we're going to renationalise them.
Chris Bryant: Well...
George Monbiot: I mean, look, why do we, on this question -
Chris Bryant: Well, because I think -
George Monbiot: We've got the country in one place, we've got the country in one place, and we've got Labour, the Conservatives and the LibDems all in a completely different place, so terrified of the corporations, that you won't actually stand up -
Chris Bryant: No, it's not about - no -
George Monbiot: - and give people what they want.
Chris Bryant: No, my argument would be that David Cameron is frightened of standing up to the corporations, which is why he won't even entertain the idea of a price freeze, which is a perfectly legitimate, sensible thing to do, whilst we re-sort the whole of the industry so that it doesn't and can't continue to operate as a cartel.
George Monbiot: Chris - Chris -
Chris Bryant: Some people have said that 5% is a perfectly decent amount of money, but I -
George Monbiot: Chris -
Chris Bryant: - just - just let me finish, briefly, 5% is a perfectly decent amount for them to be making - well, Tesco gets 5% as well. I would say that Tesco has too much power over consumers, and sometimes you have to stand up to the big companies.
Steve Webb: I quite agree, it is a kind of cartel. Ed Miliband asked us to vote for him, now, because he's going to fix it. He was the Secretary of State for Energy.
Chris Bryant: Yeah, I agree, and the way that -
Steve Webb: So why didn't he fix it?
Chris Bryant: - the way that it's were [?] means now that we've got to make sure... Whoever understands any of the complex tariffs? When you read - when they send you their tariff -
Sarah Wollaston: That's why - that's why we're going to make people [?], put them on the lowest [?].
Chris Bryant: - you have to have a far simpler system. You've got to have a system that doesn't mean that they -
Jonathan Dimbleby: Okay.
Chris Bryant: - can ramp up their prices, regardless of the international market, and regardless of what it does to consumers. [Several people are trying to speak.]
Jonathan Dimbleby: Sarah Wollaston first, and then George Monbiot.
Sarah Wollaston: I mean, the point is that that's why we need energy companies to put people on the lowest tariffs. But the other problem with an artificial price freeze is that actually that the bigger players will be able to absorb it, but the smaller players, the ones who are actually - you know, you can switch to, and are trying to drive prices down - they'll be lost completely. And that's the real danger here. I'm afraid it is an absolute con. It's lovely - we'd all love it in theory -
Chris Bryant: It's not a con.
Sarah Wollaston: - it's a con, it will not work, and it's just absolutely simplistic.
Jonathan Dimbleby: Just - just a minute, there was an article in the Guardian today, which has been generally not unsympathetic to the idea of a price freeze, in which, at length, a City voice is quoted saying that because of the price freeze, it will be impossible to raise funds in the City for the companies to invest, to protect us from a collapse of the power supplies in the years ahead.
Chris Bryant: I think there will be people who will scaremonger in that way, and that's -
Steve Webb: It's already happening.
Chris Bryant: - that's the route -
Jonathan Dimbleby: It's already happening.
Chris Bryant: - the Prime Minister has gone down, in his argument. I just disagree. I think it's time we said: this is a virtual cartel. We need to reorganise the industry and, in the meantime, we're going to have a price freeze, for a fixed period of time - it gives certainty to the market, which presently isn't even there.
George Monbiot: I think this is a classic example of what happens when you privatise essential services, which people have no choice but to use. [Audience applause.] And what I'm hearing - and what I'm hearing on the panel is the left-hand glove puppet arguing with the right-hand glove puppet. And none of you are turning round and facing the fact that these corporations are simply too powerful, because of the basic structure of the market that you have created, that New Labour created, the Tories have endorsed - we see it right across the public services, and you are not fighting it, because you are too frightened of corporate power.
Jonathan Dimbleby: We will leave that, there, with a reminder of the "Any Answers" number - 03 700 100 444 - and go to our next, please.