PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

More documents

Recommendations

Info

85WS Written Ministerial Statements 26 MARCH 2013 Written Ministerial Statements 86WS available on the Government website, and I have also placed copies in the Library of the House. While we are specifically inviting the views of councils and political parties and certain other consultees listed in the document, comments from all are welcomed. The consultation ends on 13 May 2013. Firebuy Ltd The <strong>Parliament</strong>ary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Brandon Lewis): I have today deposited in the Library of the House a copy of the annual report and accounts of Firebuy Ltd for the financial years 2010 to 2012. Firebuy Ltd was an Executive non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Communities and Local Government. It was a public policy failure of the last Administration, on top of the failed FireControl programme. In October 2010 it was announced that Firebuy was closing as part of the Government’s wider review of arm’s length bodies. It went into voluntary liquidation and ceased trading on 13 July 2011. These accounts have been produced to report to <strong>Parliament</strong> for the expenditure incurred between 1 April 2010 to 13 July 2011 when Firebuy entered into liquidation and for all subsequent transactions up to 31 March 2012. In doing so my Department is fulfilling its intention to produce the accounts on Firebuy’s behalf in order to meet our commitments within managing public money and to be open and transparent. The directors of Firebuy were discharged prior to completion of these accounts in order to allow Firebuy to enter into liquidation and close. Retaining the directors while these accounts were being produced would have delayed closure and incurred additional costs to the public purse in respect of an organisation that had failed to deliver value for money. By closing Firebuy the Department has saved over £1 million per annum. We will be taking forward the lessons learnt from Firebuy’s operation (and the closure process) within my Department as well as disseminating across Whitehall. Ultimately procurement is a matter for fire and rescue authorities to lead on based on their individual requirements. They are best placed to develop relevant models that ensure best practice standards are adopted as appropriate, so that the financial and efficiency benefits of interoperability and collaborative procurement can be realised. Like other public bodies, fire and rescue authorities are encouraged to update the publicly available “Contracts Finder” with details of upcoming procurement to allow suppliers to access these opportunities and promote joined-up procurement. ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHANGE Electricity Market Reform (Contingencies Fund) The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey): The Department for Energy and Climate Change requires a cash advance of £6,580,000 from the Contingencies Fund for financial year 2013-14, to support urgent preparatory work to set up a contracts for difference (CFD) counterparty; to fund a panel of technical experts; and to fund external advisers in relation to transitional arrangements for early investors before parliamentary approval of both the specific enabling legislation and the necessary estimate. Contracts for difference (CFDS) are designed to ensure sufficient investment comes forward in time to replace old generating plant due to close from 2016 onwards with new low-carbon plant, thus ensuring continued security of supply for the UK and contributing significantly towards achievement of our legally binding EU renewable energy target. The Energy Bill will, subject to Royal Assent, provide for the establishment of a CFD counterparty. Work needs to commence now in order to ensure that the CFD counterparty is ready to sign and manage contracts for difference from mid-2014. The Energy Bill also makes provision for transitional arrangements to enable developers to take investment decisions, where required, ahead of full implementation of electricity market reform. The Department needs to engage external advisers before the Bill receives Royal Assent to support the negotiation of any such arrangements to ensure they represent value for money for consumers. Government have committed to setting up a panel of technical experts in order to scrutinise the analysis that will inform the first electricity market reform delivery plan. The first EMR delivery plan will be published in 2013 and set out the CFD strike prices for renewable technologies and the reliability standard for a capacity market. An advance is required to pay the panel for this work. Accordingly, parliamentary approval for additional resources of £6,580,000 for this new service will be sought in an estimate for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. Pending that approval, urgent expenditure estimated at £6,580,000 will be met by repayable cash advances from the Contingencies Fund. Low Carbon and Renewable Heat The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Mr Edward Davey): I am pleased to announce today the publication of DECC’s heat policy document “The Future of Heating: Meeting the Challenge”. I am also announcing the next steps for supporting renewable heating through the renewable heat incentive (RHI). Heating is an integral and critical part of our lives and our economy, worth billions of pounds to industry and an essential element of all of our lives. The vast majority of heating is currently supplied by fossil fuels, comprising around a third of the UK’s total greenhouse gas emissions, and more than half of the UK’s natural gas usage. We need a strategic plan if we are to change the way we heat our homes, businesses and industry in the decades ahead to meet our carbon emissions targets. That is why in March last year I published a vision for low-carbon heat. I made a commitment to produce a follow-up paper setting out policies and actions to help make the vision a reality. Today I am delivering on that commitment.
87WS Written Ministerial Statements 26 MARCH 2013 Written Ministerial Statements 88WS Today’s publication deals systematically with all the different heating requirements in the UK; and commits us to clear steps forward. To meet our long-term climate change target, we are going to have to change the way we generate, distribute and use heat in buildings and industry. This needs to be delivered in a way that is fair and affordable, and maximises benefits to the economy in terms of jobs, growth and investment. My Department has been engaging with a range of organisations in the public and private sectors, from business to consumer organisations, from local authorities to research establishments to develop these new proposals. Last year’s document contained questions to which we received over 150 responses covering the domestic, commercial and industrial sectors. I would like to thank all those who submitted a formal response. Heat for industry I believe that there is a great opportunity for UK industry to become more efficient, save carbon and prosper in a low-carbon future, provided it looks ahead and prepares now. Different industry sectors face very different challenges. The key to greater efficiency and lower emissions lies in the nature of the particular industrial processes employed in each sector. So with the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, my Department will work with industry over the next two years to develop a low-carbon “road map” for each industrial sector for the long term, focusing on the sectors that use the greatest amount of heat and represent the greatest carbon emissions. Through closer working with the companies themselves, we aim to understand more about how energy is used in each of these sectors and how it can be decarbonised. Heat networks Heat networks will be an important part of our low-carbon future—with the potential to provide heat to dense urban areas at a lower cost and with lower emissions. I am today announcing support to promote their deployment. To overcome the initial hurdle of heat network development, DECC will provide £6 million over the next two years. This will help authorities to carry out heat network planning and development, bringing forward projects to the stage where they are suitable for investment by the green investment bank and commercial lenders. I will also establish a heat networks delivery unit to support local authorities in developing heat networks. This added capacity and expertise will supplement project teams in individual authorities—by sharing best practice, and identifying and tackling barriers to development to deliver a step change in heat network deployment. Renewable heat incentive The Government continue to make progress towards finalising all the details of the domestic RHI scheme and the expansion of the non-domestic RHI—the first scheme of its kind in the world. We intend to announce the final details of the domestic and expansions to the non-domestic RHI in summer 2013 and open the schemes for payment from spring 2014. To provide continued support to the domestic renewable heat market in the interim period we will extend the renewable heat premium payment scheme for a further year to March 2014 with the same level of support as in 2012-13. This will not affect current application deadlines, but will allow for new applications to come forwards. The non-domestic RHI has been available for just over one year. In response to uptake of the policy and stakeholder feedback, my Department has looked at the evidence on the cost data and heat usage assumptions used to set the level of tariffs when the scheme was launched, alongside the level of uptake so far under the scheme. I concluded that some new input assumptions should now be adopted and my Department is working to identify what impacts this will have on tariffs. Later this spring, I propose to launch a short consultation on some tariff changes and to confirm our decisions in the autumn. We are progressing this work as quickly as possible. Subject to the necessary approvals and acceptable modelling outputs, I expect the outcome of this review to come into force by spring 2014. Where tariffs increase as a result of this review, it is DECC’s intention that installations accredited from 21 January 2013—when the early tariff review was first announced—would also benefit from that increase. Where there is compelling evidence, I expect to consult on increased tariffs for some technologies and to leave other tariffs unchanged via this review process. The degression mechanism the Government announced in February will be used to reduce tariffs if required, according to our policy for budget management. Where we consulted on introducing new technologies into the scheme in September, we will provide an update on modelled tariffs as part of the consultation. However, decisions on their inclusion in the scheme and the final tariff level will be announced in the summer in the Government’s response to the September 2012 consultation. The tariffs and technologies affected are summarised on the DECC website. BUSINESS, INNOVATION AND SKILLS Agriculture and Fisheries Council The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr Owen Paterson): I attended the Agriculture and Fisheries Council on 18 and 19 March in Brussels. Richard Lochhead MSP and Michelle O’Neil MLA also attended. The main business of the Council was to agree Council’s position on the four regulations which set out the rules for the common agricultural policy (CAP) over the 2014-20 financial period; and agreement was reached on this late on Tuesday evening. I am pleased to report that many of the key negotiating objectives for the UK were secured. I worked closely with all the devolved Administrations, and as a result we successfully secured key changes to address concerns for Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales on issues such as internal convergence—the rules governing the move from historically based to area-based payments for those regions which have not already achieved that transition—and the designation of areas of natural constraint; and in particular, a change which was designed to clarify that implementation decisions on all aspects of the CAP can be taken at regional level. We will continue to represent the interests of the whole of the
Page 1 and 2:
Tuesday Volume 560 26 March 2013 No
Page 3 and 4:
1449 26 MARCH 2013 1450 House of Co
Page 5 and 6:
1453 Oral Answers 26 MARCH 2013 Ora
Page 7 and 8:
Page 9 and 10:
Page 11 and 12:
Page 13 and 14:
Page 15 and 16:
1473 Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundati
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 22 and 23:
1487 26 MARCH 2013 Rail Franchising
Page 24 and 25:
1491 Rail Franchising 26 MARCH 2013
Page 26 and 27:
Page 28 and 29:
Page 30 and 31:
1503 UK Border Agency 26 MARCH 2013
Page 32 and 33:
1507 UK Border Agency 26 MARCH 2013
Page 34 and 35:
1511 26 MARCH 2013 Points of Order
Page 36 and 37:
1515 UK Elected Representatives 26
Page 38 and 39:
1519 Business without Debate 26 MAR
Page 40 and 41:
1523 Flood Insurance 26 MARCH 2013
Page 42 and 43:
Page 44 and 45:
Page 46 and 47:
Page 48 and 49:
Page 50 and 51:
Page 52 and 53:
Page 54 and 55:
1551 Easter Adjournment 26 MARCH 20
Page 56 and 57:
Page 58 and 59:
Page 60 and 61:
Page 62 and 63:
Page 64 and 65:
Page 66 and 67:
Page 68 and 69:
Page 70 and 71: 1583 Easter Adjournment 26 MARCH 20
Page 82 and 83: 1607 Energy Infrastructure (UK Supp
Page 84 and 85: 1611 Energy Infrastructure (UK Supp
Page 86 and 87: 419WH Munitions Workers 26 MARCH 20
Page 96 and 97: 439WH Fetal Anti-convulsant Syndrom
Page 98 and 99: 443WH Fetal Anti-convulsant Syndrom
Page 100 and 101: 447WH 26 MARCH 2013 HMRC Closures 4
Page 102 and 103: 451WH HMRC Closures 26 MARCH 2013 H
Page 104 and 105: 455WH HMRC Closures 26 MARCH 2013 H
Page 106 and 107: 459WH HMRC Closures 26 MARCH 2013 4
Page 108 and 109: 463WH Bee Health 26 MARCH 2013 Bee
Page 110 and 111: 467WH Bee Health 26 MARCH 2013 468W
Page 112 and 113: 471WH [Steve Webb] Under-Occupancy
Page 114 and 115: 475WH [Steve Webb] Under-Occupancy
Page 116 and 117: 77WS Written Ministerial Statements
Page 129 and 130: 997W Written Answers 26 MARCH 2013
Page 171 and 172:
1081W Written Answers 26 MARCH 2013
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
Page 181 and 182:
Page 183 and 184:
Page 185 and 186:
Page 187 and 188:
Page 189 and 190:
ORAL ANSWERS Tuesday 26 March 2013
Page 191 and 192:
Col. No. INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT.
Page 193:
Volume 560 Tuesday No. 137 26 March
show all

PARLIAMENTARY DEBATES - United Kingdom Parliament

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?