Peter Aldous has welcomed the announcement from the Government that young people across Waveney are to benefit from the rebuilding and renovation of youth services in some of the country’s most disadvantaged areas, as beneficiaries of the first major tranche from the Government’s Youth Investment Fund have been announced.
The Seagull Theatre in Lowestoft is set to be transformed by £518,000 in funding as part of a £90 million investment into 43 youth centres from the Government. This comes from the £300 million of total funding for the Youth Investment Fund.
Small community youth spaces, youth centres large and small, and activity centres will all benefit from this fund.
The transformative fund launched in 2022 by the Government will pave the way for up to 300 youth facilities to be built or refurbished over the next three years in areas where need is high and existing youth provision is low.
One million extra hours of youth services will be provided in anti-social behaviour hotspots across the country as part of the Government’s Anti-Social Behaviour Action Plan through an £11 million investment.
This fund also constitutes part of the Government’s plan to tackle anti-social behaviour and help young people become active members of their local community. The Youth Investment Fund will increase the number of young people accessing regular, positive activities by 45,000 per year, support their wellbeing and give them opportunities to develop vital skills for life.
The Government has also approved £16.9 million of funding to expand access to uniformed youth groups, aiming to create 20,000 new places for young people aged between 10-18 across the country. This funding will also be focused in areas where young people are most at risk of being drawn into anti-social behaviour.
Commenting, Peter Aldous said:
“I’m thrilled to be supporting the Seagull Theatre to help young people across Lowestoft. This investment will allow the Seagull Theatre to offer more activities and opportunities for young people here in Lowestoft.
“I am confident this fund will enormously benefit the mental and physical wellbeing of our young people.”
Commenting, Culture Secretary Lucy Frazer, said:
“I want every young person to have the opportunity to access the kinds of life-changing activities which expand their horizons and allow them to develop vital life skills.
“The National Youth Guarantee will provide these opportunities and support young people with access to regular club activities, adventures away from home and volunteering opportunities.
“We are supporting this today with an investment to create or renovate spaces for youth clubs and activities to support opportunities for thousands of young people across the country who would otherwise miss out.”
Peter Aldous welcomes the Chancellor’s policies to reduce inflation, cut Government debt and initiatives to help people back into work and £4.3 million for the Lowestoft Seafront Parade, but calls for more to be done to support people and businesses impacted by Covid and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, to help businesses thrive and to support levelling-up in the east of England.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bradford South (Judith Cummins). My right hon. Friend the Chancellor was bequeathed a difficult immediate inheritance last October, and in his autumn statement delivered on 17 November he took the first steps towards putting the nation’s finances back on a secure footing, laying the foundations for sustainable long-term economic growth. He is to be commended for what he has done in the past four months with policies that will significantly reduce inflation and cut Government spending on debt interest. His initiatives announced today on childcare, the abolition of the lifetime allowance, universal credit reform and supporting the disabled into work are to be welcomed, as are his announcements on investment allowances and tax breaks. However, in the aftermath of covid, there are ingredients to economic growth that are missing and it is important that this Budget is not the endgame but instead the first instalment of a plan for growth, with parts 2 and 3 being delivered in the autumn and this time next year.
I shall highlight three themes that I believe it is important to keep firmly in mind as we hopefully move on from the seismic shock that covid delivered and the devastating and heartbreaking ongoing impact of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. First, it is important to continue to support—albeit hopefully on a reducing scale—those people and businesses who have been most impacted by that cruel double whammy. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor is right to extend the energy price guarantee scheme for three months and to introduce the energy bills discount scheme for businesses. He is also right to support local councils with their leisure centre costs, and I welcome the support for the charitable and the third sectors.
My right hon. Friend needs to keep the situation under review, however, and I suggest that he needs to pay particular regard to the following groups. The first is the disabled, and I am thinking particularly of those with neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis and motor neurone disease, who have been seriously impacted by the dramatic increases in energy costs. We must not forget the ongoing challenges that they face. In the longer term, it may well be appropriate to introduce a social tariff to support such vulnerable groups, and I would urge the Government to look closely at how that might work. I am also conscious of the needs of businesses that face particular challenges. I have in mind such sectors as metal finishing, which use large amounts of electricity. They are losing work overseas and are not as yet included in the Government’s support for energy-intensive industries. I urge the Chancellor to keep that under review.
Secondly, it is important to put in place measures that enable businesses to thrive. The tax breaks and offsetting arrangements that my right hon. Friend has announced today are welcome, but they are only a start. In the autumn statement, he announced major reforms to business rates, but this work needs to be continued. In the short term, the Non-Domestic Rating (Lists) Bill must be introduced as quickly as possible, and in the longer term, work should continue so that business rates return to being a much smaller component part of a business’s operating costs.
The energy sector is a vital part of the UK economy. From a local perspective in East Anglia, there are significant opportunities for generating prosperity and jobs, ensuring our energy security and driving forward on the road to net zero. There is enormous potential in offshore wind, nuclear at Sizewell and the oil and gas sector, through the North sea transition deal, which also paves the way for hydrogen and carbon capture and storage, on which we did get some good news earlier.
If we are to realise the potential of this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, it is vital that we reform our fiscal and regulatory regime, so that investment does not go overseas, whether to the US, Europe or beyond. The Chancellor has made a start in meeting that challenge and I look forward to the Government’s clean energy reset, which must enable the UK to retain its position as a global leader in the energy sector.
To achieve long-term economic growth and to enable people to realise their full potential, we need a skills revolution. There remains a great deal of work to do on that. It is right that the Chancellor is looking closely at it and has asked Sir Michael Barber to carry out a full review, but in the short term further education colleges, such as East Coast College in Lowestoft, are doing their great work with one arm behind their back. In the immediate future, there is an urgent need for more revenue funding to get through an incredibly challenging period. I highlight the need in the longer term to reform the apprenticeship levy.
Thirdly, let me turn to levelling up. Along with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), I co-chair the all-party group on the east of England. In December, along with the Local Government Association, we published the “Levelling up the East of England” report, which concludes that, on five of the levelling-up missions, there was very low confidence of their being achieved. One of those missions is infrastructure, so the lack of Government support for the Ely and Haughley junction rail improvements, from which the whole UK would benefit, is very disappointing. I urge the Government to continue to work with those in the region promoting this project.
On a positive note, I welcome the announcement of funding for the Lowestoft seafront jubilee parade project, which is an important part of the regeneration work taking place in Lowestoft and will help to revitalise the town, making it a compelling place to live, work and visit. However, I cannot hide my disappointment that none of the 12 proposed investment zones is in the east of England. In Lowestoft, we have a successful enterprise zone that is in need of refreshing. We had a false start last September, when Suffolk County Council and East Suffolk Council put forward exciting proposals for investment zones. It now appears that nowhere in the east of England will have an opportunity to even be on the starting grid. In that context, the mantra of “Enterprise, employment and everywhere” does ring slightly hollow.
In conclusion, this Budget is not the endgame. There is a lot of unfinished business. Last November, the Chancellor delivered his prologue. Today, he has provided act one of his strategy for growth. Acts two and three come in the autumn and next spring. I have highlighted the work that I believe remains to be done and, in the coming months, I look forward to working with him and his colleagues in the Treasury to meet those challenges.
Peter Aldous, who is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Further Education and Lifelong Learning, has organised a letter from backbench MPs to urge the Chancellor of the Exchequer to invest £400 million of emergency funding into colleges so they can continue to offer a wide range of courses.
For more on this visit Association of Colleges.
Peter Aldous writes in The Express to back calls for the Chancellor to give firms a tax break for investing in clean energy to lower energy bills or risk losing investment overseas.
Peter writes:
Our exceptional offshore wind industry - the largest in Europe and second only to China globally - can now build the cheapest new power sources available.
But we risk falling behind unless we ensure our tax policy stays competitive.
It's right that energy firms pay taxes on their windfall profits.
Given the scale of government support to keep the lights on and homes warm, these firms should contribute toward the bill.
But we still need to incentivise investment in cheap, clean renewables.
If we don't, we'll stay hooked on expensive fossil fuels for longer, the consequences of which every household and business in the country feels right now.
As volatile international fossil fuel markets set the price of oil and gas, now under the malign influence of Vladimir Putin, the key to lower bills is switching to clean, British power. Building more renewables is also crucial for tackling climate change.
But with the USA's Inflation Reduction Act providing around $370 billion in subsidies to green industries, we risk losing investment abroad as we put taxes up.
We have enormous potential as a country. The government wants the UK to have the cheapest electricity in Europe. With our unparalleled windy and shallow seas, and long coastline, British offshore wind can power us towards cheaper bills.
Thanks to Conservative policies, we've won significant investment over the past decade into our wind industry.
It's why renewables make up 40 per cent of our electricity supply compared to seven per cent in 2010.
As the industry has grown, prices have tumbled. New offshore wind projects were three times cheaper than the first offshore wind projects and up to 10 times cheaper than gas power at that time.
We have the skilled workforce, geography and technological know-how to keep Britain ahead and lower bills. But to ensure we remain the home of wind power - we need a tax policy to match our ambition.
Peter Aldous and Miles Briggs, MSP for the Lothian region, write for ConservativeHome.
Almost a fifth of the UK’s carbon emissions come from heating our homes. In order to reach our Net Zero targets, decarbonising the UK’s housing stock will be key.
We can and should look to heat our homes with low-carbon solution like heat pumps, hydrogen, or renewable liquid gases. But we must also look to improve the energy efficiency of our homes to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat them in the first place.
As a way to drive this change, both the UK and Scottish Governments plan to use Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs) as a tool to improve the energy efficiency of the UK’s housing stock.
From 2025, all rental properties in Scotland will require an EPC rating of a ‘D’ and from 2028 all rental properties in England and Wales will require a rating of ‘C’.
EPCs were first introduced in England and Wales in 2007, and a year later in Scotland as a tool for measuring a building’s energy efficiency. However, due to the methodology that sits behind them, they are fundamentally flawed.
The key issue with EPC methodology is it is disproportionately focused on the cost of the input fuel. In essence, this means EPCs are nothing more than a measure of energy cost per square metre, rather than a measure of energy efficiency.
You could be forgiven for assuming that, as everyone is affected by the poor methodology, the playing field is levelled. But this is not the case. The flawed methodology has a particularly adverse impact on our rural communities, from the Suffolk Coast to the Pentland Hills.
This is because the fuels available to communities not connected to the gas grid typically cost more than the ones used by their on-grid, urban counterparts. As a result of this, there could be two identical properties, one off-grid and one on-grid, with vastly different EPC scores, just because of the cost of fuel they use.
More worryingly, the flawed EPC methodology has the potential to drive off-grid homes away from low-carbon technologies and onto higher carbon, cheaper energy sources to gain a higher EPC rating, rather than improving the building’s fabric.
Many rural property owners considering updating their heating systems have been advised their property would be unrentable and in the future unsellable and they should instead stick with their existing oil heating. This cannot be right and does nothing to help our rural communities to decarbonise.
This ‘fabric last’ approach not only fails to deliver building standard improvements for residents, but it also directly counters Government’s wider decarbonisation objectives.
The current methodology means that if off-grid homeowners do, rightly, push ahead with a ‘fabric first’ approach it could cost them upwards of £20,000 to achieve EPC Band C – £15,300 more than the average £4,700 quoted.
The flawed and unfair approach to EPCs will undoubtedly devalue off-grid properties as potential homeowners and landlords choose not to invest in rural locations due to the unfair policy penalties.
To address this, EPCs require urgent reform. Splitting the methodology into actual energy efficiency, carbon, and average energy costs would make it clearer and fairer for rural homeowners whilst focussing on actual energy efficiency.
There is no question that the UK must improve the energy efficiency of its housing stock if we’re to reach Net Zero, but before EPCs are used as policy tool to do this, they must be reformed and made fit for purpose.
Peter Aldous makes an intervention in an Adjournment debate on the Norfolk and Suffolk NHS Foundation Trust to highlight the lack of acute beds in the region and the stress this causes patients and their families and calls on the Trust to address this as a priority.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. He mentioned improvements on the acute wards, and I wanted to highlight that a recurring theme of my 13 years as an MP has been the lack of acute beds in the region, and how for so many people with real challenges beds have to be sourced out of region, which causes them a lot of stress and their families a great deal of anguish as well. I am aware that the trust has plans to address the deficit, but does he agree that this issue must be addressed as a high priority?
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has been a strong advocate for patients in his constituency receiving the care they need locally, which is something we all want for mental health patients. The trust has identified that out-of-area placements have been a problem, which is now being addressed at board level and throughout all services. Part of that work will be about improving and developing the mental health estate, improving the in-patient facilities available locally in Norfolk and Suffolk, and part of it will be about transforming the model of care, moving away from inappropriate in-patient admissions where people can be better cared for in the community. I will return to that subject, but my hon. Friend is right to say that the trust must continue to focus on reducing out-of-area placement, which is not good for patients or for their families, who want to support them while they are being cared for in hospital.
Speaking in a debate on legislation designed to ensure that benefits from the alternative fuel payment are passed through to consumers, Peter Aldous raises concerns that the penalty for landlords who do not pass on the benefit is too lenient to be a deterrent.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
I was not planning to speak in this short debate, so I will be brief.
We have waited a long time for this statutory instrument. During that time, many very vulnerable people have been suffering. I acknowledge that, from the Government’s broad perspective, it is a challenge to get this legislation right, but my concern, which I hope my hon. Friend the Minister can allay, is that the punishment for landlords—I am thinking in particular of some rogue park home site owners—who do not pass on the money is, I sense, puny rather than punitive. They will just laugh at the punishment. I hope I am wrong, but I ask the Minister to take on board my concern.
Peter Aldous writes for FEWeek Magazine.
Bridges are some of the great engineering wonders in our country. The Iron Bridge in Shropshire is the oldest cast iron crossing in the world, a marvel dating back to 1779. The Humber Bridge was the world’s longest suspension bridge between 1981 and 1998. Indeed, in Lowestoft in my constituency work is well under way on the Gull Wing Bridge, which once completed will be the largest rolling bascule bridge in the world.
Why all this talk of bridges? Well, a bridge has the purpose of making something impassable passable. Whether it is fording a great river, traversing a mighty gorge or crossing a motorway. The bridge is the solution to the problem of navigating a gap we would otherwise struggle to cross.
Sitting on the green benches, we regularly hear about the skills gaps we face and how they are a major problem for our economy. It is a challenge which has spanned Conservative, Coalition and Labour governments. Last autumn, the ONS estimated there were almost 1.2 million job vacancies which went unfilled. While this is partly testament to the record low unemployment we now enjoy in this country, it means many employers cannot find the skilled people they need to fill posts.
While this problem has proved hard to overcome, the solution is staring us in the face. Our fantastic colleges and independent training providers, which serve communities the length and breadth of the country, are there to bridge skills gaps. The very purpose of further education is to provide younger and older people alike with the training they need to get on in the workplace.
I am proud to chair the All Party Parliamentary Group on Further Education and Lifelong Learning and I am always astounded by the excellent work East Coast College does in my own constituency. But colleges and the wider FE sector could do so much more if they were given the means to fulfil their full potential.
The sector could do so much more if they were given the means
Today, I joined a panel discussion in parliament to explore these issues in greater detail. Clearly, the issue of funding is high on the priority list for college principals, but there are non-monetary ways to help the sector too.
The Future Skills Coalition is a new partnership between some of the major players in the FE sector: the Association of Colleges, the Association of Employment and Learning Providers and City & Guilds. They have a clear sense of the priorities to tackle this problem: A right to lifelong learning; fair, accessible and effective funding; and a national strategy to support local, inclusive growth.
The Conservatives have laid strong foundations for this. Policymakers now understand and value the FE sector more. However, the autumn budget did not deliver a funding boost for colleges, despite a sizeable package for schools to deal with inflationary pressures. It was encouraging that the Chancellor announced a review of FE reform implementation by Sir Michael Barber, and it is very important that this is quickly followed by a positive statement on revenue funding, so that colleges’ concerns that Whitehall does not understand their worth are allayed.
I am hopeful the Chancellor will make colleges and the FE sector the keystone of his plans to boost growth and increase productivity in his spring statement on 15 March. Jeremy Hunt recognises the issue but is in the unenviable position of having to make tough decisions for the sake of our future prosperity. I urge the Treasury to consider that the return on investment for any additional funding for colleges will be vast both economically and socially, as the lives of our constituents are forever improved by access to education and training.
A gap is a problem which invites ingenuity to bridge. With the blueprint already laid out by our colleges, I am sure this is not a bridge too far for the Chancellor.
Peter Aldous calls on the Government to use the forthcoming Budget to introduce new tax incentives and to reform capital allowances to ensure that the UK remains an attractive place to invest in offshore wind.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
T8. Offshore wind is a great British success story, but fiscal and regulatory action is urgently required if the UK is to remain an attractive place to invest. Can my right hon. Friend thus confirm that, ahead of the Budget, he is working with the Treasury to introduce new tax incentives and to reform capital allowances so that the UK can compete with other countries, such as the US and those in the EU? (903815)
The Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)
I am sure my hon. Friend is as delighted as I am that the United States and the EU are now following our lead in developing renewables, including offshore wind. We work closely with the Chancellor to ensure that the UK remains, as it has been consistently under this Government, the best place in the world in which to invest in offshore wind.
Hansard
Today Peter Aldous has written to Ofwat, the water company regulator, to support proposed measures to link water company dividend policies to their performance for customers and the environment.
Peter Aldous said:
“The residents of Waveney have been clear that they expect better from their water companies. They must clean up their act, tackle their pollution urgently and improve their service to customers to provide clean and plentiful water.
“I have written to Ofwat to support their proposals to link dividend payments to performance so that we can better hold them to account and improve outcomes for residents.”