Called-in Planning Decision: West Cumbria

In a moment, we will resume proceedings on the statement started earlier by the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. Before we do so, I put on record my dismay that the Government have failed to follow not just the clear, long-established conventions of the House but their own rules. The “Ministerial Code” says:

“A copy of the text of an oral statement should usually be shown to the Opposition shortly before it is made. For this purpose, 15 copies of the statement and associated documents should be sent to the Chief Whip’s Office at least 45 minutes before the statement is to be made. At the same time, a copy of the final text of an oral statement should in all cases be sent in advance to the Speaker.”

The key point here is “final text”. It is not acceptable to provide a brief precis of a statement that is then significantly expanded by the Secretary of State at the Dispatch Box, as this means the Opposition have no meaningful advance notice and—this is my main concern—that Members do not have the detail they need in written form so they can properly ask questions of the Minister.

This situation is simply not acceptable and has caused the House very serious inconvenience, and it must not happen again. I have decided to allow the proceedings on the statement to continue, for Members to question the Secretary of State. Given the exceptional nature of this morning’s events, I will call Members who were not present when the Secretary of State delivered his initial statement but who are present now.

I am very grateful to Hansard for quickly producing a transcript of the Secretary of State’s statement, but I emphasise that it should not have to be expected to do so.

I now call the shadow Secretary of State.

I have one question for the Secretary of State: what on earth is he thinking? The decision to greenlight the reopening of the Woodhouse colliery is bad policy and bad politics. It is the latest in a string of absurd decisions from a Government in chaos, causing chaos in this Chamber and out there in the country. They are in office but not in power.

This mine will produce coking coal used for steel, not for electricity generation. So, as the Secretary of State has had to admit today, the claim it helps to safeguard our energy security is nonsense, but it gets worse. The two big steel producers, Tata and British Steel, are phasing out this coal in favour of lower-carbon production methods. By the mid-2030s, at best, the UK will use less than 10% of the mine’s output. Across the world, demand for coking coal is projected to fall off a cliff, by 88%, by 2050.

People in Cumbria deserve a long-term future, with lasting, well-paid jobs that power us through the next century. Instead, they are saddled with a weak, short-sighted and unambitious Government who, only two months ago, rejected a plan to bring new nuclear to Cumbria, which would have created not 500 short-term jobs but 10,000 jobs for the long term.

The right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) is supposed to be the Secretary of State for Levelling Up. The Tories were once the party of conservation, and now they are the party of environmental vandalism. He can fiddle the figures all he likes, but the reality is that this mine is projected to increase emissions by 0.4 million tonnes a year, according to his own advisers. That is equivalent to putting 200,000 more cars on the road every single year.

This decision flies in the face of Britain’s net zero objectives, contradicts the aims of the UK’s COP26 presidency and undermines the 2019 Conservative manifesto. This is chaos. Successive Secretaries of State are contradicting each other and the Government’s independent adviser on climate change condemned the decision as “indefensible” even as the Secretary of State stands here trying to defend it.

Mr Speaker, thank you for your ruling earlier. I apologise to you and to the House. No discourtesy was intended. I appreciate the importance of maintaining the courtesies of the House, particularly with regard to statements.

As I mentioned earlier, the context of this statement is a quasi-judicial process on a planning application. I always admire the rhetoric of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), and she asks, “Where is the ambition? Where is the leadership?” I think we all know where the ambition and the leadership is: it is sitting right across from me.

The hon. Lady will have her own views on future demand for coking coal, but I fear she elides the difference between coking coal used for metallurgical purposes and coal used for energy generation purposes. The inspector’s report makes it clear that coking coal is used not for energy purposes but purely for metallurgical purposes, for the manufacture of steel. Of course, we will need steel for decades to come, including in the renewables sector. How else will we ensure that we supply all the materials necessary for onshore wind and other renewable energy without using steel? If she or anybody else in the House has an answer, I and millions of scientists would love to hear it.

It is important to look at the inspector’s report, as I have in detail. The inspector makes it clear on page 239, in paragraph 21.37, that in all the scenarios and forecasts presented to him there was

“continued demand for coking coal for a number of decades.”

He also made it clear that, at the moment, imports of coking coal come from Australia, the USA and Russia. As I pointed out in the statement, and as the inspector makes clear, no evidence has been provided to suggest that any other metallurgical coal mine in the world aspires to be net zero in the way the Whitehaven development does. Again, the inspector makes it clear that the

I thank my right hon. Friend for the leadership he has shown on this matter, cutting through the noise from the Opposition and implementing the planning inspector’s decision, which acknowledges the ongoing need for coking coal and the lack of alternatives to it in steelmaking. My constituents and I cannot understand why today’s Labour party feels the need to campaign against the UK supply chain and local jobs, and for further emissions through the importation of this necessary coking coal. Can he?

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. He draws attention to the importance of paying close attention to the inspector’s report. The inspector makes it clear that the industrial decarbonisation strategy, which the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy produced and which has been endorsed across the House, explicitly

“does not rule out the use of coking coal in an integrated steel making process together with CCUS as a net zero compliant option going forward”.

On the basis of existing policy and the inspector’s recommendation, I have made my decision. As my hon. Friend points out, others—indeed, others from other parties—may make the decision on a party political ground. The decision we have made is purely on the basis of the evidence in front of us.

I call the SNP spokesperson.

The decision has been condemned by the Chair of the Climate Change Committee. Chris Stark, chief executive of the committee, retweeted that this is

“climate vandalism and economic incompetence on a scale difficult to believe”.

The International Energy Agency previously stated that no further fossil fuel projects can be built if net zero is to be achievable by 2050 and OECD countries need to end use of coal by 2030, so why license this mine to 2049? Ron Deelan, a former chief executive of British Steel, called it

“a completely unnecessary step for the British Steel Industry”.

Chris McDonald, chief executive of the Materials Processing Institute research centre, previously advised that British Steel could not use this coal because it is

“not of the right quality”.

The reality is that 85% of this coal is going to be exported, so talking about cancelling imports is a complete red herring. What we are doing is increasing our carbon footprint to support industry in the EU. It is illogical and we know demand for coking coal will fall, as the EU is further ahead on the development of green steel. Where is the UK progress on green steel? Coking coal is not even identified on the UK’s critical mineral strategy or in the National Security and Investment Act 2021, although it is a critical mineral for the EU. But, clearly, this mine is not needed for the UK. Given this decision, what steps are being taken to rapidly accelerate the net zero pathway, for example, by changing the Scottish carbon capture and storage cluster to track 1 status?

The Secretary of State hides behind the recommendations of the Planning Inspectorate. Why did his Government override the Planning Inspectorate on Sizewell C? This coking coal is not critical for the UK. It is going to be exported, so why has he made this decision just to appease Tory Back-Bench climate change cynics?

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his questions. He quotes a number of individuals and draws explicitly—he was good enough to acknowledge this—party political conclusions. I relied on the inspector’s report and on the evidence in front of me. As I explained in my decision letter, no evidence was provided to suggest that any other metallurgical coal mine in the world aspires to be net zero, so the proposed mine is likely to be much better placed to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions than comparative mining operations around the world. On that basis, it is entirely in keeping with our net zero commitments, and indeed with the commitment to not only jobs, but the environment, to approve the inspector’s case.

I speak as an ex-miner and a net zero champion in this place. I remember a time when the Labour party stood shoulder to shoulder, side by side with the coalmining communities in our great country, but Labour’s treachery has taken a new twist. It has turned its back on the red wall and the coalmining communities. Does my right hon. Friend agree with the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), who is not in his place, when he said in 2015, when his local Hatfield colliery was due to be closed, that we should not be importing coal for the Drax power station from places such as Russia and Colombia, and instead should be mining it on our own doorstep?

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The right hon. Gentleman’s comments are on the record in Hansard and are a valuable contribution to this debate.

The Secretary of State is probably aware of the statement made yesterday by the Secretary-General of the United Nations that multinational corporations are making ecosystems into “playthings of profit”. The Secretary of State has prayed in aid the inspector’s report, and I accept what the inspector has said. However, the Secretary of State provides the framework for the Planning Inspectorate, so will he not now at least say that he will review the whole of our planning framework to try to protect wildlife, ecosystems and biodiversity, as well as the green belt?

Let me set aside specifically the decision here, where the inspector’s report speaks for itself—I urge the hon. Gentleman and others to read it in full. On the broader point he makes about planning policy, we are bringing forward changes to the national planning policy framework explicitly to defend the green belt, safeguard biodiversity and introduce biodiversity net gain. Those changes that we brought forward were shared in a “Dear colleague” letter that I sent to every Member of the House of Commons. They attracted widespread support from Conservative MPs, but were denounced from the Dispatch Box yesterday by the Leader of the Opposition. I have enormous affection and respect for the hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) and I am grateful for his commitment to the environment. Perhaps he could have a word with the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) and encourage him to take a greener approach towards planning and development overall.

I really welcome this news and the fact that the Secretary of State has found that he does agree with the views of the independent Planning Inspectorate. I warmly congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) and others who have campaigned so effectively on this issue. I, for one, will sleep easier in my bed knowing that we have recovered a UK-based capability to supply an incredibly important specialist kind of coal. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Government must always keep in the forefront of their mind the importance of certain industries and materials for our national resilience and our strategic capabilities? He knows that, as always, I am talking about steel.

On this side of the House, we have had iron ladies, but there is no better champion of steel than my hon. Friend. Whether in Scunthorpe or Port Talbot, jobs depend on the future of our steel industry. Steel is a critical strategic component of our future economy; it will be necessary as we make the transition to net zero. In that context, following the inspector’s report and following the need for coking coal, as he points out, according to experts, for decades to come, I have agreed with the inspector and am convinced that his recommendation for this mine is right.

In recent weeks, we have had the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change almost literally gaslighting the public by claiming that fracking and the new oil and gas licences for extraction in the North sea are green measures. Now the Secretary of State is trying to make the same claim about opening a new coalmine. He tries to claim that this is a net zero coalmine, but will he confirm that that does not take into account the actual burning of the coal?

There are two separate points and the hon. Lady is absolutely right. There is both the operation of the mine itself and the future usage of the coal. The inspector analyses both, and the recommendations that he laid out weighed with me as I made the decision.