Ian Swales

I, too, congratulate the Members who have initiated this debate, which, as we can tell by the turnout in the House, is on a hugely important issue. Metal theft will not go away easily. Why? Because it is so worth doing. Some of the figures are quite staggering. While BT's stock-market value is about £15 billion, the estimated current value of the metal in its cables is £50 billion. There are billions and billions of pounds worth of metal in our country, in some cases literally lying around-in the railways, for example. Thieves are now sawing down metal railings, and I recently canvassed a street in my constituency where all the drain covers had been stolen. Making the assets themselves secure is obviously impossible.

Because of the sums involved, the people engaged in this activity run all the way from petty thieves to organised crime. Just as in other organised crimes such as drug dealing, some of the big players will not do their own dirty work; others will be stealing to order for them. We all know that these crimes can cause massive costs and disruption. Recently visiting friends in a village in Oxfordshire, I could communicate only by text in the last two days before the visit because the village had been entirely cut off by the theft of telephone and internet cables.

Shortly before I came into the Chamber this evening, a member of the House staff told me that Norwood library recently had its roof stolen and £2 million-worth

of damage was done to books and computers as a result. We have heard other stories from other Members, so I shall not say much more about that. Such stories show that these crimes are far from victimless, as a single theft can impact thousands of people.

I am vice-chairman of the all-party steel and metal recycling group, and in that role I recently visited two sites of European Metal Recycling, the largest metal recycler in Europe, which has 67 sites across the UK and employs 2,000 people. The notes for my speech state that this is a "highly reputable organisation", but I might need to speak to the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) about that. At its small site in Marske in my constituency, I saw many of the measures mentioned in the motion already in action-for example, documentation, video recording, photo and vehicle identification are routine and there are clear rules about how to check material. The original source might be a council as in the case of road signs or items might be labelled as BT equipment. At its large site in Hartlepool, I saw what a huge-scale operation, including car shredding, looks like.

Companies like EMR support regulation. EMR says:

"All we ask is that the Government takes the necessary time to work with the industry to ensure that regulations are as tightly and effectively drawn as possible and that the necessary level of resource is committed to enforce rigorously once in place. We have had 20 years of increased regulation and poor enforcement in our industry. Without doing both of these things the legitimate industry will be harmed, the illegitimate thrive and there will be little or no impact on metal theft."

Let me touch briefly on another area-prevention. All people with metal-related assets need to think more about how they can discourage theft. I have already mentioned BT's franking of its equipment, but a lot more could be done. Energy companies, Network Rail and many others should look at how to make it easy for dealers and enforcement officers to spot stolen material. They must ensure that their legitimate scrap disposal routes are advertised to the industry so that anyone else receiving identifiable material knows that it is stolen. More questions must be asked about the source of the material, such as high voltage cables or transformer equipment. We must make it easy for people to report others that they see involved in this activity.

We should not legislate for the sake of it, but we should ask the police what is necessary-and make the punishments fit the crime. It is time for action and I urge the House to support the motion.

I welcome the idea of a statutory register of lobbyists, but will the Deputy Prime Minister ensure that the definition of lobbyist will not deter charities or businesses wishing to invest in an area from being able to approach their MP frankly and openly?

Having sat through almost every sitting of the Public Bill Committee, I do not recall this issue getting any traction at all, so it is quite a surprise to hear it come up now. The right hon. Gentleman says that one size does not fit all, so is he going to tell us what sizes do fit, starting with London?

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent assessment he has made of the use of the Coastal Communities Fund; and what his policy is on the future of the fund.

rose-

I am not giving way again on that subject.

As the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris) said and as we all know, many factors are involved in health inequalities: smoking, alcohol, obesity, housing, income and others. Sadly, the area that I represent has the worst rate or one of the worst rates of obesity in the country, and one third of my constituency is in the poorest 10% of most deprived wards, so I am well aware of how these things operate in the local area.

In the public health area, we should, as the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central said, celebrate a great success and learn from it. The Fresh organisation has had a great impact in terms of smoking reduction. The rate in the north-east went from 29% in 2005 to 22% in 2009. I also find this hard to believe, but apparently males in the north-east have the lowest rate of smoking in the country. It was probably the highest at one time, but apparently it is now the lowest. That shows that effective public health action and education can have a big impact. Models such as that, in which innovative third sector organisations focus on change, can assist with this important job, which is a lot about behavioural change.

As well as successes such as the one that I have described, I welcome the increased spending in the NHS by the previous Government. That has increased health outcomes for all, regardless of the fact that it failed to narrow health inequalities. My area has seen the setting up of excellent facilities such as the James Cook university hospital. As has been mentioned, there is also the data gathering, which is so important in learning how to deal with these problems.

There is still a lot to do. In my constituency, there is a 16-year gap between the life expectancies in the richest and poorest wards. I therefore welcome local health commissioning, which will lead to a more joined-up approach to local issues. An excellent pathfinder GP group is already up and running in Redcar; in fact, it was running as a social enterprise for five years before the recent reforms were introduced.

I welcome the public health agenda and the fact that the budget will go to local authorities. I also welcome the setting up of health and wellbeing boards, although we will have to watch how the money is spent to ensure that the maximum amount gets to the front line. Similarly, I welcome the proposed establishment of Public Health England, which will have the specific aim of reducing health inequalities.

Even more study is needed into, for example, the psychological aspects of why people choose lifestyle options they know to be harmful. Recent research clearly shows that many social problems, including the one we are discussing, stem from income inequality, not from absolute levels of income, and some interesting data are emerging. Sadly, income inequality also widened under the previous Government.

The new Government have made a start, but there is much more to do, and I look forward to the Minister's comments.

I believe that the wider issue of NHS reforms is outside the scope of this debate, but certainly I see a growth in the number of GPs already.

I bow to the hon. Lady's knowledge in this area. She certainly has a great deal more than I do. I do not know the answer to her question.

In 2003, the Government identified 12 cross-Government headline indicators and 82 cross-Government commitments, but sadly overall it was effective action that was the problem. In 2005, the Government identified 70 spearhead local authority areas for special attention, and credit to them for that. One third of those areas were in the north-east. However, only in London did those spearhead areas see a narrowing of health inequalities.

I know that this issue is complex, but some things are basic. The NAO report showed that more deprived areas had fewer GPs. Some had significantly fewer. They were also paid less. I was shown barely believable figures showing that Redcar and Cleveland had only half the average GP resource of the most deprived 20%. Clearly, that is not a good position to be in.

I absolutely agree with that and will go on to say more about it. The Department of Health has an important role in being the umbrella Department for monitoring action in this area, however. The report went on to say that the Department recognised its failings, admitting that it had been

"slow to put in place the key mechanisms to deliver the target it had used for other national priorities"

and

"slow to mobilise the NHS to take effective action."

However, I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is much more to this than simply the NHS.

There certainly has not been a shortage of reports on this subject. The Department of Health issued 15 major publications on the issue, starting in 1998 and rising to a crescendo in 2010. In fact, 2007 was the only year in which the previous Government did not issue a publication.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing the debate. I agree with her that the issue of health inequalities is of great importance to all MPs and particularly those of us who represent constituencies in the north-east. Having been born in Leeds, I was delighted to emigrate to the north-east in my early 20s.

First, I would like to refer to the July 2010 National Audit Office report, which was specifically about "Tackling inequalities in life expectancy in areas with the worst health and deprivation", and to the subsequent hearing of the Public Accounts Committee and the report that it produced in November 2010. That report was in effect a catalogue of action by the previous Government and bears detailed reading. It said that the Department of Health had been

"exceptionally slow to tackle health inequalities…we find it unacceptable that it took it until 2006-nine years after it announced the importance of tackling health"-

The Minister mentioned economic modelling. Do the Government have any wider modelling that takes into account the whole picture, not only carbon capture and the grants that might be required to get it going, but-my earlier point-petroleum revenue tax resulting from enhanced oil recovery?

Just one point of clarification: those two things are not necessarily entirely separate. A new 300 MW biomass power station has been announced for Teesport. A CCS network in the area could actually feed into that. As I said earlier, we could end up with carbon negative power as a result of doing that, so they are not entirely separate. While 300 MW is not a huge amount, it is worth noting that the Longannet project was only 400 MW.

The hon. Gentleman might be interested to know that the pressure I feel in my constituency is essentially coming from industry, not from power generators, because industry can very much see what is happening to it competitively and so on through carbon pricing. Does he agree that there may be a carbon pricing method that can incentivise the power sector to play its part in bringing this new technology on board faster?

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, if CCS is worth £10 billion to the economy, those who will benefit have an incentive to help to get things going? It does not seem to make sense to rely only on Government funding.

The hon. Lady makes a good point, and that is where we must challenge the private sector and be imaginative about the schemes. I will come on to a scheme I am familiar with that is not in Scotland, but for which there is already a conglomerate of companies ready to roll-household names in the gas and pipeline industries and lots of different companies. It can be done.

To those who say that such development is highly expensive, I say that we need to look more at the overall longer-term finances for the Government, industry and energy generation. For example, it has been estimated that the CCS project proposed for Teesside can generate a peak of £1 billion a year in extra petroleum revenue tax for the Government, through oil companies using CO2 to get more oil from their North sea wells. That possible extra oil recovery from the North sea is estimated at 4 billion barrels. The use of CO2 for enhanced oil recovery is already widely practised in the United States.

The debate is about Scotland, but a project is ready to go in Teesside, and the necessary list of major players in pipelines, processing and so on are ready to start. More than 30 large CO2 emitters in the power and industrial sectors can be connected to the system. Interestingly, a few of those are using biomass, which raises the prospect of net carbon-negative power-sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere. By generating clean power and running clean industry, CCS can make a huge contribution to UK climate change targets. A clear and ambitious

UK-wide strategy, action to remove roadblocks to progress and a sense of urgency are needed from DECC, so that the UK can genuinely lead in this exciting new industry.

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that challenge. I do not necessarily see it as my job to represent the Treasury, but £1 billion for less than a quarter of the Longannet power station was not a good use of money. Having talked to people in the industry, I think that there are better ways. Conglomerates of private sector companies want to get into the sector, and we need to be more imaginative about how we make that happen.

Congratulations, Sir Roger, on your ennoblement-that is not the right word, but congratulations on your award. I congratulate the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Thomas Docherty) on securing the debate. It is an extremely important issue for the long-term future of our country from the point of view of both power and industry.

I have more than 25 years' experience in the electricity and heavy process industries. The delay in carbon capture and storage implementation at Longannet is disappointing. The UK is in a great position to exploit CCS. As Lord Oxburgh, president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association recently put it:

"Experience gained in the North Sea oil and gas industry, and the abundance of offshore geological sites where CO2 may be stored underground have allowed the UK to become one of the global leaders in CCS. Capitalising on this early leadership is vital".

We certainly can be leaders. The same technology that has been so successful in the complicated job of extracting, storing and processing oil and gas from the North sea can be modified to put carbon dioxide back under the North sea. There is a skilled work force, and academia is already doing important support work. Professional bodies such as the Institute of Mechanical Engineers are very clear that the technology is perfectly practical, and there is a great future here if we move quickly. The global market in the technology alone is conservatively estimated at $10 billion.

A similar story could have been written some years ago about wind technology. We are one of the windiest countries in the world, but thanks to Government dithering and lack of public and private investment, we are playing catch-up and importing most of the technology and equipment. Having worked mainly in the private sector until May 2010, I am baffled at the interminable time scales I see in this job. When someone says something will take six months, my questions are: so what will happen tomorrow and the next day, and how can we shorten the critical path? I am then met by blank looks. I am sure that the giant new Tesco store being built in my constituency would not have gone from a green field to a functioning supermarket in six months with politicians and civil servants running the project. My challenge to the Minister is: how fast can we go and what is getting in the way?

We should be ambitious about CCS in the UK. It is needed to decarbonise our power production and our heavy industry. The areas that get CCS infrastructure will become magnets for new power and industrial investment. That means that we can protect energy-intensive industries, which are currently being challenged by European Union and United Kingdom climate measures, and help to reverse the decline in our manufacturing sector. Failure to act will lead to more announcements like the

recent one on the closure of the UK's last aluminium smelter. Ironically, it is in Northumberland next to the North sea, and the owners had considered using CCS to keep the plant going. It is now too late.

Where should CCS investment take place? Again, we should be ambitious. There are four obvious prime locations: the Aberdeen area, the Forth, the Tees and the Humber-south Yorkshire area. They all have merits, and the Department of Energy and Climate Change should kick-start development in them all. A long-term strategy should be developed for CCS infrastructure.

Partnerships for Schools says that Kirkleathamhall special school in my constituency has problems with access, temperature, lighting and ventilation; most of the teaching spaces are too small,

and the full curriculum cannot be provided to secondary- age pupils. Will the Minister meet me to discuss this unacceptable situation?

If the NHS stands behind private providers in such cases, it is effectively providing free indemnity insurance. Will the Secretary of State look at the insurance position of providers of such services and ensure that the taxpayer does not face open-ended liabilities?

I thank the Minister for that answer. The Teesside coroner is used as a bad example nationally by charities such as Cardiac Risk in the Young and the Royal British Legion. It is led by 81-year-old Michael Sheffield. Will the Minister meet a delegation of local MPs to discuss how the performance of the Teesside service could be improved?