UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL]

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott. I declare my membership of Peers for the Planet and my position as vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I start with the irony highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. To anyone listening to our debate from the outside, welcome to the see-saw. Today, we have a powerful demonstration of the utter failure of our system of governance. One Government set up the UK Green Investment Bank plc in 2012; a few years later, it is sold off to an Australian investment bank, Macquarie, with an extremely dubious reputation, through a process that the Public Accounts Committee concluded was deeply flawed. Now, we are essentially re-creating that thing that we destroyed a few years ago. We come to this debate having considered earlier today a report on children’s social care, which highlighted that one Government created an extensive network of Sure Start centres. They have now been destroyed and we are looking to re-create something similar again.

We have an archaic, dysfunctional constitution, delivering governance that see-saws between creation and destruction, taking with it jobs, knowledge, skills, institutions and infrastructure. We talk a lot about the failures of the British economy, sometimes blaming British workers. Why do we have a productivity problem? Perhaps we have an extremely unproductive, ineffective system of governance. It is easy to blame individuals but the underlying problem is the structure.

I have focused on that point—some noble Lords may feel that I have laboured it—because the Minister highlighted the problem in her introduction. I wrote down some of the adjectives she used; she said that they are aiming to create something “long lasting”, “long term” and “enduring”. There is a positive point to be made here, because if there is any part of our government structure that can engage in an act of co-creation, see different sides of politics get together and, I hope, agree on something that will endure for the long term through different Governments, weirdly enough, in our constitution, the House of Lords might just be the place where it can be done. I hope and am confident that the Minister will approach Committee and Report in that light.

We have possibly seen a positive sign in getting a perhaps ideologically unlikely alliance between the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, who are both questioning whether we should be creating a bank to do this at all. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, I would not want to start from here; I would not want to see the Government putting money into all this and seeing all this happen anyway. Given that we do start from where we are, however, we have a chance to try to do something positive. However, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth: £22 billion sounds nice when you say it quickly, but when you look at the goals being set before it and recall that the 2019 Green Party manifesto talked about spending £100 billion a year on tackling the climate emergency, that perhaps sets the scale for what we are talking about here.

Many noble Lords have already covered—I will not go over the same ground—the essential need to write the biodiversity crisis in alongside the climate emergency. I note pretty much total agreement between the noble Baronesses, Lady Young of Old Scone and Lady Hayman, and many others who have made that point. However, as you might expect from a Green, I would like to go much further, because even just focusing on climate and nature does not go nearly far enough. We have clearly identified and documented nine planetary boundaries that we are breaking, and we need to think holistically and systemically in the way set out by the sustainable development goals that our Government and all global Governments have agreed to—to look at this in a complete, holistic way. The Bill might be a place where we can start to do that. More than that, it might be a place where we can start to do doughnut economics.

I come down to some specifics of how we might look at changing the Bill to do this. When I talk about doughnut economics, I am talking about tackling the huge social crises that we face, as well as the environmental crises. Clause 2(3)(b) says that the objectives of the bank are

“to support regional and local economic growth.”

To pick up some points made by the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, why are we just talking about growth? Who is the growth for and where are the benefits of that growth going? Surely what we need for levelling up is to tackle poverty and the massive issues of public health—such as the differentials in expected lifespan that we see in different parts of the country—and social infrastructure, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, who is not currently in his place, said. We need to look at Clause 2(3)(b) and find a way of saying how this delivers for the people of Britain in our most disadvantaged areas. Just saying “growth” does not do that.

Clause 2(5)(a), which I think we will be talking about a great deal, refers to

“water, electricity, gas … or other services”.

Many noble Lords have highlighted the urgent need to conserve energy, home energy efficiency et cetera—we talk about this endlessly. I am not a lawyer but, at a stretch, one could perhaps define “services” as including reducing the demand for those services. None the less, it is clear that we need to write that into the Bill.

More than that, one of the huge issues we face socially at the moment is food security—something which the Government are now increasingly acknowledging. This is where we can really start to join up the social and the environmental. Yesterday, I happened to be at the global conference on biocontrol, which was looking at the ways in which we can use biological knowledge to control pests and diseases of crops, getting away from chemical pesticides. This is an industry which is very much dominated by small and medium enterprises, which are significantly undercapitalised and have huge problems getting through regulatory barriers. That might be a great area for the UK Infrastructure Bank to get involved in. Building up the infrastructure of our agriculture and supporting agroecology meets both environmental and social objectives.

On Clause 2(5)(b), we again come to the point about social and environmental impacts. I do not believe that this new bank should be investing in one new road; new roads are not benefits to people, and they are certainly not benefits to the environment. I can guarantee that there will be an amendment coming from me on that basis.

Coming back to a couple of general points—I warn noble Lords that I will get more radical yet—the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, pointed out that the previous Green Investment Bank rather went for the safe, the money-making and the certain. We must ask the question: is this bank here to make money or to deliver for our society? Here I join with the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton, both of whom reflected on the dictatorship of the Treasury. Is this the right department to oversee this bank? This Bill is written for the purposes of levelling-up and for environmental improvement. Why not give joint control of the bank to Defra and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities? After all, that is what this is supposed to be for—I am not sure what the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, will think about that; I wait to see her response.

I am not going to get into detail about this, but I note the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, and I very much look forward to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on the issue of ensuring that this is not yet another imposition from Westminster on the other nations of the UK. Failing a level of control being taken away from the Treasury, I think that the points of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, about the qualifications of the board were really important.

Finally, on climate considerations, I think that we need to include terminology around renewable electricity in Clause 2(5)(a). It is absolutely crucial that this does not include gas and does not go towards funding fossil-fuel investments. We have seen reports that BEIS is trying to define green investments as including gas as a transitional fuel. But that ignores the fact that we must shift to renewables now—renewables are the cheapest and best option. Fugitive methane means that gas must not be included in the activities of this bank.