Marine Renewables: Government Support

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 7th December 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Carmichael]

If the hon. Member wants to send me his CV, I will keep it on file for when I next have a vacancy for a speech writer. I am at risk of being too consensual, but he knows my views on this and we have to find a way to recognise that in energy security there is no silver bullet. Contributions will be made by all sectors on the journey towards net zero.

The Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult estimates that the UK’s tidal stream industry could support 4,000 jobs by 2030 and 14,500 by 2040. Those high-wage, high-value jobs would be focused on coastal areas. UK tidal stream projects use an average 80% UK content in the world-leading arrays, creating supply chain with high rates of return on public investment. As with offshore wind, the supply chain is widely dispersed across the UK—for example, Leask Marine is a vessel charter, commercial diving and international marine construction service based in Kirkwall, but it operates around the world.

Being the world leader in developing tidal stream technologies, the UK is well placed to capitalise on exports to future global markets, including Canada and Japan, in which the sector has already secured export orders. Nova Innovation has a presence in Shetland, but, from its Edinburgh base, it is already working to export to Nova Scotia and Canada—part of a 15-turbine order.

Marine energy provides a particularly competitive solution for countries with islands or remote populations that depend on expensive and polluting diesel generation. The energy innovation needs assessment of tidal stream, commissioned by the Minister’s Department, estimated that growth of UK tidal stream exports could add more than £540 million gross value added and nearly 5,000 jobs per annum by 2050.

I hope the House will forgive me for labouring the point, but that is the potential that sits within our grasp. That is where we want to get to. The question, then, is how. The marine renewables sector has a number of clear and well-formed asks of the Government, one short term and three for the longer term. The most immediately important is the need for an early indication of the Government’s intentions with regard to the continuation of the ringfenced pot for tidal stream in their upcoming contracts for difference allocation round 5.

The creation of that £20 million pot has been enormously important to unlocking private sector finance for the sector, and the sector itself has been able to be creative in the financial instruments it has devised to take advantage of that. Maintaining that investor confidence is critical, and an early and positive announcement on allocation round 5 is essential for that confidence. I would be delighted to hear something about that from the Minister today, although I am prepared to be realistic even though it is almost Christmas. However, an indication of when an announcement might be made would be welcome not just in the House, but in the wider industry.

In the longer term, the industry is looking for contracts for difference options to be reformed in a way that rewarded projects with significant UK content, which would enable it to trigger new manufacturing investment or support innovation in the supply chain. It also seeks a commitment from the Government to a target of 1 GW of marine energy by 2035. Again, that would give confidence to investors that the UK intends to remain the leader in tidal stream.

That 1 GW represents a significant threshold, because it is the point at which it is forecast that tidal stream is expected to become lower cost than new nuclear. The United Kingdom, Scottish and Welsh Governments should work together to expedite the process for new tidal stream sites to ensure development can continue at pace. Pace is important, and the Minister can use his office to work across Government and between Governments to remove some of the forces that are currently a drag on the pace of development.

In its briefing for this debate, Nova Innovation called for the speeding up of CfD timescales and consent processing for tidal stream sites. Section 36 consent, which is required to qualify for a CfD, takes at least three years. That is driven by the requirement for two years of bird and mammal surveys and the nine-plus months it takes to receive a consent decision—it is often much longer in practice. In contrast, the EU target is three months for renewable energy project consent. Section 36 is required only for onshore projects greater than 50 MW, but the offshore limit is 1 MW.

Overall, it takes at least six years from conception to the commissioning of a UK tidal energy site. That timeline is similar across the nations of the UK. In contrast, developers in Canada can go from a greenfield site to first power in two to three years. That puts the UK at a competitive disadvantage for project investment and we risk losing our lead in tidal energy. We should also increase the pace and scale of investment in the UK’s electricity grid so it does not remain a constraint on renewable energy development.

EMEC provides state-of-the-art testing facilities for tidal stream and wave technologies. It plays a pivotal role in supporting the development of the UK’s marine energy sector. The UK leads the way in marine energy as a result of our innovative UK tidal and wave companies, our well-developed project portfolio and our excellent natural resources. EMEC’s activities have been made possible by the support it receives through EU structural funding—specifically funding from the EU Interreg programme. Between 2016 and 2020, that was £17.4 million.

Interreg projects account for 51.9% of EMEC’s overall funding. Obviously, that funding will soon come to an end, so it is imperative that a clear replacement is established to secure its long-term future. The discontinuation of our participation in the EU Interreg programme has presented EMEC with a cliff edge in access to the grant funding supporting the operation and growth of the test centre.

EMEC is taking proactive steps to mitigate the lost funding from Interreg, but—let’s be serious—it will not make good all the lost funds. Direct revenue funding of £1.5 million a year for four years to replace the Interreg gap will enable EMEC to preserve the high-quality jobs and the growth sector, supporting levelling up, protecting that internationally accredited and strategically located facility, and providing recognition as a national asset in pursuit of the UK’s aspirations to be a global research and development superpower. It will allow EMEC to enable further growth and diversification in new technology areas, including wave and tidal array testing, green hydrogen integration, maritime and aviation decarbonisation, and floating offshore wind research and innovation, all with the aim of developing the domestic supply chain and the manufacturing capability of UK plc as a whole in the pursuit of economic growth and reaching net zero.

The replacement of Interreg funding is something of a lonely child when it comes to Government responsibility; it seems to sit between a number of departmental responsibilities. Although the response today is from BEIS, I am aware that the Levelling Up Secretary has an important role. He will be coming to Orkney in January for the final signing of the much-welcomed islands growth deal, and I look forward to raising Interreg with him then if we have not been able to make progress beforehand. Officials in the Minister’s Department have been fully apprised of the situation, so I hope we will be able to work together to ensure EMEC’s critical work is allowed to continue and that the cliff edge in the funding set-up can be avoided.

The marine renewable sector’s asks are far from extravagant. This is the time to capitalise on the lead that the sector has given us as a country, commit to the policies that will expand our reach and make tidal stream innovation the icon of the UK economy that we know that it can be.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 11 am, and I am obliged to call the Front Benches no later than 10.27 am. The guidelines are to allow 10 minutes for the SNP, 10 minutes for His Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. Alastair Carmichael will have three minutes or so at the end to sum up the debate.

China: Labour Programme in Tibet

Debate between Alistair Carmichael and Philip Hollobone

Wednesday 7th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) on securing this debate. I declare an interest, in that I am also a member of IPAC. I, too, think that IPAC is to be commended for the production of the report that is tagged in the title of the debate.

To pick up on the theme first touched on by the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), it is heartening to see the attention that issues such as the oppression of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang province and the situation in Hong Kong are now getting. However, it has not always been thus, and we should acknowledge that there has been a significant attitude change in Governments across the developed world towards China.

By and large I welcome that and I think it a positive change, but I sound a note of caution: when we criticise the regime in Beijing, the Chinese Communist party, we do that because what it does is worthy of criticism. It is not about isolating or demonising China. China has the potential to be a force for good as a massive and growing economy, but when we see that strength in the Chinese economy being used as a malign force in different parts of the world—the way in which China has used its economic influence in Africa, in particular, is worthy of greater consideration—we have not just the right, but the duty to call it out.

It is the case, candidly, as the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) touched on, that Governments of all stripes in recent years have been slow to the party on this. I remember the years when visits to this country under the Blair Government saw protesters shielded away from the site to avoid the risk of offending the delegations, and in 2013, Alex Salmond should have met the Dalai Lama when he came to Edinburgh. However, on all those occasions it is fair to say that the risk of upsetting China, getting on the wrong side of it and then being somehow economically disadvantaged, meant that we made the wrong call and took the wrong turns.

I am delighted to see a different approach from this Government and others throughout the western world. It was for that reason that I made the point about southern or, as we often call it, inner Mongolia, because what we are seeing there has disturbing echoes of what we have seen in other semi-autonomous regions in China. It starts with the linguistic and cultural oppression, but it never finishes there, and when we see it starting, that is the point at which we should be calling it out. I know today’s debate is not about southern Mongolia—perhaps we can keep that for other occasions—but I would draw the House and the Minister’s attention to some of the recent work being done by bodies such as Human Rights Watch and the Southern Mongolian Human Rights Information Centre and the reports that they published towards the end of August.

The IPAC report that the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green referenced reveals that Tibet now has a significant compulsory vocational training programme and forced labour transfer scheme—straight out of the Xinjiang playbook, we could say. More than 500,000 people have been enlisted by the programme in the first seven months of 2020 alone; 49,900 of them were directly transferred to other parts of the province, while 3,109, according to the report, were transferred out of Tibet. It is easy to talk about the figures, horrific as they are, but it is worth pausing for a second to reflect on what they actually mean.

The figures mean, essentially, that the people of Tibet are seen as tools of the state and are deprived of the right and the opportunity to have any say in how and where they work. They have no freedom to choose how they live their own lives. It is a wilful disregard of human rights and human dignity, and that is why we have a duty to call it out. The report says that the forced labour programme is overseen by “strict military-style management”, which limits the liberty of Tibetans in an attempt to remove their so-called “backwardness”.

There is absolutely no place for such an approach in any working or social environment. We see this obsession with conformity and uniformity time and again in the way in which the Government in Beijing approach their people. There is no place for that in a modern state. The treatment of Tibet is part of the much wider programme that we have seen by the Chinese in other parts of the country.

I have a number of points for the Minister. To pick up on a point made by the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), there is a need to get observers and a human rights taskforce, badged under the United Nations, into Xinjiang province and other areas of concern. There is a need to meaningfully use Magnitsky-type sanctions and to look at whether the supply chains of companies selling and operating in this country have been using forced labour and whether British businesses and public bodies should take that into consideration. The Modern Slavery Act 2015 means that we have legal obligations as well as a moral imperative.

This comes down to the most fundamental human rights imaginable. We should never forget that human rights are universal. If they do not matter in Tibet and Xinjiang, frankly they do not actually matter here either.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

We now come to the Front-Bench speeches. I call Patrick Grady for the SNP.