Energy Bill [HL]

Baroness Maddock Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, following the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, perhaps I may take the opportunity of this amendment to thank my noble friend the Minister for circulating overnight the impact assessment, which we have all read with interest. It does seem to have a discouragingly large number of “Not availables” in various boxes throughout, which rather puts one off. However, I can see that my noble friend has made a considerable effort and I am grateful to him.

The impact assessment states that last January the Oil and Gas Authority began to undertake an urgent piece of work involving industry to come up with practical measures to mitigate the immediate risks that the downturn in oil and gas prices present. That is a high ambition, but we open the papers each morning and read of thousands of redundancies, talk of fields closing down and a real sense of crisis beginning to envelope the industry, as the oil price for Brent crude remains resolutely down at around $50 and much lower for West Texas Intermediate. Can we be assured that as we go through this stage and the Report stage that we have a little more meat on the description of what these practical measures are and how, as the sense of crisis develops, it is going to be mitigated by the work and the powers we are assigning to the Oil and Gas Authority? I think that a new sense of urgency is coming to the debate which may not have been the case in January or when the new authority was set up, but we now need to incorporate that as we handle the legislation that is necessary to send the authority on its way.

[Baroness Maddock (LD)]

My Lords, I am delighted to hear that some noble Lords have received the impact assessment, but I wonder if the Minister can tell me how it was distributed, because it has not come my way yet.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may deal with the last point first. I certainly gave instructions that the impact assessment should be sent out in hard copy form and by email. I take the inference from what the noble Baroness says that she has not received a copy in one of those two ways. She should have done so, and I can only apologise for that. I hope that no one else is in that position.

I shall now deal with the issue of impact assessments. I apologised on Monday for the fact that the impact assessment had not been circulated earlier. It was held up through processes in government—documents are cleared by a particular Minister, but that is not the end of the process, as I am sure the noble Baroness is aware. I can only confirm that it is the case that the assessment was not cleared until Monday. I think I indicated then that that was when it was cleared, and it was only then that we were in a position to notify noble Lords. I hope that I can offer some reassurance because all morning I have been chasing the remaining impact assessments, and indeed a note was passed to me just as the debate opened that they have now been cleared and will be circulated, it is hoped, by the end of the day. However, I will add a word of caution by saying that we will ensure that they are sent around by tomorrow. Once again, I apologise.

I will focus on the general points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, in relation to carbon capture and storage. I thought, as she did, that on Monday we made considerable progress on this issue. There is a shared feeling across the parties that these issues are important and on Monday I gave an undertaking that we would be looking at them between Committee and Report. Letters are going out today to noble Lords who spoke on Monday, as well as to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who indicated that he could not be here. I have asked that he should be sent a letter. Moreover, anyone who speaks today but who did not speak on Monday will also receive a letter asking about their availability between now and when the House returns on 12 October so that we are able to call a meeting, or potentially a series of meetings. We will ask everyone to the same meetings so that we can thrash these issues out.

My own feeling is that we want to do something; I have not changed my view and I hope that noble Lords will accept my good will on this matter. I am keen that we should move forward, but I do not think that this is the stage at which to talk about exactly how that is going to happen because it is not something that can easily be done. Carbon capture and storage is important to the Government. We committed a significant sum of money to it in our manifesto and that remains very much government policy. We have a good story to tell in that as a country we have the important potential of the North Sea for carbon capture and storage, so I am keen that it should be incorporated in the Bill in a way that it is not at the moment.

My next point will, I hope, address points quite rightly made by my noble friend Lord Howell, and I thank him for his thanks in relation to the impact assessment. Work has started but, in relation to the focus of the Oil and Gas Authority, it is important that we do not load too much work on the authority and diffuse what it seeks to do. There is a balancing act: we are very keen to ensure maximising economic recovery from the North Sea at the same time as realising the great potential that we have from carbon capture and storage. They remain very much our objectives.

I turn to the more technical points, quite validly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, as to what this clause does and what these amendments seek to do to the clauses in the Bill. Although I am a lawyer, that does not mean that I perhaps have any greater insight. Therefore, I tread with trepidation and have spent some time on this. I believe these provisions seek to ensure that, on an assignment of ownership or rights by a party, there is no delay in them being able to take up the rights that were previously enjoyed by the transferor, if I can put it that way. We will have a look at that and I will write to noble Lords on this issue to ensure that it is not any more complicated than that and that it does not prejudice the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, raised. That is certainly not the intention and I do not believe that it creates difficulties in the way that they indicated might be the case. But I will certainly confirm that.

I hope that that answers the points raised by noble Lords and therefore ask noble Lords to support these amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Viscount Ridley]

I do not disagree—I was simply picking up on a couple of points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, and the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. I will wrap up my remarks very soon, but let me point out that the only scenario that the IPCC considered in its models that gets us to 4 degrees by 2100 is RCP 8.5, which assumes that the world will be burning 10 times as much coal in 2100 as we are today. That is not very realistic, and it also assumes that by then, we will be getting our motor fuel from coal. Nobody thinks that is going to happen, so one has to be careful about which of the IPCC scenarios one looks at. That one is not very plausible.

Anyway, I think we agree that this is an excellent amendment, and I will leave it at that.

[Baroness Maddock]

I was going to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, on introducing an amendment that has actually brought together both sides of the climate change argument. Unfortunately, that was rather spoilt by the latest comment of the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. We were spared that on Monday, when we debated carbon capture and storage. However, I do hope that the Minister will take this proposal and this amendment seriously.

The final point I want to make, which I made on Monday, is that I am concerned that, in our rush to make sure that we keep the oil and gas industry as profitable as it can be in the circumstances, we do not put anything in the Bill that will prevent us developing carbon capture and storage. We have heard how slow and difficult progress has been, so I welcome these proposals, which we should look at. I hope we can have a good discussion of the issue, but I point out that, other than next week, it is very difficult for me to get together here in London to discuss it before we return in October.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, we have been treated to a veritable tour d’horizon on this amendment, going far beyond the amendment itself. I certainly do not criticise that; I think that in a sense it is important, and it has been a very good debate. I shall try to pick up the points that were made.

To echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Maddock, has just said, there is an attraction in getting everybody on the same side, including my noble friend Lord Deben, who is not in his place today—he is just in his place; I am sorry. Getting everybody on the same side of the argument as my noble friend Lord Ridley in relation to CCS is indeed seductive, if for no other reason than that this matter certainly demands close attention, although it demands close attention for many other reasons.

The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, introduced his amendment with great authority. He spoke widely about something being in the air and the challenges that we are facing as a global community, as well as the Conference of the Parties that is taking place in Paris at the end of this year. I associate myself entirely with what he says about the challenge there and the fact that there are positive moves and ambition in the air. However, I would not want anybody to think that this is a done deal. There is a lot of hard work going on. Our own Secretary of State, my right honourable friend Amber Rudd, is spending most of her time on this, working around the clock. She has been given a major role on finance by the French President to try to bring countries together. That, again, is a good thing for us as a country and for all concerned, as she is the right person to do that. It is important to try to keep the 2 degrees centigrade increase in sight, and that is a real challenge. However, it is right that there is ambition in the air and many positive things are happening.

The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, was right when he said that this is a germ of an idea, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said that it was the start of an idea. I agree with that. This is very much a nascent amendment and it certainly deserves attention in the broader context of looking at carbon capture and storage, which, I repeat, we are very happy to do within the context of this Bill.

The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, spoke with great passion—and understandably so—about the narrow focus of this legislation. It is narrow in many ways but I understand that we have the support of the Opposition in ensuring that the Wood review becomes law. That is important. I am very aware that we do not want to lose sight of the central focus, which I think my noble friend Lord Howell referred to with words of caution. The jobs are important, as is gas, in our move to a carbon-free environment. Maximising the economic return in getting gas and oil from the North Sea is vital and we do not want to lose sight of that.

That said, we are very keen to ensure that CCS features centrally within the legislation. The Government have in place one of the most comprehensive programmes in the world on CCS, as recognised recently by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. This includes a carbon capture and storage competition, with up to £1 billion capital, plus operational support for up to two commercial-scale carbon capture support projects and a £125 million research, development and innovation programme. That said, my noble friend Lord Ridley is absolutely right that it is only Canada that we can look to as somewhere where this is working commercially. DECC officials have spent a lot of time looking at that. They have visited Canada on many occasions and will continue to do so.

I am keen that CCS remains very central to what we are thinking about. I repeat the undertaking that all Peers are invited to join in this process, and all Peers who have spoken will receive a letter inviting them to indicate their availability. If it is difficult to get one meeting because of lack of availability then we will put on two, but we will not be splitting them on a party basis, because I think that there is a genuine cross-party feel on this issue. I do not think that there is any real difference between people on this, which is a very good thing.

I am very keen that we should move forward in relation to this carbon capture and storage issue. I appreciate the debate that we have just had. It has been very helpful, although, as I said, it was much more wide-ranging than the amendment. However, I respectfully ask the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment on the basis that the Government have given an undertaking to look at carbon capture and storage in relation to the Oil and Gas Authority and to do so between Committee and Report.