Horizon Europe: UK Participation

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think my noble friend has asked that question three times. He gets the same answer every time but he is welcome to ask it again. The point that he makes is very valid. There are 15 countries in addition to the EU that have associated to Horizon, including Israel, Kosovo, Turkey and Tunisia, but, for reasons known only to itself, the EU refuses to continue the agreement.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, the Government’s plan B will not help the situation, as the Science and Technology Committee found in its report on the Government’s ambition to be a scientific superpower. Our work and scientific visas and upfront health costs are up to six times as high as those of other leading scientific nations. Will the Government implement our recommendation to reduce visa fees in line with those of our competitors? If not, we will carry on losing scientists.

COP 27: Outcome

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am sorry to tell my noble friend that I am not responsible for the financial services Bill. I would be very happy to get Treasury colleagues to write to her.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, could I ask the Minister about our overseas investments? It is important that we put our money where our mouth is. Since Boris Johnson announced that we would stop supporting fossil fuels overseas nearly two years ago, what, if any, investments have been made into fossil fuels through British International Investment, UK Export Finance or one of their subsidiaries? If he does not know the answer, would he write to me?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As far as I am aware, the Prime Minister’s pledge has been kept. If that is not the case, I will certainly write to the noble Baroness.

COP 27: Commitments

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 24th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, it is an honour to open the winding-up speeches in this very important debate, on a matter about which our Benches, like all other Benches, feel particularly passionate. I know that a number of my colleagues were particularly disappointed that they were prevented by other commitments from being able to speak today. On behalf of all of us, I thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, for giving us this opportunity today and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Leong, on his excellent maiden speech.

As the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said early in his speech, there was something to welcome in the outcome of COP 27, specifically—as my noble friend Lady Sheehan also mentioned—the commitment to create a fund to address the loss and damage done to some poorer countries as a result of climate change. I think that we all believe that its success will depend on the specific details. I think we would all like to know, from the Minister, what practical and financial commitment the UK Government will be making to this fund.

The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, also raised the issue of forest management: those vital carbon sinks. That is why I particularly welcome the commitment of President-elect Lula of Brazil to stop deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon. The damage done under President Bolsonaro has been disastrous for the future of the planet. Can I therefore ask the Minister whether the UK Government will be offering any practical help, such as surveillance, to President Lula, to assist him with enforcement and to crack down on the criminal loggers who are clearing his forests?

However, at COP 27—as the noble Lord, Lord Leong, said quite sadly—it was disappointing that there was no increase in ambition on mitigation from the partners, including the UK, to reduce damaging emissions any faster than the commitments made at COP 26, despite the fact that the world is moving towards a disastrous 2.4 degrees of warming. As the noble Lord, Lord Birt, noticed, Alok Sharma MP was clearly very disappointed by the outcome. Given the further evidence of the urgency of the matter over the past year, with serious adverse weather events such as flooding, drought and wildfires, one would have hoped for better.

Many good points have been made during the debate. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, and my noble friend Lady Sheehan mentioned debt relief, so that countries such as the Maldives can use the money to help with their protection from and adaptation to global warming. That is a really important point. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, also mentioned the costs of moving to net zero, particularly the availability of materials such as lithium, cobalt and nickel, many of which are mined by workers in very poor working conditions and human rights situations. That matter was raised with the Minister yesterday in the debate on the report of the Science and Technology Committee on batteries and fuel cells. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, pointed out that we produce only 1% of carbon emissions: of course, we must all do our bit, but I do agree with him that we have a leadership role in helping others to reduce theirs through our technological developments—more about that later.

In his maiden speech, the noble Lord, Lord Leong, emphasised the role of the next generation, and how poignant that is when we are destroying the planet. The noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, mentioned many exciting technical solutions in the growing green technology area that other people had not mentioned—things to do with methane and plastics. We heard about more exciting developments from the noble Lord, Lord St John of Bletso. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, reminded us of the Prime Minister’s words at COP 27 that reaching net zero is a cross-government responsibility in the UK, and also an international responsibility, so we must address it in the spirit of co-operation. My noble friend Lady Sheehan emphasised the importance of world leaders getting together at COPs and also of giving a voice to small countries and drawing the attention of the world to the challenge of climate change.

However, it is our own emissions over which we have most control, and we could start by stopping subsidies for fossil fuels, which my noble friend Lady Sheehan and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, called for, but we also have an opportunity to take a lead and to benefit from economic opportunities if we are more ambitious and innovative. The UK has done quite well on renewables since the lead given by my right honourable friend Ed Davey MP when he was Secretary of State for Energy in the coalition Government. The climate change performance index currently ranks the UK 11th in its 2023 report, but the Egyptian presidency of COP 27 called for “bold and immediate actions” on mitigation to ensure that the rise in global warming remains below 1.5 degrees. The Glasgow climate pact from COP 26 called on parties to accelerate the transition to low-emission energy systems, but COP 27 disappointed on that.

So the matter is urgent, and it is about the balance and resilience of our UK renewable energy policy that I wish to speak. According to the Autumn Statement, Sizewell C will be eye-wateringly expensive and will not produce a single gigabyte of electricity for a decade, so why not invest in a renewable energy that has been largely ignored but can produce energy long before that? When I was a little girl, I went on holiday in north Wales with my bucket and spade, and when the tide went out my dad and I dug for lugworms in the exposed sand and stuck them on hooks to go fishing for dabs. The tide came in and covered the holes we made, and then it went out again—and it did that again every day of our holiday. Then my father explained to me the link between the tides and the gravitational pull of the moon. It occurs to me then to ask, in the week that the Americans revitalised their ambition of putting man on the moon again with the launch of their Artemis rocket: if man can go to the moon, why can we not harness the regular, predictable energy of the tides?

So I would like to ask some questions about the potential of tidal stream energy—TSE—which does not vary like solar and wind and therefore has the potential to fill a valuable place in our energy baseload and keep battery storage topped up. Currently, marine energy is more expensive per kilowatt than other zero-carbon methods, but I am grateful for an excellent briefing from the catapult on offshore renewable energy, outlining research on what support is needed to reduce the levelised cost of energy—LCOE—produced from the tide and showing how it could, with the right support, be cheaper than nuclear by 2035.

It is no accident that both solar and offshore wind have reduced significantly in cost over the past two decades. It is because they have benefited from significant public development funding and energy generation subsidies. When I first installed solar panels in a property 15 years ago, the cost was pretty high, but when I installed solar in my current home, six years ago, the cost was much less because economies of scale had kicked in. That was because of government action. However, political support for the tidal stream sector has been inconsistent. This has slowed down investment and technology development compared with alternative renewables. Consequently, there has not been the chance to unlock cost reductions through deploying commercial-scale arrays, and there are only a handful of projects across the UK to date. But the opportunity for TSE to contribute to the resilience of the UK renewable energy mix and to export both technology and energy around the world and contribute to growth is considerable.

Through a number of demonstration projects, the industry in the UK has achieved a reduction in its levelised cost of energy since 2016 of more than 40% with little or no revenue support, so it is crucial that this technology continues to drive down costs to become competitive with other forms of energy. However, the industry needs the help that other forms of renewable energy have received. Its innovation and development and its effective demonstration projects warrant government support to help us achieve the title of “science and technology superpower” and reach zero carbon emissions.

So, what is needed? The first answer is long-term commitment and certainty. Will the Government set a long-term deployment target for the sector? Secondly, the supply chain needs to see a clear project pipeline to enable investment in workforce and facilities. The Marine Energy Council’s UK target of one gigawatt of ocean energy by 2035 is feasible, and there is no reason why TSE should not make up around 900 megawatts of that. Such a target would encourage the flow of private capital, but an industry target needs to be backed by consistent revenue support. In the UK, the best way to support an industry in this crucial early stage is to maintain a ring-fenced amount in upcoming contracts for difference rounds. That is important, since TSE is an emerging technology and currently unable to compete with the large scale of more established forms of renewable energy.

I hope the Minister will consider these requests in the interests of energy security, diversity, resilience, predictability and the opportunity for serious export opportunities and growth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I welcome the Minister’s celebration of the contribution of indigenous people and civil society to successive COPs, but I asked whether the UK would work to exclude oil and gas lobbyists from future COPs?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

May I request that the Minister writes to me about tidal stream energy?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am happy to write to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on the important objective of tidal stream energy. With regard to fossil fuel lobbyists, it was not a cheery sight, although there are different issues and many fossil fuel companies are also engaged in renewal energy. Many of the biggest players in our own country are fossil fuel companies as they seek to transition through. We will certainly look closely at the issue of lobbyists, but who does and does not attend is not necessarily always our decision.

Battery Strategy (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, as a member of the committee, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Patel, for his excellent chairing of our inquiry and his introduction today. I also thank all the committee staff and advisers, who have done such a good job. We heard from a very wide range of experts, to whom I am also grateful.

The subject that we chose could hardly be more apt for this week, as COP 27 comes to an end, since batteries and fuel cells should play such a crucial role in our ability to mitigate climate change and reach net zero. I am pleased to note that, since the report was published, the Government have met a number of our recommendations, committing to phase out non-zero emitting HGVs by 2040 and publishing the hydrogen and critical minerals strategies, about which more later. However, our witnesses suggested that the Government have a long way to go if they are to realise the potential of the UK’s role in the production and use of batteries and fuel cells.

As the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, pointed out, even the media have noticed that, unfortunately, we have already lost the race to become a global leader in the production of lithium-ion batteries. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, warned, this provides a serious danger to our UK automotive industry. If we are even to reach our not very ambitious targets for EV cars and vans on our roads, it will have to be done by importing batteries and complete vehicles, and we can be held to ransom by China. The rules of origin laws coming in in 2027 will also mean higher costs and loss of markets, unless we can increase our own production. My noble friend Lord Teverson called it a timebomb, and he was right.

The Government have stated an ambition to build eight gigafactories to manufacture batteries by 2030, but we have only one, and Britishvolt is struggling to obtain its investment in its proposed factory in the north-east. Is that because investors are unsure of the Government’s support and commitment in the long term? I suspect so. Can the Minister reassure us?

As our witnesses told us, there is an opportunity to take a lead on next generation alternative battery technologies, such as solid-state, lithium-sulphur, sodium-ion, et cetera. Focus and funding of research and development of those new technologies is crucial. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, mentioned, the funding of the Faraday Institution is guaranteed for only two years and has no allowance for inflation for that time, meaning a real-terms cut. That means that there will be no PhD cohort starting in October 2023 or 2024. Will the Minister please look at this?

In addition, there is no significant funding in the Faraday Institution project for redox flow batteries needed for static batteries for power storage. As my noble friend Lord Teverson said, this will be essential as the demand for power, for recharging and other things, increases. Will the Minister talk to UKRI about this issue? The Faraday Institution has also brought together a consortium of seven partners to develop a world-leading prototype solid-state battery, but at least two of the partners have either taken themselves abroad, as is the case with Johnson Matthey, or are struggling to fund their battery factory—the case with Britishvolt. So how will this affect the objectives of that consortium? Badly, I suspect.

To encourage uptake of EVs in the domestic market, we need to look at the factors that deter purchasers and fleet owners: cost, range and the charging network. On cost, the Government have just removed the grant that was available to reduce the price premium, and last week they announced that EVs will have to pay vehicle excise duty from 2025. Indeed, some will have to pay a very high rate of VED, because they are expensive. What is the sense of this, if we are going to reach or exceed our targets? The range is gradually increasing as the work progresses on making lithium-ion batteries more efficient. But this will take time, which makes the motorway and major road charging network even more important. Having queued up many times to use the only working charger of two at a service station, I am painfully and personally aware of this, as is my noble friend Lady Randerson. Our committee recommended a vastly increased number of public charging facilities, since many people cannot charge at home. What are the Government doing to speed this up?

Something could be done right away, however, to encourage people without a home charger to get an EV: reducing the VAT on power downloaded from public chargers. This is at 20%, whereas people like me who are charging at home pay only 5%. Can the Minister do this right away? The cost of upgrading the power supply to serve workplace chargers is high, which will deter blocks of flats, workplaces, petrol stations, supermarkets, et cetera; will the Government increase the support for this?

Skilled workers have been mentioned by several speakers. To reach our targets, we need many thousands of skilled workers for the manufacture and maintenance of batteries, fuel cells, vehicles and the chargers and grid needed to service them. The Government have set out a number of industry training schemes, as my noble friend Lady Randerson noted, but there was no new funding announced in the Autumn Statement for the further education colleges that will be key to delivering them. Was that an oversight by the Chancellor?

As the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, pointed out, many of the essential materials needed for current batteries are not found in this country, and the new critical minerals strategy is important here. However, we hear from researchers that there is no pathway and that funding for delivering the strategy is minimal. Can the Minister assure us that there will be more funding coming down the track?

One way to ensure the pipeline of minerals and deliver a sustainable circular economy is through recycling, as my noble friend Lady Sheehan pointed out. The early batteries were difficult to recycle, but this can be made easier through recycling by design. Can this be made mandatory through regulation, at least for those made here? I think that there is one recycling facility for these materials in the UK; batteries are having to be shipped to France for the recovery of vital materials. I understand that the University of Exeter is working on the reuse of cobalt, lithium and rare-earth elements, but we need development and manufacturing facilities too. What are the Government doing about that? My noble friend Lord Teverson also talked about reuse for static batteries for grid balancing.

I make two final points. First, given that some renewal energies are intermittent, there will be a need—in addition to a smart grid, smart meters and so on—for the Government to ensure that energy providers offer variable tariffs to customers to incentivise behaviour change and spread demand across the day. What are Government doing about this?

As my noble friend Lord Teverson said, there is also the need for large-scale battery storage to even out our supply. They also have a role in ensuring that no precious captured energy from wind or solar is wasted. I have always thought it was a terrible waste to have to pay wind turbine operators to stop the blades turning when the wind is blowing, when grid demand does not match supply. Will the Government widen the remit of UKRI, the Faraday Institution and the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre to include static batteries?

I have not yet mentioned fuel cells and hydrogen but, to be very brief, they have an important role in heavy transport, marine and rail as well as space heating, such as in Japan. What are the Government doing to encourage more research on this? As regards reaching net zero, however, only green hydrogen produced by electrolysers has a serious role to play. What is really needed is a large-scale demonstration plant onshore, near to a major wind farm, to use the excess energy to produce green hydrogen. Can the Minister say whether there are any plans for this? We will also need hydrogen storage. Let us not make the same mistake as we did with gas, when the Government allowed the removal of the gas storage capacity, which has caused such a serious problem since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Our report calls on the Government to make many changes and to speed up our progress, particularly since transport is such a major contributor to our emissions. I look forward to the Minister’s positive reply.

Prepayment Meters: Pricing

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 11th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Of course I can give the noble Baroness that assurance; we will do all we can to protect the most vulnerable. We all recognise the difficult circumstances that such people would be in, but our top priority is to make sure that there are no interruptions to supply at all. That is one of the reasons why we are ramping up efforts to make sure that we have enough energy to serve the UK this winter.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, those renting from private registered landlords often have little choice about how they pay for their energy. I am thinking in particular of students in houses of multiple occupation, many of whom are faced with very large bills indeed. Are landlords in that situation obliged to pass on any government subsidies to those students?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

We certainly encourage them to do so. We are looking at the upcoming legislation, which the House will consider shortly, to ensure that not just people in situations such as houses of multiple occupation but also those on heat networks, those in temporary accommodation, et cetera, get the reduction passed on to them.

Catapults (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, it was a privilege to be a member of the Science and Technology Select Committee, under the able leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Patel, when we produced the report on catapults. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Mair, on his excellent introductory speech. He emphasised the need to increase the scale of funding for the catapults, commensurate with the Government’s great ambitions.

I knew little about catapults before I heard the evidence to the committee, bar the fact that they hurt when somebody fired one at you in the playground. That is a serious point, because catapults often hide their light under a bushel, despite their important role to assist the transfer of research into industry, jobs and profitability. The noble Lord, Lord Willetts, mentioned that they were not on the Liberal Democrat manifesto in 2010, but I am pleased that they were finally introduced under Vince Cable, a Liberal Democrat Secretary of State for Business. He supported them very enthusiastically.

Even the DCMS does not seem to know much about them. That department recently published a report about translating artificial intelligence R&D into commercialisation. There was no mention of the commercialisation and translational role that catapults could play, even for the most successful ones, such as the Digital Catapult, which is the one most relevant to artificial intelligence.

As I see it, there were four themes to our recommendations. The first was the role of catapults in delivering the Government’s objective to spend 2.4% of GDP on R&D by 2027. The second was the need for strategic decisions from Government on matters affecting private investment decisions to assist the catapults in their role to deliver more of that; and the noble Lord, Lord Patel, focused on this. The third was what can be done to correct the imbalance between collaboration and competition to enable universities and industry to work better. The noble Lords, Lord Patel and Lord Willetts, both spoke about that. The fourth was an enhanced role for the catapults in delivering the Government’s levelling-up agenda.

As you might imagine, our witnesses from the catapults suggested ways in which they could get their hands on more cash to fund their projects. The noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, asked for more flexibility about funding. Some of our recommendations agreed that this could be done in a number of ways. We asked UKRI to allow catapults to bid for research council funding, where there are clear advantages for research and innovation. I am pleased that the Government’s subsequent review of the catapults agreed this should be done. We also asked that Innovate UK should raise the cap on the share of collaborative research funding for which catapults can bid, particularly where more than one such organisation is involved. I echo the request for that from the noble Lord, Lord Mair, and the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said that failure to do so has had a chilling effect.

Again, the Government agreed to ask UKRI and Innovate UK to make these changes, so I ask the Minister whether there are any figures on how much additional funding has become available to the catapults since that change was agreed in the Government’s review. This would be money well spent. Catapults can deliver enormous leverage for the funding they receive, though some are better at it than others. For example, the Digital Catapult core grant is £12 million. It calculates the yield as £436 million over four years, from the funds raised by the businesses it supports. The noble Lord, Lord Holmes, also mentioned this and the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, mentioned the great success of the Cell and Gene Therapy Catapult.

There is of course some variation in the success enjoyed by the catapults. Some are better at working with universities than others, and we recommended that more could be done, perhaps through adjusting the universities’ KPIs, to encourage them to collaborate with catapults to increase translational work. Some are better than others at helping small businesses grow, and I would like to see more opportunities for the less successful ones to learn from the leaders in the catapult field.

When we wrote the report, we believed that there needed to be more clarity in the Government’s plan for their innovation ambitions, a matter we are pursuing further in our current report on the R&D landscape. In their response, the Government restated their confidence that their target of reaching a spend of 2.4% of GDP on R&D would be achieved by 2027, though unfortunately, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Mair, the latest data available says we have reached only 1.7% to date.

The Government have accepted that more private funding is essential to their ambition, but we recently heard from a senior industry witness that they are not engaging with industry sufficiently well to achieve that. There is a lack of confidence in the clarity and consistency of the Government’s science strategy to encourage such investment. I realise the response was published a year ago—we have been waiting that long for a debate on this—but I wonder whether, in his reply, the Minister will tell us whether that situation is improving and through what actions.

I heard that the Government’s innovation strategy, published several months after our report, contained a mention of the role of catapults, so I had a look at the “implementation” section. I found multiple strategies, missions, forums, reviews, assessments, headline pledges and even a new organisation—ARIA, the Advanced Research and Innovation Agency, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, pointed out, cannot seem to find a chief executive.

Eventually, I found a mention of catapults on page 110. First, I found the review of catapults, which, as I have mentioned, was carried out last April just after our report. I found an acknowledgement of the role of catapults in the levelling-up headline ambition, as they are in 40 different locations across the country and are charged with creating jobs and improving skills by helping industries to grow. I found that the review published last April recommended:

“Innovate UK will ensure that Catapults deliver on their full potential for business. This will include growing their capabilities to support skills development in the sectors they support, contributing to levelling up, driving research commercialisation, and enabling global innovation collaborations.”


Our committee also had a recommendation about this. The catapults work in the regions, but the strength in places funding stream from UKRI is tightly ring-fenced. This means that they sometimes cannot work in places where they might have added value. We asked the Government to look at this and I hope the Minister will tell us that they have. I therefore wonder whether that recommendation and various others about scaling up funding are being carried out, and I look forward to what the Minister has to say about that.

I have one or two more points. The noble Lord, Lord Mair, asked about our suggestion that UKRI should support researchers to work at the interface between universities and industry, in the exact place where the catapults work. Support for such professionals would allow them to make a valuable contribution to any catapult. Has there been any progress on this idea?

The noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Holmes, mentioned skills, and they might like to know that our next report will be on what can be done to increase the science and skills people pipeline. I look forward to further debates on that when it comes out but, for now, I look forward to the Minister’s response.

Gazprom Energy

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 24th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an important point. Gazprom Energy supplies about 20% of the UK business market, as he correctly observes, including many schools and hospitals, and so on. It would not be right for the Government to interfere in individual contractual decisions but for those that choose to break their contracts, the Crown Commercial Service stands by to support them in securing their next energy contract.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware of a recent paper by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit which shows that our dependence on Russian gas could be quickly and permanently eliminated, not by more North Sea gas, which is expensive, not immediate, low impact and temporary, but by reducing gas demand by returning to our programme of insulating homes, installing heat pumps and expanding renewables? Of course, that would also reduce household bills, create jobs and provide us with energy security.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness posits those as two alternatives but in fact we are doing both. We will still need gas supplies during the transition, but we are spending some £6.6 billion over this Parliament on home insulation measures, and we have one of the largest programmes of renewables in the western world and one of the largest offshore wind sectors in the world. We are proposing to expand that to approximately 40 gigawatts by the end of this decade. None of this can happen quickly—it is a transition—but we will still need gas during that transition. My point is that it is better to get the gas that we will need during the transition from UK sources rather than relying on unstable parts of the world.

Lithium Ion Batteries: Fire Safety Standards

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

It is an important point. We offer an attractive tariff for consumers who generate their own electricity to export to the grid but, as that tariff is lower than that for which they would have to buy the electricity themselves, there is an incentive, if possible, to store it and reuse it. As we get more EVs, we will see their increasing use as storage devices, and companies will start to offer an attractive tariff to enable electricity to be released from those at times of busy demand.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, going back to the right reverend Prelate’s question, how many facilities for recycling batteries are there in the UK, and what is being done to make sure that we have end-to-end design technologies in this country?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I do not have figures for the precise number of battery recycling plants in the UK. I am aware of some developments in that field, but I do not have the precise numbers. The noble Baroness makes an important point: that we need to ensure end-to-end recycling and reuse.

Private Sector: Environment and COP 26

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

All companies that take part in COP 26 will have joined our race to net-zero initiative. As I mentioned in response to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, 40 of the FTSE 100 companies have already joined it and we hope that more will follow.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, can the Minister get all the companies that run public electric car chargers together in one room and force them to simplify and standardise their access and payment technologies? I ask because if anyone wants to drive an EV to Glasgow for the COP 26, they will need a phone full of apps, a handful of cards and nerves of steel in case the charger that they urgently need is either occupied or broken.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I think that the House has some sympathy with the points made by the noble Baroness. She will be delighted to hear that the Competition and Markets Authority is carrying out a market study into electric vehicle charging in the UK, considering two broad themes: how to develop a competitive sector and attract private investment, and how to ensure that people using EV charge points have confidence that they can get the best out of the service. I am sure that the noble Baroness will want to contribute to that study.

Office of the Whistleblower Bill [HL]

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 25th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD) [V]]

My Lords, I am delighted to support the Bill and I declare my membership of the APPG for Whistleblowing.

Change in organisations is most effectively implemented if it has support from the bottom up, but if workers are not encouraged to suggest better ways of doing things, and even penalised when they report problems or wrongdoings, things will never get better. Therefore, it is in the best interests of every organisation to encourage reporting of concerns and have in place effective systems to put things right.

Unfortunately, the experience of whistleblowers, as we have heard, varies across employers. Some have systems that recognise the benefit of an open and learning approach. Too many others are closed and secretive, believing they are protecting their good name, but in fact doing themselves harm when the truth eventually comes out, as my noble friend Lady Featherstone has just demonstrated. Some people do not know where to report issues; others know very well, but fear for their career if they speak out, so remain silent. They may have heard of other whistleblowers whose cases have dragged on for years, who have been discriminated against and had enormous costs and mental stress, as we have heard today. This is why we need a body whose duty it is to improve the system.

I support the power for the new office of the whistleblower to consult on a review of the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 and recommend changes. In the past two decades, the pattern of work has changed. PIDA does not protect self-employed contractors, non-executive directors, trustees, volunteers, interns and most job applicants. If they want to pursue a case, they have to go to court at great expense and stress. They take a serious risk, as court findings are often inconsistent, so the current legal framework needs to be reviewed. For example, currently there are no obligations on employers or regulators to handle disclosures in a way that protects whistleblowers and results in a meaningful investigation.

I have long been an advocate of mandatory reporting of child abuse. There are many parallels between this and adult whistleblowers. What children who report abuse want is for the abuse to stop. Imagine how a child who makes such a disclosure feels when the information is not passed on and nothing is done. The same applies to adult whistleblowers. Like the abused child, they only want it to stop. A new office of the whistleblower would contribute to ensuring that it stopped. I have often been told that you cannot mandate the reporting of child abuse in case you uncover more abuse than the system can cope with. My answer to that is that whenever you lift up a stone, you usually find something nasty underneath, and if you are afraid to lift up stones, there is something wrong with the systems to deal with the nasties you uncover. I support my noble friend’s attempt to improve the system of lifting up stones and dealing with the nasties underneath.