Carers: Unpaid Leave

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Callanan

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Well, I suppose the answer to the noble Baroness’s question is that it depends on how much time Parliament chooses to spend on particular legislation. Obviously, we were committed to an employment Bill. The Queen’s Speech set out a packed and ambitious legislative programme, with a comprehensive set of Bills that will enable us to deliver on priorities such as growing the economy, and so on—and I am sure that noble Lords will spend a large amount of time on studying those Bills. We are committed to that legislation, as I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and we will look for alternative vehicles and work with parliamentarians to try to deliver what is a manifesto commitment.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, can the Minister explain whether the Government have considered how many carers might be able to return to work if this provision were available to them, and whether secondary legislation could be used to introduce this simple measure?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My understanding is that it would need primary legislation.

Costs of Living

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Callanan

Wednesday 25th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. The best thing we can do to ensure security of supply is to generate more of our supply here in the UK. For that, we need to keep producing as much oil and gas as we can from the North Sea during the transition period, and to ramp up the amount of homegrown renewables and nuclear, which we are also doing.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, some of the Government’s current plans to improve the situation—I recognise that that is what they are trying to do—will not necessarily benefit those who are on disability benefits. We must accept that people who cannot move easily in order to stay warm demand greater help with the resource of fuel. Will the Minister please comment on that?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Baroness is referring to the warm home discount. We are increasing the amount of money generated for the warm home discount and it is going to a wider cohort of people, but we are trying to concentrate those payments on those who need them most.

Vaccine Manufacturing and Innovation Centre

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Callanan

Monday 25th April 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Of course the legislation applies, as it does to all transactions that have taken place in this country since 1 January, so we would bear any appropriate security considerations in mind in any potential call-in. I obviously cannot comment on any particular circumstances, as the noble Lord will understand, but we are happy for this transaction to proceed.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

Could the noble Lord explain whether we would be able to contain vaccines in this country from the centre in the event of us needing mass inoculation again?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The centre has not been completed —it is still under construction—so it has not produced any vaccines yet. Obviously whether it does so will be a matter for its new owners. But the Government have a wide range of emergency powers that we may need to deploy in the event of any future pandemic.

Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Callanan

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank everybody who has spoken in yet another wide-ranging debate on energy policy—I definitely have all my lines ready now for the next time we have Oral Questions in the House. At the risk of agreeing with almost everybody, I just want to say that what we need in this country is a diverse mix of supply—yes, we need new nuclear; yes, we need more renewables; yes, we need interconnectors; yes, we need pump storage—which is the best way to keep bills low and supply reliable. It is absolutely not a question of renewables or nuclear; government policy is that we need both.

There is a long list of amendments in this group. They have been tabled respectively by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lords, Lord Foster, Lord Teverson, Lord Oates and Lord McNicol. We have taken them together because they are of similar intent and similar subject matter.

Let me start by replying to the noble Lord, Lord Foster, and his comments on the designation statement. He is of course right that the department is still developing the statement, given that we do not want to pre-empt any of the debates we are currently having in Parliament on this Bill; the noble Lord would be one of the first to criticise us if we decided all these things in advance. We want to listen to what parliamentarians say and gather all opinions before finalising the statement.

Before coming on to the individual amendments, let me remind the Committee of the commitment we made in the 2020 energy White Paper to bring at least one large-scale nuclear project to a final investment decision by the end of this Parliament, subject to value for money and all the relevant approvals. I thank my noble friend Lord Howell and the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, for their thoughtful contributions setting out all the considerations that we need to take into account when making decisions about the value for money of new nuclear projects.

The Bill has been introduced with this objective in mind. It seeks to introduce a funding model that can lower the cost of finance for the large-scale nuclear that most of us agree we need; help to invigorate the UK nuclear industry; encourage, ideally, investment from British institutional investors and pension funds; and support our desire—shared by everyone, I think—for a decarbonised, resilient energy system.

Amendments 7 and 8 seek to clarify the types of company that may benefit from the nuclear RAB model. Amendment 7 would severely inhibit our ability to achieve the objectives I have just set out by restricting those able to benefit from the RAB model to not for profit, co-operatives, community-interested companies or companies wholly owned by a UK public authority. I understand the political intent of the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, but I point her to the brilliant examples of energy companies that have been set up by a multiplicity of local authorities across the country in recent years. Without exception, every one of them has gone bankrupt, with considerable costs to local taxpayers. These things are not as easy to do in the public sector as the noble Baroness might imagine. If it was so easy and simple, all those companies would be prospering and returning funds to the taxpayer. In fact, a number of—mainly Labour—local authorities have lost millions of pounds for local taxpayers in attempting to do things better than the market. Public is not always good.

With regards to Amendment 8, I am pleased to confirm that Clause 14 already provides that “a company” means a company that is registered under the Companies Act 2006 in England and Wales or Scotland. The amendment is therefore unnecessary.

On Amendment 23, I can confirm to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that, irrelevant of ownership, if a designated nuclear company ceases to meet the designation conditions set out in the Bill, the Secretary of State has the power to revoke its designation. Provision is already made for this in Clause 5(1); for that reason, the noble Baroness’s amendment is unnecessary.

Amendments 6, 10 and 29 seek to tackle scenarios whereby a nuclear station may not be built or suffer from cost overruns, or there are issues with its generation output. Those things can happen in the real world but all these scenarios are fairly unlikely to occur. The approvals process for nuclear projects, of which designation for the purposes of the RAB model will form a part, is designed precisely to ensure that the Secretary of State must be sufficiently confident that the proposed project would be able to complete construction. In due course, we will publish a statement to provide details of exactly how the Secretary of State expects to determine whether the designation criteria have been met.

Once construction is under way, we will want to make sure that the project company is incentivised to manage its costs and schedule. It will be overseen by Ofgem as the independent regulator. However, in the unlikely and remote circumstance that a project looks as though it may exceed the cap on construction costs set out in its modified licence, it is important that there is a mechanism in place to allow additional capital to be raised to ensure completion of the project. The aims of that, of course, are to ensure that consumers can continue to benefit from their investment and to minimise the risk of sunk costs.

With regard to Amendment 6 and the first part of Amendment 16, I assure the Committee that the RAB model will be designed to ensure that the appropriate incentives are placed on the company to maximise plant availability. Nuclear reactors have an extremely good record of availability and delivery but we want to make sure that that is maintained. On broader generation capacity security, I draw the Committee’s attention to the Great Britain security and quality of supply standard and the Great Britain capacity market. Both these essential tools ensure that security of supply is met in GB and that we have resilience in the day-to-day operation of the GB electricity system should generation outages occur.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Watkins of Tavistock) (CB)]

There is a Division in the House. The Committee will adjourn and resume as soon as agreed after the Members present have voted.

Covid-19: Impact of No-deal Brexit on Vaccine Supplies

Debate between Baroness Watkins of Tavistock and Lord Callanan

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I welcome my noble friend to these Benches. He has acknowledged expertise in this area and, of course, he is quite right: commercial options will be used first, second and third, and the military only as a very last resort.

[Baroness Watkins of Tavistock (CB)]

My Lords, first, I congratulate the Government on procuring the vaccines so urgently needed. Each box contains 96 vials; each vial, five doses: a box is enough to vaccinate 480 people. The value is considerable and illicit drug dealers and criminals have never been more motivated to intercept or steal legal drugs, as the potential profit is far larger, at the moment, than those from heroin and cocaine. For this reason, I welcome the fact that we may have to use the military to ensure that vaccines are delivered safely in this transition period. Can the Minister assure the House that plans are sufficiently robust, in terms of security, to prevent theft?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As I said in my previous answer, the use of the military is very much a last resort. I am sure that the noble Baroness will understand that I cannot share details of security arrangements, but I can assure her that we have worked very closely with vaccine suppliers and others to ensure that shipments are properly protected and looked after.