Energy Bill [HL]

Baroness Worthington Excerpts

Tuesday 26th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Worthington (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Grantchester. In his opening remarks, the Minister referred to saving bill payers money. We are discussing the early closure of a support mechanism for renewable energy which was replaced by contracts for difference under the Energy Act 2013.

Essentially, control over subsidies for renewable energy was repatriated to the Secretary of State in the UK from the hands of the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government, where it used to reside. Until 2013, energy policy and renewables subsidies were devolved issues. They now sit solely in the hands of these Houses and the Secretary of State. Were we to repatriate decisions about how we allocate CFDs and give subsidies out to renewables—and let us be clear that we are not yet meeting our legal obligations on renewable energy, so there is a need to continue subsidies and we need to continue to deploy least-cost technologies so that bill payers get the best value for the money they pay in—and if Scotland had the decision over how projects were allocated subsidies and it chose to allocate future CFDs to onshore wind, all bill payers would be paying less because at the moment CFDs are not going to onshore wind, which is substantially cheaper than many projects that are continuing to receive subsidies.

The Government’s policy states that they want to allow local people to have the final decision over projects and that they want to encourage least-cost deployment of renewables. This refusal to accept this very sensible amendment goes completely against those two objectives. If this went through, we would all be saving money and local people would be getting what they want, which is wind power in Scotland where it is supported and where it is sustaining jobs and delivering economic growth.

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[Baroness Worthington]

Would the Minister care to comment on the fact that, because we have not yet met our deployment targets under our legally binding European targets, any onshore wind project that goes through that is cheaper than projects less close to CFD auctions that we are about to grant saves the bill payer money rather than costing the bill payer more?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

To me, unnecessary subsidies—and I think we are entering into that area—are undesirable. Solar, for example, is being deployed without subsidy, as we know, and that will no doubt happen with onshore wind. All the evidence I see is that those technologies where we do not need a subsidy, we should not be subsidising, and that is the international message that is coming across. Al Gore and others who are not necessarily supportive of the Conservative view say that we should not be subsidising unnecessarily, and we are very much of that view.

I turn to the noble Baroness, Lady Liddell, who sought to characterise the House of Commons as a big boy with a stick or a bully. That may happen on occasion but it is perhaps an incomplete picture of what, after all, is the elected Chamber, and this measure was passed by a significant majority in the House of Commons.