Long-duration Energy Storage (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Science and Technology Committee on this report. It really hits the nail on the head in the need to think about things. One thing that always amuses me is that people keep talking about doing these things “at pace”. Surely they mean “speedily”. A pace can be slow as well as fast, so it is an ambiguous word to use.

Anyway, enough of that. We all talk about transmission and central storage, not always but quite a bit, whereas living in the country I am only too aware of the importance of having electrical back-up. We have a diesel generator, which cuts in sometimes two, three or four times a year. We are not very far from London, only 60 miles, just off the A1, but nothing like that is reliable. We need reliability because, for us, internet communication is essential for filing stuff to the Government on time. If you are late, you get fined, so it is not an option.

The other thing about local storage is that it reduces the load on central systems. It does not necessarily have to be electric. I was just looking at heat batteries because I am putting something in in Scotland and thought they might be good because they use phase change materials to store the heat and you get it back when you want it. We should look at that sort of stuff.

How we use whatever energy source we are going to use is key. I want to focus on the problems of heavy-duty transport, particularly vans and lorries going out from depots, with everyone buying from central depots on the internet. They have problems with this, because fuel cells are not commercially viable or affordable. Electricity is an obvious thing, but in moving machinery batteries are not an option for much of the market—they have been tested and shown not to work. Two large companies are delaying putting them into effect although they were under pressure to do so; they are not buying them at the moment.

Another problem is that you cannot get power through the grid to distribution depots. One site was quoted tens of millions of pounds to get a sufficient supply. The planning system is blocking delivery of electric charging points, which are needed for a lot of stuff in northern and remote parts of the motorway and for A-roads. The planning system is blocking them because they want substations or need more heavy-duty copper cables. That is a big problem, so I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Lane-Fox, and support everything she was saying about prevarication in the planning system blocking a lot of stuff that will be needed in future.

Transport fleets have a problem in reducing their overall carbon emissions and modern adapted diesel engines are ideal for heavy transport. The problem is that the DfT is blocking the approval of hydrogen internal combustion engines, or H2ICEs. The technology was adopted by the EU in April 2024 but it is blocked over here and therefore cannot get research funding, grants or support from the Government. It also will not be approved by the DfT when trying to evaluate sites or companies in getting towards net-zero targets. The fact that this British modern technology in research is not eligible for support here means, I have been told, that a leading UK company is actively considering moving to the EU and the US because it will get subsidies and government support over there, and that saddens me.

Another part of the solution would be to generate the hydrogen near the depots. You would have wind farms and solar, say, next door to the depot, hydrolyse the hydrogen directly, and then it can be used there locally. Again, that takes the pressure off trying to centralise all these systems. Another area I heard about that is apparently not getting any government support is carbon-negative ways of generating hydrogen locally. They should be supporting innovative stuff such as that. As mentioned by several noble Lords, small modular reactors would also take local pressure off the grid. That would be very sensible. Many of these ideas are quick and affordable and it saddens me when I hear that the British Government have apparently given £188 million to Tesla over the last eight years. We could have been supporting innovation in the UK instead—that would be far more productive.

Another point that I was thinking of making, but I did not know whether I would have the time and I do not know whether my science is faulty, is that hydrogen has a much lower energy density than the hydrocarbon in natural gas. Therefore, you cannot just shove hydrogen down the gas system into houses for heating and all the things that system is used for at the moment because you will not get the same heat out at the other end from the same volume of gas. I do not know quite what is happening on that; I think there is a lot of research, and people talk about adapting boilers and all sorts of other wonderfully expensive ways of trying to get round the problem. Sometimes everyone thinks that there is a magic word that will solve all the problems, but very often that is not true. However, we need to get on with it. That is the most vital thing in this report.

Financial Services and Markets Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 13th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords I rise because this amendment allows me to do two things that I do not do very often. One is to thank the Minister because the amendments that she has brought forward are constructive, as others have described. The second is to say to the noble Lord, Lord Moylan: finally, a benefit from Brexit. One down, which pleases me, I have to say.

I want to ask the Minister if, in the course of the review, she will look at the industry that has mushroomed from the vetting of PEPs. I dealt with the American Express problem that others have described. I filled in my forms and still have my card—I am afraid that the BA miles win me over. I decided that I would open a savings account at Chase Bank as they were offering some good rates but discovered that I was caught up in this PEP process and the bank asked for a raft of information that, frankly, I should have never been asked for. The breaking point was a phone call asking me for payslips for my husband. On his death, I had inherited from him and therefore the bank wanted historical payslips. My husband died 17 years ago and I do not know how many people still have their payslips from 17 years ago, never mind those of a dead spouse.

To me, that was typical of the overstepping and exaggeration—gold-plating is almost an understatement —that has been going on in this process. It caused me to go on to the web and discover that there is a raft of consultants, advisers and legal entities that have become engaged in this process and taken straightforward guidelines from the FCA and blown them up into something extraordinary and complex. I am furious with the FCA because it does not enforce the guidelines; I hope the Minister will convey that and that the Government will become furious with the FCA for not enforcing its own guidelines. I hope that she will also encourage it to use the review to look at the vast industry that has burgeoned and makes its profits from making life an absolute misery for anybody it can catch in the system.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I should like to add to this because I have had enough trouble with the PEPs issue for a long time. First, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, for explaining an important point about why I can get no information from Northern Trust on administering an investment trust in which my wife owned shares in Ireland. We had to get probity in Ireland, but the trust will still not release the money and will not say why. I am getting an absolute blind spot. Even Barclays, which wants money over here to pay off something does not seem to be getting any joy. I suspect that it is because the trust is not allowed to tell us that we are under investigation. That is wrong. If there is a problem, we could unlock it if the trust could just say, “We are trying to investigate this because we think we have to”.

I personally find it offensive that I am deemed to be a risk and a crook. I thought that in this country we were innocent until proven guilty. Actually, this is the other way around. Just because I happen to be a Member of the House of Lords, it is assumed that I am corrupt. This has caused a lot of problems for me and my family, but I am not going any further into detail. We have heard good stories from others, but I do not understand why we are PEPs. I have no access to government contracts and there is no reason to bribe me, sadly. I do not understand the logic behind that, and something should be done. The classification of PEPs should be looked at and revised because a lot of other people who are not PEPs are in places handling government contracts. As far as I know, they are not under permanent scrutiny, so I think you have got the wrong people and it is a nightmare.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Eatwell, mentioned the Crown dependencies. I want to ask my noble friend on the Front Bench about the position of the British Overseas Territories.

Financial Services (Banking Reform) Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Tuesday 8th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

My Lords, I know that noble Lords are looking forward to hearing the Statement, but this is an important point. I certainly would not be able to add anything to what the most reverend Primate has said in a very powerful speech. I am glad that he liked my analogy about wallpaper and walls. I have to say to my noble friend the Minister that the writing is on the wall here, and it is absolutely clear that if we do not have in this Bill a clear provision that gives the Government power to deal with the sector as a whole, most banks will decide to go with the culture and try to make it work. But they are in competition with each other; one will come up with a clever scheme and the others will say, “They’re getting away with this—we ought to do the same, or we will do some variation of the same thing”. You need there to be a threat to the whole sector, if some of them fall by the wayside. That is another argument, in addition to the ones made by my noble friend Lord Lawson and by the most reverend Primate.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will think about this very carefully and see the writing on the wall. He will find it very difficult to get this Bill through this House without a provision of this kind being incorporated in it.

[The Earl of Erroll (CB)]

My Lords, I make a simple observation from experience. I have seen this attempt at ring-fencing in the past. When you have ring-fenced or non-ring-fenced entities—it does not matter which—reporting up to a group head, at the end of the day that group head can manipulate things at an investment level or at all sorts of other levels to influence the outcome in a way that is unexpected. It does not work, the moment that you have a group, because that is outside the ring-fence. I could give noble Lords instances, but it might cause problems if you did. I would rather say that I totally support the most reverend Primate and this amendment, which is very sensible.

Financial Services Bill

Earl of Erroll Excerpts

Wednesday 28th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, I will intervene only for a moment but in case the Government are unable to meet the hopes of the noble Lord, Lord Flight, and others today perhaps I might say that I chair the sub-panel of the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards which is looking at competition in retail banking. Account portability is a significant part of that and the staff are now on the alert to take the report of the comments made today in Hansard and make sure that it and the amendments are put before the panel’s next meeting

[The Earl of Erroll]

My Lords, this is a very sensible amendment and it should be accepted. I also agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, that it ought to be applied to all accounts. We have had to leave some family accounts open just to receive some old shares and such things coming in because we cannot really get around to changing them. If we could change them at the bank end, it would make a lot of sense.