Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Debate between Earl Russell and Earl of Kinnoull

Report stage
Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Kinnoull (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 5, which stands in my name. I thank the Minister and his Bill team for their time in what is always the busiest period of the Treasury’s life. He was happy to give time, and I am very grateful for that and for the sensible discussion that we had.

The amendment is designed to be the gentle pencil in the back, as I put it in Committee, in order that the Crown Estate Scotland be afforded the same freedoms and flexibilities that the Crown Estate will have following the passage of the Bill. I described in Committee how the Crown Estate Scotland had advised me that the Scottish Government were keen that it has those. I know that the UK Government are keen that it does so, as is the Crown Estate itself.

There are many opportunities for collaboration, particularly for energy projects in the North Sea at the moment, but there will be other opportunities as well for aquaculture. There is the ability to copy the good and avoid the bad, given that a number of copycat transactions might be done using Crown Estate property going forward. This is of course in all our interests, because ultimately this is very much part of the net-zero agenda, and the more the two Crown Estates can be aligned the better it will be for everybody in the long term.

The amendment is, as I said, a gentle pencil, designed to ensure that the UK entities do not down tools following the passage of this Act but carry on enthusiastically to ensure that Crown Estate Scotland benefits from the same freedoms and flexibilities. I therefore ask my only question of the Minister: does he share this aim of ensuring that those freedoms and flexibilities are afforded, and does he feel that this amendment is a proportionate way of going about it?

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to all the amendments in this group, all of which relate to reporting.

Beginning with government Amendment 3, I am grateful to the Minister for this important concession and welcome his listening to the concerns expressed across the House and his open engagement and willingness to look again at this issue. If he will forgive my saying so, we have come quite a long way since Second Reading, when the Government’s response was that the partnership with Great British Energy was not really a key part of the Crown Estate Bill. We support the clean energy mission—this is so important not only for our net-zero goals but in providing for our own energy security. Great British Energy promises to unlock £60 billion of private investment, and the Government themselves have committed £8.3 billion over the course of this Parliament. We have the third-best wind resources in the world, and we should be making best use of them to bring down the cost to bill payers and ensure that we have security of our own supply.

By 2030 this will, I hope, have led to the generation of enough electricity for the equivalent of 20 million homes. Everyone across the House has broadly welcomed this, but collectively we have wanted broader and greater scrutiny of the Crown Estate and the work it does. It is a long time since the 1961 Act came in, and simply updating the borrowing powers without updating any other measurements did not feel like the complete picture for providing that security going forward. We have campaigned for greater transparency and the Government have listened. I am grateful to them and welcome this.

We are happy to support Amendment 5, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, but with one small caveat. It is very important that Crown Estate Scotland goes along with the energy transition and is fully invested. The noble Earl’s amendment is carefully worded, simply calling for a report to be laid before Parliament. Devolution is an important issue for us on these Benches: it is not for this Parliament to be telling devolved Parliaments what they should do or how they should act, although we recognise that the noble Earl’s amendment does not do that.

Equally, as I said, we support the amendment and would like to see progress made on this issue, just as we would like to see Scotland fully engaged with the Great British Energy partnership and contributing to our green energy. As the noble Earl said, the amendment is a pencil in the back. I have written down “a gentle nudge”, and they are probably similar things. We welcome the amendment, which puts down a marker to the Minister and the Government to continue their negotiations and conversations with their equivalents in the Scottish Assembly, the Scottish Government and Crown Estate Scotland so that progress can be made.

Finally, my Amendment 8 was tabled as a compromise, from my point of view. There has been a feeling around the House that we need greater scrutiny, and noble Lords have raised numerous issues that they feel should be subject to such scrutiny. The Minister responded by saying that under the original 1961 Act, too many legal powers were constraining the Crown Estate’s ability to act freely in the interests of the state. He consistently argued throughout the various stages of this Bill that he did not want to reimpose those conditions on the Crown Estate’s ability to operate. The idea behind my amendment is that, simply by putting chapter headings in the Crown Estate’s annual report, which goes before Parliament, there would be greater opportunity for the issues that have been raised collectively in this House to be scrutinised in Parliament, so that, in exchange for giving the Crown Estate greater borrowing powers and a greater role, there would also be greater scrutiny.

I have aimed to cover a lot of the issues that have been raised across your Lordships’ House. It is quite a simple amendment that simply asks for these topics to be covered. However, I doubt whether the Minister will respond positively to it.