Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Committee stage
Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, we rely on agreed definitions as to whether an energy is clean. The noble Lord mentioned biomass and Drax. He will know that the Government’s view, which his party also took when in government, is that the carbon absorbed by the forestry that replaces what has been transported to Drax more than covers the carbon expended in the process of bringing it to Drax, including the use of shipping. For 14 years, the party opposite accepted that this was an appropriate definition.

I turn to my noble friend Lord Berkeley’s amendment, on the risk to off-grid households and the value of renewable liquid fuels to these households. The noble Lord, Lord Bruce, also covered that point, and I listened with great care to what both had to say. Clearly, we want fuel-poor and off-gas-grid homes to benefit from the transition to net zero. The current energy company obligation includes incentives to deliver measures such as low-carbon heating to off-gas-grid rural homes in Scotland and Wales. Phase 2 of the home upgrade grant provides energy efficiency upgrades and low-carbon heating measures to low-income households living in the worst performing off-gas-grid homes in England in order to tackle fuel poverty.

We recognise that renewable liquid fuels could play a role in decarbonising heat off the gas grid. We therefore expect to prioritise the use of renewable liquid fuels for the small number of homes that are not readily suitable for electrification, as these have the fewest options to decarbonise through alternative low-carbon technologies. My noble friend Lord Berkeley suggested a meeting on this; I am very happy to engage with him and, indeed, with the noble Lord, Lord Bruce.

Amendment 76, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Offord, and Amendment 77, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, relate to sourcing materials for GBE projects from the domestic supply chain. Adding the proposed detail to the Bill would too narrowly restrict the company in carrying out its activities, halting the potential feasibility of projects where UK sourcing is not currently possible.

On jobs, I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, concerning the importance of the UK continental shelf and the need for an orderly transition. My daughter supported her career as a wireline engineer in the oil and gas industry working out of Aberdeen, and I am well aware of the importance of the sector, what it has contributed to the UK economy and the skills and dedication of the people working there. As we have described, we want an orderly and just transition.

GB Energy will be committed to helping drive the growth of supply chains in the UK to accelerate the deployment of key UK energy projects. It is important, however, that we comply with the international trading rules that the UK is bound by, such as prohibitions on requiring local content contained under various agreements under the WTO.

Amendment 80, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Petitgas, requires the Secretary

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Lord, but I wonder if I can press him further on the issue of jobs and the impact on our own economy when countries run, in their own jurisdictions, the kind of slave labour arrangements that I and others referred to earlier. He will have seen the information about the loss of electric vehicle-related jobs because of the flooding of the market—we do not have any tariffs on those vehicles, whereas every other G7 country does. He will know that, in the last quarter, the trade deficit with China was some £32 billion but at no time since 1995 has there ever been surplus on our side of the equation. How can we justify, therefore, pouring more money into the economy of a country that relies on slave labour? It cannot just be left to companies, even Great British Energy, to identify whether a country is using slave labour or not; surely that is a matter for the Government, too.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

The noble Lord raises matters of great geopolitical importance and importance to the UK’s economy. He will have seen that my right honourable friend the Chancellor has been in China in the last few days, seeking to engage that country in relation to economic co-operation and development, within appropriate security safeguards. We want to see jobs in the energy sector developed as much as possible in the United Kingdom, but equally, we are operating in a global economy. For very good reasons, we are concerned about the introduction of tariffs which may inhibit international trade, and we must also be mindful of the economic value-for-money issues that clearly have to come into play in this area.

Let me return to the Bill and what is appropriate for us to include in it. We believe that this issue is a matter for GBE, working within the constraints set through the statement of priorities and through Clause 3, and also in relation to the further work we are going to do. We have mentioned solar, and noble Lords are right that much of the raw material for solar panels comes from China, although it is British companies working in the United Kingdom that benefit more from the value of the work on solar installations.

Turning to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Petitgas, as a publicly owned company, GBE will be held accountable through regular reporting to my department. It will be subject to HM Treasury’s value-for-money guidelines, its investments will be subject to safeguards and risk assessments, and it will invest in the private sector to share risk and reward.

On green taxonomy, a decision about how a potential UK green taxonomy could be used or applied has not yet been finalised. The Government have launched a consultation to gather views on the value of the case for a UK green taxonomy, and it will close on 6 February.

We need to come back to what Clause 6 is for as a whole. It is a backstop which one hopes would never have to be used; it is not a way to encourage the Secretary of State to micromanage a company that we very much want to be operationally independent.

Energy Costs for Businesses

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, first, of course I very much agree with the noble Earl in wishing to see a reduction in the cost of energy, particularly electricity, for our businesses. We believe that in the long term—and in the medium term, to 2030—clean power is the way to do it. He raises a very important point: one of the responses, as he will have seen in the US, is the linking of heavy energy users, which can be companies such as Amazon, with their data centres, to nuclear power generation through advanced modular reactors. Of course, the other very important issue is getting connections to the grid, which is why the clean power action plan is so important in relation to speeding up those connections.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, following the very helpful reply which the Minister gave during the earlier stages of the Great British Energy Bill on the subject of slave labour, can he say what further consideration he has given to the dilemma of purchasing solar panels that have been made in a state accused by the House of Commons of committing genocide and using slave labour in the Muslim areas of Xinjiang?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, as ever, I am very grateful to the noble Lord for raising these very serious matters and particularly the plight of the Uighurs in Xinjiang province, which we have debated. He knows from my response in the Great British Energy Bill that we are looking at this very carefully. He is right that there is a tension, and clearly many of our solar panels come from China with all the attendant issues that this involves. But we have established the Solar Taskforce to look into the issue of supply chain, and we will be taking very seriously the points that the noble Lord has raised.

Domestic Solar Panels

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Monday 25th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, we are not moving away at all from the idea of a solar revolution. The noble Earl will know that, in its scenarios for 2030, the National Energy System Operator—NESO—reckons that we will need 47 gigawatts by that time. We are committed to publishing a clean power action plan, which will embrace solar plans, very soon. The Solar Taskforce is there to provide clear advice and actions on how we will take that forward. What the noble Earl said about French car parks was interesting. There has been an easing up of development rights in this country in relation to that. On the 1.5 million homes that we pledged to build in the lifetime of this Parliament, we are in close discussion with our colleagues across government about mandation, and we very much take his point on that.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, I was indebted to the Minister for his courteous reply to us at the end of the Second Reading debate a week ago. He will recall that I raised with him specifically the use of Uighur slave labour in the manufacture of solar panels in Xinjiang, and the use of 25,000 children in child labour in the DRC in lithium production, which is essential to our green technology. The Minister was unable to answer some of the questions I put to him during that debate. Will he undertake for his officials to write and give replies, so that we can consider them before Committee? Will he place a copy of the replies in the Library of your Lordships’ House?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

I think the Lord will recollect that he asked me rather a lot of questions and, given that my winding-up speech was 20 minutes, with the best will in the world, I said that I would write to him. On the general principle, he knows that I have long shared his concern, particularly about Xinjiang province and the appalling use of the Uighurs. We understand those issues and are committed to tackling them. We have given guidance on the risk to business of trading in Xinjiang province, and we have pointed out the penalties for those who fail to report under the Modern Slavery Act. The noble Lord will find an invitation to meet in the next two days to discuss those issues.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Report stage
Monday 28th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

The millions and the thousands can multiply very rapidly in this debate. I apologise, but I think you get the point. It is over £20 million in the course of a year—£770,000 each and every single day.

I gave the noble Baroness notice of my intention to ask about this. Who authorised those acquisitions? Who decided that they should stay there? How much has it cost to date to store these items? How much has been budgeted to keep them in store at that cost of £770,000 every day, and for how long will they be stored? How much of the PPE that has been bought has proved to be defective and unusable? I would also like to know, first, how the Government intend to report the money returned to public funds by defaulting PPE suppliers through the actions of the faulty contract PPE recovery unit. Secondly, individual settlements are protected by commercial secrecy, so how will Parliament and the public be notified about money returned to public funds by defaulting PPE suppliers through the actions of the faulty contract PPE recovery unit? Thirdly, how do the Government intend to provide transparency and accountability in relation to money returned to public funds by defaulting PPE suppliers through the actions of the faulty contract PPE recovery unit?

It is clear that the NHS should be subject to far greater scrutiny, transparency and accountability. For all those reasons, I support Amendments 3 and 173 spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, which include the NHS in the definitions of a public authority for the purposes of the Bill.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alton. When he speaks about the frailty of the NHS supply chain—I must declare my past presidency of the Health Care Supply Association—I am sure he is absolutely right to put these penetrating questions to the Minister.

I have two amendments in this group, Amendments 171 and 172, but I also want to speak to Amendments 3 and 173 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. She has rightly pointed to the potential confusion between two pieces of legislation in relation to the National Health Service and the procurement regime that it is to adopt in the future. The difficulty is compounded because, of course, we have not seen the draft regulations in relation to Clause 111, nor have we seen the draft regulations in relation to the amendment made in the Health and Care Act 2022 to the National Health Service Act 2006, after Section 12ZA. The 2022 Act gave huge powers to Ministers to establish their own procurement regime through regulations.

Clearly, there is every potential for confusion as to how these two sets of legislation are to work together, particularly if only NHS clinical services are to be covered by the disapplication in the Bill. That leaves a lot of questions for those working in the health and social care sectors as to how they are to operate the new processes. Given the nature of NHS commissioning and services, there are big questions about what happens if a contract incorporates clinical and non-clinical services. Under which set of regulations is procurement to be undertaken? Large hospital contracts—PFI contracts—often contain a mixture of clinical and non-clinical services, and the terms of the contract can sometimes last for 20 or more years.

Indeed, the more fundamental question is how we define “clinical services”. Some hospitals contract with private sector operators to provide, say, laboratory services the staff of which are employed by the private sector contractor. I would have called those clinical services; they are clearly directly related to clinical outcomes for patients. I am not at all sure how that is going to be covered by the two separate pieces of legislation. Of course, the NHS Confederation, which represents the bodies that operate the health service at the moment, including integrated care systems and NHS trusts, is obviously concerned about the confusion and potential distinction between the two sets of legislation.

Procurement Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Committee stage
Monday 24th October 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, in a sense, this amendment is very different from my first two. None the less, we are seeking here to use procurement legislation to advance government policy in relation to the awful practice of forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience in China. The practice was found by the China Tribunal—as advised by Edward Fitzgerald KC, who provided expert legal opinion to it—to be a crime against humanity and part of a possible genocide against Falun Gong.

Forced organ harvesting in China involves the removal of organs from a living prisoner of conscience for the purpose of transportation, killing the victim in the process. It is state sanctioned and widespread throughout China, with the Chinese Communist Party targeting individuals because of their religious and spiritual beliefs or ethnicity. The victims are known primarily to be Falun Gong practitioners, but more recent evidence indicates that Uighur Muslims are also targeted on a massive scale. Further to that, there are several lines of evidence showing that Tibetan and house Christians are likely victims of forced organ harvesting.

Regarding Uighurs and other minorities, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights published its report on Xinjiang in August, stating:

“Allegations of patterns of torture or ill-treatment, including forced medical treatment and adverse conditions of detention, are credible, as are allegations of individual incidents of sexual and gender-based violence.”


It also stated that the treatment of Uighurs and others in Xinjiang by the Chinese Communist Party

“may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”

That is a most important and profound statement, made only three months ago.

Both Uighur and Falun Gong practitioners are arbitrarily arrested, detained in camps and tortured. They face sexual violence, disappear while in detention and are murdered for their organs, on a vast scale. A study published in April this year in the American Journal of Transplantation investigated whether Chinese transplant surgeons established first that the prisoners are dead, before procuring their hearts and lungs, or whether the cause of death was the organ procurement itself. The study was based on the dead donor rule—the most fundamental ethical rule in organ transplantation. It states that organ procurement must not commence until the donor is formally pronounced dead; the procurement of organs must not cause the donor’s death.

The paper, entitled Execution by Organ Procurement: Breaching the Dead Donor Rule in China, was written by Matthew Robertson and Dr Jacob Lavee. Dr Lavee is a transplant surgeon and the founder and a former director of the heart surgery unit at the Sheba Medical Center in Israel. In 2005, a patient told him that his insurance company had scheduled a heart transplant operation for him that would take place in two weeks. The patient flew to China and received the heart as arranged. That would be impossible unless the time of death of the donor was known in advance. Following this incident, Dr Lavee spearheaded the organ transplantation law in Israel, the first of its kind in the world, which prevented insurance companies from reimbursing expenses associated with illicitly obtained organs. Along with a range of reforms encouraging domestic donation, this stopped the China-to-Israel organ-trafficking pipeline in its tracks.

During this recent research, Robertson and Lavee found, in 71 different Chinese medical studies published between 1980 and 2015, sourced from 56 hospitals in 33 cities, that brain death could not properly have been declared. Therefore, the removal of the heart during organ procurement must have been the cause of the donor’s death. The authors state in a recent article in the Tablet,

“the act of execution was joined with the act of heart removal, and was carried out by surgeons on the operating table.”

Just think of that.

My amendment is designed to exclude suppliers located in a country at high risk of forced organ harvesting from being awarded a public contract involving any device or equipment intended for use in organ transplant medicine or activities relating to human tissue or any service or goods relating to organ transplant medicine or activities involving human tissue. Essentially, it would prevent any service or goods that may have been involved in or developed off the back of the forced organ harvesting trade from entering the UK. This includes organ transplant training, such as the training of Chinese organ transplant services, related education and research, as well as organ transplantation equipment.

I have been very encouraged by the Government’s recent willingness to legislate on this issue, such as through my amendment to the Medicines and Medical Devices Bill last year, which included consent provisions for imported human tissue for use in medicines; and the amendments to the Health and Care Bill in April this year, prohibiting the commercialisation of organ tourism. The noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, have been huge supporters of this approach and I am glad to see them here today.

These legislative steps have set a good precedent, both in our country and as a signal globally. I emphasise to the Minister that passing amendments such as this into British law is significant internationally. Other countries observe what is happening, and we are part of a global movement to try to get action to stop this reprehensible behaviour.

I am grateful to the Government for their sympathy for our approach, but I want to go further. In April this year, it was stated in a ground-breaking business and human rights legal advisory, written by international law firm Global Rights Compliance, entitled Do No Harm: Mitigating Human Rights Risks when Interacting with International Medical Institutions & Professionals in Transplantation Medicine, that

“medical professionals and institutions who have collaborations with Chinese medical institutions involved in forced organ harvesting face a risk of being charged with complicity in international crimes, including crimes against humanity.”

It goes on to explain that

“aiding and abetting ‘consists of practical assistance, encouragement, or moral support which has a substantial effect on the perpetration of the crime’.”

Prestigious medical institutions, such as the International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation, are now taking action. In April this year, the society issued a policy that it would no longer accept submissions to its journal or for presentations at its conference related to transplantation and involving either organs or tissue from human donors in the People’s Republic of China. My forced organ harvesting amendment to the Procurement Bill is critical to protect our UK medical professionals and institutions from complicity. I beg to move.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)]

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, in what was a powerful, disturbing and very thoughtful speech. I think all of us who are privileged to be in the Committee today are indebted to him for that and the way he introduced this group of amendments, to which I am a signatory, along with the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and my noble friend Lady Finlay of Llandaff. She sends her apologies for not being able to be physically present today, but she strongly supports the amendment, as does the noble Lord, Lord Ribeiro. It is worth bearing in mind that both of those noble Lords have held very high office in the medical institutions in this country and it is good that their names are attached either to the amendment or to the arguments that go with it.

I declare interests as vice-chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Uyghurs, who the noble Lord referred to, and on Hong Kong, as patron of Hong Kong Watch and as a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China. This amendment deals with a gruesome and barbaric lethal practice that has been prevalent in China. Last Thursday, here in the Moses Room, a debate was held on the International Relations and Defence Select Committee report on China, trade and security. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, was present throughout proceedings and the noble Lord, Lord Purvis, was present and contributed to those proceedings, during the course of which a number of us referred to the levels of trade and, inter alia, the level of procurement that is carried out with China by the United Kingdom.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, pointed out that we have a £40 billion deficit in trade with the People’s Republic of China. That would be reason enough for considering, in the context of resilience and dependency, why procurement policies with a country designated by the Government as recently as last month as “a threat” to the United Kingdom should be radically readdressed. During the debate last Thursday in the Moses Room, I referred to earlier debates in this Committee on the Bill specifically about Hikvision. It is worth recalling that the noble Lord, Lord True, was gracious enough to have several meetings in his office to discuss this, as well as dealing with it at that stage. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, well enough—I congratulate her, as others have done, on her appointment as Minister—to know that she will take this as seriously as he did.

The company Hikvision is responsible for the surveillance cameras in Xinjiang referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. But these cameras were purchased through our procurement policies by great departments of state and are used in local government and by public authorities up and down the length and breadth of this country. These cameras are used to impose the surveillance state on the Uighur Muslims referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

At the conclusion of our debate last Thursday, the noble Lord, Lord Goldsmith of Richmond Park, promised he would write to me in response to my question specifically about whether, during the next set of proceedings on the Bill—therefore, on Report—the amendments that many of us argued for at earlier stages will be agreed by the Government. I hope that the noble Baroness’s officials will talk to his officials before he writes that letter, so that we genuinely get joined-up government on this.

I hope they will also look at the Biden Administration’s legislation on goods made by slave labour, something that the noble Lord, Lord Coaker, and I have raised in other legislation and that we both, as well as other members of the Committee, feel very strongly about. They should also look at legislation the Biden Administration introduced called the CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, which draw together the prioritisations of investing in domestic industry, tackling climate change and reducing dependency on authoritarian regimes. All those things should be done in the context of this Bill.

In parentheses, I remind the Committee that we bought 1 billion—not 1 million, but 1 billion—lateral flow tests from the People’s Republic of China and 24 billion items of personal protective equipment where China was recorded as the country of origin. The cost to the United Kingdom was a staggering £10.9 billion—about the equivalent of our now reduced overseas aid and development budget. This is British taxpayers’ money pouring through our procurements into the pockets of a country that stands accused of the appalling barbarism identified in Amendment 185, and indeed of genocide.

Deregulation Bill

Debate between Lord Alton of Liverpool and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. However, I am disappointed with the Minister’s response because I thought that at the least he would have been prepared to give this matter further consideration between now and Third Reading. With my noble friend Lord Winston here to talk about the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, also present, I knew that we would have an interesting debate.

The point is that, however effective or not the HFEA is at the moment, the one thing that unites us all is that we do not want to see its regulatory function weakened. My noble friend Lord Winston spoke about London becoming the centre of a healthcare market, and the Minister welcomed that. When I took through the 2001 regulations that extended the purposes of research in the original 1990 Act, which was based very much on the extraordinary work of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, we clearly had in mind that there was research potential for the UK. That was one of the factors behind taking through those original regulations. The argument that we put forward then was that the UK would be able to attract research investment because, despite some of the doubts that noble Lords have expressed today, we were considered to have a first-rate regulatory function. I put it to the noble Lord that he is putting that reputation at risk by allowing ambiguity in the nature of the regulatory process.

My noble friend talked about the dangers of commercialisation in this field and he is surely right. It is interesting that the chief executive of the HFEA has recently been quoted as recognising the responsibility to take action against rampant commercialisation of IVF in the UK. That statement is very welcome. My noble friend has argued that at the moment it does not have the powers to do anything about it, but the noble Lord comes here with a proposal to weaken its already inadequate powers. That is quite remarkable.

The Government are very keen for the mitochondrial donation regulations to be approved on 24 February. I support them, but has the noble Lord considered the risk to that decision from the impact of this Bill? This will be a big issue when we debate those regulations. When the noble Earl, Lord Howe, comes to make proposals for the regulations, he will say that your Lordships can have confidence in passing the legislation because of the robustness of the HFEA. However, I, who support those regulations, will have to get up and say that actually the noble Earl is incorrect because of what the noble Lord here is proposing to do.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

I entirely agree with what the noble Lord is saying, but does it not also undermine the noble Earl, Lord Howe, who has consistently said that the HFEA is not an economic regulator, to now put him in that invidious position?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

That is absolutely right. The noble Lord then went on to say that we should be fine because the provisions in the Bill say that all the regulator has to do is to “have regard to” the desirability of promoting economic growth. However, the moment you include those words, the regulator becomes liable if it can be shown that he does not have regard to that, even though the noble Lord recognises that in many cases he ought not to have regard to it.

It is quite inadequate to say that we are consulting on this. This is absolutely wrong. We need to know by Third Reading whether the Government are going to keep in the HFEA and the PSA. I think that the noble Lord ought to allow further discussions to take place between now and Third Reading, and he ought to discuss this with his colleague—particularly the impact on the new regulations on mitochondrial donations that will be coming forward. As for his assurance that any of these bodies will be included by an affirmative resolution, how many times has an SI been defeated in Parliament? It is fewer than 10 times, so it is a meaningless safeguard in effect. I invite the Minister to say that he will at least give this further consideration before Third Reading before I make my decision.