Great British Energy Bill

Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register. It is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, who as always put his finger on some very important points that I will come to later. It has been a particular pleasure to listen to two outstanding maiden speeches. The noble Baroness, Lady Beckett, is clearly going to bring great wisdom to this House and I very much welcome and look forward to many contributions from her in future. My noble friend Lord Mackinlay spoke from the heart. It was a really stirring speech and raised some very pertinent issues about sepsis; I hope that we revisit those as a House and that the Government will be receptive. I look forward to working alongside him in future.

The Minister set out the Bill’s aims very clearly, and I thank him for that. As we debate this issue, the Government are representing the country at COP 29 in Azerbaijan—I think that conference comes to an end at the end of this week—and it is right that they are there, representing the nation. I hope that in raising points about this prospective legislation and criticising it, we do not lose sight of the undoubted challenge of the age, climate change. I hope that recognition of that challenge will remain a largely bipartisan approach. Although the way we tackle it may vary, and we may have differences on that, the global response needs to recognise that the challenge does not recognise ideologies: it is a question not of ideology but of survival, and I hope we approach it on that basis.

I had the great honour of being the Lords Minister in the Department of Energy and Climate Change at the time of the Paris Climate Change Conference and worked there alongside Amber Rudd, who was outstanding. I had the great privilege of signing the climate change treaty at the United Nations on behalf of the United Kingdom. That treaty was an important milestone and we must not lose sight of the fact that, as I say, this is the challenge of the age. The issues we are raising are issues of how we meet that challenge. As a party, we need to remember that Margaret Thatcher first identified this important challenge, and that has been followed by notable contributions by my noble friends Lord Deben and Lord Sharma, Amber Rudd and many others. We should not apologise for that.

As I say, this is not an ideological issue but we have been raising issues across the Chamber about what is not a plan but an aspiration, with a lot of power seemingly concentrated in the hands of the Secretary of State. I think we are right to raise questions about that £8.3 billion. It is not a lot of money compared to the challenge but it is a lot domestically, and we must make sure not only that it helps to deliver energy security and green energy, but that it represents value for money. We have not heard enough on that so far, and no doubt we will pick up on that as the legislation proceeds.

There are questions about that and about the reduction in energy prices, which was made much of during the election campaign. That £300 reduction in energy bills was not mentioned at all by the Government as the legislation proceeded through the Commons, and again, they have not mentioned it today. Can we pin this down? What is that reduction going to be? If not £300, why was that the claim made during the campaign and what is the reduction going to be? These are issues that people will rightly want addressed.

Then, there are the competing bodies—at least, they seem to be competing—and how they mesh together. How will the Climate Change Committee, British Nuclear and the UK Infrastructure Bank work together? In a Bill as brief as this, these things are necessarily not dealt with in sufficient detail. I wonder whether the Minister could pick that up in his closing speech.

How is the performance of the bank to be reviewed? That, again, is a fair question. So much power is concentrated in the hands of the Secretary of State, who no doubt has expertise in this; I do not think that is at issue. He tells us—and I am sure we will take it at face value—that he knows what he is doing. But that might not always be the case. How is that power going to be exercised by others? We need some system of reviewing that power.

Lastly, I turn to the much more specific issue of the siting of Great British Energy in Scotland. The Minister mentioned that it is headquartered in Aberdeen, and some offices are in Glasgow and Edinburgh. I realise that it is a Scottish company, but there are going to be issues with ensuring that power is devolved around the country. Energy projects are going to be sited around the country, and in an island nation such as ours, I think that is right. As you would expect, I have specific concerns about Wales, particularly in the light of the Crown Estate Bill, in respect of which Wales, to my mind, was short-changed. It is about to be short-changed again, and I hope the Minister can address that issue, too, when he sums up.

With that, I look forward to participating in consideration of this legislation as it proceeds through the House.