Growth Deals: North of Tyne and Borderlands

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that Northumberland is one of the few counties without a university in it and that the Conservative-controlled county council has ambitions to put that right? Does he think that that should be encouraged?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I had not given particular thought to that question until the noble Viscount addressed it to me. Of course, there are two terribly good universities in Newcastle, as we know, but I am pleased to hear about the consideration being given to a university in Northumberland.

Devolution: North-east England

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Wednesday 12th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that those are not combined authorities. We are not comparing like with like here. This is an issue where elected representatives, very often from Labour councils, come together to decide whether it is in the interests of their region, as they have done in Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region, for example. We believe that, just as in London, we need that accountability of a mayor for devolution to work effectively in the interests of the region. That is why we are pursuing that policy.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend the Minister surprised or not that those in the Labour Party in the north-east are more interested in fighting among themselves than in representing the region as a whole?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, as I indicated, I come to this brief with a genuine belief that it is in the best interests of our great conurbations and of the north-east that this goes forward. As I said previously, I make a plea to the areas concerned to come together to proceed with this. It has to be from the grass roots up—we are not imposing this—but believe that it is very much in the interests of the people of the area.

Hinkley Point

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Wednesday 11th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I repeat the point I made about the high standards of nuclear safety. We are aware of the alleged defects at the Le Creusot works. We are working on that, and it will not affect the generic design assessment process that is going on at Hinkley Point C.

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, can my noble friend tell us, at the current price of electricity, what his department’s estimate is of the subsidy that will be paid by energy bill payers in this country over the 35 years of the Hinkley Point contract to Chinese and French investors? Is it true that the figure will be a staggering £50 billion?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, my noble friend will be aware that the strike price is £92.50 on the assumption that we do not go ahead with Sizewell. If we do, which we may well, it will come down. This is unaffected by all these issues with the works council—the strike price is set, and increased costs and any minor difficulties do not affect the strike price at all.

Forests: Coal-bed Methane Extraction

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Monday 25th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I am always grateful for people exaggerating my powers, but this is very much outside my brief in relation to forestry. I will ensure that the right reverend Prelate gets a full response on the subject, and I know that the Government take it seriously.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that if this country had not switched to fossil fuels in the last couple of centuries, the Forest of Dean—and every other forest—would long ago have been cleared for fuel? I declare my energy interests as listed in the register.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, what I would say is that we, as a nation, must determine that we shall have secure energy, and energy that is not imported. If we do nothing about coal-bed methane or, more broadly, about fracking, by 2030 we will have to import 70% of our gas rather than the 45% that we import now.

Paris Climate Change Conference

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I thank the right reverend Prelate very much for his kind words and note, in particular, the lead that he has given through the Lambeth declaration and the fact that that pulled together people of many faiths. There was also a massive role of the Muslim climate group in supporting this. The participation of faith in all this, not least from His Holiness the Pope, was significant. I thank him also for what he said about climate finance. The contribution that this was able to make to the debate, and speaking to people, certainly was significant. Obviously, it is important for developing countries, particularly the most vulnerable countries, because there are degrees, as we are all aware, of poverty. Some small island states in particular need an awful lot of assistance on adaptation as well as mitigation.

The right reverend Prelate asked about the domestic agenda. Again, I refer him to what I said previously about falling costs, which is certainly true. The costs, particularly of solar, are spiralling down very quickly. Given the very clear signal that has been sent out worldwide, we can expect that to continue. The Paris agreement is significant in many respects. It is significant that the world has come together in the positive way in which it did but, on the specific, it is very important that it signals the end of the carbon economy. It is only a question of when. That message going out worldwide to business and being welcomed by business will mean that costs fall.

What are we doing within DECC? First, many DECC officials are taking a little bit of a break, having been up around the clock for the past couple of weeks. That said, work is already going on to see how this is delivered but, of course, the work had started before. We are already looking across government at what we need to do on cars and housing to meet our carbon targets. That work will continue but it is important that this is not just a one-nation issue; this is across the whole world. Hence, the importance of the five-year stock takes and the five-year reviews.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I hate to pour cold water on this love-in but perhaps I may remind the Minister that the only thing legally binding on countries which are increasing their emissions in this agreement is that they must produce voluntary plans. Paris therefore represents the end of a 20-year attempt to get agreement to legally binding emissions targets. Will he confirm that this leaves the UK as the only country with a legally binding target on emissions? Will he remember the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s pledge that this country should go no faster in this respect than other countries? Will he therefore consider adjusting our policies to fulfil that pledge in the interests of those working in the industry and those struggling to heat their homes this winter and in future winters?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I am also disappointed that my noble friend has ended the “love-in”, as he calls it. If this is regarded as something that states will just cast away, it is significant that it was such a hard agreement to drive and achieve—if it really was, as he perhaps implies, just a piece of paper and not worth the paper it is written on, why was it so hard an agreement to reach? Only one state stood apart from this process and that is North Korea. I suggest that this is no time for strategic alliances with North Korea. This is a world problem that needs a world solution. The agreement is a step on that road.

Renewable Energy: Solar

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, perhaps I may first correct the noble Lord. Most of the jobs that are lost are those of installers who are not based in Leicestershire—I know the city of Leicester very well. However, it is important to note that the Government are very alive to this fact. I am surprised that the noble Lord—in all the circumstances of the success of the market economy, though contradicted by the present leadership of the Labour Party—does not welcome the delivery of some of the best employment and unemployment figures, with unemployment coming down and employment going up. I would have thought that the noble Lord would welcome that; it is very significant.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that the efficiency of solar panels in this country, which is a rather cloudy country, is somewhere below 10% of nameplate capacity? Most of that happens in summer and in the day time, and seems not to happen often in the winter evenings.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, sadly it is a feature of life that we do not get as much sun as some countries. The good news on solar panels is that of course they can deliver significant advantages in Africa—which my right honourable friend Justine Greening is looking at through international development funds—and are delivering significant advantages in China and India as well.

Renewable Energy

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the cost (£/tCO₂e) of greenhouse gas emissions abatement in the most recent year for which there is data from each of wind offshore, wind onshore and solar, taking into account the additional electricity system costs appropriate to each technology.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)]

My Lords, based on support provided through the renewables obligation, the estimated abatement cost in 2014 was £65 per tonne of carbon dioxide for onshore wind, £121 for offshore wind and £110 for solar PV.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply and declare my interests in energy as listed in the register. Does he agree that the Ed Miliband/Chris Huhne energy policy that he inherited has been extremely effective at taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich but much less effective at decarbonisation—and particularly at decarbonisation in an affordable way? The numbers he gave for the abatement costs per tonne of carbon dioxide from those three technologies are higher than the numbers given for the total cost of climate change—the so-called social cost of carbon—as estimated by all economists, including even the noble Lord, Lord Stern. Would my noble friend guarantee to investigate these numbers to see whether we are getting value for money as consumers through these subsidies?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, it is fair to say that there is a decline in the cost of renewable generation technologies. The steepest decline is in solar PV. On my noble friend’s point about the fact that the last leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, had a policy on energy that was not in the interests of the country, I am pleased to say that one of the first actions of the new Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change was to write to the energy companies to say that we look forward to seeing a reduction in bills consequent on the fact that the last leader of the Opposition is not now Prime Minister.

Climate Change

Debate between Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth and Viscount Ridley

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley]

My Lords, given that global warming has been much slower over the past 30 years than what 95% of the IPCC models had forecast, and given that 14 peer-reviewed papers published since 2011 find that climate sensitivity to carbon dioxide is much lower than the 3 degrees assumed by the Government’s climate impact models, what is the Minister’s preferred estimate of climate sensitivity? Does he agree that the best scientific evidence now suggests that it will be 100 years before we hit the 2 degrees threshold and that perhaps there are other more urgent humanitarian and environmental priorities?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

I find myself in total disagreement with the noble Viscount. The scientific evidence is overwhelming that this is a very, very serious issue and we do need to address it. The consequences if we do not are dire.