National Energy System Operator: Blackout Risk

Lord Deben Excerpts

Monday 20th July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

Many things are being done alongside the changing nature of the system to make sure that it retains its resilience and ability to supply power on a no-failure basis. These include continuing to build out the grid, and bringing forward ancillary services, new forms of artificial inertia, long-duration storage and many other new instruments that the system will have to make sure that it continues on a stable and reliable basis. On the whistleblowers, yes, the investigation team will be led by a law firm, but it will report to a review panel consisting of the chair of the Audit and Risk Assurance Committee, the shareholder non-executive director and the Ofgem director-general. That is entirely in line with making sure that whistleblowers’ interests within the energy delivery system are properly protected.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister please accept that it is very important to ensure that the whistleblowing arrangements work effectively? Otherwise, people will use this opportunity to attack the Government’s excellent policy on moving as rapidly as we can to renewable energy, which is much cheaper and crucial for our security. Will he stand up toughly for the whistleblowers, given that some people, for some reason or other, want to attack the previous Government’s sensible policies, which this Government have continued? Will he make sure that we move to a position in which we are sovereign in our energy?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

I could not agree with the noble Lord more. Whistleblowing is and should be an essential part of all these processes. Whistleblowers have to feel safe in what they say so that it can be properly looked at and lessons can be learned if it turns out that they pointed out something that should be done. It is essential that we have an environment in which whistleblowing is protected and where whistleblowers are taken seriously. That is what the Government have done on this occasion, supporting exactly what the noble Lord said about the direction that the system is taking and why it is essential that we do not fall foul of completely unfounded attacks on that system as a result.

Climate Change Act 2008 (International Aviation and International Shipping) Regulations 2026

Lord Deben Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my declared interests and the fact that I was for 11 years chairman of the Climate Change Committee, appointed, reappointed and extended by Conservative-led Governments.

What is being proposed today was presented by the Conservative Government. My noble friend who spoke here supported that with me. I heard nothing explaining what has suddenly changed. This is just like last week. The Opposition are constantly putting forward these things without explaining why they have changed their view from what was the concerted view of every Conservative Government going back to the speeches that I used to write with Lady Thatcher.

Let us realise that this was a Conservative proposition and that the Climate Change Committee proposed it because it is a necessary way of explaining what will happen once we get the methodology right. Of course, we have to get the methodology right with the IMO and the international aviation authority. That is a perfectly reasonable way to do this. Had a Conservative Government been doing this a few years ago, they would have done exactly the same thing. There is no need for us to argue about it.

This is 10% of our emissions. It is not acceptable to come to this House objecting to what the Government are doing without an alternative. If you are not going to do this, you have to say that you will do something else. I exclude the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan of Chelsea, from this, because he has never believed that climate change is something that you need to fight. That is his position. He is entirely wrong, although we will listen to him, but he is not blameworthy. I think the Opposition are blameworthy, as they are coming forward without an alternative for what we need to do.

The reality is that this could become the largest-emitting sector if it is left out. It is stupid to leave it out. You need to have it in and help the industry get through and make its proper contribution. You cannot ask agriculture or manufacturing to make their contribution if you are not asking the aviation and shipping industries to do so. Only last week, the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, was complaining that he thought we were sending emissions abroad and shipping them here. This is one of the things we have to get right to meet the proper complaint that he made.

I have to say to my noble friend that, if this is an economic wrecking ball, it was one created by the Conservative Party. This is what we did—and thank goodness we did, because it is not an economic wrecking ball. It is a means of enabling this country to play its proper part in ensuring that our children and grandchildren have an economic system of any kind. This general comment about how difficult things are ignores the fact that we are facing an existential danger. Thank goodness that the voices who speak out on that side, including the Pope with Laudato Si’, and all those who really bother about the future of our society and our children, are making it very clear that we have to make these changes.

This is a very modest thing for the Minister to have brought forward. I have real complaints about the Government not moving quickly enough, but I am very pleased that they have moved as quickly as they have. It is not acceptable to argue about these issues unless you have an alternative, particularly when what is being proposed is something you yourself put forward.

Carbon Budget Order 2026

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as having been chairman of the Climate Change Committee for 11 years. I also chair a company advising on sustainability, business continuity and risk, and I am a partner in a small organic arable and livestock farm—so it may be said that one knows a little bit about what we are talking about.

I say to my noble friend that I listened to him make a brilliant speech yesterday on sport, and the brilliance of it was that he explained, first, why the Government had got it wrong and, secondly, how to put it right. The problem with his speech this evening is that neither of those has been part of it. It is no good standing up and saying that they do not like this or that. The truth is that a Conservative Government, when previously in opposition, were the creators of the Climate Change Act and they turned it into a cross-party agreement. Every Conservative Government have supported these policies to end up with meeting the Paris Agreement, which a Conservative Government signed. Yet at the moment all we hear is opposition to what is being proposed by the Government, on the basis of the very best advice that they could have.

There are a number of things that I think the Government are getting wrong. Any idea of loosening the movement to EVs is a great mistake, and the Government are also spending too much money on carbon capture and storage, as a matter of fact. But those are reasonable arguments to have from the point of view that we actually have to protect ourselves from the climate change that, surely, we are beginning to understand—as all the businesses I deal with understand —is no longer on the risk register: it is on today’s issue. How do we deal with this? The public and our grandchildren will never forgive us if what we do is to pretend that we are in favour of it in general, but not actually prepared to take the measures that are necessary. These figures are the necessary measures and are done far enough in advance for us to be able to deal with this.

It is very interesting that we should talk about intermittent renewables. The intermittency at the moment is with fossil fuels; the problem is that we cannot rely on them. It is also interesting that this is evidently “causing higher energy prices”, as 67% of the higher prices in this country and around Europe are because of the higher price of gas. What my noble friend proposes is to spend more money and more time on gas, instead of recognising that there is another fault of this Government, which is that they have wrongly continued the Conservative policy, which I opposed for 20 years, to put the costs of the necessary change on customers’ bills, instead of what they did between 1945 and 1951, when the Labour Party made the last huge change in our system and rightly said that that was a taxpayer’s price. If that came off now and was put on to the taxpayer’s bill, we would be properly competitive, and we would become more and more competitive as we moved.

It is all right talking about the Chinese—the Chinese are going to reach net zero by 2060, which means 2050, because they always promise in advance much less than they actually deliver. Every other country in the world that is thinking about the future is moving in this direction, because renewables are dependable and they are also cheaper. There is this idea that renewables are somehow deindustrialising Britain, but, since the Climate Change Act was passed, the GVA of the manufacturing industry has grown in real terms, and the CBI points out that there was £105 billion in added value in 2025 alone. This is a whole operation presented improperly. There is nothing in this order that is going to change whether I can grow my excellent red poll cattle.

The fact is that the reduction in our meat eating that the Climate Change Committee suggests we make is considerably less than that the medics think we ought to make; considerably less than Dimbleby, in his food strategy, said that we ought to make; and is less than what is now happening naturally. We have seen a 10% cut in the way people are eating, and there is nothing in this order that forces people to do more than that. We have to recognise that many of the people who will oppose this tonight are the same people who told us how wonderful leaving the European Union was, and the truth of the matter is that we can look at that. We have to look forward to a society in which we have protected our children and grandchildren from the menace of climate change, and until the Opposition are prepared to stand up with an alternative system that delivers that, it must be right to support what the Government are putting forward.

COP 30

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Does the Minister agree that the way to increase energy bills is to go on with fossil fuels, which are the most expensive, and that the idea that we get cheaper energy by extracting more fossil fuels from the North Sea when we would be paying the international price for them is not sensible? Does he also agree that if Britain does not keep to this excellent policy, produced by Conservative Governments again and again, and supported by the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats, we cannot ask anybody else to do it? Would it not be the very worst thing for the British people to make global warming worse so that we have a climate in which we cannot live properly? Is it not the shortest of views not to recognise that we have to move as rapidly as possible to protect our children and grandchildren? Is it not about time we grew up and learnt the realities of life?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

As on so many other occasions, I cannot find myself disagreeing with a single word the noble Lord, Lord Deben, says on this subject. I have been, frankly, in awe of his commitment and clarity on this issue over many years as chair of the Climate Change Committee. Indeed, we have spoken on a number of joint platforms with precisely this view in mind. The only thing I would add is to remind noble Lords that the recent fuel price crisis was a fossil fuel crisis of the volatility of global gas prices and it exposed the extent we are in hock to fossil fuels in a way that we would not be if we had a much lower portion of fossil fuels in our economy—preferably none at all. We would have a much more stable energy economy and a great deal of new investment and jobs to go with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

They are usually for 15 years, which means that a renewable development that is subject to that underwriting has, at the end of 15 years, a fully amortised and free energy solution for the future. Therefore, it is tremendously good long-term value, as far as that energy supply is concerned, to have that initial undertaking, which reduces and goes down to zero after that 15-year period.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Would the Minister remind my noble friend that this was precisely the reason why the Conservatives invented this system at the time? It was done because we have a present system of very large companies, with a great deal of money, pushing fossil fuels all the time. If you are going to replace that, you have to provide an alternative. That is what was done, it is what the Conservative Governments continued to do, and what the present Government absolutely properly have continued.

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

Indeed, and the noble Lord will recall that the previous system of renewable obligations was a continued underwriting, whereas the CfDs we now have are an investment reducing over time, leading to the implementation of secure long-term supplies of renewable energy. I am happy to pay tribute to the then Conservative Government for effectively inventing CfDs, which were a tremendous step forward from the previous arrangements. Among other things, they have certainly secured the enormous increase in wind and other forms of renewables that have come forward as a result. If only the Conservative Government had not banned onshore wind last time, we would be even further forward.

Infrastructure Planning (Onshore Wind and Solar Generation) Order 2025

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Grand Committee

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of this order. I thank the Minister for outlining its purpose.

The Liberal Democrats have always championed renewable energy. For too long, this country has suffered from the failures of the previous Conservative Government to invest in clean power and to insulate our homes, contributing directly to the energy crisis and leaving householders and businesses facing soaring bills. The vast majority of people in this country want more action on climate change. That is why we welcome this instrument as another important step in supporting the deployment of onshore wind and solar, which are both crucial to achieving the Government’s mission for clean power by 2030.

We are particularly supportive of the lifting of the effective moratorium on onshore wind. This was a deeply short-sighted and irresponsible policy, introduced via the planning changes in 2015 and 2016, which created a de facto ban in England. This ban limited deployment and caused the pipeline of projects to shrink by over 90%, with less than 40 megawatts of onshore wind generated during this decade. The reintroduction of onshore wind projects of over 100 megawatts into the nationally significant infrastructure project regime is crucial. The order reverses those damaging policies and places onshore wind on the same footing as other generation technologies such as solar, offshore wind and nuclear power stations. This provides an appropriate route for large-scale projects and offers greater certainty to industry.

Similarly, we support the decision to raise the NSIP threshold for solar projects from 50 to 100 megawatts. This change is needed in part due to technological advances in solar panels and aims to ensure that applications are processed efficiently through the appropriate planning regime. The previous threshold incentivised developers, as we have heard, to cap their capacity below 50 megawatts to avoid triggering the NSIP process. Raising the threshold should incentivise projects to develop on a more optimal and efficient scale and to ensure that mid-sized projects access a more proportionate planning route via local planning authorities. What assessments have been made of local planning authorities’ capacity and funding requirements to take on this extra work? They must be adequately resourced and supported to handle the influx of potentially larger-scale solar projects.

While we support the ambitions to streamline planning for major projects, concerns remain. The NSIP regime involves decisions made by the Secretary of State, and some respondents to the consultation expressed concern that this process might overly centralise decision-making and bypass local authorities and communities. This is particularly pertinent when considering large projects that can have a significant impact on local landscapes and communities. It is vital that the Government strike an appropriate balance between building nationally important infrastructure, protecting our precious landscapes and ensuring that local communities have a meaningful say. This Government must do more to work in partnership with local communities and ensure that they benefit from the infrastructure that they host—more “working with” and a bit less “doing to”.

How will the Government ensure that local voices are genuinely heard and their concerns addressed in the NSIP examination period, particularly for onshore wind? Can the Minister provide more detail on timelines for these frameworks and assure us that they will ensure that the balance between deploying renewable energy, protecting nature, ensuring food security and considering where best to locate projects is effectively struck?

Finally, the decision to set the solar threshold at 100 megawatts aims to avoid artificial capping and incentivise optimal site sizing. The impact assessment mentions monitoring and evaluation plans, looking at whether projects are clustering below the new thresholds and whether planning timelines for projects have increased. Can the Minister confirm how the planned post-implementation review and ongoing monitoring will assess whether the 100-megawatt thresholds are achieving the desired efficiency and optimal site sizing? All these projects will require timely grid connections, and I encourage the Government to support agrivoltaics.

Other noble Lords spoke about the need for more solar on rooftops and in car parks; for example, France generates 5% of its electricity from car parks alone. The Government may want to look at an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill on that. I very much welcome signs from them that new homes will have solar panels installed. There are issues around the way that some of the warehouses have been designed; they have not been built to take the weight of solar panels.

These legislative changes are a necessary step, but successful implementation requires careful consideration of local impacts and ensuring that our planning system is robust and balanced and takes communities with it.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I apologise to the Minister for missing the first moments of his speech, but as somebody who was taken to a tribunal by those who do not believe in climate change for daring to suggest that we had in effect banned onshore wind, I feel very strongly that this is an ideal moment to say how important onshore wind is.

Near to where I live in Suffolk, in the town of Eye, which I used to represent in the old Eye division, there is some onshore wind. When it started, an awful lot of people opposed it; they thought it was going to be very ugly and did not like it. Now it has become iconic. Recently, I was pleased to see—this Committee’s chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, will be interested in this—that an attractive ballet was put on using it as the background, showing a wholly different way in which people have accepted it.

I get very tired of people who are very much in favour of having electricity themselves but complain about its expense, which is the cost of gas, and then are opposed every time to having any further renewable electricity. We ought to be supporting this and seeking ways to introduce onshore wind, wherever that is suitable. There are places where it is not suitable; that is perfectly true, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rightly said.

Onshore wind and offshore wind need to be linked to the national grid system, but I hope the Government will recognise that the best way to get support for that is always to find the most appropriate way and try to avoid unnecessary pylons—then you can honestly say to a community: “I’m afraid that here there is no alternative”. I hope that people will recognise that, if we spend a great deal more on the distribution of electricity, the only people who will pay for it are the customers. We have to get that balance right. I hope that the Government will look more closely at alternatives and be able to show why they choose pylons.

On what my noble friend Lady McIntosh said, I have to say that it is not acceptable. It is no good; we will have to take electricity from where we make it to where we use it. If people want electricity, that is what we have to do. Frankly, there is no connection whatever between this and what happened in Spain. The constant desire to write down what is so essential to us seems to me very sad.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I think I am right in saying that the seat that my noble friend represented is now represented by a different party from ours. We need the electricity in the north—I cannot speak for Suffolk—and it would be much better to keep that source of energy close to where it is produced, rather than having pylons criss-crossing and destroying the countryside.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am quite sure that nobody takes electricity more distantly than they need to if it is going to be used locally. In my constituency—which was indeed one of the seats lost at the last election—the issue is not a question of pylons. The issues were very different and not really to do with this at all. I come back to the point that it is not sensible constantly to refer to things that are not connected with this. I repeat that there is no connection between the outages in Portugal and Spain and the issue before us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Would my noble friend give way so I can ask him about the phrase “arbitrary targets”? The targets are actually the result of the detailed propositions of the Climate Change Committee; they are not arbitrary in any way. He may disagree with the targets, but “arbitrary” means that they have just been picked out of the air. That is not so.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. However, we are now dealing with a moving landscape and we have an accelerated programme on decarbonisation, which goes beyond what was set previously with the target for 2030. This is critical. This road map is critical to that, and so I am right to question whether these targets are real. They are moving around; they seem to be moving on an arbitrary and accelerated basis. I think it is relevant to ask the question about how these targets are moving, as the order as it stands risks damaging both the democratic process and the long-term success of our energy future.

Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I understand my noble friend’s impatience. It is an impatience that I share, because we can all see the potential of small modular reactors in the UK and the export potential of UK companies that are involved in developing SMRs. With fairness to Great British Nuclear, it is going through a tough process. We will have assurance with regard to the technologies and value-for-money issues. Spring is not far away. I understand the haste with which my noble friend wishes us to act in this area.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, the French Government have given this Government a great opportunity to stop any further growth of Sizewell C and use that money for small modular nuclear reactors. This is an out-of-date proposal. It will cost much more than we bargained for. It is a brave and sensible Government who would say, “We will stop that and move to new technology”.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, if a Government were suddenly to say to Sizewell C, “We’re not going ahead with it”, that would have a devastating impact on our nuclear industry. We are not going to do that. We are moving towards a final investment decision. I do not recognise some of the figures that have been quoted in the media recently. It is 80% replication of Hinkley Point C, but because of that, a lot of the risks have already been ironed out.

Product Regulation and Metrology Bill [HL]

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 20th November 2024 Grand Committee

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

To conclude, I hope that I have been able to provide assurances on all these matters and I assure noble Lords that the Government have carefully considered—

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Before the noble Lord sits down, I am very much in favour of most of the Bill, but this bit is very difficult. I have been around a long time, and I have known Minister after Minister explain that things are too technical for us to have proper parliamentary scrutiny, and I heard it again today. The fact is that there is some real concern, even from those of us who are, in general terms, in favour—I hope it gets as near to parity with the rest of Europe, which is our biggest market—as we want to be sure that Parliament has a say, but I am not sure that the Minister has given us a very good answer. Saying that it is very technical is the oldest story that civil servants have given Ministers since we have had civil servants and Ministers.

[Lord Leong (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for that. If it helps, I have gone through some of our 150-odd existing product safety regulations—not all of them—and their technical nature includes scientific calculation and all kinds of other technical input. Are we saying that we want this in every instance of primary legislation? I think not. If noble Lords think that we should have every technical aspect in all primary legislation, we need to have a different debate entirely, but for this, for technical reasons, we need delegated legislation to ensure that we update the regulations.

Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Norwich]

My Lords, I rise to support all the amendments in this group but I will focus my comments on Amendment 10 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, and Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, to which I have added my name in support. I would also value hearing the rest of this debate.

On Amendment 10, I reiterate the question I asked at Second Reading: what steps are His Majesty’s Government taking to safeguard marine protected areas, and why are they not taking the IUCN’s recommendations seriously by excluding MPAs from extraction in the Bill?

I will not rehearse the valuable arguments that the noble Baroness, Lady Willis, has already made on whether we have a robust regulatory framework on MPAs. From the evidence she has provided, I am greatly concerned about whether that is the case. Certainly, the new Rosebank field overlaps with the Faroe-Shetland MPA—a fragile ecosystem and marine environment. Excluding MPAs from the licensing rounds altogether would ensure their protection and that is why I support Amendment 10.

According to the Government’s own figures, only 44% of protected features in MPAs are currently assessed as being in favourable condition. We have rightly set ambitious and strong targets to protect species and restore natural habitats: 70% of MPAs need to be in good condition by 2042 and 30% of the sea must be protected for nature by 2030. Unamended, the Bill risks making this far more difficult to achieve. Meeting these targets will be ever more challenging, which sends a damaging message to the international community about how we regard our natural environment.

It also goes against what Ministers in other departments are saying. For example, in January 2023, the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, said during the debate on the Environmental Targets (Marine Protected Areas) Regulations 2022 that

“MPAs are one of the most important tools we have for protecting the wide range of precious and sensitive habitats and species in our waters … Establishing this network is an important step in achieving our goal of conserving our protected species and habitats. Now that they have been designated, we need to increase the protections for these valuable marine environments to help them recover, which is why we are setting this target”.—[Official Report, 24/1/23; col. GC 31.]


So, in one part of government MPAs are a valuable tool to achieve our national and international commitments.

There is further evidence. While he did not refer to MPAs directly, when Defra Secretary of State, Steve Barclay, announced the closure of sand-eel fisheries in the North Sea and restrictions on bottom trawling, he commented that:

“Protecting the environment is fundamental to the prosperity of our country and our new commitments will drive forward our mission to create a cleaner and greener country for all”.


Are we really doing what is adequate to protect our marine environment? I do not believe that we are, because we are playing fast and loose with marine protected areas at the moment. We need joined-up government around our commitments in this area. As your Lordships know, there are so many environmental impacts from both surveying and drilling, including habitat loss and damage; the noise from seismic surveys, which was illustrated for us at Second Reading; and oil spills, toxic vapours and the release of toxic chemicals, with a wide range of impacts on flora and fauna, including skeletal deformities. It is so important that we take all this into account in our thinking about the Bill. It is of course separate from the combined impact of further extraction of fossil fuels and the related carbon emissions on this, our single island planet home.

The Bill as it stands puts at risk the marine habitats found around our shores. We have marine protected areas for a reason; the clue is in the word “protected”. I once again ask His Majesty’s Government not to jeopardise their commitments to MPAs and, by supporting this amendment, to exclude them from surveying and extraction in the Bill. I happily support Amendment 10.

Moving on, I also support Amendment 2 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, because a skills passport would facilitate workforce mobility between sectors. One of the key arguments put forward repeatedly at Second Reading was that jobs would be impacted and that, if we did not have this Bill, further job losses would occur. The reality is that the North Sea is a declining basin. New licensing is unlikely to prevent the ongoing decline of jobs in the oil and gas sector. More than 200,000 jobs, both direct jobs and those that support the oil and gas industry, have been lost in the past decade, in spite of around 400 new drilling licences. A skills passport would facilitate that mobility, enabling people to transition from the oil and gas sector into other sectors.

Further, a green skills retraining plan, as proposed by this amendment, would assist those wishing to transition in using the valuable skills they already have so that they can flourish in a new sector—sectors that will be emerging and coming on stream yet far more into the future. Currently, oil and gas companies are not required to provide retraining or support for workers. This measure would be something of such foresight for them to do. A skills passport would help this work- force navigate the transition to net zero so I support Amendment 2.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the Committee of my declaration of interests, in particular my being a trustee of the Blue Marine Foundation. I support not only Amendments 1 and 2 but the previous two that we have been talking about.

First, I congratulate the Government on the fact that we have these marine protected areas. The Government have also reached out to what might be called the “confetti of empire”; we have, in fact, created an increasing number of marine protected areas around the world. This is leadership by Britain, which is now being followed by others: the French are keen to do similar things. We really have led the world on this; in fact, it was this Government, under a previous mix, who did it. We have this background.

We then have the marine protected areas rules and suchlike, which have been quoted clearly. The words of my noble friend Lord Benyon are particularly germane to this discussion. However, I must remind the Government that they had to be sued by the Blue Marine Foundation to stop bottom trawling off Dogger Bank, one of the most important areas that we have. It was only the court case that managed to get a change in the Government’s attitude. This matter is not an exact parallel but it suggests that the instinct of government is not to protect, although the legislation of government demands protection.

Therefore, I say to my noble friend the Minister: there is a real issue here for him, not least because there are two different concerns about the Bill. At the moment, we are not concerned with the first, which, I remind the Committee, is mine. It is that, by passing this, we have given up our leadership in the world on the expansion of gas and oil exploration; that is a great sadness and turns its back on some very real progress made by previous Conservative Governments.

Climate Change Policies

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 20th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My Lords, there were a number of questions there. In essence, I think the noble Baroness is asking whether the Government are really committed to net zero. As I said in the original Answer, the answer is yes. More importantly, we have the track record to prove it. The UK has overachieved on all our carbon budgets to date; we have reduced emissions faster than any other major economy; we are home to the first, the second, the third and the fourth-largest offshore wind farms in the world; and renewable power reached a record share of 48% of total generation in the first quarter of 2023. All those matters have been achieved under a Conservative Government. It is our record and we are proud of it.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, the Climate Change Committee and Chris Skidmore, who was the Government’s own adviser, say that the Government cannot at this moment reach net zero, even before they cut back. Last week, the Government failed the offshore wind industry. This week, it appears that they are making car manufacturers unable to do their jobs. How are this Government going to restore the confidence of investors, businesspeople and the general public that they will stick to their word?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Yet again, the noble Lord is wrong in his statements. As he well knows, we have the largest offshore wind industry in Europe and the second largest in the world. Other European countries are racing to catch up with our record. We have over- achieved in meeting our carbon budgets, and I remind the House that these are legally binding commitments. We are on track to overachieve on carbon budgets 4 and 5. We are also on track to achieve carbon budget 6, which does not start until 2033, so I am afraid the noble Lord’s statements are wrong.

Offshore Wind

Lord Deben Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am happy to hear the noble Baroness be so cavalier with bill payers’ funds; she is, in effect, talking about increasing the strike price. It is always difficult for the Government to strike the right balance: we want to get the best value possible for bill payers, as opposed to providing sufficient revenue for the companies to build. I obviously know which side the noble Baroness is on but I want to be on the side of the bill payer. We have already secured the largest offshore wind sector in Europe by far; she quotes the example of Germany, which should be very jealous of the amount of offshore wind capacity that we have. We secured almost 7 gigawatts in the last allocation round and, in this round, secured 91 projects with other technologies. There is a viable long-term pipeline of about 77 gigawatts of wind available to this Government and we will take advantage of it, but we will make sure that we do it at the right price for consumers.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I am on the side of bill payers. The problem is that they will have to pay more, because we will not have the renewable energy that we would have had and will have to use more expensive gas instead. This was the Government’s fault; everybody warned that the reserve price was too low. But let us forget the past. Why can emergency legislation not pass through the House, which I am sure would be supported by all sides, so that we can replay this very quickly for the bill payer?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The bill payer will be very grateful that 7.5 gigawatts of construction is already under way, as we speak. We all want to see more, but at the right price. I understand why industry is urging us to pay more for this. That is understandable and in its commercial interests, but I would have expected most Members of this House to be on the side of bill payers as well. We can do both: we can get a good deal for the bill payer and take advantage of the many gigawatts of potential construction in there, which has either been consented or is under consent. Following a contract being let, it takes three to four years, on average, for the capacity to come on stream. Obviously, the capacity let in previous rounds is coming on stream gradually, as we speak. As I said, we consented to about 7.5 gigawatts in the last round. There will be another auction in about six months and it would take almost that long to pass new legislation.