Queen’s Speech
Lord Donoughue Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Donoughue
My Lords, I agree with every rapid word from my noble friend Lord Prescott, but I wish to focus on the energy section of this debate, bearing in mind the threat of a new Energy Bill. I will concentrate on the Government’s decarbonisation agenda, pursued with little concern for the competitiveness of our economy and with its accompanying pressure to prevent the exploitation of our rich shale gas reserves, which threatens to produce a serious energy crisis in this country.
Last week, a global warming campaigner from this House denounced those who question green orthodoxy as, revealingly, the “forces of darkness”. I say revealingly because the language is religious or religiose. Much of this debate is conducted in those terms. The greens claim the high moral ground, pursuing the virtue of—ambitiously, I must say—saving the planet. “The end of the world is nigh”, they say. Those of us who question them are evil sinners.
Perhaps with the decline of Christianity and the fall of Marxism, our chattering classes need a new faith. As a Roman Catholic, I respect faith but I am aware of its scientific limitations. I have always—including when I was my party’s spokesman here on energy—supported a healthy environment, limiting pollution and using energy efficiently. At first, I accepted unquestioningly, as was wrongly claimed, that there was a unanimous consensus among scientists supporting the global warming case and that only a tiny lunatic minority questioned it. But then I found a serious number of questioners, including scientists, on the internet and in this House, although many spoke in hushed tones for fear of denunciation as deniers—like neo-Nazis who deny the Holocaust. Nasty that. Now the polls show that at least half the nation is sceptical. Even media commentators have started to question, although not of course the BBC, which is still a propaganda branch of the green faith. The Met Office also remains true to the faith that the planet will boil, forecasting mild winters and barbecue summers, which never appear.
The basic facts on global warming are that the planet has recently been in a warming phase and since 1880 has warmed 0.8% of 1 degree. However, in the past 16 years, there has been no further warming, and the Met Office forecasts that the globe will not warm further in the next five years. Beyond that, the warming trend may resume. We do not know. The strict link between carbon emissions and the degree of global warming has been questioned, given that emissions still increase while temperatures do not, and atmospheric carbon levels were much higher in the last ice age. We need better evidence.
The problem is that our Government are committed to spending scores of billions of pounds on policies that assume that the alarmist beliefs are already proven facts. Those policies involve a massive switch to uneconomic renewable energy. The costs threaten to make some of our industry uncompetitive and fall disproportionately on the poor, and the number of those in fuel poverty has reached new peaks. Nearly 20% of recent energy price increases come from green imposts.
The massive investment in wind power, despite producing barely 5% of our electricity generation, is a particular folly. Environmentally, wind turbines can have many negative effects, as set out in DECC’s 2010 appraisal. Financially, they are a disaster. The cost of subsidies and integrating them into the grid—ultimately borne by consumers—will reach £5 billion a year by 2020 and by 2030 will have doubled again, totalling well over £50 billion.
Onshore wind costs double and offshore wind costs treble the cost of a combined cycle gas plant. This huge cost is because of their inefficiency. They often do not work in very cold, windless weather. In the severe cold spells of 2010 and 2011, they at times contributed less than 0.5% of Britain’s power. They need some 80% of back-up capacity from the fossil fuels they are supposed to replace. So wind does not replace fossil fuels; it embeds the need for them and drives up the price of power generally.
A further burden imposed on our society, and especially on the poor, by the green agenda has been the obstacles put in the way of developing our rich reserves of shale gas, estimated to meet our needs for the next 150 years. This abundance, as the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, said in his excellent maiden speech, could help to generate huge tax revenues and to rebalance the economy by boosting manufacturing, especially with jobs in the north.
We should note that in the United States shale has provided tens of thousands of new jobs and reduced gas prices by two-thirds, while the green jobs bonanza has proved a mirage. In the States it has created only 2,800 jobs at a cost of nearly $12 million a job. The prospect for green jobs may be just as thin here, with most windmills built abroad.
So why is the shale revolution not happening here? It is mainly because of ideological hostility to shale exhibited by greens in DECC and especially by Liberal Democrat Ministers. Scaremongering about shale fracking, alleged to cause so-called earthquakes and water contamination, was well publicised in the media—less so the later inquiries by the Geological Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering, which showed that fracking has never caused any human or structural harm and will not do so if conducted, as it must be, according to established safety and environmental rules. Yet the alarmists continue their opposition. They do not want safe shale; they want no shale. This is economic madness.
What should be done? My own Labour Party is rightly attached to environmental values and should continue so, but in a balanced way and not with excessive green faith and global warming ideology. It should remember our historic concern for jobs and not damage the competitiveness of the economy, and it should show concern for poor people freezing in winter with rocketing energy bills. Labour should be wary of elitist green policies which pay rich Scottish and Welsh landowners and big corporations billions, derived from green taxes on ordinary people in tower blocks in Glasgow, to rent out their estates for wind farms. This could involve the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich since the 18th century enclosures. It is not clear to me that it should be a central Labour policy.
As for the Government, the Prime Minister should remove Liberal Democrat Ministers of extreme faith from the energy department. Right now, he should ensure that the Energy Bill meets Britain’s critical energy needs and stop littering our countryside with a blight of windmills.
Finally, for the wider issues of climate change, the importance of which I do not deny but the causes of which are not scientifically clear, we should monitor climate developments in a measured and non-ideological way. We should react on proven evidence, not on hysterical alarmism and not by assuming that Britain, with barely 2% of the world’s carbon emissions, should lead some imperial moral mission to save the planet, and certainly not by damaging our economy and the living standards of our people. That is not the responsibility of any sensible and mature Government.
Leveson Inquiry
Lord Donoughue Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Donoughue
My Lords, this is clearly an important and so far fascinating debate. There are many fine speakers to come, and I shall try not to delay noble Lords too long.
First, I should declare some ancient interests. Long ago, I worked as a journalist for four newspapers, including one owned by Rupert Murdoch. I was sacked by him, an experience of which I am unequivocally proud. I was also sacked by Robert Maxwell, but I shall not go into that here.
The Leveson report, which we are here to debate, is immensely impressive. I basically support its approach, especially on the need for a fine, delicate layer of statutory underpinning. I support all that was said by my noble friend Lady Jones and by the right reverend Prelate about the value of the local press, the remaining, though fast disappearing, jewel in our media.
The report, of course, has deficiencies and omissions, which is inevitable with such a vast subject to cover in such a little time. It has been and will be comprehensively covered today, so I shall try not to repeat much of what has been said—and I am sure will be said—on the body of the report.
I wish to make just two points. The first, which has been stressed to me by old journalist friends, is that the fact that present proprietors, editors and journalists sadly include some thugs, bullies and, in the case of the Murdoch gang, some alleged—I stress alleged—criminals, does not in itself justify eliminating the basic freedom of the press. I agree with that. However, I do not believe that the Leveson report, if read carefully and fairly, does anything like that. It is careful and subtle in deliberately setting out not to do so. Only the recent ridiculous campaign by some parts of the press to denigrate Leveson by proposing that its aim is for the Government to control what journalists do and do not say suggests that it might do so. The Prime Minister, who is perhaps historically too close to the Murdoch camp—he and his party are not alone in that—is wrong in apparently believing that that is the danger in Leveson, and in seeking to appease the press rather than its victims. I trust that the Minister, when he replies to the debate, will demonstrate that that is not so by accepting the need for some statutory underpinning. However, I confess that I am not too optimistic about that. He should acknowledge that on many previous occasions when the press has been under the scrutiny of previous commissions of inquiry into newspaper behaviour—I think that there have been six in my lifetime—it has always promised to perform more responsibly in order, of course, to avoid closer regulation, but has always broken its word. In recent times it has behaved worse than ever, as the evidence to Leveson and recent actions by the police have proved. It does have form, my Lords. The fact is that it cannot be trusted to operate complete self-regulation.
My second and main point concerns one of the crucial factors which is understandably given little analysis in this hasty report: that is, the excessive concentration of ownership power in the media, which has shaped the culture of the media, to which the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, rightly referred, in particular the concentration of power in Murdoch’s media empire which stems from the 1981 decision to allow him to take over the Sunday Times and the Times. That concentration led to his newspapers having the power to intimidate politicians as well as ordinary members of the public and, over time, led to some—I stress “some”—of his newspapers and journalists feeling that they were above the law and unaccountable. Indeed, it apparently led some of them to feel that they were above all normal standards of moral behaviour, thus leading to the appalling episodes of behaviour which Leveson exposed.
The events of 1981—the takeovers by Murdoch of the Times and the Sunday Times—were central to this process of decline and corruption. The politicians, led by Prime Minister Thatcher, for whom I have great admiration in other fields, behaved outrageously in conniving with Murdoch for him to acquire this excessive power: a bigger concentration of newspaper ownership and power than was ever held by notorious newspaper barons such as Northcliffe and Beaverbrook in the United Kingdom and Hearst in America. Murdoch’s acquisitions were characterised by deceit, misrepresentation of facts to Parliament and the public and contempt for company law—all to avoid reference of these takeovers to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and to allow Murdoch to avoid the official guidelines of a 30% maximum share of newspaper ownership. These events were all set out in meticulous detail by Sir Harold Evans in his inside story, Good Times, Bad Times, which I recommend noble Lords to read, and have never been challenged or disputed. They show how the Prime Minister had a secret meeting in No. 10 to plan these developments. The Prime Minister and Murdoch both later denied that meeting to Parliament and it was never reported to Cabinet although it was minuted by her press secretary. No other competing bidder was given that privileged access. When the deal was done, Parliament was reassured by Murdoch giving five statutory undertakings, backed by criminal sanctions, which mainly referred to guarantees of editorial independence. All these guarantees were subsequently breached without action being taken against Murdoch.
In seeking to avoid a referral to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission, the device was used of claiming that the Sunday Times, which in the past and in the future is one of the most profitable British newspapers in history, was “not a going concern” and therefore needed Murdoch’s immediate financial rescue. In fact, the financial statistics on the performance and prospects of the Sunday Times were distorted and misrepresented to Parliament. The paper’s finance director, who knew the true figures, was not called to brief the Department of Trade, whose Secretary of State was handling the issue on behalf of the Prime Minister. It was later reported to me by an official from the No. 10 private office, who I knew, that Mrs Thatcher was heard to say, “Rupert supported me in the election, and I must support him now”. That is an understandable political reaction.
That excessive concentration of power given to Murdoch by dubious methods was, and still is, inimical to the workings of a healthy democracy. It is indicative of the bad effects of such a concentration of media power that the later alleged criminal activities of journalists were concentrated in, though not exclusive to, Murdoch’s empire. When the alleged criminalities were first exposed in the brave Guardian newspaper, that paper was exposed to derision in the mass media, much of it owned by Murdoch. The same patterns of behaviour began to be observed as Murdoch moved towards increasing ownership and power in television through seeking control of BSkyB. If that proceeds, he will probably offer guarantees, but we should remember that he once said the guarantees he gave over the Times were “not worth the paper they were written on”. He has the virtue of honesty.
Concentration of media power enables a proprietor to intimidate or reward politicians, as Murdoch rewarded Mrs Thatcher with future electoral support in his papers, although, of course, that was his natural inclination anyway. Politicians naturally need media support, hence they are tempted to return favours to supporting media. As we know, the police—
Lord Donoughue
I am concluding. It is a potentially corrupting game. All power corrupts and excessive media power corrupts excessively. The Leveson inquiry was an impressive enterprise but it will fail if it does not ensure that such a concentration of media power, and the corruption which follows it, never happens again.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston
My Lords, I know that the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, missed my remarks at the beginning of today’s debate, but it might be helpful for me from time to time to give noble Lords a sense of how we are doing as regards time. I remind everybody that we have suggested—this is just guidance—that speeches should last for around seven minutes if we are to rise at around five o’clock this afternoon. We are starting to run a little behind schedule.