Great British Energy Bill

Lord Falconer of Thoroton Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Falconer of Thoroton (Lab)]

My Lords, I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, who is very welcome to this House.

It is a great personal pleasure to follow the truly excellent maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Beckett. I told her that I would say it was excellent even if it was not, but it turned out to be exactly as expected—brilliant. My noble friend has made a contribution to public life that is second to none. She served in the Governments of Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. There are others who have served as many Prime Ministers, but many of those other Prime Ministers lasted only 49 days. While my noble friend Lady Harman has the longest continuous record as a female Member of the other place, my noble friend Lady Beckett has the longest service of all as a female Member of Parliament at 45 years.

She was first elected in October 1974. There was a break between 1979 and 1983 when there was a misunderstanding with the electorate of Lincoln, who elected a Conservative and indeed continued to elect Conservatives until 1997, when my noble friend Lady Merron was elected on behalf of Labour. In 1983 my noble friend Lady Beckett became the Member of Parliament for Derby South, and she served the people of Derby South until 2024. She never forgot Lincoln, if for no other reason than because she married Leo Beckett, the chair of the Lincoln constituency Labour Party. Leo and Margaret—if I may call her that, just for this remark—were always together, the most famous couple in the Labour Party, more Jennie and Nye than Victoria and David but very much loved. Sadly, Leo died in 2021 and is much missed by everybody.

Within months of entering the House of Commons in 1974, my noble friend was made a Whip. Over the next 35 years she held a series of offices, including Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Leader of the House of Commons and Foreign Secretary. But a description of her distinguished career does not adequately describe the characteristics that will make her so important and valuable a contributor to this House.

She is wise. In those years in government from 1997 to 2010, she was the wise owl whose advice we wanted. In 1997 there would have been those who thought she might be an early casualty, but the Prime Minister—like all the Prime Ministers who followed—very quickly realised that there was no more reliable and insightful person on his Front Bench than my noble friend. She ended up as his Foreign Secretary, leaving government on the same day as the Prime Minister, although the next Prime Minister had her back on the Front Bench within 18 months.

She is loyal. She has been a member of our party for even longer than those 50 years. She is universally loved. She held our party together during the dark days that followed the tragic death of John Smith. When she announced her retirement, the East Midlands Labour Party gave her a dinner that was massively oversubscribed, a love fest that few politicians in either party could have inspired.

Above all, she is trusted. Her commitment to our party will not prevent her saying when we are on the wrong track. She is a great public servant with profound loyalty and commitment to our country. Her words are always worth listening to. She is seldom wrong in her judgments.

It is particularly good that my noble friend Lady Merron, now on the Front Bench, was a successor to my noble friend Lady Beckett in Lincoln in 1997, when finally it was won back after 18 years. The current Member of Parliament for Lincoln is my son, Hamish. He could not be prouder to be one of my noble friend’s political children. She is so very welcome and will hugely enhance the deliberations of your Lordships’ House.

I thank the Minister for his clear and helpful exposition of the Bill, which I greatly welcome. I was unable to determine from her contribution whether the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, was in favour of the Bill; I took the view that she was probably not, but it was not clear. The merit of the Bill is that it will bring British public ownership back into the United Kingdom energy system, albeit through a state-owned private company.

All agree that the clean energy revolution that is required will not come from either public or private sector investment alone. There has to be a combination, and the effect of the creation of Great British Energy is likely to promote the crowding in, not the crowding out, of private sector projects in this field. They have to operate together. The Government’s description of the working of the company seems right:

“Led by its own CEO, Great British Energy will be overseen by an independent fiduciary Board, rather than ministers, benefitting from industry-leading expertise and experience across its remit. Trade unions will have a voice and representation within Great British Energy”.


The creation of Great British Energy right at the start of this Government, coupled with the commitment of £8.3 billion for Great British Energy to invest, shows both the urgency with which the Government are addressing the issue and that they have hit the ground running on it. I strongly welcome the early partnership with the Crown Estate in offshore wind power—this is exactly the sort of drive and leadership that Great British Energy can give. I also welcome the early appointment of Jürgen Maier. To have secured the services of a serious, successful figure in the private sector of his stature shows the depth of the commitment and the likely ability of GB Energy to deliver results.

I completely understand the wisdom of setting up an entity in private company form, albeit wholly owned by the state. It imposes the private sector disciplines on the company, including the need for a sensible return on investment, but in a way that allows this company to pursue the overarching aims of the Government to deliver on the aims of clean energy. I also underline the point made time and again by the Secretary of State that the promotion of our clean energy agenda will be a major contributor to the creation of a whole new infrastructure, the creation of community energy projects and the widespread retrofitting of the built environment to growth, upon which the future of our economy depends.

I thoroughly welcome the Bill and what it demonstrates about the Government’s readiness and commitment to addressing the climate emergency. I have two questions on which I would welcome assistance from my noble friend the Minister. The first is how this Bill fits in with the state subsidy and competition regime in law. There are limits on what state subsidies may be given by the state, particularly in the context of competition law, which prevents a state subsidy warping a Minister. Can the Minister say a little about what limits there are on the subsidies that the Government can give to Great British Energy and on the subsidies that Great British Energy can give to third parties?

My second query is that the Bill does not address the strategic objectives of Great British Energy, which will come from a statement by the Secretary of State. We are well acquainted with the aims of this Secretary of State, but would it be better, from a constitutional point of view, to incorporate the strategic aims in the Bill so that they cannot be subverted subsequently without parliamentary approval? We know that this House has always been keen to repel skeleton Bills.