Online Communication Offence Arrests

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, for securing this important debate and for his powerful opening speech. We now live in a world in which everyone, if they wish to, can make their views known to everybody else. It is a world where political debate is not the preserve of a small establishment group but is open to all. Yet not everyone seems comfortable with this, and rather than welcoming this uniquely open debating environment, we find many politicians talking of disinformation and misinformation and even of putting outright bans on certain kinds of speech.

Unfortunately, the British legislative framework gives them plenty of power to make these words reality. Our legal framework potentially criminalises wide categories of speech and messaging. The noble Lord mentioned a couple of them. We have the Communications Act 2003, criminalising “grossly offensive” messages. We have the Malicious Communications Act 1988, criminalising “indecent or grossly offensive” communications. We have the Public Order Act, which criminalises causing harm or distress, including the notoriously broad “stirring up” offences. All these are aggravated if motivated by “hate”. Of course, we also have the Online Safety Act 2023, which criminalises false communication by an individual; it makes fake news literally illegal.

These laws raise a number of problems. First, there is definition creep, with “grossly offensive”, “abusive”, “insulting” and “false”—says who? What these mean, in fact, depends ultimately not on law but on CPS guidance, which can easily be changed in line with prevailing fashion and fashionable beliefs. Secondly, there is the chilling effect. In a country where, clearly, there are problems of immigration and integration, one person’s fair commentary is another’s abuse or insult. For example, is commenting on different characteristics of migrant communities in the UK and crime levels among such communities fair political comment or is it “stirring up” racial hatred? The risk of drifting over that border and committing an offence creates a chilling effect that means that people are frightened to comment.

Thirdly, all these laws were written either well before this great democratisation in political debate or by legislators who had not caught up. They are written for a world of green ink letters and shouting in the street; they are not written for the very punchy, sharp, meme-based, satirical social media world. In my view, these laws should mostly be abolished or at least focus much more clearly on genuine incitement. Until that happens—and I am not exactly holding my breath about it—our only protection is a Government, an establishment or a wider climate of opinion supporting free speech. Unfortunately, of course, we have no such thing.

We know from the Covid era that the commitment to free speech is thin to start with. Politicians of all parties muse about controlling social media further; they often believe that, in this new world, the ill-informed populace is easy prey to false beliefs and conspiracies. The Government are particularly well placed to do that because most misinformation actually comes from Governments. Trump’s supposed collusion with Russia and the Covid lab-leak theory are two outstanding examples of that. On most political issues there is simply no authoritative interpretation of the facts. Instead, what a fact tells you depends on the interpretation you bring to it, what you see as the goals of a policy. The same fact or number can be used to support very different arguments, depending on your prior beliefs, your interpretative framework and what you are trying to achieve. Thus, the only way to reach an outcome is to have a free debate and see who wins the argument.

I worry that we are heading towards a real crisis. There has always been some censorship in Britain—more’s the pity—but, until recently, it was more artistic and cultural, rather than political. We prided ourselves on being a free country in which we could speak freely. We simply cannot say that now. We are, in fact, all vulnerable. Say the wrong thing in the wrong way at the wrong moment, and any of us might find the police at our door. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us when he responds.

Contracts for Difference (Miscellaneous Amendments) (No. 3) Regulations 2025

Lord Frost Excerpts

Monday 14th July 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Wilson of Sedgefield) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government have committed to achieving clean power by 2030 and the contracts for difference—CfD—scheme will play a key role in achieving that ambition. The clean power action plan, published in December last year, outlined several key reforms to the CfD scheme ahead of allocation round 7 opening this August. Following a robust public consultation process, we published our consultation response, which set out that legislative changes are needed to enable the Government to reach clean power 2030 and enable a fair price for consumers.

The draft SI will enable changes to the allocation process to ensure that our clean power 2030 ambitions are met and that consumers pay a fair price. It amends the Contracts for Difference (Allocation) Regulations 2014 budget publication process and the information that the Secretary of State will have access to during the allocation round. With access to anonymised bids and by changing the budget publication process, the Secretary of State will be able to set budgets for CfDs that maximise good value capacity deployment for clean power 2030 and avoid the outcome seen in allocation round 6, where an unspent budget for fixed-bottom offshore wind meant that a potential opportunity to secure additional projects at a good price was lost.

These amendments mean that the Government can bring forward renewable capacity that represents value for money, which will benefit consumers by moving the country away from volatile fossil fuel prices. The instrument also amends regulations to enable the costs of the clean industry bonus to be included in the Ofgem price cap. There needs to be a specific provision in the relevant regulations that allows the CIB to be counted as a specific bill cost as part of wider CfD costs. This is a technical change; the rest of the CIB regulations are already in place. It will ensure that the price cap captures all the relevant factors that might impact on it.

These draft regulations represent an important step in ensuring that we achieve clean power 2030 and protect bill payers now and into the future. They make the necessary amendments to enable the CfDs to adapt as we head towards clean power 2030. This will enable us to maximise renewables deployment at a fair cost to consumers. I beg to move.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as an unpaid director of the campaign group Net Zero Watch. I think the Secretary of State for Energy is at the moment giving a Statement in the Commons on the state of the climate and energy in which he promised—or, at least, briefed—that there would be some radical truth telling. It may be useful to do a bit of that ourselves in this discussion. In particular, there are two areas of concern before I come on to the detail of this instrument.

First, the Government’s policy is based on the incorrect belief that renewables are cheaper than gas. There are different figures out there, of course, but independent commentators show that if you include all the subsidy costs, grid balancing costs and capacity market costs, onshore wind is about twice as expensive per megawatt hour as gas, offshore wind is two and a half times as expensive, and floating offshore is three times as expensive. Even solar, which is perhaps the most of viable of any of these renewables, is 50% more expensive. That is the first incorrect belief.

The second incorrect belief is that prices will go down rather than up, which has been very well debated recently. According to data from the International Energy Agency, Britain had, as is well known, the most expensive industrial and domestic energy prices in 2023. The data for 2024, in so far as we have it, shows that we have the most expensive industrial energy prices in Europe, and now only the fourth most expensive domestic energy prices. However, gas prices are about average for Europe, which strongly suggests that, contrary to everything that is said, gas prices are not driving the high costs. In fact, it is the subsidy, the balancing costs, the capacity market and the inflated capital costs—all of which, by the way, the OBR predicts will increase rather than decrease over the next few years. All those are driving higher prices.

The Government have to pretend to believe the things that I just outlined; I do not know whether they really believe them, but they certainly have to pretend to. The problem is that doing so makes it difficult to run a proper renewables policy, and that is why AR6—allocation round 6—was such a fiasco. As the Explanatory Memorandum says, AR6 constituted a

“budget underspend for offshore wind”.

Alternatively put, renewables producers would not supply at the prices that were offered, so there was an underspend. If renewables are as cheap as the Government say they are, why should that be the case?

Therefore, the Government badly need AR7 to be a success. They need this vast expansion of renewables, whatever the cost, if they are to decarbonise by 2030. But developers are getting cold feet; we saw it in AR6, and we have seen the cancellation of projects since then. Hence this statutory instrument is a different approach. It is very complex and obfuscatory, in the way we have come to expect, and there are many technicalities, but the core of it, as various commentators have set out, is that instead of setting a budget and seeing what capacity the Government can get for the money, they are setting a capacity ambition, seeing what bids come in and then seeing what they have to pay to get that capacity. That is why the Secretary of State needs this anonymised data early and why they need to delay publishing the budget until all this has been assessed. The Government hope that no one will notice what is going on if it is done in this technical way in the statutory instrument, but I am afraid it is a scandal, because we will see prices and budgets go up, and we will not get a proper explanation for it.

I have two other points to make on the instrument. The consultation on it, which the Minister referred to and described as “robust”, involved developers, electricity traders—I quote the Explanatory Memorandum—

“businesses operating in the offshore wind sector”

and “environmental groups”. Those, of course, are all producers. What about actual businesses that have to use energy or electricity and have to deal with the increased energy costs and complexity that come as a result? We know what the consequence is and we know why they did not consult them. It is because they know that prices will go up. We know that because, in the industrial strategy announced a couple of weeks ago, the Government have had to pick sectors and subsidise their energy costs to make their operations viable.

My second point is about the security risk of all this. We all saw what happened in Iberia a couple of months ago as a result of excessive reliance on renewables. The Government say that they are investing in nuclear, gas and, to the extent they can, storage, but, of course, none of this will be ready by 2030.

I shall finish with three questions. First, can the Minister tell us how much the Government expect to spend on the AR7 budget? If prices are falling, why will it not be less than AR6? Can he tell us how much consumer prices are expected to fall as a result of the constant fall, as we are supposed to believe, in the cost of renewables? Secondly, if they did not consult consumers of electricity on this SI and the new methodology, can they commit to doing so in future on similar instruments? Thirdly, can the Government tell us how they expect to fill the gap in production that renewables create before the new gas, nuclear and storage come online well after 2030?

Palestine Statehood (Recognition) Bill [HL]

Lord Frost Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 14th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, who is always so courteous and so clear in what he says. I am afraid I disagree with him and with the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, and the Bill that she has introduced, and briefly I will explain why.

I think we have to look at the situation on the ground. Israel has been fighting for 18 months now. It is much the longest war it is ever been involved in. It involves not just Gaza, but Lebanon, Syria and even Yemen and Iran. It is imposed huge strains on Israeli society, and there is no end in sight to it. So it is not surprising that Israelis are sceptical about the land for peace concept, and it has failed as a concept, most obviously in Gaza. Indeed, only about a quarter of Israelis now support a two-state solution. Equally importantly, as a PSR poll last autumn showed, only 39% of Palestinians support a two-state solution. This means that a two-state solution seems very unlikely to happen.

That is the context in which we must consider this proposal to require HMG to recognise Palestine as

“a sovereign and independent state on the basis of the pre-1967 borders”.

The only problem is that no such state exists on the ground. There are no agreed borders or territory, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, pointed out. That is not the only relevant criterion. Palestinians have very limited control of the territory, for good security reasons. There is no real ability to engage in interaction with other states. They have institutions that are riddled with anti-Semitism and corruption and simply cannot govern. There simply is nothing approximating to a state, which is important because that is the basis for UK recognition of states.

In these circumstances, what is the point of the recognition of Palestine? At best, it is acknowledgement of the concept of a state for a state that does not exist; at worst, it is just a form of international virtue signalling, or even a statement to Israel that we will reward in some way the Palestinians for the chaos and violence of 7 October.

I think the Government are being sensible in saying that recognition can come only as part of a process that is working and in which they can help. I am tempted to think that that is just another way of saying that it is never going to happen, but the problem is that for as long as recognition is a theoretical possibility, it encourages the international community to keep engaging with the phantasm rather than dealing with the real situation. This country should deal with reality as it is, rather than wishing for things that are not going to happen, and that is in our interest. That means backing Israel to do what is necessary for its security to support a realistic and achievable solution to the grievous problems that beset Israelis and Palestinians, which I strongly suspect is not going to involve a two-state solution in the near future, and stopping pretending that gesture politics by those with no skin in the game can help in any way in this. That is why I oppose the Bill.

UK-EU Relations

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

In response to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord True, on this, the Government recognise the value of schemes that give young people the opportunity to experience different cultures and work or study elsewhere. We have the Turing scheme and, separate to that, the UK operates a number of bilateral youth mobility schemes with European countries such as Iceland and Andorra and with a number of our global partners. We do not have a proposal or plan for a youth mobility scheme, but we will look at any EU proposals on a range of issues. But, as I outlined in the debate we had on youth mobility in your Lordships’ House a couple of weeks ago, the EU has not yet come forward with definite proposals on this point.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, the Government have set out two of their objectives for this supposed reset: an agreement on SPS—agri-food—and some sort of agreement on the emissions trading scheme, with closer linkage between our scheme and the EU’s. In its negotiating document that was made public before Christmas, the EU said that agreements in those areas would be possible only if there were dynamic alignment in the application of EU law, jurisdiction of the Court of Justice and an EU enforcement mechanism. Will the Minister confirm that such terms will not be acceptable to the British Government in this reset? If she is not willing to give such a clear denial, should we not conclude that such terms could in fact be negotiated in this reset?

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

On the sanitary and phytosanitary agreement, the Government are committed to pursuing an agreement that could reduce trade friction and bring benefits to both the UK and the EU. The UK and the EU are like-minded partners with similarly high standards, and we have been clear that an SPS agreement could boost trade and deliver benefits on both sides.

Europe: Youth Mobility

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure, as always, to follow the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and it is a particular pleasure to have been able to listen to the rather endearing maiden speech from the noble Lord, Lord Moraes. I am sure he will bring a lot to this House from his experience.

I also thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans for securing and opening this debate. I listened to his speech with a good deal of interest, and he set out the positions very clearly. I was waiting, I confess, for the moment at which he would show how his positions derived from the doctrine of the Church of England or Christianity more broadly, but sadly, that point never came. Nevertheless, I take them as so derived, and he certainly made a very good political case for the changes in rules in our relationship to the EU that he set out. He referred to the reset, and I want to begin by talking a little about the so-called reset, because that is the context in which we are looking at this idea of youth mobility.

I confess that I am not completely convinced that we need a reset with the EU. The relationship seems to be working perfectly well for the moment, but I accept that there are many who think differently, and that is why the Government have taken us on the path that we are now on. I think it would be better if the Government could set out their objectives for that reset a bit more clearly. I refer the Minister to the comprehensive document that we set out in February 2020 outlining our approach to the free trade association negotiations. It is a pity, to put it no more strongly, that in a negotiation of this nature we have no real guidance on what the Government are seeking to achieve and why, so I guess we have to define it for ourselves.

The way I look at the reset and what may be on the table falls into two categories. The first category is a set of proposals that would be marginal but genuine improvements to the relationship as it now stands. None of them are game-changers, but they are things such as improving the mutual recognition of qualifications procedures, something to do with the arrangements on touring artists—which have been referred to and I am sure will be again—improvements to the conformity assessments, pragmatic relaxation of border processes, e-gates and things such as that. I would put at least some kind of youth mobility agreements into this category, and I will come back to that and explain why. That is one category.

The other category of things that might come up in the reset is more troubling from my point of view, and ought to be more troubling from the country’s point of view as well. Those are things that we are led to believe might be on the table, although we are not quite sure. They are issues such as free movement-like arrangements, participation in asylum or migration arrangements of the EU, application of EU law, alignment with EU rules or regulations in any way, ECJ monitoring in an SPS agreement or accepting EU rules on defence procurement. Those are the sorts of things that start to change the FTA-type relationship that we have into a different kind of relationship, one that involves a degree of subordination, acceptance of lawmaking outside the country, that we had hoped we had got away from.

Some of these things may be on the table for the Government; we do not know. I hope that if—and it is probably when—they come back with something from these negotiations, they will be honest about whether they have accepted changes to the free trade nature of the relationship and lawmaking outside the country through alignment with EU law. That is a fundamental point.

As I have said, youth mobility arrangements can, but do not necessarily, come into that category. They are a prudential issue rather than a problem of principle, at least in certain forms. One has to say that because, after all, the UK has youth mobility agreements with a number of other countries around the world already, so there can be no objection of principle to another such agreement. It all depends on the terms and the degree of control. If we are ever asked to judge whether a youth mobility agreement with the EU is sensible, I would look at four criteria.

First, what are the numbers? They are crucial. We all know that there is a huge debate about the number of migrants coming into the country. I will not get into that, but in that context some numbers in a youth mobility scheme would not be material and some definitely would. All our existing agreements have numbers below a cap of 10,000 per year, with the exception of Australia. That is the order of magnitude that we would have to think about in an EU arrangement. The EU’s proposal for such an agreement includes no cap at all; it is simply a criteria-based arrangement under which, in principle, many tens of millions of people would probably be allowed to come to this country. Maybe they would not—I am confident they would not—but it takes only a small proportion to cause a difficulty. Numbers and a cap are really important.

The second criterion is fairness and balance. One has to laugh slightly at the nature of the EU’s proposal to us for such a scheme, which is so wildly unbalanced and tilted in its direction that it cannot think we would give it any serious consideration. Can it really be fair that everybody who meets the criteria in the entire European Union is allowed to come to the UK but that UK citizens are allowed to go to only one of the 27 EU countries? It makes no sense for the EU to say both “We can negotiate this only at EU level, because that is the way we do things” and “You can come to only one of our 27 countries, because that is also the way we do things”. We cannot have that. It makes no sense. If it is a UK-EU agreement, it would have to be done on that basis.

Thirdly, there can be no importing of EU concepts, by which I mean non-discrimination between UK and EU citizens. It is a big ask in the EU’s recommendation that we should accept that EU visitors under the scheme should not have to pay the NHS surcharge, for example, and that students should not have to pay the same fees as other foreign students. That too is not acceptable in such an arrangement. There should be and is a distinction, which we should maintain, between UK citizens and non-UK citizens. I see no case for assimilating EU citizens into that category.

Fourthly and finally, we are clear that this is an EU ask, and the Government have been quite clear that it is not something that they are looking to negotiate particularly, which is good. If we end up agreeing it anyway, what will we get in exchange for making concessions to the EU? How will it come up in the negotiations? There are many things that we ought to want from the European Union in any reordered arrangement, but unfortunately the most important of those, the Northern Ireland arrangements, are already off limits for the time being—more is the pity.

However, there are acceptable trades for this. The most obvious area is mobility; one can imagine a high-equilibrium arrangement, with some sort of youth mobility agreement in return for some sort of relaxation of the ESTA-type arrangements, better use of eGates, more pragmatic arrangements for service providers, including tourists, artists and so on. One can see we could find an equilibrium that could make sense and be of benefit for both sides. Whether that kind of thing is on the table, or whether the Government plan to concede more than that, we just do not know; we will have to wait and see.

To conclude, I set out these four tests for youth mobility. To be honest, I find it hard, in practice, to imagine that it is possible at the moment to negotiate a youth mobility scheme that would match all four of those things, but you never know. It is wise for the Government to have said they have no plans for such a scheme and it is probably best to stick to that, unless a really good offer is made to us.

Economic Growth

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, before looking at what we have to do to get growth back, perhaps we should consider where we are and why we are here—not just in this country but across the West. We are in a very difficult position. As has already been noted by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, GDP is falling. GDP per head, which is the only thing that matters, has begun to fall again. It is at the same level that it was in 2019. It is no wonder that people in this country do not feel better off; they are not better off.

This is not just in this country; it is common across the West. If you compare the pre-financial crash growth figures to the post-financial crash figures, only America and Australia have maintained even half their growth rates. Most of the Europeans are down 20% or 25% on their previous levels. Famously, Tolstoy wrote in the beginning of Anna Karenina:

“All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.


The same is true of most western economies; we all face different sets of problems. The specifics are different, but I do think we are all facing a variant of the same very deep-seated set of problems that we have to be honest about and grapple with.

First, the end of the Cold War—I think we have to go back that far—removed the pressure to remain productive and constantly demonstrate superiority of the western free-market model, and we got complacent. Secondly, what happened is what always happens when there is no counter pressure: collectivism. Intellectually bad ideas started to set in and go down the path of least resistance.

Thirdly, we saw economic policy follow that intellectual trend, with an expansion of government, more regulation and more state intervention. All that inevitably led to worse economic outcomes, more social conflict and a political environment that got worse. In the end, political choice accommodated itself to this environment. Most western electors faced the choice between two different versions of international progressivism and social liberalism—one supposedly on the right, involving international economic institutions, trade liberalisation and international business, and one conventionally on the left, involving redistribution and a lot of “woke” politics. Neither aspired to change the fundamentals; both involved high levels of migration, weakening social bonds and the nation state still further.

This system now has its own internal dynamism, and it looks very difficult to break out of it. The result is what we are seeing—the collapse in growth and zero-sum conditions. The economy is ceasing to grow, we cannot afford things that we have got used to having, social conflict is growing and crisis is near. Doing more of the same is not going to help—it will just make things worse. We have to face this reality and we need to do two very difficult things. First, we must make a huge attempt, much bigger than anything that is being contemplated at the moment, to reverse the trend of economic collectivisation and regulation from the past 30 years. There needs to be a determined attempt to end deficit financing; shrink state and taxation; recreate incentives; reverse the net-zero policy and produce cheap and more abundant energy; remove the vast corpuses of legislative regulation that dominate economic activity; intensify competition in the economy; sort out public services; conduct painful reductions in welfare transfer programmes; and look at investment in infrastructure, housing and so on, in many places.

However, it is not only this. As my noble friend Lord Farmer has set out, we need to look at the social environment too. We need to make a major effort to repair the sinews of social fragmentation, to reconnect and rebuild politics by consent. If we cannot do this, we will never get the consent for the economic changes that are necessary. Here we are going with the flow of electorates; there is a greater emphasis on culture, the nation and social conservatism. We need to go with that, which means cutting migration, controlling borders, getting an effective Government, getting out of the web of binding international agreements, killing off wokeness, getting serious about defence and thinking of investing in the family much more.

We need to do both those things, which requires making a series of correct choices, many of which are going to be unpopular—but it still has to be done. I finish by quoting the great man Sir John Hoskyns, who was behind the Stepping Stones report in the late 1970s. He said:

“It is not enough to settle for policies which cannot save us, on the grounds that they are the only ones which are politically possible or administratively convenient”.


We have to do better than that. The British people want better than that—they know something is going wrong—and it is for us, the politicians, to provide it.

Live Events Ticketing: Resale and Pricing Practices

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Absolutely. I mentioned in a previous response that there was a successful prosecution relatively recently. Without prosecutions, without teeth and without action, all the work by Members of this House, including my noble friend and others who have been campaigning for years to address these issues, will have been in vain. I am clear, as my noble friend indicates, that this needs to lead to clear action.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I am going to break the cosy consensus here. The Conservative Party always used to be, and perhaps still is, the party of markets and economic freedom, so I am going to say what I think a lot of Conservatives might still think, which is, I am afraid, that this is a silly idea and the price of a sporting event or a Taylor Swift concert is nothing to do with the Government and can safely be left to the market. Does the Minister agree—I suspect she does not, but I will ask her anyway—that the best way of avoiding the problems we have been discussing is to deregulate, legitimise secondary markets and allow individuals who want to participate in cultural events to decide how much they want to pay for them and get access to them accordingly?

Civil Servants: Compulsory Office Attendance

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Maude who, as his thoughtful remarks showed, was one of the few Ministers to have taken public sector reform seriously in recent years. I also thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for securing this debate and setting out the issues and concerns so clearly. I can only echo most of them. In the short time available, I will make just one short point about why working from home seems to be such a problem in the public sector.

Working from home is often conflated with working shorter hours. There is a suppressed assumption that the one should facilitate the other. This happens either formally, as we have seen in the South Cambridgeshire case, or informally. The suspicion, which I think is well founded, is that those working from home do not always put in the same hours as they would if they were in the office.

It is true that working hours have gradually reduced over time, from the six days of the Victorian era to the five and a half days I dimly remember my father putting in during my childhood to the five-day standard now. One might ask why we should not see this continue, facilitated by home working. The answer is very simple: those reductions in working hours over the years came from steadily increasing productivity, and the gains were taken partly in wages and partly in increased leisure. But we have not had those productivity increases over the last 20 to 25 years. Rather, we have had them to some extent in the private sector, but we have not had them at all in the public sector. Public sector productivity is lower now than it was in 1997.

One might argue that, if there are to be shorter working hours, these should be in the successful parts of the private sector, and public sector workers should be working longer until they can work better as well. Yet, in fact, the reverse seems to be happening: private sector staff are coming back into the office for five-day weeks, as my noble friend Lord Farmer noted, while the public sector is working more and more at home, with ever shorter hours. It is therefore not surprising that we see output falling and the problems that have been mentioned at the Land Registry where, rather than acknowledge and deal with this problem, the workers preferred to strike and make it worse.

Now, of course, there has been a technological shift, as remote working has become more feasible. There has been a cultural shift with the pandemic, and it would be foolish to pretend this does not exist. It would also be foolish to claim that, in certain circumstances, home working cannot make sense, at least for part of the week. Given the issue that I have just explained and my noble friend Lord Maude alluded to, the only way it can work is if it is coupled with top-quality management, assurance that the working hours are being carried out, clarity about outputs, relentless improvement of processes and proper performance management including, if necessary, firing those who will not work in this way.

The problem is, as I and many of us know—I from my 25 years as an official—that such management is pretty rare in the public sector. This is not because the people in the public sector do not want to do it, although I think that that is sometimes the case, but because the tools for proper management do not exist. It is impossible in the public sector to really change incentives, positively or negatively, and it is virtually impossible to fire anybody. The only real tools that public sector managers have are personal leadership and moral suasion within their teams, and these are exactly the attributes that are difficult to exercise remotely. Therefore, it is not surprising that extensive home working in the public sector sees output and productivity fall.

The best solution, of course, would be to revolutionise the way the public sector runs itself, to try to improve its woeful productivity record, perhaps to get its workers contributing to better output by using the time saved on commuting to work instead. Alternatively, it might ensure that those who choose to take their rewards in the currency of flexibility or shorter hours see that reflected in their cash wages as well, but I do not expect that that will happen anytime soon. We must therefore require the second-best solution, which is to get people into the office and working together again. That is why it is so important that the Government really insist on their target of three days in the office and, ideally, reforms public sector working more broadly. I hope that, when she responds, the Minister will be able to reassure us of that.

Complications from Abortions (Annual Report) Bill [HL]

Lord Frost Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 13th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Foster, who spoke, as she always does, powerfully, compellingly and rationally—it is important keep that rational focus on this important Bill. I thank my noble friend Lord Moylan, who set out the rationale for it clearly, compellingly and in some detail, and I am delighted to have this opportunity to support it.

Whatever one’s views on the substantive question of abortion, I find it hard to see why we would not want as much information as we could possibly get on this question, especially when, as my noble friend Lord Moylan noted, there is clear evidence for at least a potential anomaly that needs addressing in the statistics. It is surely in the interests of any woman considering an abortion to have the best possible information about the possible risks involved.

In the short time available, I want to make one further point to those that have been made already, on the objection from the British Pregnancy Advisory Service—which the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, has already noted—that this Bill would in some way “exceptionalise” abortion. I find that worthy of a brief comment. As the noble Lord said, abortion is already exceptional in various ways. One might note in passing that it is the only form of healthcare that has required the suspension of free speech rights—and even non-speech rights, those of free thought—to allow it to be transacted. Passing on from that, more substantively, it is exceptional because it is one of those areas of care where there really are starkly clashing worldviews. I am sure that we will hear much more about that later on this morning. That means that it always is going to be subject to debate, unless there is some fundamental change in the ethical basis of our society. Therefore, ways through have to be found, in a free society, to accommodate that.

The need for debate around abortion provision will, and I think should, always make it exceptional. It means that we need that debate to be as well-founded as we can possibly make it—well-founded in the moral judgments that we bring to it and well-founded in having the best possible information and analysis around it at a technical level. That is what this Bill would help to provide, and that is why I support it.

Renewable Energy: Costs

Lord Frost Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Frost]

That this House takes note of the cost of renewable energy and its effect on energy costs in the United Kingdom.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my entries in the register of interests. I thank all those Members of your Lordships’ House who have agreed to speak today; I am very grateful to them all.

With COP 29 well under way in Baku, it is a timely moment to have this debate, even if that conference is perhaps attracting rather less interest than in previous years. That is certainly not because of lack of interest in the climate and energy issue. President Trump’s election is likely to open up debate once again at a global level. In the EU, we see increasing levels of doubt about the policy consequences of the climate commitments already made. Here in the UK, we have the new Government’s plan to decarbonise the energy grid by 2030, with the report last week from NESO, the newly formed National Energy System Operator, constituting the first detailed commentary on that plan.

Central to that plan is delivery of large-scale renewable capacity for our energy grid, both wind—onshore and offshore—and solar, together with a revamp of the transmission system to handle that. The NESO report provides us with costings for all this and much else besides. Like most other official and quasi-official studies on the costs of net zero, the NESO report uses figures already produced by the Government for this purpose. That is why it is such a matter of regret that there appears to be a large measure of disagreement about many of those underlying figures. We would have a much higher quality debate about the costs of net zero overall if there were at least consensus on the underlying figures. There is not, and that is why I felt it right to try to secure today’s debate on this matter. I do not expect we will find consensus today either, I fear, but perhaps we can hope to shed some light on why the differences exist.

The difficulty arises for two broad reasons. First, there are starkly different views of the levelised costs of renewables, particularly onshore and offshore wind, and these are relevant to the closely connected question of subsidies to this sector. Secondly, it is an inevitable consequence of the intermittent nature of renewables that this imposes costs elsewhere on the energy system: back-up, interconnectors, other non-renewable generation, and measures to ensure grid stability, together with the costs of rebuilding and reconfiguring the transmission system—and all this seemingly on a highly ambitious scale. I want to look at these areas in turn.

First, on the levelised costs of renewables—that is, the cost of building and operating wind and solar, discounted over time—the latest figures were published in 2023 by the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and, as I said, the NESO report is based on them. Those figures claim that offshore wind can generate power at £44 per megawatt hour in current prices. Yet AR6, the recent round of capacity auctions, awarded contracts for offshore wind at £82 per megawatt hour in current prices. It is difficult to understand why there should be such a significant difference between these figures, if the £44 figure is in any way correct. One becomes even more baffled if one looks at the actual accounts of recently commissioned offshore wind farms, which suggest a production cost of around £100 per megawatt hour, or, indeed, if one looks at the recent payments, published yesterday, to offshore wind farms under contracts for difference, which suggest a production cost of around £150 per megawatt hour.

There are similar huge gaps in other areas of the costings. DESNZ assumes a capital cost for offshore wind of £1.5 million per megawatt of capacity. Yet, once again, looking at the accounts of wind companies, the figure appears to be about £3 million per megawatt, which is twice as much. Indeed, at the end of 2023, the developers of Moray West wind farm were still installing the foundations of the wind farm yet had already, at that point, spent the equivalent of £1.6 million per megawatt hour. It bears noting that if the seemingly correct higher offshore wind capital spending figure were used, the NESO estimate for capex from now to 2030 would go up by about £15 billion every year, taking the total capex from a total of £31 billion to £34 billion to a total of £45 billion to £50 billion annually.

To take just one further difference, the DESNZ figures assume a 61% capacity factor for offshore wind—that is, they assume that over a year, wind farms generate about three-fifths of their notional installed capacity. But once again, recent wind farms are opening at a capacity of 45% when new, and that figure is falling over time. The real capacity factor over the whole of the life of a wind farm may well be under 40%. If that is correct, it means that we will need to build 50% more offshore wind farms to get to the actual power that DESNZ estimates—and, of course, costs will go up by the same amount.

I note that Professor Gordon Hughes from Edinburgh University and Andrew Montford, director of Net Zero Watch, wrote to the Permanent Secretary at DESNZ on 16 September asking for further detail on some of these discrepancies. They have not yet received a reply.

Those figures are just the actual costs of operating offshore wind. The gap between assumptions, auctions and actual real-world costs explains why there has been such a need for subsidies ever since the shift to renewables began in the mid-2000s. The OBR says that “environmental levies”—a catch-all category which covers the renewables obligation, the contracts for difference and the feed-in tariffs—currently stand at about £12 billion a year. That is over £400 for every UK household. Yet one has to ask again: if the real cost of offshore wind really is £44 per megawatt hour, well below current market prices and the prices agreed in auction rounds, why do we need these subsidies at all?

I turn now to my second category: the costs elsewhere in the energy system. I think everybody agrees that there are some such costs; the question is: how high are they and what are the consequentials? The costs are principally those of intermittency, of which there are two kinds. The better-known one is the fact that little power is generated by renewables when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine—periods like the one we saw in this country for most of last week. This requires back-up, currently mainly gas, and there is obviously a capital cost in maintaining a dual system of any kind. Moreover, the fact that the gas-fired stations cannot be used at close to full capacity but must be turned on and off at short notice brings a cost in reduced efficiency and revenue. The cost of paying operators not to shut their power down as a result of this lack of efficiency—the so-called capacity market—is currently £1 billion a year. The OBR says it will rise to £4 billion in three years’ time.

The other kind of intermittency, which is less well known, is the reverse: what happens when the wind blows and the sun shines when we do not need the power generated. Under current arrangements, that involves us paying the renewables producers not to produce and to turn their kit off to avoid grid instability. That costs £2.5 billion per year, which is expected to rise to £3.5 billion in three years’ time.

It bears noting that the more renewables we produce and build, the bigger these figures will get. The more we rely on renewables, the bigger the problem when we have the wrong kind of weather, and the bigger the concomitant costs are going to be. That is why it is a simple fallacy, though a seemingly widely believed one, that building more renewables reduces costs and brings more security. It is surely clear that the reverse must be true.

Finally, there are the wider knock-on costs, most notably in the plans for what NESO calls “demand management”: rationing of energy if the grid cannot supply enough energy to meet demand. This will come either by compulsion—for example, in plans to reduce supply to industry in such circumstances—or by price rationing to consumers, or both. The NESO plan for demand management is slated to cover, by 2030, five times as much potential demand as now—that is, about 10 gigawatts.

Now noble Lords may say, as people do, there have always been differential energy tariffs. Indeed, some of us are old enough to remember things like Economy 7, from the 1980s. But that was differential pricing to stimulate demand in the night-time, when supply was high but demand was low. This is the reverse; this is a plan for us to put up with differential pricing to reduce demand, when it is demand that is high and supply that is low. That is quite different, and it necessarily imposes an economic cost on industry and the consumer, for they cannot use energy when they want to use it and may have no warning of the fact, either. It is hard to quantify that cost, but it is clearly potentially significant. It should be factored in to the cost of running an intermittent renewables system, but it is not.

The only attempt that I am aware of by government to quantify some of those wider costs—though not all of them, for some are still excluded—was made by the then BEIS in 2020, in its document entitled Energy Generation Costs 2020. This showed, even on the imperfect measures being used, that both offshore and onshore wind were on average likely to be more expensive than modern gas power stations, even allowing for some of the implausible assumptions that I discussed earlier.

Let us try to bring all this together. We have a significant discrepancy—disagreement, call it what you will—in assessments of the levelised costs of renewables. In the case of offshore wind, it is a discrepancy amounting, potentially, to up to £100 per megawatt hour. The high levels of subsidy we are paying in various forms suggest that production costs are in fact quite a lot higher than acknowledged. There are also wider costs to the grid—£3 billion to £5 billion in the current year, growing in future—and to the economy, hard to quantify but definitely present in the various kinds of inefficiencies created by an inefficiently working electricity supply system. In short, one side of the argument sees low levelised costs and believes that they will fall further; the other, with which obviously I associate myself, sees costs that are not falling and that require high and growing levels of subsidy and complexity to make the whole system work properly.

This situation is deeply unsatisfactory. The Government are about to embark on a dash to decarbonise the electricity grid according to an assessment that is based on certainly disputable direct costings, and which will be heavily contested and simply fails to take into account many of the wider costs and consequentials. This really is not good enough; the country is owed better.

I recognise, of course, that when the Minister responds he may not have the information he needs to reply fully to some of these detailed points, but I hope he might do so in writing, and perhaps at the same time encourage his Permanent Secretary to reply to Professor Hughes’ letter, which I mentioned earlier.

I say all this not to make a political point. We really need to understand better the real cost of renewables to the consumer, the Government and the economy. If it turns out that I am wrong and the costs really are low and falling, that will be excellent news for us all. I am doubtful about renewables not on some ideological grounds, but because they seem to me extremely expensive in their own right and to come with many additional costs and security risks too. I have not yet seen the evidence that would persuade me otherwise.

I finish on this point. With this in mind—and I am not sure the Minister will leap with alacrity on what I am about to say, but I hope he might respond anyway—the Government should consider establishing some form of expert committee on this subject, made up of officials and experts from the department and bodies such as NESO and the Climate Change Committee, with a red team of outside experts to provide challenge, to look on a totally transparent basis at the evidence and the costings, and to see how close it could get to a common view. This would seem to me the best way of getting at the reality and an assessment that might command a bit more consensus than the current situation does. Whatever this country’s future energy policy may be, we surely all want it to be established on the best possible analysis and the best possible knowledge. I look forward to the debate today and to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I do not want to detain your Lordships’ House for long. I thank every contributor today for the care with which they have presented their case, and I am grateful to the Minister for his thorough winding up. I did not really expect him to pick up my suggestion, and indeed he did not. I look forward to his full response to some of the points that I raised.

We have heard an extremely interesting set of speeches. If I might be allowed just one reflection, on those that we have heard from proponents of the transition, it is that I detected perhaps a reluctance to tackle some of the specific details of costs and numbers that I mentioned but rather appeals to authority and nebulous assertions about the costs of not acting in relation to our global responsibility and credibility in this regard. I feel that is a little unsatisfactory as a basis for transforming our entire energy system, which is why I suspect we will need to come back to this and related subjects before long in the future. Meanwhile, I commend the Motion to the House.

Motion agreed.