King’s Speech

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, and indeed all my Labour friends and colleagues. We are very lucky to live in a country where power changes in the way it does, where civil government is civil and politics are polite. Nobody is exiled or shot—in fact, raising the bar a little higher, there is not even really the prospect here, as there is in many of our allied countries, of a party refusing to accept the outcome and going to law. I think we can take that for granted. I hope we all want Britain to succeed, and that means wanting this Government to succeed.

I will focus this afternoon on areas not just where I think the party opposite can succeed but where it can succeed by the metric of comprehensively outperforming the outgoing Government. There were two spectacular candidates in the King’s Speech. One is healthcare, which your Lordships will debate tomorrow. Even within the red lines set by the Health Secretary, the fruit is not so much low hanging as piled up in great snowdrifts, because the previous Government were so terrified of being accused of privatisation if they allowed any mechanisms of internal markets.

But I will talk about housing. I share my noble friend Lord Attlee’s enthusiasm for the speeches given at the beginning of the debate from the Front Bench. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, set out the problem extremely well. We do not build enough houses in this country, and we have not been doing so since the 1960s. Housing has been falling as a proportion of our population for longer than I have been alive.

The problem has accelerated as our population has grown. In the last 15 years, population has increased through immigration by 5 million, 1.5 million of that within the last two years, and housing stock has fallen in percentage terms commensurately. What are the results of this? Well, we can see them whenever we compare this country with our nearest neighbours. The average size of a dwelling here is two-thirds the average in France, Germany or the Low Countries. Rents here are 1.5 times higher on average. Rents in London are twice what they are in Paris and three times what they are in Berlin. The number of young people who own their own house has fallen by 51% since 1989.

So much for the diagnosis—what about the prescription? Here again I have some grounds for optimism in what we have heard from the Front Bench opposite. Particularly, it is a good idea to begin by calling in some decisions that have been held up, often with trivial and vexatious objections. I agree 100% with the onshore wind decision, and it is an example of how quickly things can be done. I struggle to see why that logic does not extend to fracking or, indeed, to the issue of North Sea drilling. I very much share my noble friend Lord Ashcombe’s concerns that, by simply stopping getting our own energy here, we are driving up the environmental costs of bringing it in from elsewhere, since all sides agree that, at least during the transition, we will need some of it. But I promised to be positive, so I will not dwell on that and I will go back to the question of calling in these decisions.

I hope that this Government will have a general presumption in favour of infrastructure. A great many projects have been hanging around for an inordinate length of time. If there is a tunnel or an interconnector, build the wretched thing—there is no point in having yet more rounds of consultation. The proposed inter- connector to Portsmouth would bring in as much clean energy as a brand-new, state-of-the-art nuclear power station, yet it has been held up again and again, without, as far as I can see, even that much local objection to it—there is some very vocal local objection, but it is not universal. The lower Thames crossing would free up immensely the capacity of our ports, as well as relieving pressure on the Dartford Crossing. If you have these projects, use the power to call them in and get them done.

But that is only a short-term fix, not a long-term solution. We cannot govern the country by a series of these decisions made by one Minister in Whitehall; we need to reform the system more widely. Again, this comes down to how we build more houses. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, talk about new towns, but it is important that we build new towns where people want to live. That generally does not mean putting them in the middle of the countryside somewhere; it almost always means putting them on the edge of an existing town.

The railway station I commute here from every day is in Basingstoke, my nearest town. I hope that none of my neighbours in Basingstoke will take it the wrong way when I say that not even the most patriotic local would say that it is the loveliest town in the country. It was a new town, but I think that if you had to choose between Basingstoke and, let us say, the new town of Edinburgh, it is kind of a no-brainer as to which is the more architecturally pleasing.

A number of proposals for significant urban expansion were in the in-tray of the outgoing Government. My right honourable friend Michael Gove spoke about them at the beginning of last year: the expansion of Leeds, the expansion of east London and, above all, the idea of a new town in Cambridge. If I may say so, these are very early tests of whether the party opposite means what it says about capacity. They will need to be actioned sooner rather than later.

This will also mean lifting the noose from around some of our cities that goes under the name of the green belt, which I think is an extraordinary bit of mismarketing. A couple of years ago a think tank ran a competition for people to photograph the ugliest bits of green-belt land they could find, and it was deluged with images of car washes, petrol stations and rubbish heaps. A lot of what is called green-belt land is scrub-land, but because we are not able to build in it, the building has to take place in genuinely green fields, which is what most people understand when they hear the phrase “green belt”. Again, that did not happen under the last Government—let us be frank about this—because a lot of the local MPs had association chairmen who were district or borough councillors. I think that is less of a problem, looking at the electoral geography of the country, and that too is an early test. By the way, the green belt in Bristol begins one mile from the city centre. How can the cities where people want to live grow if they are asphyxiated in this artificial way?

I will end with one suggestion: we can go for what my late friend Roger Scruton used to call gentle density. In our cities we have some of the lowest density in the advanced world. If we moved to a slightly more normal model by European standards of having comfortable, spacious, four or five-storey buildings with family apartments, we would solve a lot of the problems that noble Lords opposite have identified. There are some changes that could be made very quickly, not all of them requiring primary legislation. We could have a presumption in favour of building mansards or upward extensions in cities. We could allow for street votes or estate votes on greater densification. The noble Lord, Lord Mawson, was talking just now about Tower Hamlets. I saw that there was a project in Tower Hamlets where an estate that had contained 24 houses has increased to 202. All the previous residents got a bigger house; they had to vote to do it, but it helped tackle the problem. A similar one in Lambeth has gone from 135 to 441 houses, plus a gym and other amenities. Make it easier by giving communities a stake in expansion, to get that kind of gentle density through.

I would ideally like to scrap, or at least massively overhaul, the Town and Country Planning Act 1947. If you look at any village, the ugly houses tend to begin around 1947. If anything has failed on its own terms, it is that legislation—but I think that would be asking too much.

I end with a proposal put forward by my friend the writer Sam Bowman that he calls the 1894 project. It is named after the London Building Act 1894. Give buildings in the Greater London area or within a mile of surrounding tube stations or the Elizabeth line a presumption that they can grow up to seven or eight stories, equivalent to what every other city in Europe did.

These are decisions that have a high upfront political cost and the economic gain comes later, so I urge noble Lords opposite not to hang around, because as the next election comes closer, the political costs become more visible and the economic gains get pushed to the other side of the election, so

“If it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well

It were done quickly”.

Gas-fired Power Stations

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord is right in that the number of larger generators on the system is falling, with the elimination later this year of coal generation —we will have phased it out completely. He is right, again, that the gas generators that we are talking about—which will be some refurbished existing plants, but also a few new ones—will be able to take part in the capacity market auctions. These are essentially auctions for back-up capacity that may be required in certain scenarios.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder if my noble friend the Minister can enlarge slightly on the question posed to him by the noble Baroness on the Labour Front Bench about hydrogen adaptation. I very much welcome the Statement; it seems to me important to tackle this issue in the proportionate, affordable and measured way, rather than in a millenarian spirit. Can my noble friend the Minister outline a little bit of what the Government’s hydrogen strategy is as part of that solution?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for the question; I am very happy to do that. We are progressing a very advanced hydrogen strategy, which I will try to summarise in a few words. We let the first 11 electrolytic hydrogen contracts before Christmas, offering £2.1 billion-worth of long-term support for the development of electrolytic hydrogen. We have a few blue hydrogen projects that are currently taking part in the CCUS negotiations. We are currently putting in place business models for a transportation and storage system and hope to progress that later this year, as well as the first couple of storage projects. We have a very ambitious hydrogen project; we think that hydrogen has a very important role to play in the net-zero scenario, both in terms of long-term energy storage and in decarbonising some elements of industry that are particularly hard to decarbonise. We should of course electrify where we can, but we will still need hydrogen power to generate power in some of those sectors.

Decarbonisation

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Thursday 13th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The consultation only closed at the end of last month, so the noble Baroness will need to give us a bit of time to analyse the hundreds of responses that we received. It is a complicated issue, and we of course understand the desire for quicker action, but there is a whole range of factors to be taken into account. We have to be very careful not to indulge in some form of green protectionism, where we incentivise lower-standard products against others that are better performing. Across a whole range of sectors and procurement areas, it is a complicated issue that deserves to be studied properly.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, the essence of climate change is that it is global and does not recognise borders. It is very disappointing that we have so many calls for responses that are essentially protectionist, introverted and selfish. Will my noble friend confirm that, just because our allies in the United States—and indeed in the European Union—are going down the road towards protectionism, carbon adjustment taxes and so on, this country will not disadvantage itself or raise the price of the green technologies that we need to combat this global problem?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend has been steadfast for many years in his support for free trade—a cause that I manifestly agree with. But it is a complicated issue. It looks as though the EU and US are going down the road of carbon adjustment mechanism taxes, but, as I said in my Answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, it is a complicated issue. For instance, do we want to incentivise the installation of poorer-quality solar panels that may be constructed with lower carbon intensity, or better-quality solar panels? That is one example of millions that I could give.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, I am very struck by the change in tone in this House. For years, we were told that the EU was an association of nations and that it was some abstruse, recondite obsession of Eurosceptics to claim otherwise; now we are told that it is a massive Jenga set and that, if we take anything out, the whole structure will come tumbling down because it is so deeply embedded in our domestic law. For years, we were told that we had extraordinary Rolls-Royce civil servants and that we were the best country at implementing everything; now it is suddenly beyond them to repeal the same things within a reasonable deadline. For years, we were told that parliamentary sovereignty was a 19th-century hang-up of interest only to eccentrics; suddenly—I welcome this—it has become a deep concern on both sides of the Chamber.

In accepting the previous debates in this House, the Government have done their best to reach a balance. They must implement the decision and have done so in a way that takes account of the objections raised on all sides by your Lordships. They deserve rather more recognition than they are getting this afternoon.

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, to pick up that point, we have heard in every debate a recognition that the Government have moved, which has been very important and welcome.

Some people want to continue a debate about Brexit. These amendments are not about that. That is why I totally support the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Hodgson, who have previously participated in debates in this House on the nature of secondary legislation and how it has increased, and how it empowers the Executive. This is a unique situation; we have established the principle in the first group but, if we are to make changes—revise, reform and revoke—how will we ensure that the people with the responsibility to legislate have the responsibility properly to scrutinise and amend if necessary? People jump up and down and ask whether this is the right place to have a debate about secondary legislation. I am not too bothered about that. I am concerned about outcomes. Parliament should have the opportunity properly to scrutinise the changes and powers in this legislation. The noble Lord, Lord Lisvane, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, have offered us a process in this Bill for those changes to be made.

The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, has pushed me on numerous occasions, particularly when we debated his committee’s report, on whether a future Government would adopt this for statutory instruments. I cannot make that commitment, but I know that, if we adopt Amendment 76, it will establish a practice that people might see is beneficial for future arrangements. We can have a win-win situation. This debate is not about Brexit. It is about who has responsibility to legislate in this country. It is not the Government; it is our duty. That is why we should support Amendments 76 and 15.

Green Investment

Lord Hannan of Kingsclere Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Earl raises important points with regard to trade negotiations. I am not familiar with the details so I will have to write to him.

[Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)]

My Lords, there is a grotesque misnomer here. The Inflation Reduction Act will in fact raise trade barriers, push up prices and thus increase inflation. Worst of all, like the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, it is likely to set off a series of beggar-my-neighbour retaliatory measures, not least from the European Union. Will my noble friend the Minister confirm that this country remains wedded to the principles of free trade and that, if others put rocks in their harbours, we will not retaliate by putting rocks in our harbours?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. I know how committed he is to and how hard he works for the principle of international free trade, which we totally support. We want to engage with the US on these matters but we need to convince it and, of course, the EU that free, fair and open trade benefits everyone. That is the key point that we need to put across to them.