Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 26th June 2023 Lords Chamber

For these two reasons, this is a very important amendment, and I am glad to hear that the Government are now sympathetic to its purpose.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment, so powerfully moved by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, and supported by the noble Lord, Lord Butler. I realise that behind the amendment is the wider concern of protecting the Carltona principle from being undermined—and I shall come to that a bit more in a moment.

It may help your Lordships if I explain some of the detailed background of how we operated during this period in Northern Ireland and Belfast after the fall of Stormont in 1972. In doing so, I draw from extensive personal notes that I made of almost every occasion during the two or three years I served there, and what they emphasise and remind me of. I will share with the House a brief picture of how we worked and the plan that we had to devise in order to operate in a very violent, dangerous and fast-moving situation.

There was the Secretary of State, the late Lord Whitelaw, and three Ministers with him, of whom I was one, with about 12 or 13 departments that we had to take over between us in the Northern Ireland Government. We each had quite a lot of departments to cover. The plan was always to have one duty Minister at Stormont right through the weekend at all times. During the week, there was one Minister usually out in the field, visiting hospitals, victims, violent situations and communities, doing the work of their departments. We tried to keep one Minister at Westminster, constantly accountable and ready to meet Members of Parliament and Members of your Lordships’ House, answer PNQs and so on.

This was a very dangerous moment; the violence was very great indeed, and people were being killed all the time. At all times, the four of us—the Secretary of State and the three Ministers—kept in very close contact with each other; my notes refer to a lot of telephone calls that we had with each other and our constant movements. One moment the Secretary of State would need to be in the Cabinet and the next moment he would have to fly back to Belfast—then the next moment he would be in his own constituency. The same applied to the two others of us as well. Of course, Lord Windlesham was a Member of this House at the time.

This is a recorded picture of an extraordinary situation, which I do not believe has ever been repeated, for British Ministers or a department of government. Just to give an example, I see that I noted in my memoirs that one week I crossed the Irish Sea five times—and I am sure that my fellow Ministers were having the same experience of constant movement, all the more so as the Government at the time had quite a narrow majority and the Whips were saying, “Why aren’t you here instead of in Belfast?” You had to be in two places at once.

Throughout all of this, dependence on the Carltona principle and being able to conduct matters in accordance with that principle was absolute and unquestioned. We could not possibly have managed without that principle operating. It was for that reason—and this has possibly been missed by some commentators—that, when we put the provisions about Carltona in the Detention of Terrorists (Northern Ireland) Order 1972, we strengthened it—it is a strengthened principle there, because it limits the permission to sign to Ministers rather than to officials, referring specifically to Ministers and Under-Secretaries of State. The provision is absolutely crystal clear; it is in print and a parliamentary clear wish, passed without any opposition at all and applied in good faith, because we knew that that was the law and the wish of Parliament.

I have no doubt, as the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has wisely reminded us, that, if the judgment is allowed to stand unreversed, it would severely constrain normal government operations. Looking backwards in the rear-view mirror, as it were, it would have made our work in Northern Ireland absolutely impossible, as we moved towards the power-sharing agreement of 1973, which is said to have been the foundation for the Good Friday agreement some 20 years later. We could not have conducted affairs in that atmosphere of violence and killing—indeed, the IRA called it a war, although we did not—without the Carltona principle being applied. Of course, the judgment opens the door to all sorts of meritless litigation and unreserved compensation, which would be completely wrong.

I am astonished, frankly, that such a legal error could have been made. If the Government are not able to meet this—as I hope that they are, from indications by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks—and are not able to respond in a positive way, I shall be even more astonished that such an error could be perpetuated.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, when I asked a question about this some six months ago I was assured that something would be done to sort it—I think that was the word used—so I am very pleased to support the amendment in the name of the noble Lords, Lord Faulks and Lord Godson. I am pleased and waiting to hear what the Minister will say, because I am very hopeful now that this will get sorted and that we will not have to have a vote on it. It would be good if he were able to make it very clear that the legislation will definitely be amended, so that we get the result before Third Reading. I think it is useful to remind noble Lords; the noble Lord, Lord Howell, gave a very clear view of what things were like back in 1972.

In the judgment, Lord Kerr said that the law said that it had “to appear” to the Secretary of State that the person in question was suspected of organising terrorism. Ironically, the case of Gerry Adams was one where it could unquestionably have appeared to Mr Whitelaw that a custody order was appropriate; his personal consideration was just not recorded in the archives. I am sure that the Secretary of State knew, rather than suspected, that Adams was a key figure, because he had him flown over for negotiations with the IRA at Cheyne Walk in 1972, a year earlier. Lord Kerr also said that Mr Whitelaw should have been able to sign all such custody orders, as

“there was no evidence that this would place an impossible burden”

on him or be “unduly onerous”, given that Merlyn Rees, his Labour successor from March 1974, managed to.

I think this is a reflection of an unhistoric assertion lacking context, given the terrible violence outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Howell, of 1972 and 1973, let alone the logistics involving Ministers, one of whom had to be in England and one in Belfast. Furthermore, it took no account of the differing political circumstances involving Secretary of State Merlyn Rees, who was very keen to end internment and sought to minimise the number of orders being placed in front of him. In fact, internment ended a year later.

Noble Lords should also remember that the Supreme Court President, Lord Reed of Allermuir, in effect supported a correction when he spoke to the House’s Constitution Committee in March 2021. There he said, in response to the noble Lord, Lord Howell:

“I cannot say very much about the particular case because I did not sit on it myself. Lord Kerr wrote the judgment. The Lord Chief Justice and some other justices were sitting with him. I am well aware that it is a controversial judgment ... I really cannot remember the details of the case. From what you say, it sounds like a wayward judgment, in which case it will be put right in another case”.


I believe that this amendment and what the Government are now going to do are a valuable substitute for such another case at the Supreme Court, which could otherwise take years to appear.

Northern Ireland Troubles (Legacy and Reconciliation) Bill

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 11th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Macdonald of River Glaven (CB)]

My Lords, I want to briefly offer some words of support for that amendment. In their paper, Professor Ekins and Sir Stephen Laws, the former First Parliamentary Counsel, make a compelling argument that the United Kingdom Supreme Court judgment was wrong. I will not address that, because it is not important for the purposes of the amendment. What is important is that they also make a compelling argument for the deleterious practical consequences that are likely to flow from Adams because of the importance of the Carltona principle to the good and smooth running of government. That is beyond argument, and the risk here is that that principle has been in some way undermined.

Let me give an analogy. As your Lordships will be aware, a number of the most serious and sensitive criminal cases require the consent of the DPP before they may proceed. But the system has always been that the Director of Public Prosecutions designates a small number of his or her most senior prosecutors to exercise this consent function on the DPP’s behalf. Of course, if the DPP wishes to call in a particular case to consider himself or herself, that will and does happen. But if it were ever to be the case that every file requiring DPP consent had to be placed before the DPP in person, the system would swiftly grind to a halt; or, the DPP would exercise that consent allegedly personally but really and practically on the basis of advice that he or she had received elsewhere. So the present system is the more honest. The individual giving the consent, exercising the consent function, is the individual who has actually read and considered the papers. To the extent that this amendment will protect and fortify the Carltona principle, it has my full support.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I strenuously support this amendment spoken to by my noble friend Lord Faulks, supported by my noble friend Lord Godson, and for two specific and extremely important reasons.

The first is simply this. If your Lordships go back to the 1972 detention of terrorists order passed through the House of Commons and this House, they will find specific provision in the text of that order for 28-day and night ICOs to be signed by Ministers of State, junior Ministers or other officials. We were doing that—I had the privilege of being involved in taking it through the House of Commons at the time—not just to reinforce the eminently sensible Carltona principle but for the most practical, hard-headed considerations of the circumstances in which these matters would have to be handled.

What we were dealing with seems to have fallen out of the memory of many people. Although we said that it was not a war, the Provisional IRA said it was, and indeed there was talk from Dublin of the same thing. We were having to deal with war conditions, whether or not we accepted that a war was being waged against the United Kingdom. The practicality of that was that the Secretary of State—Mr William Whitelaw at the time, under whom I served—was having to move very quickly between Belfast and the Cabinet, handling the situation in the Houses of Parliament and a variety of other commitments as well. It was perfectly obvious that, for the smooth working of the procedures and the empowerment of the detention of terrorists order and many other pieces of legislation, he would need support of all kinds in handling these matters—in particular, in accordance with the detention of terrorists order and Carltona.

Much of the discussion since has been detached from the context and intense pressures in which we were working after the fall of Stormont and the arrival of the Whitelaw mission in Northern Ireland. Incidentally, this had the support of the whole House. The House of Commons supported it unanimously; there were maybe one or two queries but no amendments at all.

The second reason for my support for this amendment is that, while I do not wish to criticise the courts in anyway—I would not dare do so—I am absolutely baffled that legal and court procedures in a complex matter of this kind, going back in history, did not involve calling any witness of any kind to corroborate what actually happened and what went on in Stormont and in the procedures we are discussing. Ministers should have been called in those proceedings. It happens that I am the only Minister left from the Whitelaw team who is still alive, and I should have expected to be asked exactly how these things went on. What happened when one was asked on a Sunday night to sign an ICO? Who was consulted? To what extent did one talk to the Secretary of State beforehand, or to other Ministers of State or important witnesses from the police and other authorities? This was extensive but none of it was ever discussed.

It is utterly bizarre that somehow the court procedures should ignore what was specifically provided for in the original order. This seems to be almost incomprehensible. I therefore ask strongly that the Government reconsider what my noble friend Lord Faulks has put so eloquently and the point that the noble Lord, Lord Butler, has rightly argued about the procedure. Was there really a procedural glitch? No one knows; it was never discussed, and yet here we are with the prospect of millions of pounds being claimed on the basis of a judgment that appears to be based on sand—on nothing.

This is a very serious matter; it is a dangerous and costly matter. It may encourage many more difficult feelings at a time when—heaven knows—the whole balance and fragility of Northern Ireland is once again in question. It would be a great mistake not to accept the validity behind this clause, even if it needs amending in certain ways, and to pass it by or cast it aside on the grounds of matters settled. This is not settled; it is unsettled and most unsatisfactory. It needs very serious determination and consideration now.

[Baroness O'Loan (CB)]

My Lords, the discussion on Amendment 154A shows the importance of getting legislation right in the first instance. I speak in support of Amendment 146 to Clause 34, to which I have put my name. This amendment and Amendment 152 will remove the provision that all existing investigations must transfer from the existing investigation body to the ICRIR. Chief officers of police have to notify the Secretary of State of all criminal investigations of Troubles-related matters. The only exception to this under the Bill arises when a prosecution is under way and the investigation is pursuant to the prosecution.

Nuclear Power: Emissions

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

We must expedite these developments. The nuclear sector deal which the Government have invested in is worth £200 million. Its purpose is to reduce significantly the costs of the replication of these new developments, and the regulated asset base should be a new model for us to make sure that there is value for money as well. Nuclear will be a vital part, I believe, of the ongoing energy mix in this country.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I wonder whether my noble friend’s brief really reflects the full position. After all, Hinkley is now £3 billion over budget and delayed by a year or two, Wylfa has been suspended, Moorside has been abandoned, and the Chinese and French are struggling to raise finance for Sizewell C. It is not a very good picture. Should we not be focusing rather more on prospects for small modular reactors, which can be built much more quickly, and perhaps more cheaply, and might make an even bigger contribution when it comes to global climate change, which is the real problem?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My noble friend is, of course, absolutely correct. If we get to the stage where Hinkley comes online according to its timetable in 2025, it will in due course supply 7% of our electricity needs. However, the reality is that small modular reactors are vital. That is why we have invested £18 million in development thus far—£18 million that is matched by the private sector. This may well be how we can move forward a whole new generation of nuclear electricity generation.

Brexit: Workers’ Rights

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

All the rights that we have accrued as a member of the EU are retained from EU law into our corpus of domestic law. That is the best place for them to be set out. Any changes to that, including any that a future Government may wish to make, must be made with the permission of the other place and this place, using voting procedures in the normal way. There shall be no diminution of the rights of workers as a consequence of this.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, is not one difficulty with this whole debate that some people are confusing the modernisation of rights, benefits and workers’ conditions and protections with lower standards? Is it not a fact that we now have a modern economy, 83% of which is services, and that workpeople face entirely new conditions that require much more detailed attention? A great deal of the EU legislation of the past, which was well intentioned, was conceived in the age of very big business—and largely by big business—and an age of steam and steel that no longer exists. Is there not a new situation which lively, caring economies should be addressing much more vigorously?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My noble friend makes an important point, which I will answer in two ways, if I may. First, in this country, we have very much a service-based economy. In making rules and laws that affect workers, we can tailor them carefully to the needs of the people of this country. My noble friend also made a point about the situation with regard to the laws and rights that exist in the EU at present. As I recall, for many decades the Benches opposite opposed almost every aspect of what was going on inside the EU, because they felt that it was servicing big business rather than individual workers. We must make sure that our laws are fit for our people.

Gas Tariffs Code (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Thursday 26th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has raised some very penetrating and expert questions—as one would expect from him—and I will briefly pursue two of them. He referred to our connectors. Of course, most of our interconnectors are for electricity, but there are some important gas connectors. These are part of our gas import scene, which is vastly important, given that domestic onshore gas is not really happening and offshore gas is still not at the level that it was. Post Brexit, will the auction rules on the granting of contracts for developing gas supplies and turbines apply equally to gas that originates inside the EU and comes to us when we are outside it? Remaining in the internal energy market of the European Union would be fine, but it is undergoing considerable stresses and strains—including, notably, the ever-growing appetite of Germany for imported gas, particularly Russian gas, from both existing pipelines and the new Nord Stream, which seems to be going ahead although the Americans oppose it. Will the Minister show a little more of the Government’s hand and their attitude to the internal energy market, which is not working well—it is causing considerable difficulties in eastern and central Europe—and requires a steady hand to ensure that it works for us if we remain in it?

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

Building on the interventions by the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Howell, I have a question. The Minister will be aware that gas networks and cross-border supplies are a matter of high politics and security, as well as energy policy. The Russians, in their disputes with Ukraine, frequently threaten to interfere with gas supplies crossing Ukraine. When originally proposed, the new German pipeline that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, referred to, which connects Germany and Russia, was described by Poland and the Baltic states as the economic equivalent of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, in that it exposed them and made them vulnerable to discrimination by Russia, to put political pressure on their democracies.

As I understand it, if there was a such a crisis involving Russian gas supplies, we would be protected by the principle of non-discrimination, because we are members of the internal market. In other words, if there was pressure on gas supplies on the continent it would not be legal for suppliers on the continent to turn off the taps to Britain. What will the situation be when we leave the EU: will we have those kinds of legal protections, and will the Minister enlighten us as to what they are?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

Let me be very specific: it is the policy of this Government to remain part of the internal energy market. The policy has not changed—for the same reasons, in truth, that applied before. They still apply today.

I will write with a specific answer to the question about petroleum reserves, which might be helpful. It is important to stress that it is government policy to ensure that the reserves are adequate for every eventuality. They must be stress tested necessarily through the challenges that Brexit represents. It is not our ambition to in any way put at risk what those reserves mean for the functioning of the wider energy situation in the United Kingdom. I also stress that we are—primarily in gas, certainly—dependent on imports from outwith the EU as a whole, although not primarily from Russia.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

We are talking about gas and not oil reserves. That means gas storage. As we know, our own gas storage system is not all that reliable and has within recent memory gone down quite severely, with devastating effects on short-term gas prices. Are we planning any further storage projects of the kind we have had in the past, or to replace the Rough storage facility in the North Sea as a result of moving into the Brexit situation?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

I do not believe that the Brexit situation changes the dynamic of how we approach the wider question of gas storage. We need to make sure that the storage is adequate for any—in fact, every—eventuality. Brexit itself has not changed the policy on that. It will be our intention to ensure that it is not only adequate but able to anticipate whatever challenges come ahead. We will remain committed to that end.

Spending Round 2019

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, with a certain amount agreement, which is, frankly, extremely unusual. But there it is—in the extraordinary situation we find ourselves in, many new alliances are formed. A certain madness seems to have gripped the discussion on public expenditure in recent years, and aspects of this are what I want to talk about. My noble friend Lord Horam confessed that he had been an economist; I confess that I am an economist apostate. I was in the Treasury as an economist, and since then I have become more and more convinced that modern, liberal economics seriously distorts the way the world works, seriously misguides our public policy and seriously undermines a great many of the developments that good governance requires for a modern society in the digital age. In fact, I think liberal economics has not at all come to terms with the total transformation of the internet and digital age, leading to much grief and misunderstanding.

When it comes to public expenditure, we are treated by analysts and the media to a sort of Punch and Judy pantomime show between polarised extremes. Either public spending is depicted by one side as a mass of ruthless cuts, making austerity a dirty word—that is what it has become in the language of both political debate and outside as well—or, from the other pole, as a sea of extravagant waste of taxpayers’ money, driving us all ever deeper into debt and so on. In fact, in this digital age, a rough practical balance is asserting itself throughout the world’s economies between obvious and growing public spending needs and the capacities of the private sector and private finance on the market with a good deal of co-operation between the two.

Much of our political debate is manufactured—it is the way it comes out with party politics as we have played it in recent years—but it has very little influence on what is really happening in the trend of public expenditure. These deeper forces all around the world bring about a sort of figure for total public spending—as a proportion of all spending, investment and GDP—that hovers between a percentage in the mid-30s and the high 40s. Although, of course, it is always with upward pressure and with endless political promises, which all politicians and Governments make, to spend on favourite causes and lobbies, many of them highly deserving—they come up all the time. It depends on what gets included in definitions of public spending, what is deemed off budget and what is simply ignored.

Again, we have to realise that, in the world of economic statistics, there is chaos, because all the traditional views are being undermined. The very concept of GDP and all the aggregates that were invented by Simon Kuznets in the 1930s—taken up by Lord Keynes—which were very relevant to the pre-digital economy, do not fit into the arrangements and patterns of business, economics and wealth creation that we have today. Even the Asian miracle economies, where all the growth will be in the next 10 to 20 years—including even the autocracies—find that the state, markets, public spending and private enterprise cannot do without each other when it comes to finance, resources and national objectives. Even China, with its swollen state-ownership sector—wildly inefficient in many areas—finds that it has to grope all the time for a new public-private balance with its belt-and-road initiative and in its tax policies.

My advice to Chancellors, past and present—not listened to, of course, in any way, except perhaps by Ian Macleod, but that was a long time ago—is not to talk about austerity or ending austerity, but to talk much more about balance and constant control, which is always necessary on all public spending, whether it is growing or shrinking. All public spending programmes always grow, unless a hand is kept on them. All public spending has to have a very tight hand kept on it, so the idea that you can stand back and say, “Austerity is over, now we can let everything rip”, is a recipe for disaster. It is a serious imbalance in how the economy and society work.

Back in the 1970s, some of your Lordships will recall—I am afraid noble Lords would have to be rather old because I am talking about 50 years ago—that we sought new controls on the then hopelessly swollen and inefficient public sector, inherited by the Conservatives in 1970 and again in 1979, by means of what we called programmed budgeting, an approach pinched from the Americans. The idea was to focus much more on results and actual outputs of public policies, and on questioning whether the right systems were in place to deliver, rather than simply on whether they should be state or private systems, or whether certain estimates had been exceeded. Indeed, we had no OBR in those days and our forecasts were very primitive. In some ways, there was a questioning of whether a particular public expenditure programme was the right one to deliver the results required for the consumer and the public effectively. That was the genesis of privatisation; it was rapidly concluded that many of these operations should not only be contracted out but put into the private sector.

The Treasury did not like that at all at the time. The Treasury was and is very good and very sharp at cutting existing spending programmes, or occasionally, as now with the spending round, letting its budgets rise. It may be very good about fiscal rules—though whether they are being revised or not, I am not so sure—and with deficit headroom, which does or does not exist. However, even 50 years ago—I fear that this applies still today—it was much less good at ensuring and delivering quality government programmes and seeing the best and most efficient ways of meeting vital social and infrastructure needs, which are always changing and evolving, and where constant innovation is required. Just cutting—or not cutting—is fine, but what is really required in the handling of all public expenditure programmes is constant innovation, to see that they are delivering what we want. It is not just a question of more schools, as in the spending round being put forward now, but of having really well built and efficiently designed schools, which match modern ideas of efficient education for the technical society that we are going to live in. It is not just a question of more prisons, though heaven knows we have enough prisoners, but of better prisons, run in entirely new and better ways. It is not just a question of having more police, but entirely new police methods, which are needed to combat the kind of crime that is developing in our country so rapidly, particularly knife crime on the streets.

Hearing the distinguished former Foreign Office Permanent Secretary, the noble Lord, Lord Ricketts, prompts me to make a further spending round point. The whole balance of our international resource allocation has gone awry; it is completely dotty. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office is meant to be the spearhead of our international standing, prosperity and security, and needs to be. Yet while the two other great international departments—DfID and the MoD—have budgets respectively of £14 billion-plus and £37 billion-plus, the FCO budget is £2.3 billion at the most, and the core number of discretionary expenditures in the FCO is much less. It makes no sense to have our foreign policy, our foreign reach and our security for the future run on a shoestring. I know that there is £90 million more expenditure in the current spending round, but that is small compared with what we really need. We should bite the bullet and re-merge the whole DfID operation and the FCO into a really powerful and punchy overseas department, which would then have a budget of £16 billion and far more impact round the world. It would be far better for world development as well. That could build up our role in the giant worldwide Commonwealth network, and in all the other new Asian networks with which we have to engage, in a way that reflected our changed national direction and purpose, as it is not being reflected now. I do not believe that our development aims would be in any way compromised. The whole concept of development aid is anyway patronising and out of date, and needs rethinking. So, in this transformed global system, I look forward to a much more balanced discussion of the role of public spending in our growth and direction, with less ideology and more practicality.

I had further words to say on the public expenditure implications of the Brexit drama. Like the most reverend Primate, I am absolutely bewildered about why we are discussing no deal when no deal is now illegal. What we should be discussing is the withdrawal agreement, which I think is attainable. The key to that is of course Ireland, which my right honourable friend the Prime Minister is working on—how much that will cost and what the implications will be. I believe they will be reasonably limited, but there is the question of the £39 billion transfer and at what point it has to go over. We will see how all this works out. I know that all the experts are saying that there will not be an agreement with Ireland. I believe that there will and that they will be wrong, but we will have to see what happens in a few weeks’ time.

When it comes to public spending now, I say open wide the crystal fountain, by all means. Just make sure that the fountain works well and delivers top-quality flow in places and in ways that people really want it. We should look for balance between public finance and private enterprise investment, harnessing both in delivering quality government with public infrastructure and social care programmes, which will always expand through need and demand. Above all, in the digital age now upon us, we need to remember that the best levels of public spending and the best programmes to meet people’s real need will be decided by technology advancing ever more rapidly every day—not by politics, yesterday’s tired ideologies or economic and political theories.

Nuclear Power Stations

Lord Howell of Guildford Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

The noble Baroness raises issues about climate change, which I will address head-on. The Office for Nuclear Regulation must not only anticipate but mitigate any potential problems that might occur, which will include not only sea level rise but sea temperature rise. In every instance, it must put forward robust strategies to ensure that at all points nuclear safety is paramount.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, is not the conundrum here that, while higher global temperatures may affect nuclear power, nuclear power itself can make a major contribution to combating global warming by producing massive amounts of low-carbon electricity? Can my noble friend give us an assurance that in doing so, costs can be kept down, particularly in relation to Hinkley Point, as they are rising rapidly? Could he make sure that we have a proper debate on this whole subject when we come back, as things are not going very well at present?

[Lord Duncan of Springbank]

My noble friend is of course absolutely correct that nuclear power itself is a means of reducing carbon emissions, and it will remain part of our electricity generation mix—necessarily so, as it is already 20% at present. When Hinkley Point comes online it will represent 7% of the overall electricity generated in the entire United Kingdom. It is therefore important that we are able to ensure that nuclear remains a component part of our offering and our energy reduction. It is also important to recognise that one of the conditions of the nuclear strategy which we have put forward—the £200 million fund—is that there is a significant reduction in the cost of the production of nuclear energy. That will represent a 20% reduction overall, which must be part of that strategy. We are alert to these issues. Again, the time is right for a proper debate on the wider questions, which I suspect my noble friend would have raised had we had more time.