Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Foster of Bath

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

I have enormous respect for the noble Lord—indeed, I think that he has asked some very pertinent questions—but he has spent his time criticising the amendment when the Bill that he is perhaps going to support later currently says that

“the Secretary of State is of the opinion that designating the nuclear company in relation to the project is likely to result in value for money.”

So the value for money is already there; my amendment seeks to have it published so that we can see what basis has been used. I think that the noble Lord should be addressing his questions to the Government, not to me.

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

What I am saying is that, if the Secretary of State decides to publish his value for money assessment, that assessment will of course include the long-term national security concerns of this nation and a variety of other advantages of moving into a proper low-carbon electric age. That kind of value is not one that the noble Lord is going to agree with, so the disagreement will continue. Value is a totally subjective aspect; that is so with many national projects, but particularly with this one.

If I may say to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, the rather endearing Lib Dem concept that no public subsidy could possibly be involved—that is, nuclear is all right but there must be no public subsidy—is an absurdity. Of course there is going to be public concern about the national security of this nation; public concern is something that will have to be paid for, either through subsidy by the taxpayer or by ordaining the Government to raise the money in some other way. The latter was the proposition for Hinkley C, which was allowed to have a strike price that was at that time almost twice the going rate for electricity kilowatts per hour from coal, oil or anything else, including renewables. Things have changed since then; now that electricity and gas have soared, perhaps the strike price is quite reasonable compared with other fossil fuels. That raises the question of contracts for difference; perhaps it was not quite such a bad prospect as some of us thought.

Anyway, that is beside the point. The main point is that value is utterly subjective and must contain all kinds of assessments by the Secretary of State, his colleagues and the Government about national security and its contribution to our long-term aim of a decarbonised world, as well as a vast range of other considerations—all of which have to be balanced out in taking these difficult political decisions. We can argue until kingdom come but the reality is that judgments have to be made, and they are much bigger than value in the narrow sense.