Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Trenchard’s amendment to Amendment 56. He knows a great deal about the oncoming revolution in civil nuclear power, which does not seem to have quite arrived in the Government’s thinking. They are still contemplating building backward-looking, out-of-date technology structures. That will all emerge as we debate it.

I also ought to declare my interests. The noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, rightly reminded me that that is what I should have done. I do indeed have registered connections with energy-related companies.

I am left almost bereft of words of surprise and dumbfounded that my noble friend’s amendment is not assumed to be vital to the entire structure and operation of this project. I am talking particularly about including Great British Nuclear in the Bill. The National Wealth Fund will also be in the game, as it will look at sites and at projects, but Great British Nuclear and Great British Energy need not only to talk to each other. It is always nice to talk and so on, but they are treading on exactly the same immensely complicated ground, on which the most intimate integration and co-operation will be required.

I refer first to transmission and the whole question of redesigning our transmission grid over the next five years, if we can do it. As a matter fact, I do not think it can be done, but if it could, it will need to get electricity, first, from the North Sea to the switching stations, most of which have not even been started—one or two have—and then to the markets where electricity is consumed. That raises a whole lot of questions about transmission that we will discuss later. Secondly, it will need to get electricity from new nuclear sites, which I hope will be covered—I think they will in other countries—by smaller nuclear reactors, advanced boiling water reactors and others, all in the 250 megawatt to 400 megawatt range.

The process of siting these reactors is already going on. More than one government agency, including GBN, is putting around consultation documents to see what we mean by siting. Is it just that we will use disused sites—the old Magnox sites? Can we reuse them? I suppose we cannot if we persist with Sizewell C, but if we had the wisdom to postpone it, that site could be covered with eight or 10 SMRs. To get a sensible balance by 2050, let alone 2030, we will need about 500 SMRs of various designs across the country, sited mostly, I imagine, on disused or current nuclear sites but maybe on other sites as well. These are possibilities on which the public have had no say at all so far. I think their initial reaction will not be very well informed, because they have been told nothing about it. There is a whole operation of siting SMRs, combined cycle gas turbines and other energy installations. Heads have to be put together very closely so they do not end up in a glorious muddle on where things should be sited, who gets there first and that sort of thing.

Then, of course, there is the whole issue of how much electricity we will need. It is underneath our discussions now, but we know there is a hopeful view, which I think is still the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero’s view, that we have to aim for a couple of hundred gigawatts of cleaner electricity. We have now about 33 to 40 gigawatts of clean electricity—half our electric sector, which is 20% of our total energy care, so that is about one-ninth of what we need even to satisfy present demand. But there are stories in the papers—there is one this morning—indicating that demand is already surging far ahead of any predictions any of the governmental experts have made. This is a sign of something to come. In particular, if oil and gas are forbidden by 2030, so you cannot get oil or gas for your home and you cannot get petrol, the demand for electricity to replace all that will be absolutely enormous. Even if nothing very dramatic happens in the way of overall demand for power, it will be enormous.

Meeting this demand will require the closest possible co-operation between organisations such as GBN and GBE. The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, said that it was implied, perhaps wrongly, that he is against the Bill. I am not against it for the simple reason that we cannot be. Our constitution in this Chamber does not allow us to knock down the whole purpose of a Bill. All we can do is desperately try to improve something that we know will obviously be a nonsense in the end. The aim of 200 gigawatts always struck me as way below what will be needed; I think it will be more like 300 or 400 gigawatts of electricity in the all-electric age. There are 40 million vehicles in this country, vans and cars. Will they all be electric? If they are, that will use a lot of electricity, even if some of it can be fed back into the system.

But these issues sit above what we are dealing with now, which is how bodies we set up can possibly be kept apart when they deal with the same ground and the same issues—transmission and siting. I find it quite incredible. Perhaps I am being premature and the Minister will stand up and say that this obviously got left out of the Bill and must be put in it now so that those bodies should at least talk. Of course, they should do more than that; they should co-operate.

I support my noble friend Lord Trenchard, who has rightly spotted a great gap in the logic of this organised project. We should put this one right, which we can do, and recommend to our friends in the other place on the basis of the very considerable expertise that exists in this Chamber that this would at least repair one dislocation in this unhappy legislation.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, if I am brutally honest, I do not really like this Bill at all. It is a vehicle for a nationalised industry that should not even be set up by a Labour Government who want to gamble with other people’s money with no parliamentary scrutiny. Therefore, and on that basis, I really should support the amendment, because if they have to consult all these quangos and unelected bodies, which have made life such a nightmare for people for so long, they will never get anything done anyway, but that is just too cynical even for me. I have found that the Climate Change Committee represents a dwindling number of people in this country and basically keeps the Reform party in business.

As for the environmental committee, that is the one that, of course, the Government are going to ignore when they introduce their housing target of 1.5 million, because that has basically been blocking the number of planning permissions. Once again, I have a vested interest here: my family has land in Surrey that they are hoping to develop, so we are very keen on the recent Statement from the Deputy Prime Minister.

These quangos have not done anybody any good at all. The Government would be absolutely right if they resisted this amendment, because we have been run by these people for much too long and it is time that the country was run for the interests of the people.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Committee stage
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, I approach this amendment, and many others that are coming, broadly with sympathy and understanding about the enormous complexities of what we are dealing with. Obviously, I also wish to see us succeed, in the sense that a nation with a bad, interrupted or poor energy supply will be a nation drained of blood. It will be an absolute catastrophe if we do not somehow get all this right; whether in five, 10, 15 or 28 years remains to be seen, but right we must get it, because the dangers are overwhelming.

I also declare my interests in the register as connected to energy-related firms. Also, at one stage in the not very distant past, I attempted to do the same two jobs as the Minister is trying to do now, which is, first, in his department, to begin to piece together in very precarious and dangerous world conditions all the necessary equipment and organisations for energy policy success and, secondly, to explain it all to the House of Lords. That is a double job, which I am sure he will try to do with all his abilities, but this is very tough going in a very dangerous area.

We now come also to a third vast task that lies behind these amendments in particular, which is: do we need entirely new relations, far away from the old polarities of left and right in politics, between the state, with all its overload and difficulties in the digital age, and the role of the markets and the private corporations in achieving the energy transition that we somehow have to achieve? That question hangs in the air. One can see these questions about the relationship between GBE and other bodies and whether it should collaborate and have minority stakes, and so on, as the shower of questions that come out of that task. I hope that somewhere, in government and indeed in the politics of all parties, that is being worked on. We have to develop a whole new generation of co-operation, particularly in the energy field and in infrastructure, to replace the difficulties and problems that we and Labour ran into with PFI 10 or 15 years ago, which was a good idea but it did not work, and unless we understand why it did not work, we will not get it right this time.

The amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, are of course probing but are very interesting. I beg the Labour Government of today, who want a national reset, a renaissance and all that, not to fall for the old socialist Adam, which is that you can solve problems by creating more and more institutions, bodies and bureaucracies. That is not the way—we have to be cleverer than that. That is the old socialisation pattern, which always goes too far and never works.

So I am in considerable sympathy with these amendments and I hope that, when the Minister answers, he will show some sympathy for the importance of flexibility and the importance in the energy field of not making too many rigid definitions and delineations. The trouble, as we will find as we debate, is that everything is connected to everything else. We are trying to rule out nuclear in debates on later amendments, but in fact you cannot—nuclear is intimately connected with all other public investment decisions. We are trying to work out about the National Wealth Fund, which is very interesting. It is having a show here in Parliament tomorrow and I am looking forward to hearing its views in detail on its relationship with GBE.

We had the famous letter from the Minister, describing some of the connections and linkages that he wants to see developing, telling us how all these things are going to be linked together. He lists straight off six or seven organisations that have to work together: the National Wealth Fund, Great British Nuclear, the Crown Estate, the National Energy System Operator, the Climate Change Committee—and of course there are dozens of others beyond those. There is the office of energy resilience; there are regional co-operation planning organisations—dozens of them. I can hardly read my writing, but there is a list that practically goes off the page of organisations that think they are in the business of investing in either the supply chains or the actual projects related to energy transition.

This is the biggest thing since—in fact, it is far bigger than—the Industrial Revolution. It is the most enormous project ever undertaken in the modern world and certainly in this nation. There is a huge amount of co-ordination and tidying up to do before we have even started. Yet, in examining this one further new organisation, far from tidying up, we are tidying down—we are untidying—the pattern of the future. So these are very important amendments and I look forward very much to some clear answers on how we can go forward towards a greater effectiveness and focus in this whole area, rather than scattering assignments, arrangements and responsibilities in every direction, always with great complications and always at great cost.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Offord in his amendment but, funnily enough, not for the same reasons that he does. He says that Great British Energy should become a subsidiary of the National Wealth Fund. I am very worried—I do not know whether anybody else is—about the enormous powers that Great British Energy will give to the Secretary of State. It strikes me that we are right back to Ministers choosing winners, when on the whole the role of government in choosing winners has been pretty abysmal.

I am old enough—I am reluctant to admit how old I am in case somebody suggests I should retire—to remember Ted Heath, who started out as being the “Selsdon Man”, supposed to believe in free trade and free enterprise, and then bailed out Upper Clyde Shipbuilders. I do not think he did that because he thought he was choosing a winner—I think he knew he was choosing a loser—but he was, of course, faced by critical political embarrassment at the fact that this shipbuilding company was going bust, and he had the thought that he would use taxpayers’ money to try to bail it out.

I have been reading that the fund will be have £8.5 billion of taxpayers’ money put into it and it will be sitting there and there will be the temptation for Government Ministers to say, “Oh well, we’ll bail out this or that company, or we’ll take a punt on the fact that we do not have a battery maker” and perhaps the reason for that is that the market will not support that; or, with electric cars, for instance, we are having great difficulty making enough of them. So we will see taxpayers’ money being put into ventures which the private sector would never support. But it will be done for good political reasons. No doubt, rather like DeLorean, we will find that the enterprise will be pitched in some part of the country where there is high unemployment and not enough activity and the Government might think that they will be able to buy themselves a few votes in those areas or whatever. But, for all the wrong commercial reasons, we will end up using taxpayers’ money on ventures that will never succeed and would have been picked up by the private sector if they were profitable.

This is what worries me about energy generally. We rather fancy that people who put up wind turbines are really concerned with renewable energy. I have to tell your Lordships that they are not; they are financiers. What they do, long before they put up any wind turbine, is put up an experimental one to find out how much wind is blowing over a long period, and then they work the feed-in tariffs and, by the time they have done all that, they then have a cash flow on which they can then borrow money and put up the wind turbines. So it is a financial venture which is basically controlled by government in terms of all the criteria that matter and I do not really see that venture capital using taxpayers’ money has any great role to play in this. So I support my noble friend’s amendment and hope that he puts it to a vote.

International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Friday 6th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, I listened almost with amusement to the last forceful intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. He summed up in an excellent, succinct phrase exactly the content of my maiden speech in this House in 1997—namely, that economics is not a science, as many of its proponents insist, but an art, and a very ambiguous art at that, which is full of subjective views. To look back, frankly, at the development activities of the past 40 and 50 years, post the Second World War, the economists have not done a very good job. They have applied all kinds of economic rulings to the proposed triggers for development and have found that they have not worked. Of course, far more than economics is involved. There is a whole range of psychological and particularly local factors in all the countries that all of us have visited over the years—I have visited dozens of them—which are operating not to the laws of economics. I say “Well done” to the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. That is exactly the truth of the matter. We do not want to be guided too much by economists.

What we want is flexibility and room in which we can look to the future for once rather than the past and see the ways in which development can be triggered and promoted in the future. As my noble friend Lord Lawson said, the world has changed totally in the last 40 years. The developing countries are looking for new priorities and new ways of assistance. They are looking for ways in which they can graduate away from official development systems à la 20th century into new forms of support and development in the 21st century.

All sorts of distinguished reports from the other place and your Lordships’ House emphasise that. The latest report from the excellent House of Commons International Development Committee on the future—not the past—of UK development co-operation states:

“The impact of DFID’s support … depends less on the volume of financial support and more on its ability to act as a purveyor of development excellence, helping its partner countries to identify innovative solutions”.

Your Lordships’ House should be thinking about innovative solutions and not the past. The committee also states:

“As grants of aid become less appropriate in some countries, so new forms of development co-operation are necessary”.

It goes on to identify the evidence that it had gathered in the various countries that it had visited. That is the reality of the moment. New forms are required to promote development. If we glue ourselves into the old ways of thinking, we will deny ourselves the flexibility of this kind of goal, which our superb staffs in DfID, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and other areas will seek to be guided by, and we will do a disservice to development on a massive scale.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I follow my noble friend Lord Howell on the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Cashman. He is absolutely right that economists indulge themselves in a form of science that is not exactly reputable. Some noble Lords may remember the letter written to the Times by, I think, in excess of 360 economists, who said that the Thatcher economic policies were absolutely doomed to pitch this country into constant recession. That was the turning point for the economy in the United Kingdom, and things really took off from there. We are very much at home with him on that.

The noble Lord also spoke about how we should feel enormous compassion for those in great need in places in Africa and so forth. We all very much sympathise with where he comes from there, but the point has already been made in this debate that only 10% of what goes to these countries comes from development aid programmes. The rest comes from investments made in these countries. Let us face it: what is really going to make a difference in a desperately backward country such as the Democratic Republic of Congo is the fact that the Chinese are prepared to put in extensive railway and road networks in return for copper and cobalt concessions in that country. These are the things that will really make a dramatic difference in a country such as the DRC. In terms of relativity, development aid programmes are merely a pinprick compared with what is being invested in return for mineral resources.

To return to the amendment, the noble Lord, Lord Cashman, is right that this is not about economics. This is much more about accountancy. Some people will argue that accountancy is one of these other rather faulty arts, rather than a science, but I think it comes nearer to being a science than an art. What we are talking about here is how you manage money effectively. It must surely be right that you can take somewhat longer to meet a programme, rather than restricting yourself to 12 months. People who support this Bill have not really answered my noble friend Lord Forsyth’s point about 40% of the budget being spent in November and December of a year because it is bumping up against the end of the financial year. This should strike an enormous amount of disquiet in people’s minds, because it suggests to anybody that the expenditure of this money is being rushed. No control is being put in—we are just trying to meet targets to show that we spent all this money, and where the money goes is of much less concern.

I spent a certain amount of my youth in the army in Kenya. After independence, one of the famous elements of Kenyan politics was the Wabenzi, people in government who drove around in Mercedes-Benzes, many of which had been paid for of course by development aid money. One has to recognise that, in these sub-Saharan African countries, the elements of corruption are very great indeed and there is no respect for development aid programmes. People do not say, “This is being brought into my country to aid the poor, therefore I will not put my hands on it”. The fact is that those in charge manage to get hold of an awful lot of that money, which is why so many of them are driving around in Mercedes-Benzes today.

Council of Europe

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Wednesday 1st February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I agree that this would be a good aim. A number of areas need further consideration before a final decision can be made on whether to sign the Council of Europe convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence. As part of this further consideration, which is on very real and important issues, I am advised that the Home Office launched a consultation in December, about two months ago, on whether to create a new offence of forced marriage. The consultation period will end on 30 March and we will then be able to make a definitive decision in line with the hopes of the noble Lord.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Following my noble friend’s question about the crisis in the eurozone, what is the Government’s policy towards unelected Governments of so-called experts in Greece and Italy?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I think that my noble friend will be the first to recognise that we have to leave the member states of Europe, and indeed the nations and democracies of the world, to decide how best to govern themselves. From time to time they call upon experts and technocrats to make up for the deficiencies of quarrelling democrats.

Libya

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Tuesday 4th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

It is always difficult to make a precise judgment. However, all the evidence that we have is that the priorities of the National Transitional Council are to complete the liberation, to be even-handed, to avoid any pandering to extremism, and to be highly co-operative with the United Kingdom Government in dealing with these matters. That is all the reassurance that I can really give.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, it was rumoured in the press that the murderer of PC Yvonne Fletcher was killed in the conflict. Can the Minister confirm that?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I am sorry; I did not hear my noble friend’s first words.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

I asked about the murderer of PC Yvonne Fletcher.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I can tell my noble friend that of course we want to see justice for WPC Fletcher, her family, friends and colleagues. The Metropolitan Police are determined to bring this investigation to a close. That is a priority and we regard it as a key element in the UK’s future relations with Libya. Prime Minister Jibril has personally assured my right honourable friend the Prime Minister of the new Libyan authority’s intention to co-operate fully with this investigation. I hope that answers my noble friend’s question.

EU: Polish Presidency

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Thursday 30th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

We have certainly discussed the European Union Bill with all our European partners in various ways. We have not raised with them the noble Lord’s proposition, because it is completely inaccurate and does not represent any aspect of that Bill. The whole idea of there being 56 items which could initiate a referendum is complete nonsense. These are 56 veto elements in four or five absolutely key areas, which the noble Lord, as a supporter of the previous Government, believed are important just as the rest of the British people do today.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Will the Polish presidency be looking at reform of the common agricultural policy, which was of course promised to the Blair Government in return for giving up our rebate?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

These matters remain under constant discussion. Everyone recognises that the common agricultural policy continues to have its flaws and challenges, given the ways in which it promotes exports out of Europe at great expense to poorer countries and farming communities. We will certainly discuss all these matters on a continuous basis.

Libya: Bribes

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Thursday 10th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

As my noble friend will appreciate, that is a broader question than the one we are looking at now about Libyan employees and officials, so I do not have any additional comment to make, except that I am sure that the matter is carefully under review and in hand.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

Does my noble friend accept that the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Stamford, would be the first to condemn the Government if we had failed to get our nationals out of Libya, even if we had to pay facilitation fees to do so?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My noble friend is absolutely right.

Afghanistan

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Wednesday 27th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

I cannot say very much, except that the earlier setbacks have to some extent been corrected and I believe that we are making progress. I should like to be able to give the noble Lord a far more detailed reply but I am not in a position to do so at the moment. I shall therefore do it in writing or at some other opportunity.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, can my noble friend confirm that the northern tribes in Afghanistan are getting extremely nervous about the talks with the Taliban? That of course means that the Pashtuns are being brought into the peace process and they are the people against whom, not very long ago, the northern people were involved in a very serious civil war, supported by the West.

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

It is a yes and no sort of answer. It is certainly true that Taliban extremists have relations with, in particular, the Pathan or Pashtun tribes, but my noble friend must remember that the Afghan security forces consist of 43 per cent Pashtun and 42 per Tajik, who have been at odds in the past but are now working together. Therefore, while inevitably the position of the Pashtun and their readiness to work with the rest of Afghanistan to see a stable state emerge will always be the problem—and has been for 100 or 150 years; there is nothing new about this—the fact is that at the moment many Pashtun are working very well with the Tajiks and the northerners. If it comes to discussions with any kind of Taliban adherents, they will obviously be the ones who are more ready to be integrated and to discuss a positive future and who are less extreme than the inevitable wild small percentage who will want to go on killing to the last.

Commonwealth Games: Delhi

Debate between Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Hamilton of Epsom

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

My Lords, on the first point, the Commonwealth Games are part of an ever growing and stronger Commonwealth network, in which I take a particular interest. I believe that it can be of great advantage to all developing countries, including India—and to ourselves and our prosperity, exports and interests. The noble Lord is quite right on that point.

On the issue of aid, India is a country which still contains one-third of the world’s poor people, which is an enormous number. Part of our growing and enhanced relationship with India includes the immensely well targeted DfID programmes which are aimed at meeting the absolutely unbelievable poverty that still exists in India. Those programmes are, of course, greatly welcomed by the Indian Government and the Governments of the various states within India.

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

My Lords, have I missed something? Is India not a sovereign nation and is it really our business to tell it how much money it should or should not spend on the Commonwealth Games?

[Lord Howell of Guildford]

No, it is not our business. We have negligible influence on the matter and I would not presume to tell India how much it should spend. It will manage perfectly successfully and it does not need any additional comment from us, except helpful and friendly advice, which we are always ready to give.