National Infrastructure

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the debate initiated by the much respected noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I completely concur with other noble Lords that it should be conducted in a bipartisan spirit because, as we all know, infrastructure is for the long term and crosses Governments and Parliaments.

From my experience in government, which ended a year ago, I know that government has a poor history of developing infrastructure. It is not a naturally commercial animal and should avoid carrying out projects at all times, as they often end in overspend and incompetent management. However, government is an enabler. I congratulate the current Government and my noble friends Lord Sassoon and Lord Deighton, who have set about the task of enabling in an extraordinarily energetic and vigorous fashion.

We have had a very poor landscape of infrastructure development. We have had economic failure and the failure of banks to lend, which is fundamental to development. That has led to lack of confidence. Through my noble friends’ initiatives, despite having their hands tied behind their back, we have been able to develop confidence. I have enjoyed working closely with them on projects such as Battersea, Sellafield, when I was a Minister for energy and climate change, the early stages of Hinkley Point and now the Tottenham redevelopment.

What they have established is joined-up government. It is fundamental that across departments we must all share and work for a common aim. They should be further congratulated on setting up a showcase of the infrastructure projects that are available. This is the first time a Government have ever done this.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, quite rightly refers to the regions. He has taken London as a shining example of infrastructure showing the fundamental prosperity of a region. I totally concur with him that if we are to get real infrastructure projects going in this country, we have to empower the regions; we have to let them make the decisions and therefore generate the opportunities.

If one wants to see how that works, as the noble Lord said, one needs look no further than at Boris Johnson’s mayoralty, which has shown London as having travelled so widely. It is now the centre of the world in terms of how people look to see a city prosper and develop. We now have an opportunity, surely, because the economic landscape is changing. We have cheap money. We have the availability and the thirst of many investment organisations to invest in long-term projects. We must grasp this opportunity, as noble Lords have said, to develop infrastructure projects for generations to come. Now is the moment when government should act and take those opportunities.

Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Lord Marland Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

As I say, if they are merely probing amendments, it is excellent that we have had this constructive debate about them and I look forward to the Minister’s reply. However, if our Front Bench was so unwise as to press them to a vote, I shall be in the Government’s Lobby.

[Lord Marland (Con)]

My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to re-engage in this debate. In particular, I wish the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, better health and applaud her braveness for coming in today. I had the great pleasure of opposing her, or being opposed by her, for quite some time, as Members will know. There was never anything between us. In fact, when we took the Energy Bill through the House, there was very little between us—and there is not now with these amendments. I am taken by the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, who believes that these are probing amendments. I, too, believe that they are probing amendments.

There is nothing between us because, as the noble Baroness said in her opening remarks, she was in favour of fracking. She also said that it had to be properly regulated. We have heard in the debate, particularly from the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Jenkin, that we have the best regulation in the world for this part of the industry. To overdo regulation is to kill it. What it will kill is our ability to progress economically as a nation, as the two noble Lords on the opposite Benches have said; it will not enable us to have fuel security, which fracking gives us the opportunity to have; and it will not enable us to have cheap fuel in our homes. For people in this country these are the critical things that matter to the future of this economy and country. I am therefore delighted that the Government have taken on the work started four-and-a-half years ago in this field. It is fundamental to us all that we press on with it. The longer we debate it and get carried away in different directions from the core issues, the longer it will take to get this country back and going.

[The Earl of Caithness]

My Lords, I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, as to where the heart of the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, lies on fracking. Her heart on this subject is a little closer to that of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, but she is putting on a very brave front, because she has to, and says she supports fracking. We have been at hydraulic fracking in this country for more than 50 years. As so many of your Lordships have said, this is a highly regulated industry and Britain is a world leader in it. It is totally inappropriate to compare our standards and form of regulation with some of the scare stories from America. However, it is about presentation and, at the moment, the industry and the Government are losing the presentation battle, although that might be beginning to change. As my noble friend Lord Deben will remember only too well, it is fine to say, “I wish the Government would improve their PR”. It is difficult to do that in practice because if it is a good news story our press do not want to know about it. All they want to know about are the bad news stories.

I made my comment about the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, because these amendments will make the whole process much more difficult and time-consuming. For example, new subsection (1)(a) in Amendment 113G requires all sites to,

“carry out an Environmental Impact Assessment”.

We know that environmental impact assessments are hugely important. They cover a range of other industries. However, European standards have been agreed on for fracking. Within those standards are certain exemptions for the small fields and for some experimental wells, but there are also restrictions. It is not a total blanket; it is a limited exemption. Why does the Labour Party want to gold plate what is already in existence and covers the whole of Europe?

When I was on Sub-Committee B and we inquired into energy, what came over abundantly clearly was that the rest of Europe—which has quite a lot of shale gas, too, particularly Poland—is looking to Britain for a lead. When Britain does it, the rest of Europe will get on and do it. We in Europe can all benefit from that. If we do not take the lead, the others will not do it by themselves. That is why I support all those who have said that we must get on with it, regulate it and make transparent who is regulating what and why, so that we can give the maximum amount of reassurance to the public.

Economy: Growth

Lord Marland Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Soley, for organising this excellent opportunity to debate this matter. It is critical that we have debates such as this, and they are not to be confused with the manifest subjects involved with the Queen’s Speech. It is a slight shame that it is taking place in the graveyard slot of lunchtime on a Thursday but it is an important issue.

I also wish to apologise to the House for the fact that I have to leave after I have spoken because my boss has called me. There are very few people to whom I say yes but he is one of them. Therefore, I give my apologies if I have to leave.

The Prime Minister has put trade and the enhancement of British trade at the heart of economic recovery. I congratulate him on the leadership he has shown—he has led huge delegations all over the world. Wherever he goes abroad, he takes a very big delegation with him to further those efforts.

I have the honour of being the Prime Minister’s trade envoy and have visited roughly 30 countries in the past 18 months. To respond to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Soley, I have been to Mozambique, Angola, two or three times to Algeria, Morocco and Libya. I am planning on being in Gabon in the next month and, I hope—if that is the appropriate word—Ghana in July. The noble Lord is absolutely right: Africa is an important area for us. It has been left unnurtured for far too long by successive Governments. We have been complacent over it and so we are going into overdrive. My noble friend Lord Green, the Minister for Trade and Industry, has also travelled extensively, taking big delegations with him.

We have reorganised UK Trade & Investment with a change of board, having brought in commercially focused people from industry. We have reorganised the way that they interface externally, working with our ambassadors, who are being driven by the Foreign Office to be much more outward-focused. We have set up a trade envoys programme. We have eight trade envoys from across the parties—Liberal Democrats, Labour, Cross Benches and Conservatives—to focus on territories on which we have not focused previously. We have a business ambassador’s programme, where business ambassadors who are leaders of industry across the country are sent to various countries, and I am also honoured to chair that programme.

I note in her place the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, whom I would call a friend, although she is not a “noble friend”. She is a friend to this country in the work that she does overseas, particularly leading delegations in the Gulf region. She has just returned from Saudi Arabia—a vital market.

We are establishing a Ministers travel programme, where Ministers will continue to lead trade programmes, and of course we have invested time and money in making the export guarantee fund a very flexible fund to support businesses.

Everywhere I travel, I discover that people want the British offering. One feature of the Olympics was that they gave us self-confidence. They reminded us of the incredible bandwidth of skills that we have as a nation, from airlines to the arts, and from music to mechanical engineering and so on. The Olympics showcased those skills not only to ourselves but to the rest of the world. Excepting that bandwidth of skills, why do people want to do business with Britain? Simply, we are a transparent nation. Transparency is the key to how we do our business.

I had my misgivings about the Bribery Act but now I am completely behind it because it sets us above other countries which continue to indulge in corrupt dealings. It sets Britain apart, and that is something of which we should be unbelievably proud. Indeed, we can take our open government programme and what we have done through the Bribery Act to overseas countries which are desperately trying to find a way through this corruption. Of course, we also have the rule of law, which is a fundamental basis for doing trade and is being adopted by many countries.

I shall not dwell for too long on the headline deals that have been done in the past few months alone but they include a £10 billion contract for Shell in Abu Dhabi, a new cybersecurity programme in Kuwait, an award for the new Kuwait airport, companies being appointed for the metros throughout the Arab world, and warships being sold to Brazil to protect their coastlines against piracy. All manner of big sums are being generated through this trade activity.

The Government are creating the weather. Government is an enabler and it has to create the weather. In many ways, we are turning a marathon into a sprint. That is what we are driving ourselves to do. As Mervyn King says, there are signs of good news out there. However, the key point he makes is that this is not a time for complacency, and he is right. A damning statistic from the Federation of Small Businesses shows that only 20% of its members’ businesses export. That is a terrifying figure for a trading nation which, as the noble Lord, Lord Soley, mentioned, for years has gone out and exported its trade. Another damning statistic is that 70% of small and medium-sized businesses export only when someone from abroad has knocked on their doors to buy something. This is a damning and frustrating challenge not only for us in government but for the businesses themselves.

My plea to everyone in this House, the other House and elsewhere is to persuade the local companies you have got to know to get out there and trade and make investments overseas. We are doing our best to take the horses to water but they have to drink it. They will only do that if they work through UK Trade & Investment and the various business associations in which many Members of this House are involved, where they allocate funds for export and travel, and ultimately take the risk. However, the most important thing is that we have a Government focused like no other on helping them to trade.