Manufacturing Post Brexit

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a good point. We need to do lots of things to help us on the journey to electric vehicles. Charging infrastructure is an important point. We have very ambitious plans to invest in thousands of new chargers, which are being rolled out. We already have one of the largest charging networks in Europe, but we need to do an awful lot more. In addition, as I mentioned, encouraging gigavolt battery manufacturing plants in the UK is particularly important. There is a lot that we need to do to support our electric vehicle plans.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Bassam of Brighton (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, quick questions and quick answers will mean that both noble Lords will be able to get in.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, Britain has over the decades sadly lost its pre-eminent position in nuclear power. Has my noble friend noticed that Rolls-Royce has today announced a new nuclear academy of excellence in Derby? Will he recognise that this is a real opportunity to move forward with the experience Rolls-Royce has in small modular reactors?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I completely agree with my noble friend. There is a great future ahead for small modular reactors. We want to support Rolls-Royce as much as we can in this area. We are rolling out support for Great British Nuclear and the SMR programme.

Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 28th April 2020 Lords Chamber

[The Senior Deputy Speaker]

Did I hear the voice of the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, during the previous question?

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

You did. I want to comment on the question about Dominic Cummings. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that anyone who has worked in No. 10 knows that the better informed the Prime Minister’s personal staff can be on background policy decisions, the more use they are to the Prime Minister?

[Lord Callanan]

I totally agree. It is entirely right that No. 10 advisers—and, indeed, advisers and officials from other government departments—attend, to understand better the scientific debate and the decisions that then need to be taken. Surely we should all welcome a proper understanding of the science helping to drive the ultimate political decisions.

Rural Post Offices

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I simply do not agree. The network is broadly stable. We have seen 400 new post offices open in the last couple of years; the coverage is there. The Post Office itself is now broadly making a profit after 16 years of loss. As a result, that network can be maintained, and we will do what we can to maintain it.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend suggest to the Post Office that it promotes the banking service more? I have been a client of this wonderful service for 10 years. It has the great advantage that you can put money in and withdraw up to £1,000 a day from any post office, however small, at any time. It is particularly important for rural areas. It is more secure than a hole in the wall, because your card is taken by somebody behind the counter and put into their machine, rather than swiped in public. The Post Office should be promoting this much more.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, my noble friend is right to draw attention to the banking framework agreement. We are grateful for the work that the Post Office and the banks have done together. Post Office Ltd handled over 128 million banking transactions on behalf of the high street banks; that represents growth of around 12% year on year. The implications of the new framework agreement with the National Federation of SubPostmasters was announced at its conference and has led, in some cases, to a doubling or even trebling of the fees that agents can receive from the banks.

Fuel Poverty

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 4th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, we should treat the figures with some caution. They are based on income below the poverty line, and thus are relative figures. That being the case, there is always the danger that the more one does the worse they get, because you can never actually meet that target.

However, the noble Baroness is right to look at practical measures. I referred to the energy company obligation, which has delivered 2.4 million energy saving measures since 2013. I also refer to the warm home discount scheme and the various measures we announced recently to deal with the private rented sector, providing extra insulation for houses and increasing the obligation on landlords to spend more on bringing their houses up to an appropriate level of insulation. I refer to the Domestic Gas and Electricity (Tariff Cap) Act 2018, which made various changes, and the work that Ofgem has done on the safeguard tariff. I could go on.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that one simple, practical measure would be to make the winter fuel payment taxable? It is paid out by the department for social services anyway, so that would be very easy. The tax collected could then be used to increase the payment, so that those who do not pay tax would get a higher sum. That would mean it was self-adjusting. There would be no further expenditure, but it would at least mean that more of the expenditure went to those who need it.

[Lord Henley]

I suspect it is a benefit of which a large number of Members of this House are in receipt—I see one or two indicating that they are not. I note what my noble friend said. It is a very good suggestion, and I will ensure that my right honourable friend the Chancellor is made aware of it.

Energy Policy

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I totally reject what the noble Baroness, Lady Humphreys, says. It would be a slap in the face to go ahead with this project and impose costs on the Welsh consumer, in terms of the extra amount that they would have to pay for their electricity, and Welsh business. I think in particular of the Port Talbot steelworks and how much more it would have to pay for the vast amount of electricity that it uses. Having looked at the figures in front of them, it would be irresponsible of a Government to go ahead with this project.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on increasing the generating margin from 5% to 10% for cold winters. That genuinely makes us feel a lot safer. My noble friend the Minister mentioned Hinkley Point several times. It is interesting that, with the remarkable fall, the price of offshore wind is now 5.75p per kilowatt hour—a figure quoted by the Minister—compared with the strike price of nuclear energy from Hinkley Point, which is 9.4p per kilowatt hour, index linked for 35 years. Does he agree that it is very difficult to justify that 63% extra cost for nuclear power? Can I ask—I declare my interest because I live near it—when the Government are expecting to announce whether Sizewell C is going ahead?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I cannot assist my noble friend with announcements about Sizewell C—but, as always, I shall say “in due course”. My noble friend is right to point out the costs of nuclear; that decision has been made. What we are talking about here is a potential decision to generate electricity at three times that price at a time when the cost of, for example, offshore wind had come down so dramatically. That is why we had to make that decision, and why we have made it. It is possible that for other nuclear power, in due course, if more work is done in the world of modular nuclear power stations, the cost could come down. But we have made the decision on Hinkley, and have now made the decision not to go ahead with Swansea—but we will continue to look at all possible sources of energy to make sure that we have green energy and secure energy.

Industrial Strategy Consultation

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I hope that I can assure the noble Lord that we will not obstruct—or rather, we will try not to obstruct—the industrial strategy. I am reminded of that old lie, “I’m from the Government—I’m here to help you”. I keep in mind that we will try not to build in too much bureaucracy. We have an ambition to reduce the cost of red tape by £10 billion over the course of this Parliament. Of course, electricity prices are critically important, particularly to industries such as the steel industry and indeed to all energy-intensive industries, so that will be very much part of the industrial strategy, as it emerges over the next three months.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

To follow on from what my noble friend Lord Howell and the noble Lord, Lord Stoddart, said about energy policy, how can the Government quote Hinkley Point as an example of affordable energy policy when it will cost £20 billion to construct but with a level of subsidy for its output which, at the end of its 40 years of life, will raise that £20 billion to £100 billion? That is paid by the consumer, whether industrial or domestic, and the cost of a gas-fired station with the equivalent output over the same period would be £3 billion.

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I should make it clear that I was not quoting Hinkley as an example of our affordable energy policy but as an example of our infrastructure policy. We need to have a mix of different energy sources.