Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 16th January 2023 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

But that industry should be decarbonised. Whatever the noble Lord says, it goes exactly against what we as a nation have said about the future of coal. That brings disrespect, I am sad to say, on not just this Government but this country. That is why I believe this amendment is an important one to go forward.

If the Government cannot agree to the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, on the name of the Oil and Gas Authority then there is absolutely no hope for the Bill. I also very much support the amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. I remind the Committee that the International Energy Agency’s executive director, Fatih Birol, said at the end of last year:

“If governments are serious about the climate crisis, there can be no new investments in oil, gas and coal, from now—from this year.”

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 224 and 230 standing in my name. Before I do so, I shall make a supportive remark about Amendment 226 in the name of my noble friend Lord Lilley.

I remind the Committee, since it is such a long time since Second Reading back in July, that the context in which it was introduced was one of a very serious energy crisis. Whether or not we have a climate crisis is highly debateable, and many of us do not accept that alarmist language. However, that we undoubtedly had an energy crisis in the course of last year is absolutely manifest in the lives of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of ordinary people living in this country. Although we have been assisted by the weather in having a very moderate winter and therefore less demand for domestic energy, none the less that energy crisis has not abated; prices remain extremely high and energy is in short supply. We all know the reprehensible reasons lying behind that and we condemn Russia’s action in Ukraine, but none the less there is no likelihood of it ending very soon, as far as anyone can see, and we have a very serious crisis. That is the background to the amendments that I am speaking to. It is remarkable that in the same group there are a number of other amendments that seek to cut off—radically, permanently and, by statute, for ever—access to energy supplies that we have available to us.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, was somewhat surprised that I should talk in Amendment 224—which I will speak to in more detail in moment—about increasing gas supply to reduce foreign dependency. The noble Baroness seems to think that we have a target of zero carbon emissions set in law in this country. We do not; we have a net-zero target and there is nothing that I am aware of in government policy that says that the use of some amounts of carbon, including gas, in our energy mix over the long term is not both foreseeable and acceptable, provided that it meets a net-zero target.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am grateful for that clarification. If the noble Lord is saying that the time has gone, that, it seems to me, is essentially a commercial and practical judgment. It may be right—I do not run a fracking company; I know very little in practice about fracking. It is possible that the time has gone in commercial terms, and that it might not be a sensible thing to do in current circumstances. None of that is grounds for ruling it out as a matter of statute and prohibiting it. It is complete nonsense to suggest doing that. We will leave fracking to one side for the moment.

I turn to Amendment 230, a much narrower and more technical probing amendment which relates to the composition of the domestic gas supply. It takes me back to my boyhood and the childhoods of a number of people in this Room, though not all, who might remember what life was like before we had North Sea gas pumped into our homes. We had town gas, which was produced from coal. Its content was a mixture of gases, including CH₄, CO, CO₂, H₂, higher-order hydrocarbons and phenols. The composition was adjusted according to the calorific value.

When we switched over to North Sea gas, the composition of the gas that we used became over-whelmingly methane, with a small amount of higher-order hydrocarbons. The switchover to using methane allowed the calorific value to be higher. Those of us with very long memories will recall that it was marketed as “high-speed gas”, which meant “hot”—it had a high calorific value, so you could cook that much faster. Moreover, we then put that composition into legislation, which I am grateful to the Library for finding for me: the Gas Safety (Management) Regulations 1996, which are referred to in my Amendment 230.

The result is that, today, a significant amount of gas that we could extract from the North Sea is not being extracted because it cannot be used in our domestic supply by law. In effect, a lot is going to waste. The proposal in this probing amendment is to ask the Government to reflect on this and consider whether, given the energy crisis we have been facing, it might not be sensible and possible to amend those regulations so that we could make use of many of these gases that are currently going to waste but could, none the less, be fed into our domestic system. It could mean that the calorific value would be a little lower in our cookers, so it might take a little longer to bake a cake—a number of television programmes might be affected by this in detail; the outcomes might change—but in terms of efficiency, at a time when we desperately need energy, it is certainly worth looking at.

[Baroness Hayman (CB)]

I have listened to the noble Lord with some interest, but those of us with long memories remember the dangers inherent in the gas that was used before the date he was talking about and the number of suicides that took place. Does he think there is a health and safety issue to consider before going back to those days and that sort of gas?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

The name of the regulations that I am suggesting we review is the Gas Safety (Management) Regulations, so I fully acknowledge that this is a question of safety, but it is not necessarily the case that these regulations, passed in 1996, that we are still adhering to could not be looked at to see whether, precisely as I say in my amendment, they could be

“safely amended to allow more efficient use of extracted … gas.”

It may be that they cannot but, nearly 30 years on, it would be helpful if the Government could look more closely at this.

My principal point in raising these amendments relates to Amendment 224. A bit like the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, earlier, I want to know whether the Government have a strategy for resilience. Do they contemplate the dependence on foreign supplies going on endlessly in very large measure, and what would they like to do about it? I think that an awful lot of people in this country were shocked to discover our level of dependency on imports and would like to hear that we are becoming more self-sufficient.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, may I address some of the noble Lord’s responses to my comments earlier? It is clear to me that we have a fundamental difference of opinion on the science behind climate change. I believe that climate change is real, as is shown by the change we are experiencing. What evidence can the noble Lord point to that climate change is not real? There is substantial evidence of it, including the unprecedented levels of the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as verified by ice core samples from the Antarctic and tree rings over millennia. The changes in carbon dioxide correlate precisely to the changes in climate that we have seen in historic times. That is the basis on which my amendments have been tabled, and they are clearly designed to meet the Government’s legal duties under the Climate Change Act and their need to reduce oil and gas consumption to meet net zero by 2050. The noble Lord’s amendment talks about a strategy for increasing domestic gas production. That cannot be compatible with meeting climate change targets—the Government have a legal duty to do that. Will the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, please accept that?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am grateful for those points, which I will try to answer briefly since they were put to me directly.

First, I hope that nothing in what I said suggested, implied or stated that I do not accept that climate change is happening. I am also perfectly happy to accept that there is a man-made contribution to that. What I reject is the language of climate alarmism and climate crisis. The questions around the consequence, in practice, of climate change and the best means for dealing with it remain absolutely open. Over the last 20 years, we have seen wild, extravagant and unjustified claims about how large parts of the world are going to sink under water and we are all going to scorch; in fact, we see very little of that, but we see a few weather events being played up as if they are great catastrophes. Even if that were happening, the question that arises is what you do about it.

Many of us would rather put the emphasis on mitigation and adaptation rather than what we are doing at the moment, which is absolutely damaging our economy, in order that we should try to avoid those emissions. The cost of that damage to our economy has been estimated by the Climate Change Committee as at least 1% of GDP per annum—most people recognise, I think fairly, that it is closer to 4% or 5%. There are those who would say that that that cost is both necessary and justified, but it is none the less a damage to our economy, and not all of us accept that it is necessary and justified—we think that there are other methods of dealing with it.

I have not rejected climate change. I accept that net zero is a statutory target—I said nothing contrary to that. If I may repeat myself—this is my fault entirely; it is the problem with having an amateur such as myself drafting amendments—I apologised when I spoke for using the word “increase”, which I can change if we come back to this on Report. That was not quite what I meant; I meant increase relative to imports, such that I explained that my amendment would be applicable even if our consumption of gas was falling.

There is not that much in the substance of the comments that the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, made about my remarks. None the less, we have a profound disagreement—less about the science and more about what to do about it.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, rising to speak after the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and his representation of an extremely minority view, I will restrain myself and simply say that there will be no jobs on a dead planet. I will leave it there.

Electricity: Decarbonisation

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Wednesday 21st December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I remind the noble Baroness that we have the smart export guarantee scheme to encourage precisely that. The good news is that we have already 14 gigawatts of solar installed capacity in the UK and a fourth CfD allocation round for another 2 gigawatts of ground-mounted solar awarded contracts. The Chancellor recently removed VAT on solar panels, and on solar panel and storage packages. We are doing a lot in this area. Solar is a cheap and versatile source of power, which we should encourage.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, to have a strategy for decarbonising electricity, the Government have to be able to say what will make up the supply when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining. I have looked high and low, but I have not found a strategy that will set that out, be it through the use of batteries or hydraulic pumps. I have not found a document that sets out the Government’s strategy for meeting that intermittency. Can my noble friend help me by pointing to one?

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 7th September 2022 Lords Chamber

I recognise that some potential long-duration storage solutions are innovative technologies, but pumped hydro storage is not: it is old and proven, in terms of both effectiveness and value over the long term. These amendments will not solve things, but we may come back more specifically on Report. What I want to get from the Government is some understanding of whether they feel they can come forward with at least a pathfinder solution, possibly for something like Coire Glas, because that will take a long time to build out. It needs to get going and the people developing it cannot just keep these things mothballed all the time; they need to know the revenue support model. I hope the Government will respond specifically on that issue. I also hope they will think about how to separate their support models for innovative technologies, which may need to be more flexible or different, from those for proven technology that we can get on with now. I beg to move.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Oates, has just said. My concern is perhaps even a little more profound than his because I do not understand what role the Government see for pumped storage in addressing the problem of intermittency of renewables. The noble Lord focused on the funding mechanism, but what role is it going to have? How large a part do the Government intend that it should play?

However, that is not my purpose in rising. My purpose is to speak to Amendment 225, which relates rather to gas, which is also there to be used to some extent to address the problem of intermittency. I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, and my noble friends Lady McIntosh of Pickering and Lord Frost. The House had a Question on gas storage earlier today and the Minister made some helpful and informative comments in response, but it was largely a backwards-looking Question. It looked at decisions taken in the past, whereas this amendment is intended to look a little more forward. It would require the Government to provide gas storage onshore or under our waters equivalent to 25% of forecast annual demand. However, in a sense, the real purpose is to give the Government an opportunity and to elicit from them some sense of their plans for addressing this question. In the past few months, we have all seen on the television news and in the newspapers, and been gripped by it, that while Germany has been busily filling up its capacious gas storage facilities, we have none whatever, so I think the Committee and the public will be interested to know what the Government intend, if the Minister is capable of giving us an indication today.

I shall make just two points about the amendment. To those who say that we are phasing gas out, I say that the amendment is worded to require 25% of forecast demand, so if the demand comes down, the amendment still works and the amount stored can be adjusted. I think I am a correct in saying—this emerged at Second Reading—that nobody in the House believes that demand for gas is going to fall to zero, even if it is to fall to quite low or even miniscule levels, so the amendment still works and, planning over the long term and looking forward a number of years, it should be possible to make this workable.

Secondly, I put in 25% as a placeholder as much as anything else. I am very open to the Government making a case for why that number should be higher or lower and why government policy should not be 25% but more or less. I am even open to an argument that the number should be 0%. Indeed, reviewing what the Minister said today, he made the valid point that, unlike Germany, we already have a store, so to speak, of gas in our control; it just happens to be under the sea. I understand that there is a point there.

I think back to the United States in the 1970s, when the oil shock arrived. The United States decided that what it needed was a large oil reserve, so it started pumping oil into specially prepared caverns in the earth. Then I think it struck the US that it was pumping oil out of one bit of the earth and then pumping it into another, and that perhaps this was not as sensible as it might have been, so the policy was gradually abandoned.

The Minister may want to make a similar and parallel point in respect of our own gas reserves. He may say that zero is a perfectly reasonable amount for us to store. If the answer from the Government were zero, it would at least be a decision and a policy. We would be able to scrutinise it and understand the arguments for it. As I say, setting the number at 25 is very much a placeholder. I am not being in any sense dogmatic about what the number should be, but I do feel that the Government should have a number in mind, should be able to justify it—even if it is zero—and should be able, I hope, to tell us what it is.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I fully support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Oates and that in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Moylan, and others. They seek, in effect, to get more information from the Government about their plans in relation to energy storage.

My Amendment 240 is also about storage but, in this case, the storage of solar energy, the use of which is growing at an incredibly rapid pace. There are already something like a million domestic solar systems installed around the UK, and residential solar deployment is at a record subsidy-free level according to Solar Energy UK, which represents many of the UK’s solar firms. This is perhaps unsurprising given the benefits of generating your own electricity at home. This is also good news for the Government since, if we are to meet our net-zero target by 2050, we need as many of the 29 million homes in UK as possible to decarbonise. Solar is of course part of that solution.

At this point I should draw attention to my interests. I recently installed solar panels on the roof of my home, together with one battery; it is the battery element that is relevant to my amendment. It was great news when, in the Spring Statement delivered on 23 March, the then Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, made the very welcome announcement that certain energy-saving materials would be eligible for zero-rate VAT on both labour and parts. This change was effected through the Value Added Tax (Installation of Energy-Saving Materials) Order 2022, which added a list of energy-saving products eligible for the zero rate to Schedule 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994, which is relevant, as noble Lords will see in a second.

Solar panels are the only solar-related items specifically included in this list. Batteries that store the energy from solar panels when it is not needed, and which can be used at a time when it is needed or to supply energy back to the grid, are not listed. However, the energy-saving materials and heating equipment VAT notice 708/6, which relates to the earlier Act, states:

“The installation of certain specified energy-saving materials with ancillary supplies is zero-rated in Great Britain.”


I can find no reference to “ancillary supplies” in the Value Added Tax Act 1994, which the Chancellor’s Spring Statement amended. However, HMRC has said that, in certain circumstances, batteries are in fact included. It has said that, when batteries are sold as part of the installation of a solar array, they are to be treated as an ancillary supply and so also qualify for zero-rate VAT. However—this is the crucial point—they would not qualify if installed separately at a later date.

A neighbour of mine, Mr Geoff Makepeace, installed a solar array with batteries a while ago; it was before the Spring Statement, so he did not benefit from the zero rate of VAT announced in it. However, keen to get increased benefit from his solar system, he sought advice: should he increase the number of solar panels or the number of batteries? The advice was to install another battery. He followed that advice but was subsequently surprised that his bill included £567 for VAT at 20%.

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 5 in my name, and thank the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, and my noble friend Lord Frost for their support, and to speak to Amendment 231, also in my name. Before doing so, I should say that since I joined your Lordships’ House, my entry in the register of interests has shown my membership of the advisory board of Stirling Infrastructure Partners, a relatively new corporate advisory boutique. Stirling Infrastructure seeks business with a wide array of major corporations, some engaged in the energy field, and it struck me after speaking at Second Reading that I should perhaps have specifically drawn the House’s attention to my registered interest at that point. I have not received any remuneration during my time on the advisory board, and I have since then terminated the interest.

I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, and the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, for bringing forward Amendments 1 to 4 as a matter of general principle, because they are right that a Bill which seeks to articulate and implement our energy strategy, particularly our energy security strategy, should have a preamble that is strategic in character and should provide a setting so that we know where the Bill is heading and what it is trying to achieve. My difficulty with their amendments is that they are rather general in character and not entirely strategic. I hesitate to say this, conscious as I am that the noble Lord, Lord West of Spithead, may choose to speak, but simply aiming to win the war is not a strategy. A strategy requires something on resources, a plan and a general conception of how you are going to do it. If we are to achieve net zero, there are certain knotty issues that the Government need to be clear about so that we understand exactly what their strategy is at the level of detail appropriate to strategy. I, for one, am rather confused about the whole thing.

The purpose of my Amendment 5, which I have to admit is drafted in a rather convoluted way, for today’s debate is to elicit from my noble friend on the Front Bench some answers to three particular knotty questions. The first is the cost of net zero by 2050. One would have thought that we knew what the cost was going to be, but my understanding is that the only estimate the Government have had available to rely on was produced by the Climate Change Committee, which estimates that it will be in the order of 1% of GDP a year.

I do not have an objection to dedicating government expenditure on the basis of a certain percentage of GDP. If the Government want to say that they will spend 2% or some other percentage of GDP on defence, or they will spend 0.7% or 0.5% on international aid, for example, that is perfectly legitimate. But, of course, the figure of 1% a year from the Climate Change Committee is not of that character. We are pledging to spend not 1% a year but whatever it takes to deliver net zero by 2050, and 1% a year is an estimate. Moreover, it is an estimate that relies to a high degree on certain built-in assumptions, particularly that things are going to get cheaper—that the various inputs will fall in price over time. While that might be true of some, there is no reason to think it is going to be true of all. Part of the purpose of this amendment is therefore to call for the Government to commission an independent assessment of the cost of meeting net zero by 2050.

Then, we come to the question of affordability. Achieving it by a certain date—the date set in statute—doubtless has one cost attached to it. This amendment also calls on the Government to consider as part of that assessment what it would cost to achieve it. Would it be cheaper—more affordable—especially in the current crisis we are facing, if the terminal date were not 2050 but later? I put in two particular dates but if the Government choose others, I would be happy to go with those. The issue is the principle of whether achieving net zero over a longer period would be more affordable for the people of this country.

That is the first thing this amendment is trying to elicit the Government’s views on: do they have a reliable cost for achieving net zero by 2050, and would it be affordable if we took longer over it? As I said at Second Reading, bearing in mind that this country contributes a very small fraction of global emissions, the idea that achieving it by 2065 or 2050 will save the planet is simply self-delusion. We are doing this principally for exemplary purposes, rather than because of its practical effect.

Secondly, I do not wish to cause the slightest difficulty or embarrassment for my noble friend on the Front Bench, but I find the Government’s existing strategy, particularly the energy security strategy, the 10-point plan and so forth, rather weak in terms of strategic content and cost assessment. What are they going to cost? Also, implementation dates are largely lacking. We also need to know the relative contribution that each of the Government’s proposed measures will make to achieving net zero. Some might be very significant and others not, but we do not understand that from the documentation. That is the second purpose of this amendment. It is an important strategic question and I hope my noble friend will be able to say something about it.

The third point concerns the crucial issue, which I raised at Second Reading, of the intermittency of renewable sources. What do you do when the wind is not blowing or the sun is not shining? An obvious source to use to make up for that at the moment is gas, and that is largely what we do. Will we continue to use gas? That is one option. At Second Reading I quoted Professor Sir Dieter Helm saying that that makes the gas expensive in itself, because switching it on and off all the time is very inefficient and increases costs. However, is that the strategy? When I said that at Second Reading, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, drew my attention to a recent report from a Finnish university that said that intermittency can be dealt with without recourse to gas. Afterwards, she kindly gave me a link to it, and I have studied it. The solution suggested—it is not unique to that university; it is fairly widespread—is that intermittency should be dealt with by way of battery power. When the wind is blowing and you do not need the electricity, you charge up the batteries, and when it stops blowing—it is the same for solar—you take the electricity out. That seems plausible at one level, and maybe it is the solution the Government are coming to; there is stuff about batteries in the Bill. However, it raises questions about the environmental consequences of extracting the minerals needed for the batteries, and about their disposal, siting and so forth. Can the Government tell us what role they see for batteries—if it is to be batteries; maybe it is not—in dealing with intermittency?

The third suggestion I have heard is that pumped water should be used. This involves using surplus electricity to pump water up so that, when you need it, it falls down again. I believe that some installations do that—indeed, one of them is hidden inside a mountain in Snowdonia—and that a couple are to be built in Scotland shortly. My understanding is that they produce very little power. They are an interesting idea. Is it the Government’s intention to roll them out at scale? What is the cost? Where are they to be sited? These are the things on which we should have some indication before we give the Government these powers. I note that there is stuff in the Bill on exactly this.

Finally, I have heard that we should use surplus power to produce hydrogen, but that assumes that there is a distribution network to take the hydrogen where it is needed when the wind is not blowing. So there are serious potential solutions to this problem. All of them have costs, both financial and environmental. Which do the Government prefer?

I have spoken quite long enough so I will come to Amendment 231 in my name, which asks a question that has been on many people’s lips over the past few weeks: how do we price wholesale electricity? At the moment, as I think noble Lords are aware, the price paid to generators is the price of the highest input needed to achieve the demand that exists in the system in a particular half-hour period. In recent weeks and months, that has become gas. Whatever they use to produce electricity—be it wind, solar or whatever—everybody is receiving the same price as for gas.

To be perfectly clear, though, not everybody is receiving the same price because many of those producers will have entered into a contract for the difference—a swap arrangement—with a government-owned company. Effectively, this means that they have a guaranteed price, and it does not matter what the price is in the pool. At the moment, this is something that the European Union is looking aggressively at in terms of whether it should be changed, whether we should have a different system and whether there should be two separate pools, with one for carbon and one for renewables.

These are all things that I would like to hear the Minister say something on. I sympathise with him because today is the last day of the current Administration. Tomorrow, there will be a new Prime Minister. It may be that the Minister does not have the answers to all these questions at his fingertips in the way we would all like to hear at the moment, so an answer in due course as Committee goes on would be extremely welcome.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 6 in this group; I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, for his reference to it. It is intended as a probing amendment. I like to think that it is short and perfectly formed; I am grateful to the clerks for their assistance in drafting it. I remind the Committee that I am the president of National Energy Action. As the noble Lord, Lord Lennie, referred to, there are worries about households that have already fallen into fuel poverty and the strong likelihood that, by October this year or January next year, 1.5 million more households may be at risk.

Some further background to this amendment is my concern that most of the talk in the White Paper and the British energy security strategy from April, most of the talk in the recent leadership election campaign and most of the concentration of the press and media seem to focus on household fuel bills and the price cap relating to them. We must not lose sight of the impact of fuel and energy costs on small, medium and large businesses. Many have recently cited the instance of launderettes, which may not be big employers but serve a particularly useful function and are obviously highly intensive users of energy.

However, there are many others. In what was previously the Vale of York constituency, there is the York brick company, which has kilns to make its clay bricks on the go for probably two-thirds of each day—often over weekends, I imagine, if it is trying to complete an order. If we lose many such small and medium-sized companies, this especially will have a grave impact on the UK economy going forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, did I hear my noble friend say 2023? Did I hear that correctly?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Yes, it is a complicated area that requires proper and detailed policy analysis, but that work is under way, and we will do so.

Splitting the wholesale market would a necessitate a fundamental and irreversible design of our electricity market arrangements, and without the appropriate consideration of the potential costs and any potential benefits and without sufficient stakeholder input, it could well lead to higher bills for consumers, and it would create an investment hiatus which would jeopardise our ambitions for decarbonising the power sector by 2035—which is exactly the point I was making to my noble friend. So, this is an important issue, but it is one that needs to be looked at thoroughly, properly and professionally. I hope that my noble friend is assured that the issue is being closely examined and will therefore feel able to withdraw his amendment.

Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 19th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to speak after the right reverend Prelate and to hear of the encouraging things happening in his diocese. We also heard him mention the fact that they have a cost. He is possibly the first speaker in this debate who has drawn attention to cost; I shall spend quite a lot of my time talking about exactly that.

This is a technical Bill but it has a simple purpose: to give effect to the British energy security policy. In my view, that means ensuring that energy is available abundantly and affordably to the British people and to British industry and businesses, and also that energy is, as far as possible, secure against external shocks. That is how we maintain and enhance our prosperity, and any other statement of the Government’s objective would appear to me to be traducing the obligations we have to the nation.

Net zero is not an energy strategy but a constraint on how we might achieve our energy strategy. Nobody seriously thinks that the UK’s commitment to achieve net zero by 2050 will have any significant effect on the heating of the planet, since we produce only 1% of global emissions. At best, it is setting an example to the world; its practical effect will be very small indeed. The core strategy for this Government has to remain abundant and affordable energy for the UK. If my noble friend on the Front Bench disagrees about that, I am sure he will say so when he winds up. The question is how the Bill and the energy strategy it effectuates measure up to that objective. It is a mixed bag and, like other speakers, in the interests of time I will be fairly selective about the parts of the Bill I choose to focus on at this stage.

One of the things the Bill does is encourage investment in wind power. Despite claims that the cost of wind power is constantly falling, that is simply not true. Although it has fallen from its early days, it is ceasing to fall; the fall is declining as a result of the maturity of the industry, as you would expect with any industry that matures. But even if the marginal cost of wind power can be brought down to something close to zero—in other words, that it is similar to nuclear power in that regard—none the less, the capital costs required would still require subsidies, in addition to the feed-in tariff, and these are very large indeed when it comes to offshore wind.

Moreover, despite providing in excess of 20% of our energy, there are many days when wind power falls close to zero, and much the same can be said of solar. This means that gas generation has to be available to take up the slack at those times. I heard the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, envisage a day when demand for gas would be zero. I do not understand what source of power she imagines will take up the slack when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

I challenge the noble Lord to say where I said that the need for gas would be zero. I said it would be minuscule.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

I am happy to accept the correction from zero to minuscule because it does not change my argument in the slightest. I thought I had said close to zero, but either way I am more than happy to accept the word “minuscule”. I was hoping when the noble Baroness stood up that it would be to tell me what fuel it was that was going to take up the slack in the place of gas.

To make demand for gas intermittent in order to match the intermittency of wind power is, in the words of Professor Sir Dieter Helm,

“devastating to the economics of gas generation and for two reasons”.

First, it takes a much longer time to recover the capital costs, and, secondly, because the gas power is demanded only intermittently, the cost of producing that supply increases as well. So in addition to the high cost of wind generation, we have to take account of an inevitable increase in the cost of electricity generated by gas simply to match it and make up for the intermittency. Professor Helm is a great supporter and advocate of net zero. His complaint is that we are not being honest with the British public about the costs of it. My noble friend the Minister will be able to say whether he thinks the Government are being honest with the British public and that Professor Helm has got it wrong, but net zero is not cheap and the Government need to level with the public. They need to show that their energy strategy is affordable.

Then we come to the question of abundance. The noble Baroness, Lady Blake, referred, as did other speakers, to Russia’s illegal war in Ukraine. My worry was that she had not taken account of how radically that has changed our situation, but my worry on that score rather fell away when I heard my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford. He explained very clearly that it is not some minor event; it is a radical change in the energy supply market, and it goes to the question of whether we are going to be able to maintain abundant supplies.

The noble Baroness called for three things to happen simultaneously as a result of the Bill: she wanted to cut bills, increase security and tackle climate change—I hope I have referred to her correctly. My point is that you cannot have all three. The second two require higher bills because the cost of them is largely borne by bill payers rather than taxpayers. Even if you take it out of the bills and put it on to the taxpayers, the taxpayers are of course the bill payers with a different hat on.

There are things in this Bill that I agree with. I was particularly pleased to see the reference to the promotion of nuclear fusion. It may be a very long way off—nuclear fusion as a solution has always been a long way off—and that makes one a bit sceptical, but I have confidence that something can be done. Nuclear fusion is of course an extremely clean form of energy, not like nuclear fission, and the UK Atomic Energy Authority is a leader in the field. At the moment there are half a dozen places throughout the country competing to be the home of the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s spherical tokamak, which is going to take forward Britain’s next step in developing the prospect of genuine nuclear fusion. If anything, I would encourage the Government to spend more money, as I am told that that would speed up the work; that is all very good. Nuclear fission will be core to providing our baseload, and I welcome the work the Government have done to promote that as well. But large amounts of gas will remain absolutely indispensable to our energy mix—all the more so the more we rely on wind and solar.

The gaping hole in this Bill and this strategy—not only the hole referred to by my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford, in that we are not sufficiently encouraging increased oil production among the oil producers—is, as far as our domestic policy is concerned, its failure to put increased domestic production of gas at the heart of our energy strategy.

India: Cereals Export Ban

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, that is a good point, but I think that the House will appreciate that changing railway gauges is a complex process, which cannot be done in the short term. Let us hope that this conflict does not go on for so long that that becomes the solution.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, given concerns about the supply and cost of imported grain into the UK, why are Her Majesty’s Government maintaining tariffs on imported wheat averaging 16%?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, my department has taken strong action in relation to this, either reducing or eliminating tariffs from Ukraine, which was obviously the right thing to do in the terrible situation facing the people of Ukraine.

EU: Imports

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord. Harmonious arrangements and harmonious affairs between nations are the way to increase trade and investment, and we all benefit from that. Let us hope that harmony is restored in these important matters.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, let the European Union be as protectionist as it wishes. Does my noble friend the Minister accept that it is for the benefit of British consumers and manufacturing businesses to have access to imports from the rest of the world at the lowest cost and with the least bureaucracy and fuss? Do the Government have a plan for making this easier?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My noble friend raises an important point. We are absolutely committed to ensuring that businesses get the support they need. It is very interesting that, in 2021, trade with non-EU nations fared relatively better than trade with the EU. Goods imports from other countries exceeded the value of goods imports from the EU for the 10th month in a row. This is global Britain in action.

Status of Workers Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 10th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, I rise with considerable trepidation to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, on a matter of employment law in which he is such an expert whereas I am not even a lawyer. I had not expected to find myself in disagreement with everyone who has spoken so far, but I have genuine concerns about this Bill.

I start with a small technical issue which I may well have got wrong; the noble Lord may correct me. It seems to me that someone who is serving as a non-executive director of a company or a public body, as I do on the Ebbsfleet Development Corporation, would be caught by this Bill and effectively have to be made subject to a contract of employment, thus becoming an employee of the body that they were meant to be supervising. I cannot imagine that was the noble Lord’s intention and I may well have got it wrong; it is a point that can be dealt with at later stages of the Bill. I use it to illustrate the fact that the argument for this Bill, that the current situation is messy, with four, five, six, seven or however many different statuses you count for people who work, fails to recognise how messy and complicated real life actually is. If anything, to catch up with the modern labour market, this Bill would create more categories rather than trying to reduce them, in effect, to two or, at maximum, six, depending on how you cut the noble Lord’s cake.

On the point about changes in the labour market, I was very comfortable to hear what the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross, had to say, because we cannot go back to looking at the labour market in terms of a monolithic industrial market from the 1960s and 1970s, with a small number of large employers and a very large number of more or less substitutable industrial workers. Yet that seems to be the sort of lens through which this Bill is being looked at.

I am surprised that so far in the debate there have been no comments about the effects on employment, particularly youth employment, that this Bill might have. We may all be assuming that the very welcome consequences for the labour market of Brexit, mentioned by my noble friend Lord Blencathra, and rising wages and tightness of labour markets, will mask any of those effects, so that, net, we will see very few, but none the less, we must factor that in. It is very surprising that nobody has mentioned it.

My next point is slightly more difficult and is about the dignity of work. If work is one of the curses we take from our expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the dignity it can confer on humanity is part of that recompense. There are many people in this House—I am one of them and I venture, without absolute certainty, that as a practising barrister the noble Lord, Lord Hendy, is another—who have been what he would regard as genuinely self-employed for much of our lives. We have not had the protective benefits of a contract of employment, but nor have we had the downsides: that is, being told what to do, having a boss and having people who now take it as their responsibility, in some cases, to decide what you can do in your private life and your social media. But we decide and assume that this is what other people want and would benefit from.

I regard this as essentially a backward-looking Bill that does not embrace changes in the labour market and makes rather patronising assumptions about what is good for other people that we would not accept. I hope that we can reflect on that, consider whether it should proceed and how it might be amended in future to remove those objections.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 14th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, Amendment 32A, in my name and that of my noble friend Lady Garden, would require the appropriate national authority to consult with higher education institutions and other training providers before making regulations under this clause. I declare an interest as chancellor of Cardiff University.

I asked a Written Question, answered by the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, in which I asked Her Majesty’s Government

“why higher education institutions and other providers of training for professional qualifications are not listed as stakeholders affected in the impact assessment for the Professional Qualifications Bill; whether higher education institutions or others …were consulted on the proposals in that Bill, and … what plans they have to consult such providers in the future.”

The Answer stated:

“The proposals in the Bill do not affect the UK qualifications or experience required to practise a profession. The Government ran a Call for Evidence on the recognition of professional qualifications … between August 2020 and October 2020, which was open to anyone with an interest in professional qualifications”,


and that there were, among others,

“26 responses from educators who provide training and higher education institutions.”

The Answer continued:

“Officials have met representatives from Universities UK to discuss proposals in the Professional Qualifications Bill and will continue to pursue an active programme of stakeholder engagement.”


So, having told me in the Answer that this Bill has no impact on HEIs and other trainers, the Government went on to say that the HEIs and trainers identified themselves in the public consultation as being concerned by, or interested in, this Bill. Following that, the Government have been in discussion with Universities UK at least. Will the Minister clarify whether the Government have also spoken to other training providers, not just the representatives of universities?

I have had correspondence from Universities UK, which says that, although its contact with the Government has been fairly constructive so far, it would be helpful to require the Government to consult with higher education providers as they strike regulator recognition agreements, given the importance of these agreements to certain sections of higher education. The potential impact on onshore recruitment of EU students on relevant courses should be monitored. Clearly, that is of importance because if you are doing away with the EU-established system, there will be an impact on the number of EU students coming to this country, potentially some of them afresh as they will want to get their qualifications here, but also on the top-up courses that our HEIs provide. It also says that it would be helpful to have frequent consultation and analysis-sharing between the Government and higher education providers to help ensure that the Bill benefits the range of bilateral agreements that could increase recruitment to higher education, rather than have a detrimental effect.

It is not the case that this Bill does not affect HEIs. It affects the number of foreign students applying to the UK on top-up courses, and, crucially, what the HEIs and other training providers teach. Depending on what they teach, it affects who they employ and how many of them they employ, so this has a deep impact on them. I urge the Minister to consider this very reasonable amendment. The Government have recognised the legitimate role of higher education—I hope they have consulted other trainers as well—so what reason could they have for rejecting such a sensible and modest amendment?

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, Amendment 55A is in my name. There are many excellent provisions in the Bill requiring regulators to share information. They are required to share information with regulators at home and abroad, and with people who wish to be qualified to practise in this country. However, there is nothing in the Bill which requires the sharing of information with people who are already practising the profession in this country. Indeed, there is nothing in the amendment spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, which touches on my point, although it would expand the requirement for information sharing.

It might be thought otiose to have such a requirement where a regulator is also a membership body, as it could be assumed that naturally it would communicate with its members, but a regulator is not always a membership body. I remind noble Lords that I said at Second Reading that I was an honorary fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and I am grateful to RIBA for discussions about this topic. RIBA is a membership organisation representing its profession, but it does not regulate the architectural profession. As noble Lords will know from other parts of the Bill, that is a function reserved by statute to the Architects Registration Board. Experience is that stand-alone statutory regulators do what is required of them by statute, and very little else. That is why a nudge is needed, and this amendment would achieve that.

This clause would allow professional practitioners to know what agreements regulators were pursuing, what mutual recognition agreements were in the pipeline, what progress had been made and the timeline for the agreement. It would also provide a clear path for professional practitioners to have their views on how agreements should be prioritised made known to the regulator. Remarkably, without this amendment, there is no statutory obligation on a regulator to have any communication with regulated professionals at all.

Why does it matter? To take the example of architects, British architects are known to lead the world. They work on major projects throughout the world, and they often work with our world-beating civil engineers on transport, infrastructure and other major projects. They earn a great deal of export earnings for us as a country, too. When they are doing this, they need to be able to send architects to work in other parts of the world. On occasion, they also need to be able to employ in this country architects who are from countries where a pipeline of work might be developing and have specialist knowledge of regulations—be they on planning or whatever—that apply in the country where the project is being delivered. They are very commercial architects—they have to be, because they operate in a harsh commercial world—so they look ahead. They see a pipeline of activity in a particular country that might be coming forward with new projects—airports, infrastructure, or whatever it might be. They want to be able to have some influence on their regulator about how mutual recognition agreements might be prioritised to facilitate capturing that work.

I have used architects as an example, but there are other professions that might find themselves in a similar situation, which would want to have that two-way flow with their regulator and which, not being a membership organisation, would need, in my view, the help of statute to ensure that that communication took place. This is so modest and commonsensical a suggestion that I hope my noble friend will be able to rise and simply say that he accepts it.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I speak particularly to Amendments 31 and 32, and I commend Amendment 32, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, to the House. I remind the Committee that the British Dental Association said:

“We would strongly advise that any body issuing qualifications which might be recognised in the UK must be a recognised body for the purpose of issuing professional qualifications by the regulator in a given country. This is crucial to avoid situations in which a UK regulator might be asked to enter into recognition agreements with another regulator in a country where not all educational institutions might be fully accredited by that regulator.”


Unfortunately, I was too late to add my name to Amendment 32. I strongly support it and hope that the Government will take it on board. I have wondered whether it would benefit from “relevant” being inserted before “overseas”, but that would come later on. We certainly need something of that nature in the Bill.

I also speak briefly to Amendment 32A because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, outlined, it is essential that there is a degree of stability in the higher education system and with training providers. In some subject areas, there is a need for simulation suites and quite complex teaching that requires long-term investment, and, as the noble Baroness said, staff may need to be taken on. You cannot just shed staff; you cannot ask staff to start teaching something they are unfamiliar with without due warning. I am concerned that there is a danger that the Bill could inadvertently destabilise some of our own systems.

Agricultural Exports from Australia: Tariffs

Lord Moylan Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, the precise details of the UK-Australia free trade agreement are a matter for ongoing negotiations. In respect of ISDS, the UK Government consider the inclusion of ISDS provisions in FTAs on a case-by-case basis and in light of the unique UK-Australia investment relationship. We are huge investors in each other’s markets and appropriate ISDS will benefit investors on both sides.

[Lord Moylan (Con)]

My Lords, is my noble friend aware that many noble Lords are absolutely thrilled at the announcement that this deal is about to be agreed? If we are to grant the European Union unfettered tariff- and quota-free access to the United Kingdom market, what possible objection could there be to allowing the same to Australia—an advanced, civilised country with high standards? There can be no objection at all. Does my noble friend agree that if the National Farmers’ Union continues to resist every change consequent on Brexit in such a curmudgeonly fashion, it will be losing and forfeiting opportunities for its own farmers and members to export throughout the world and, in this case, to Australia?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is completely right. We should all recognise that British beef and lamb are among the best in the world and the Australia-UK FTA will bring new export opportunities to British farmers. We should be proud that the UK produces high-quality premium produce that is globally sought after. A deal with Australia is a gateway to joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership and there will be a growing demand for UK meat in these markets.