Queen’s Speech

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I look forward to debating the forthcoming energy Bill. Once again, it looks set to be a Christmas tree Bill on which your Lordships will be able to hang many policy favourites of their own. In parenthesis, I am not sure why this has become common practice in major Bills recently. It is one area where government Whips can understandably influence the Long Titles of Bills to minimise manifold amendments. That said, it will provide many of your Lordships with the opportunity to recommend strong support from government to ensure that the North Sea Transition Authority is well armed to encourage inward investment into our gas reserves. Only by consistent and long-term policy support will we encourage the absolutely vital inward investment necessary to maximise upstream production during the transition—which, in turn, will necessarily last until well into the 2030s, at the earliest.

Noble Lords should be under no illusion. Gas will play a crucial role in delivering net zero for many years to come, particularly given the nature of renewables, which are intermittent in a market requiring a consistent, uninterrupted, resilient source of supply. Let us put this in perspective. After 20 years and nearly $5 trillion of investment, the world has only 15 million barrels of oil equivalent in wind and solar, against the 237 million barrels of oil equivalent required every day. We will have to bolster the country’s energy resilience. Our love affair with the idea of green energy has left us exposed to high international energy prices. Had we had a more resilient transition 10 years ago, we would have seen far higher gas production in the North Sea. We have simply not optimised production of gas in the interests of energy security and resilience. Gas must become—and is becoming—increasingly green. Every year sees a reduction in production emissions and a reduction in routine flaring. By 2030, we will have halved our production emissions and eliminated routine flaring.

So, what can the Government do? Ministers can work with the Treasury to improve access arrangements to gathering platforms that inhibit the optimal development of marginal and mature fields, which rely on the gathering platforms usually owned by the large operators to secure onshore delivery. Ministers can show caution about calls for a windfall tax when we need to encourage investment in marginal fields, where the global market is highly competitive for the marginal investment dollar. We need to introduce measures to build investor confidence, not destroy it. Yes, the industry is making extraordinary profits with today’s oil price at $110, but how will it increase investment in renewables when it is paying out those investment funds to government through a spike or profits tax?

If the Government are to follow through with this route, they must include fiscal incentives for the industry to invest in renewables without deterring investment in gas. As BlackRock has realised in its approach to proxy balance, we need more short-term investment in traditional fuel production to boost energy security. It is time to move away from forcing upstream gas companies to decommission assets or setting absolute targets for companies to reduce emissions in their supply chains.

But this Bill will go further. I finish by asking the Minister a number of questions. Does he believe that 24 gigawatts of nuclear will happen—and, if so, by when? Can the market structures enable sufficient investment in the grid to match the hoped-for electricity use in transport, heating and industrial applications when only modest growth is anticipated over the next five years? How realistic are the expectations about hydrogen, given its apparent lack of cost competitiveness today, and where are the end users who will adopt hydrogen at scale?

Lastly, I mention possibly the most important point, which is that a clear business case is needed by government for a credible energy efficiency rollout. There is a clear absence of energy efficiency at the heart of our energy policy, which in turn is sadly absent as a key plank in the Loyal Address.

Revised Energy National Policy Statements

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests. My commitment to the environment came with me into my first ministerial job in the 1980s, and the energy world provided me with a second opportunity of ministerial office. Since then, I have regularly worked in both sectors. I was privileged to be elected the first president of the British Wind Energy Association, and I introduced the first competitive market framework for renewables in the UK, the non-fossil fuel obligation in 1990. Since then, as set out in the register, I have continued to work in the energy sector, culminating in my current chairmanship of Buckthorn Partners, which works in energy transition.

This short debate, particularly well set out in EN-4 before the Committee, and the wider strategy referred to by my noble friend the Minister, provides us with the opportunity to discuss the issues set out admirably by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Looked at rhetorically, the current high watermark of the relentless destructive attack on the oil and gas industry, with John Kerry citing the May 2021 International Energy Agency report as evidence that there should be no more new oil and gas investment anywhere in the world, is foolish and ultimately destructive. That is so in political terms, as it ignores the transitional pain inflicted on families and industries around the world, and it is counterintuitive, as it encourages highly polluting coal to be used in electricity generation, thus causing yet further pollution to our planet.

However, today, at least in this Committee, we have a more moderate, sensible and civilised energy debate, as the documents before us highlight. We vitally need to produce gas within a regime of strict environmental standards against the chorus of politicians clamouring to inflict windfall taxes on North Sea producers to help struggling families, who are struggling primarily because of eye-wateringly expensive energy policies. This came as we brought to a close a record year of low investment on the UK continental shelf. This has to change.

We all watch European customers, both residential and industrial, facing the extreme post-Covid pain of record power prices and gas prices, at some $200 per barrel of oil equivalent, which means that a European fertiliser producer, or any European industrialist using natural gas as a feedstock, is now paying eight to 10 times more for energy than a US or Middle Eastern competitor, and nearly 15 times more than a Russian competitor, due to the unprecedented differential between global spot prices, at some $200 per barrel of oil equivalent and much lower market gas prices in self-sufficient countries such as the US, Russia, et cetera. Europe, including the UK, could now lose a significant proportion of its industrial base to “home fire” very quickly indeed if this energy crisis continues.

We also anguished in 2021 at the all-benevolent coal-to-gas switch, the most effective atmospheric cleansing policy yet devised, being reversed in China and other parts of Asia as they burned more coal again due to gas prices reaching levels exceeding $300 per barrel of oil equivalent. Now we all sit on the precipice watching if the stability-threatening energy price tsunami will sweep away many industries before it, or whether the tide will turn the turn as the political elite of the West confronts its poorest citizens being crippled by the energy crisis imposed on them. Are the hopeful recent reports that—long overdue—the EU will include gas in its taxonomy of green energy a sign of energy sanity returning, or is this a false dawn, with Germany’s new Government showing ever more radical eco-credentials?

A wise voice in this debate to whom every Government should turn for advice is Philip Lambert, who, leading Lambert Energy Advisory, has continued to highlight the critical role of gas, as mentioned by my noble friends Lady Neville-Rolfe and the Minister, if the world is to pursue accelerated decarbonisation and create a responsible energy mix that balances affordability, reliability, energy security and environmental needs. With consistency in his approach to energy policy in recent debates, Lambert continues to emphasise that gas plus renewables, as so obviously on offer in the UK with its strong offshore gas plus offshore wind resource blend, are complementary partners and able to lead the phase-out of coal, as well as supporting blue/green hydrogen buildout efforts.

Recently, Lambert set out the problem in a rather innovative way, saying that it is very simple to understand if one uses a stark medical analogy. The climate doctors of the western world, who gathered at Glasgow for COP 26 in November, have decided, with very little real democratic debate or scrutiny that the global patient, threatened by the “certainty” of extreme and catastrophic climate change, now needs an accelerated transfusion of the “fossil fuel” portion of the global energy lifeblood which courses through the global economic body every day, underpinning the heartbeat of our modern life of mobility, health, domestic living, food production and industrial process. The climate doctors’ prognosis, as underpinned in the IEA paper of May 2021, is a “net zero world” by 2050, the ongoing “capital starvation” and progressive transfusion of 80% of the current energy lifeblood of the world—the 101 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of oil, 66 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of gas and 70 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of coal.

In this incredible medical transfusion experiment, we need to dispense as quickly as possible with 80% of the world’s energy lifeblood. But as any responsible medical doctor will testify, no transfusion process should happen unless the patient can receive with complete certainty instant similar amounts of “clean bloodstream” —ie, new clean energy blood of 237 million barrels of oil equivalent per day—otherwise, the patient will literally die. Yet breathtakingly, the climate doctors currently have only developed small, highly uncertain and intermittent—albeit very welcome—“new blood sources” to transfuse back into the body. After 20 years and nearly $5 trillion of investment into “new energy blood”, the world has only 15 million barrels of oil equivalent per day of wind and solar, against the 237 million barrels of oil equivalent per day required—and this bloodstream flows, as 2021 has demonstrated, only sporadically to the heart when the wind blows or the sun shines. Moreover, the all-in cost of intermittent renewables into power systems is rising not falling, due to the high cost of system balancing and legacy subsidy and government guarantee costs.

Our journey to this began 40 years ago exactly, and we have reached a global position of 15 million barrels of oil a day equivalent of renewables against the necessary 237 million, but instead of recognising that we are entering a vital stage of transition, many demonise gas—which, if revoked from the energy equation, as so many campaigners would have us do immediately, will unquestionably damage the world economy. Of course it is right to invest heavily in solutions to take us to net zero, but this should be done alongside acceptance of gas as a critical component of the energy mix in the UK as we move towards net zero and welcome ESG approaches. Setting an arbitrary date of 2050 is little wiser today than forecasting the date of storms in the UK next winter.

I should add that most of the rest of the energy lifeblood is made up of biomass, which entails burning primarily wood at higher carbon intensity than coal at a time when the world should be protecting all existing forests and planting billions of new trees, not cutting them down, especially as the tree is still the most effective carbon capture and storage process in today’s world, with the carbon abatement costs still 10 times cheaper than a human-manufactured CCS plant. So the climate leaders have been ironically highly successful at starving the global gas machine of essential investment needed to overcome natural global gas production declines of 3% per annum, let alone allow gas productive capacity to increase to beyond its current level of 66 million barrels of oil equivalent per day to facilitate the all-important environmental initiative: the global coal-to-gas switch.

We are therefore waking up to the nightmare that high gas prices may in 2022 imperil the very viability of mass renewable rollout, because the back-up needed to create a firm power product out of intermittent renewable production relies basically on gas—or coal if gas is too expensive. The real nightmare for renewables producers is new obligations on them—rather than energy customers or taxpayers—to pay the full costs of back-up supplies. This, plus a rise in interest rates to challenge their leveraged model, could push some renewable energy players in 2022 into the same difficulties as faced recently by the mass bankrupted energy suppliers in the UK, who promised “100% renewable electricity” and other seemingly attractive product brands but then faced the full storm of reality when wholesale gas/power prices soared and the questionable irresponsibility of the UK Government’s populist “price cap” policy was fully revealed, and they may well end up in the same place. I foresee many of the current wind operators facing financial difficulty. Certainly, a new generation of companies will take over but the next five years are going to produce harrowing headlines around the world along with calls for significant nationalisation.

Policymakers must cease their rhetorical attack on natural gas, realising that for a responsible energy transition to occur, a solid partnership between best-in-class renewables such as offshore wind in the UK or solar in India and best-in-class gas—zero methane leakage, environmentally responsible and cheap—is required. That means tax-effective measures to extend the life of fields in the North Sea, postpone decommissioning, bring onstream new gas fields and maximise recovery rates within a clear and certain framework of strong, environmentally responsible policies. This surely is the great window of opportunity for the UK so we can produce a clean, firm power product via our integrated and environmentally responsible gas/renewables/trading model into the market, which will begin to wake up to the fact that firm power is a premium product, not a cheap, guaranteed given.

Maybe the last word should be left to our Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who recently commented that North Sea gas

“plays an important part of our transition to net zero.”

He added:

“I want to make sure that people acknowledge that we should also exploit our domestic resources. We have resources in the North Sea, and we want to encourage investment in that because we’re going to need natural gas as part of our transition to getting to net zero. And in the process of getting from here to there, if we can get investment in the North Sea that supports British jobs, that’s a good thing. So that has to be part of the mix as well.”

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988: Sporting Events

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 2nd December 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Lipsey (Lab)]

My Lords, not only noble Lords here but all sorts of other people will be watching this debate this afternoon, including racing as a whole, racecourses, owners, trainers, jockeys, honest punters and—yes, there are plenty—honest bookmakers, because it covers such an important threat to the revenues keeping them in business. Following the noble Viscount’s wonderful speech, I certainly do not want to drone on, but let me give a brief lay man’s account of what is going on here.

Go to a racecourse now and you can hardly miss the drones; there are perhaps eight or 10 of them flying about all over the course, so what is going on? As the author of a work of racing fiction—Counter Coup, in all good bookshops now, as it has been for the last seven years—I would not dare dream up so implausible a plot as the reality of what is going on. In a nutshell, what is going on is tech-assisted cheating. These days, you do not have to put a bet on a horse before a race starts; you can back horses “in running” as it is called. When drones come in, they can transmit pictures of a race seconds before they appear on conventional television.

So, Joe Bloggs is sitting at home in front of his TV. He sees the favourite lengths in front coming to the last and puts a big bet on at short odds that it will win. More fool him, because his drone counterpart is a few seconds ahead and he knows that the horse just fell at the last. Therefore, he can lay that horse for as much cash as he wants with no danger or difficulty of losing his money. He lays the horse and counts his winnings. Who loses? It is the punter who backed the favourite and racecourses which do not have copyright in the pictures and therefore cannot get any money from the pictures of the product they are supplying. There is less money for racing, less money for owners—I am an owner, so I can say that with some bitterness—and less money for trainers, jockeys and legitimate bookmakers, apart from a handful of often illegal bookmakers who may be in on the game.

This is not legitimate betting, to which I certainly have no objection. This is foul play, and it must be stopped. One way of doing so would be to give the racecourses copyright in all pictures so that at least the droners paid up out of their ill-gotten gains. Another would be to make such filming of sporting events a criminal offence. The Government will no doubt come to their own conclusions as to which route is the easiest. What is important is that they do not conclude that both routes are difficult and therefore do absolutely nothing about this scandal of legalised fraud.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I seek your Lordships’ permission. I had no intention whatever of being discourteous to my noble friend but equally I was trying not to be discourteous to the Minister after I spoke in the debate in the Chamber on the humanitarian issues in Afghanistan. With the agreement of the Committee and of the Chair, I will hand over now and speak in the gap, just to emphasise the important point in chapter 4.32 of the Companion that speakers should be present for the opening speech. I sincerely apologise to the Committee for that being difficult on account of the other debate overrunning. I will give way to my noble friend, who will speak now, and with the agreement of the Committee I will speak in the gap.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I again apologise to and thank the Committee for allowing me to speak in the gap. I will be briefer than I anticipated. However, I had the pleasure and privilege of reading my noble friend Lord Astor’s notes in advance of today’s Committee and I fully endorse what he said and agree with the position he has taken.

I well remember the discussions on the relevant Bill back in 1988, because I was then Minister for Sport in Margaret Thatcher’s Government and this subject came across my desk. It was at a time when sport was very much on the fringes of government. It was in the Department of the Environment and long before the days of extensive broadcasting rights, major television deals and the lottery. They were still years away. In fact, most of the work done then in the department was on the problems caused by football hooligans bringing shame to the national game and the country. Much has changed. The advent of sport as an intellectual creation was still to come. The commercial world I have just described really happened in the 1990s.

The speech of my noble friend Lord Astor that I read is absolutely pertinent, because we have to act on this now. The noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, was right. I will not talk about the gambling side of this. They both made a strong argument in favour of bringing sporting events into copyright protection. It is worth quoting the excellent brief by the WIPO:

“IP rights … and the legal protection they give … help to secure the economic value of sport. This in turn stimulates growth of the sports industry, enables sporting organizations to finance high-profile sports events”.


We already have precedent in taking action on exactly what my noble friend is looking for, when we brought forward legislation for the London 2012 Olympic Games specifically to protect the rights of the organising committee at that time. Only recently we have had legislation to the same effect with regard to the Commonwealth Games to be held next year. There is ample precedent for us now to consider this in the wider context of sport and to follow the ideas my noble friend raised.

I close by endorsing what he said, supporting what the noble Lord, Lord Lipsey, said, and apologising once again to the Committee. In nearly 30 years I have never missed an opening speech in a debate I intended to speak in. I would normally have scratched immediately but, given that I missed just a speech I had read, I hope I have the Committee’s forgiveness for being present in the Chamber for the winding up by the Minister, who referred to the speech I gave on the appalling humanitarian situation in Afghanistan. I end with further apologies and thanks to the Committee.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

3rd reading
Wednesday 17th November 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, while it is undeniably true that this is a better Bill leaving the House than when it arrived, in particular because of the addition of Clauses 14 and 15, it was never clear to me what problem the Bill was seeking to address and whether indeed it was necessary. My noble friend claimed that four benefits would flow from the Bill. If ever there was a case for post-legislative scrutiny to see whether those benefits in fact accrue, this is one of them, because I am less than clear that the considerable effort that my noble friend has had to put in to turning the ragbag of a Bill that arrived here into something that resembles a meaningful contribution to the area of professions was a good use of his time and that of his officials. As I say, I am quite clear that it is a better Bill, but whether the Bill was ever necessary is an open question.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of the British Association of Snowsport Instructors and all the winter sports organisations, which have taken a very active role and interest in the passage of this Bill, I thank the Minister for his consistent, collaborative and close support for the British winter sports federations, particularly with the newly-formed contacts in UK embassies, addressing issues such as work permits, local regulations and overt protectionism. We have taken one step forward as a result of the Bill being before this House, but that one step has been very much as a result of the efforts of my noble friend, for which many thanks.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

On the assumption that there are no more professions that would wish to thank the Minister, I shall do so. I am pleased that he is continuing to work on legislative consent, which is important. Too many Bills are starting to come through your Lordships’ House where legislative consent is not given. Given the nature of this Bill, it is important that the devolved authorities are working with it 100%, so I thank the Minister for his statement and associate myself with the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, about the role of frameworks.

It is something of a cliché to say, “The Bill leaves this place a better Bill”, but in this case the cliché is true. The Minister set out his view on that and other noble Lords have been more specific about its shortcomings. I will not go into them, but I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, who has had an ear to this issue from the beginning and took the very worthy decision to put the Bill on holiday over the Recess and come back with something that we were all better able to support, with some reservations from the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, whose whiply eye stared across at us when she thought we had talked for too long.

The Bill team has had a particularly rough ride on this, and I thank it for its work, as I thank the wider community that has fed into the Bill. I thank the ever-changing Opposition Front Bench for its engagement and work. Finally, I thank my colleagues, my noble friends Lady Randerson, Lady Garden, Lord Palmer of Childs Hill and Lord Purvis, as well, of course, and without whom we could not have survived, Sarah Pughe, our legislation administrator who drove us through all of this.

The Bill has a lot to achieve in that it needs to set out a structure for how the Government engage with the professions in future. It was quite clear that that engagement had not existed in the past, and perhaps this can be a stepping stone to a wider engagement between the Government and these regulatory authorities.

Climate Change: Trade Policy

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, if the noble Lord is referring to the establishment of the Trade and Agriculture Commission, that commission has now been set up in shadow form. It will fulfil the statutory duties which it would fulfil if it were on a statutory basis. As I have explained to the House previously, it is a technical matter that it is on a non-statutory basis. This is to allow some allowances to be paid to its members, which was not allowed for in the Trade Act. As soon as we are able to put it on to a statutory footing, we will of course do so. In the meantime, as I have said previously from this Dispatch Box, we will engage with that commission to make sure that its views, advice and recommendations feed fully into our trade policy considerations.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, given the UK trade policy of levelling the playing field to prevent unfair competitive advantages and our climate change ambition to encourage global cooling, thus heralding an outstandingly good ski season in the Alps, can my noble friend the Minister update the House on progress being made during the negotiations between the UK and European Alpine nations to allow the qualifications of UK ski instructors, mountain guides and related professionals to be granted recognition in EU member states—an area in which I know my noble friend the Minister has already done much excellent work?

[Lord Grimstone of Boscobel (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend is assiduous in raising this important matter with the House. I dare say that, as the weather gets colder, we may hear more from him on this topic. We are in regular touch with the British Association of Snowsport Instructors, British Mountain Guides and GB Snowsport over this. It is a complicated matter. We have now established a recognition arrangements team in BEIS to provide advice, expertise and support to these bodies. My hope is that, with continued negotiation with European counterparts, at some point we will be able to reach a satisfactory solution to this matter.

European Union Touring Visas

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Tuesday 14th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The Department for Transport has been working closely with the industry to see what unilateral measures the Government could take to support the industry. We are currently considering the evidence that we gathered from the call for evidence that was taken, as the noble Lord says, over the summer. We will endeavour to update the sector on our approach later this year.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, pursuant to the commitments given in this House by the noble Lord, Lord Grimstone, and the offers of assistance to the British Association of Snowsport Instructors by government on behalf of members of the Alpine Sports Group, does the Minister agree that it is absolutely imperative that the Government redouble their efforts to remove employment restrictions on British nationals working as mountain guides, ski instructors and employees of ski holiday companies in order to counter the negative impact of Brexit on British winter sports tourism and UK snowsport professionals?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

First, I wish my noble friend a happy birthday which, I understand, was yesterday. It was a shame that he had to spend it voting on the Environment Bill in the House, but I am sure that he enjoyed himself anyway. We recognise how important it is for UK businesses, including those in the winter sports industry, to be able to send their employees across borders quickly and easily. As I said in an earlier answer, EU member states are principally responsible for deciding the rules governing what work UK visitors can undertake in their own countries. However, we met in July with representatives of the UK snowsports organisations to try better to understand the constraints placed on them and to work with them to alleviate those concerns.

Human Rights Due Diligence

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Tuesday 20th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I thank the right reverend Prelate for sharing that research. The UK is committed to supporting indigenous peoples and local communities, who play a vital role in protecting forests. Our proposals in the Environment Bill will require UK companies to conduct due diligence based on the laws of producer countries, in particular those laws that relate to land use and land ownership.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

I declare my interests as set out in the register. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that human rights due diligence should not be mandatory for businesses given the modern slavery and supply chain requirements, the welcome shareholder demands for ESG transparency, and the widespread adherence in this country to the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

As I said in my initial Answer, I agree with my noble friend. Human rights abuses are a wide and varied issue, which is why the UK Government prefer the approach of encouraging businesses to follow the voluntary framework of the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd June 2021 Lords Chamber

My final point is that this list gives myself and my noble friends even greater concern about the interaction with the UK Internal Market Act. We have sought assurance that the carve-outs in that Act relating to the legal and teaching professions would be respected. It looks as though under this list they will not be. As we will be discussing later, when you add that to the Government’s position on the Australian trade deal, which includes automatic recognition of, for example, all Australian lawyers to practise anywhere in the United Kingdom, this is a direct override of the UK Internal Market Act. So, while the Government have more work to do, this should not be on the hoof, or while the Bill is going through Parliament. So I agree with the noble Baroness that this now needs to be paused.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 45 in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes, which makes provision for a regulator that does not regulate the profession directly but oversees the regulation carried out by other professional bodies. This refers precisely to the British Association of Snowsport Instructors, to which I referred at length at Second Reading. I too congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, on her excellent Amendment 63. I will speak in favour of it because it recognises:

“The appropriate national authority or the Secretary of State may by regulations amend”


the schedule,

“so as to insert additional regulators.”

These will not necessarily be regulators of regulated professionals by statute but may be regulators such as the British Association of Snowsport Instructors.

I highlight this case because I have received a letter, distributed in May by the department of the economy in the Canton du Valais in Switzerland. That canton has more mountainous regions than any other in the Alps, including many famous ski resorts such as Crans-Montana, Zermatt and Morzine-Avoriaz, to name but a few. The letter, sent by the department to ski instructors in Switzerland, said:

“The enforcement of Brexit on 1 January 2021 will mean major changes in the hiring of British nationals. We would like to inform you of the following changes to your sector of activity. As of 1 January 2021, British nationals can no longer avail themselves of the agreement on the free movement of persons. They are therefore subject to the foreign nationals and integration Act (AIA), its ordinance (AOA) and its directives (AIA directives). This implies that the employment of British nationals is strictly reserved for highly qualified persons and must meet the strict conditions of the applicable law. Thus, according to the LEI guidelines, the hiring of snow sports teachers can only be done for qualified teachers, provided that there is an exchange agreement between a partner in the country of origin and a Swiss institution. In addition, the teachers must come from non-EU EFTA countries where there is a long tradition of the activity in question. Therefore, it will not be possible to hire British nationals as ski instructors. The recruitment of ski instructors will have to be done at Swiss level, or within the European Union countries. The Foreign Labour Section team is at your disposal for any further information. Please take note of the above. Our best regards”.


That is a massive blow, announced in May, for all British ski instructors who have done so much over many generations to develop the sport of skiing, both in Switzerland and in Europe. It is also wrong. It says that the ski instructors should come

“from countries where there is a long tradition of the activity in question”—

but, of course, the country with the longest tradition of activity in Swiss-based skiing is the United Kingdom. It was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who introduced skiing to Switzerland after returning from one of his skiing trips in Norway. He brought with him some skis, and he felt that Switzerland was the perfect terrain for such activity.

This is extremely serious for the future of not just British ski instructors but all those who support them. Seasonal businesses and the travel industry have argued the case very strongly that most people who go skiing in the Alps are supported. When they go on holiday, they tend to book through a British company, to be met at the resort by a British representative and, often, to be looked after by British staff—cooks, cleaners and ski instructors, as well as water sports instructors elsewhere in Europe and bar staff. This is all at risk. So the UK outbound tourism industry is facing a crisis in this sector post Covid. Thousands of young people—some 25,000 UK young people support outbound tourism—are also at risk.

It is exceptionally important to cover the second point, but I appreciate that it is the first point, on the British Association of Ski Instructors, that is most pertinent to this set of amendments. Not only does it effectively regulate all ski instructors in the United Kingdom but, through its hard work and diligence with international regulators—many of whom are supported in law in their respective countries—it is in a position whereby, as a result of the situation in which we currently find ourselves, it is not given the support by government that is absolutely necessary to remedy this.

Of course, when we were looking at the previous clause, Clause 7, on the assistance centre, there was an opportunity to put a great deal of effort, time and commitment behind securing the interests of those people as we go forward. I would argue that it is very urgent. If that sort of letter is circulating within the Alps, we need to act now.

I very much hope that one of two things might happen. The Minister is a Whitgift-educated man, and Whitgift is an outstanding centre of sporting excellence. I am sure that he wants to go back there with his head held high, having defended the interests of ski instructors in this country. Either he can use his extraordinary powers of negotiating skill to return pretty swiftly to Brussels to sort out this problem—and, in the case of Switzerland, negotiate with his counterparts there—or he can give a commitment that he will strengthen the assistance centre to make sure that this is a priority for the help given by the assistance centre. There was much debate and uncertainty about whether the resources behind the assistance centre would be adequate when the Committee looked into that in detail. Alternatively, he can accept the amendments in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and my noble friend Lady Noakes. Those are the three options.

I very much hope that the Minister will recognise the importance of this issue, which is now critical and urgent, and in so doing be able to give a very clear commitment to the Committee today that he intends to take this forward. I hope that he will underline the urgency in the same way that I have tried to do for the Committee this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Randerson (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 58 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. This is about as modest an amendment as one could possibly imagine. It simply requires that all regulations that flow from the Bill are made by the affirmative procedure. The Government have acknowledged that most of the substantive changes to the law envisaged by the Bill are to be made by delegated powers.

The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has drawn our attention to what it sees as significant problems with the Bill in respect of the constitutional principles involved. The noble Lord, Lord Patel, drew our attention to this issue earlier in our debates this afternoon. For instance, the DPRRC draws attention to the Henry VIII power in Clause 1, which gives the Government power to amend primary legislation to make provision about a wide range of issues, including details of the approach to assessing applications from overseas applicants, guidance to regulators on how to assess them, fees to be paid and appeals.

The Government’s excuse is that these changes are to be demand-led, but the DPRRC does not regard that as a justification for Henry VIII powers. Paragraph 20 of its report points out that when those powers will be executed by affirmative procedure, that in itself will provide minimal scrutiny. Paragraph 23 points out that

“Ministers will have no duty to consult before making regulations.”

Clause 3 of the Bill gives Ministers powers to make regulations in connection with the implementation of international recognition agreements—another Henry VIII power and, this time, not subject to any conditions. We can already see the reality of this principle with the very broad agreement made between the UK and Australia in the recent trade deal, which specifies mutual recognition of professional qualifications in some detail.

The Constitution Committee makes the point that there is a long-standing constitutional convention that international agreements that change UK law require an Act of Parliament, so the DPRRC considers that Clause 3 should be removed from the Bill. Clause 4 also contains a Henry VIII power on authorising a regulator to recognise an overseas regulator. I go through this because I am pointing out that, in the face of this barrage of criticism from those in this House whose job is to safeguard the constitutional integrity of the UK, it is a very small request in this amendment that the blizzard of regulations that we can expect to flow from this Bill should be made by the affirmative procedure.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest, having in prior years been a long-standing member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I echo the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, that its report on the Bill and the use of secondary legislation makes telling and worrying reading. Before I cover that, I place on record my thanks to my noble friend Lord Grimstone for his response to my speech earlier and the constructive way in which he handled that. Also, it is important for the Committee to place on record that he has sought to catch the mood of the House rather than to counter it by speaking “note rote”. That is a notable parliamentary and diplomatic skill, and he has done it more capably than many Ministers that I have heard in nearly 40 years in both Houses. However, as he knows, that does not negate the challenges that the Government face with this Bill on its passage through the House.

Most of the substantive changes to this Bill are envisaged to be undertaken by the Executive. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has said, there is a creeping growth of secondary legislation. Some of it is understood in the context of the huge number of statutory instruments following Brexit, but both Houses need to review and reverse that process, otherwise we will be in a situation where the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature is out of kilter. Parliament must be consulted. My noble friend Lord Grimstone said that many of the Bill’s aspects would be under rigorous scrutiny with interested parties; it is even more important that they are under rigorous scrutiny with Parliament.

The noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Patel, when talking about Henry VIII powers, and the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, on the lack of detailed parliamentary scrutiny, made eloquent contributions to what is relevant not only to the very light-touch but important amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Sanderson but to the wider use of secondary legislation, because there is a significant difference between negative and affirmative resolution. With negative, there is no requirement to approve the SIs for them to become law, and with the affirmative, there is a far higher degree of scrutiny sought, with the three forms of high and appropriate scrutiny that are well known to every Member of the House. That is why, wherever possible, Parliament should insist that as much as possible is on the face of the Bill, and why resorting to secondary legislation should be kept to an absolute minimum. It is with those comments in mind and made that I believe, not only in the context of Amendment 58 but throughout the Bill, that we need to return on Report to make sure that there is appropriate parliamentary scrutiny throughout.

[Lord Purvis of Tweed (LD)]

My Lords, I support Amendment 60 in my noble friend’s name, and I will speak to Amendments 65,66 and 67 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Fox. This is a very short debate which in many respects reinforces points made in other groups, but it can be divided into two areas: first, the necessity of avoiding, where at all possible, using secondary legislation to amend primary legislation, as the previous group have indicated; and, secondly, to have an argument about pausing not just the Bill but the implementation of an Act before the Government have their policy ducks in a row.

Carbon Budget Order 2021

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 10th June 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Lansley, 30 years on from when we were both working for Margaret Thatcher. I was Minister for Energy, making a series of energy transition speeches, launching the first non-fossil fuel obligation order. Indeed, this issue has been about for many decades.

There are three issues relating to this order that I would like to draw to the attention of the Grand Committee and the Minister. The first, covered in the outstanding report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, focuses not on the carbon budget which, as has been noted, brings a welcome addition in the form of the inclusion of emissions from international aviation and shipping; instead, it emphasises the need for a much clearer policy framework to clarify government thinking on the policies that will be needed to deliver this and other carbon budgets.

I would be grateful if my noble friend the Minister could confirm when the Government intend to publish the net-zero strategy and say whether it will cover cross-departmental policies to include a significant electrification of sectors such as transport, heating and industry; the continued decarbonisation of the power grid; substantial improvement to energy-efficiency measures in all sectors; large-scale deployment of low-carbon hydrogen carbon capture and storage and GHG removal technologies; increased switching to low-carbon fuels, such as hydrogen or biomass in sectors that are hard to electrify, such as industry, heavy transport, aviation and shipping—to which he referred—and implementation of available abatement options across all sectors that deal with natural resources, for example through afforestation and low-carbon farming practices.

Without such policies—and I appreciate that a number of them have already been touched upon and announced, but not comprehensively, in advance of Glasgow—we will not be able to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. I am sure that my noble friend the Minister will appreciate that for the Committee to agree to this order it is always preferable to be able to review and analyse the mechanisms to be deployed to meet its admirable objectives. In a sense, without that, the order is exposed as a worthy objective but of no further consequence.

As part of that analysis, the second issue that I wish to raise with the Minister is exploratory in nature and follows on from the comments made by my noble friend Lord Lansley. There is no doubt that the increase in atmospheric CO₂ and other greenhouse gases is the greatest challenge that the world faces and it is truly global. CO₂ respects no boundaries. The CO₂ emitted in the UK will have exactly the same impact in, say, India as that produced locally and vice versa.

Many informed experts, including Sir Dick Olver and Simon Ayers, propose that a collection of leading nations promote a global scheme of capped production allowances, co-ordinated not at the level of emitters, which burn fossil fuels for their specific processes, but at the levels of producers of fossil fuels by reference to GWP content. The production allowance is to be progressively auctioned or levied by a periodically updated fee so as to deliver the cap. As has been very clearly stated by my noble friend Lord Lansley, to succeed this has to include the US, China and the European Union. Whichever form of policy we implement, it has to be global.

I believe that producer-level action has a number of clear and significant advantages and think we should still closely study them. One advantage is that the constituency is relatively constrained. There are some 100 global dominant producers; emitters number orders of magnitude higher. Another advantage is that producers are predominantly global and this would therefore facilitate global adoption. They or their customer chains are inescapably engaged with global trading and financial, consumer and political networks, which provide leverage to secure universal producer participation without the contravention of Paris sovereignty principles.

The advantage is the realisation of substantial production allowance proceeds at the international level whose allocation can incentivise participation in a scheme for the developed world as the least-cost route to securing our future and proceeds to selectively mitigate the impact of the carbon price. The developing world would see significant net inflows under such a scheme as proceeds are eventually allocated likely by population. Finally, producer nations would assist with the inevitable social and economic cost of economy adaptation. The production-level cap on carbon pricing ensures comprehensive, uniform application and no leakage for hard-to-monitor emissions. It is still worthy of consideration while we move forward with the revised European scheme and our response to it. I would appreciate hearing today from my noble friend the Minister whether there is an appetite for a production-level cap on carbon pricing.

Finally, and in raising this issue I declare an interest as chairman and partner of Buckthorn Partners LLP, which invests in the energy transition space, there is real concern that with the impending ban on gas-fired boilers in new-build properties from 2025—which is, as we always counted in the run up to the Olympics Games, only a matter of 180 Mondays away—an important requirement is to move to heat pumps.

Yet if you run a spell-check on Taylor Wimpey’s latest annual report, there is not a single reference to heat pumps in the document. That is not a criticism of Taylor Wimpey; it applies across the board to many of our leading housebuilders. Even the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy states that

“in many cases the up-front costs of low carbon technologies, such as heat pumps, are currently higher than the technologies they replace.”

So if we are going to end gas in new builds, what are the alternatives that are cost-competitive and practical, overcoming a broad range of barriers, including technical, market-pricing, behavioural, regulatory and socio-political? I would very much appreciate it if the Minister has any observations on this and can cast light on these questions because they will be critical to any new home standard guidance that the Government are looking to work on and will no doubt publish in the near future.

Professional Qualifications Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 25th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in sport, as set out in the register. I thank my noble friend the Minister and his officials for their respective briefings. The Bill, in particular Clause 7(1)(b)(i), is important to the sporting community and the future contribution that British ski instructors and mountaineers will make internationally, not least in the alpine ski resorts of France, Italy, Austria and Switzerland, to name just some of the key historic markets in which the UK has played a prominent role in the development of the ski industry and the present high-level qualifications of the ski instructor community.

At the heart of this is the importance of ensuring that our qualifications are aligned worldwide, and that acceptance of our professional qualification recognition can be applied in all markets. It is an essential step towards labour mobility and permit-free seasonal work. In the United Kingdom, the British Association of Snowsport Instructors—BASI—continues to take the lead through its recent work. In its alignment with the International Ski Instructors Association—ISIA—the world body for the protection and promotion of the interests of professional ski instructors, BASI’s qualifications are globally recognised. BASI, with ISIA, has been an active contributor to the agreement and development of international quality standards across national associations, rather than working rights—although some countries such as Japan choose to link ISIA-aligned qualifications with protecting working rights.

The current position is bleak for our ski instructors. Qualification recognition is complex. In some countries, the profession of snowsports instruction is regulated by law—but not in others. In the EU, there are regions within countries where this also varies, bringing yet greater complexity. Austria, France and Italy, for example, are currently not members of ISIA. Because ISIA has no legal powers to enforce its quality standards and because the trade and co-operation agreement between the UK and the EU allows member states to pursue their discretion as to whether they recognise third countries’ qualifications, it is essential and urgent that the Government ensure that there is ongoing recognition of BASI qualifications which, prior to the lost Covid season, historically led British ski instructors to play an important supportive role in, for example, the French Ecole du Ski.

The British ski industry has funded the growth and success of many ski resorts across the Alps, yet there are those who would ignore this contribution and fail to link it to allow qualified British ski instructors the opportunity to join their French counterparts who seek employment in the sector. Ski tourism from the UK involves 1.76 million holidaymakers, producing a total spend of £2.9 billion in ski holidays alone over the course of a full season. However, instead of embracing this spend, the reality is different. There are more closed shops in the mountain resorts of France, where numerous parochial mayors are only too ready to take the British spend and then exercise their authority and ban or do their utmost to discourage the French ski school under their influence and power from hiring outstanding British ski instructors, many of whom have provided significant added value to the profession and are there to satisfy the choice of British ski holidaymakers—especially those families with young children in the mountains who are more comfortable with their children being taught by a fluent English speaker. At the same time, the British Mountain Guides association is butting up against those delivering services in EU countries to be established as workers in those nations.

Remedying that market distortion will require strong commitment from the Government to stand full square behind our ski instructors and assist BASI with bilateral and multilateral negotiations to deliver continued opportunities. It is perhaps unrealistic to think that professional bodies such as BASI, the BMC or BMG are sufficiently resourced to manage negotiating with their counterparts in all 27 EU states, let alone to address any protectionist working-rights policies that might exist at either a federal or regional level. Whether skiing from Zermatt in Switzerland to Cervinia in Italy, or from Ischgl in Austria across to Samnaun in Switzerland, or traversing the 400-mile Portes du Soleil ski domain, which spans 13 resorts in France and Switzerland, British ski instructors now face a plethora of employment hurdles and obstructionist tactics to deter them.

Today, in the Swiss canton of Valais, which includes the resorts of Crans-Montana, Saas Fee, Verbier and Zermatt, a letter has been sent to the directors of ski schools setting out ways in which hurdles must now be put in the way of hiring British ski instructors by linking the recent decision with the UK’s departure from the EU and placing a raft of bureaucratic protectionist hurdles in the way of highly qualified British ski instructors who seek ongoing employment. There is now, for example, a requirement that federal government acts as an appellate body and local ski schools sign off the ski instructors they employ as qualified “teachers” without defining the Swiss qualifications required for such teachers as opposed to “ski instructors”. Much urgently remains to be done on that. Negotiations are essential to address the mutual recognition of professional qualifications, which in this case are regulated by law in the alpine countries and, of course, add to the work permit issues and growing barriers of entry in the world of ski protectionism, which equally need to be addressed.

We conceded the widespread advantages of EU membership during the exit negotiations. If one is a British citizen, regardless of what association one is a member of, one is not permitted to enter the common training test, formerly known as Eurotest. A BASI member with an EU passport is also not permitted to enter the CTT.

Sadly, the news for snowboarding is even worse. In 2006, BASI negotiated a bilateral agreement with France—the Satolas protocol—over the recognition of snowboard instructor qualifications. As a French snowboarder, if one wants to teach snowboarding, one must complete the Diplôme d’Etat de Ski moniteur national de skialpin qualification with ENSA, meaning that one needs to be both a top-level alpine skier as well as a top-level snowboarder in order to be able to teach snowboarding. The UK has been told by the French that they will no longer recognise the BASI snowboard level 4 ISTD qualification.

My noble friend the Minister might be tempted to take this opportunity to intervene, if that were permitted in this House at the moment, and say that this Bill is only framework legislation and that ski instructors are not regulated by law, unlike many of their international counterparts, and that this is a narrow Bill confined to the 160 professions that are regulated by law in this country. However, as my noble friend will know, Clause 7 does not restrict support to regulated professions but covers the work of the UK Centre for Professional Qualifications, the existing assistance centre, which is open to all British professionals, including ski instructors. It is here in Clause 7 where the Government could provide a public-facing service for advice and assistance to professionals on the application of their professional qualifications overseas.

After all, the BEIS-regulated professions team leads on the international-facing elements of the recognition of professional qualifications policy, which includes our ongoing work on the EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement, working with the DIT on the RPQ elements of FTA negotiations and the Government’s work to support regulators—and, I assume, UK unregulated but internationally regulated professional bodies such as BASI—to agree recognition arrangements with their overseas counterparts. That supports UK-qualified professionals seeking to practise overseas and UK professionals intending to work in other countries. The contracted-out UK CPQ can provide guidance, officials have informed me, on how professionals can gain recognition of their qualifications by overseas regulators and professional bodies. That is an excellent initiative and the envy of many countries, and I welcome it being included in the Bill as a legally binding requirement.

I therefore ask my noble friend to confirm that the Government will first assist with bilateral negotiations for international recognition of BASI standards through the UK CPQ, while simultaneously working on a master agreement. The UK CPQ can help CTT-qualified British ski instructors work abroad and navigate the systems with other countries through mapping qualifications and providing support on the ground. Within the department, the assistance centre and the recognition arrangement team will, I hope, help BASI with its overseas counterparts on both bilateral and multilateral deals to protect British ski instructors. That should see bilateral progress made at the same time as preparing for an application for an EU 27-wide mutual recognition agreement, deliverable with Foreign Office backing, to cover British mountain guides and snowsport instructors. I hope that it can be negotiated and one day annexed to the free trade agreement.

I hope the scope for taking forward these negotiations can be agreed with BASI and with government support. We may need to seek to strengthen the Bill to ensure that the future of British instructors is not to be a bleak one and that a legally binding commitment on the Government to report back to Parliament on work under Clause 7 is considered in Committee, covering negotiations of mutual agreements and replacement of the scheme under which the highest-level British qualifications—BASI level 4 for snowsports instructors—is recognised throughout the EU and beyond. Such mutual recognition should include access to the CTT, enabling ski instructors and mountaineers to apply for jobs in alpine countries, with pre-agreed high-standard professional qualifications as well as advice and help to navigate restrictions on the freedom to work, the need for work permits and movement within Europe. I fully agree with the strong representations of my noble friend Lady Fraser. This falls within Clause 7 and is not excluded as a consequence of ski instructors and mountain guides not being regulated by law in this country. In general, save for the extensive Henry VIII powers in the Bill, I fully support the measure.