Crown Estate (Wales) Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 7th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I too congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, on introducing this Bill and for the many decades that he has eloquently, and with no less a degree of commitment, sought to represent the people of Wales and serve their best interests. It is also a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Murphy. I know this as someone who was educated in Wales and was, for the past three years, chair of Haberdashers’ Monmouth School and a long-standing president of Welsh Rowing.

I should also declare my interest in Wales as set out in the register. I chair Amey, which has worked hard to ensure the successful electrification of the Core Valley Lines radiating out of Cardiff. I also chair Acteon, which is a subsea service company that has an active global interest in offshore wind, providing seabed-to-surface sustainable energy solutions for offshore wind.

My view is that, to maximise economic growth in Wales and generate employment in sustainable energy technologies, now would not be the best time to pursue this Bill. I emphasise “at this time”, because I would favour the Government entering into discussions with Wales in due course. I hope they will make it clear that any discussions on devolving the Crown Estate to Wales must not conflict with their priority in the five-year plan to increase the proportion of the UK’s energy generated from renewables to decarbonise the UK’s electricity system by 2030.

Investors look for stability. Growth is generated and new jobs are created only if there are two foundations in place: a stable policy framework and strong financial support with backing from government. The establishment of Great British Energy is under way and understood by investors. The publicly owned clean power company will work with the private sector to encourage greater investment in renewable energy, including offshore wind, which is so important to Wales. Similarly, the Crown Estate Bill underlines the Government’s commitment to support the development of offshore wind projects in seabed areas held by the Crown Estate. Time is of the essence to meet these targets and we need to increase grid capacity now to achieve the rapid expansion of offshore wind energy.

One major hurdle to these ambitious goals would be a minimum of three years of uncertainty; this would happen if we passed the Bill in this Session, for that is how long it took in Scotland. As we know, the process for Scotland was very complex and destabilising for investors. There were significant hurdles to overcome and they all took time: the legal and constitutional challenges; clarifying which functions could be devolved; and ensuring compliance with existing laws, which proved intricate. Assessing how revenues from Crown Estate assets would be managed and distributed in Scotland took a long time. Determining the value of Crown Estate assets and how they would be managed after the transfer was a significant challenge. Engaging with all the stakeholders, including local communities, businesses and environmental groups, was crucial and challenging, as differing interests had to be balanced in the management of assets. The Scottish Government then had to build the capacity to manage the new functions effectively, which involved training new staff and developing new management frameworks. Finally, but self-evident from the debate, the transfer was politically sensitive, with differing views among the political parties on how Crown Estate functions should be managed and by whom. All of that added to the time involved and the complexity of the process.

Further, there is a significant difference in this Bill. It is the wish of the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, that the legislation be subject to scrutiny by both Houses of Parliament and the Senedd. This additional level of approval will take yet more time, and the Delegated Powers Committee brought to our attention in its report that it did not consider scrutiny of the power by the Senedd appropriate.

It is not that I do not favour entering into discussions in due course, but it should not be at a time when it is so important to encourage investors to come into Wales. All this means that there would be less clarity for those investors today. More troublingly, even if the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, put into the Act that it would come into effect three years after it passed, there would be investor uncertainty, which would be damaging. These years of uncertainty would be an inevitable consequence of a move to devolve the Welsh Crown Estate and would need to be factored into investors’ assessments. I fear that they would steer investors away from Welsh waters to other parts of the UK, to the detriment of research and development jobs in Wales, employment opportunities in Wales, which I passionately believe in, and the Welsh ecosystem of business associated with developing wind farms offshore, particularly now when there is so much attention on offshore floating wind opportunities, on which decisions are to be made over the next three years.

I am not arguing that the policy, long advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, and echoed today by the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, should not be considered in future. It should be, but not at this critical time for the net-zero policy of this Government. I fully understand the political will to devolve the Crown Estate to Wales, but the arguments are currently outweighed by the potential risks to the UK energy market and investor confidence in Wales. Let us grasp the very real opportunities together and work for the success of Wales in the offshore wind energy market. I have never been more optimistic about the potential for Wales. Sadly, if it is introduced now, I see this Bill only damaging that prospect. Its time will come, but not now.

Crown Estate Bill [HL]

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth—words that I never thought I would hear myself speak. I was unable to attend the Second Reading but my noble friend Lady Bennett of Manor Castle did attend. After the previous day in Committee, I was approached by four different Conservative Peers who complained that a Green had not spoken on that day. One of those Peers was the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who has consistently, over the 11 years I have been here, complained that Greens speak too much. I hope to hear him express his gratitude today to hear a Green speak.

I support the amendment because, although I am highly suspicious of Conservatives and their environmental credentials, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, is absolutely genuine in his care for salmon—and I support that completely. This is a very sensible amendment, and I cannot see any reason for the Labour Government not to accept it, so I look forward to the Minister’s explanation of why they will not.

These issues of environmental impact and animal welfare standards should be an overarching staple of any check on any Bill or policy that the Labour Government bring forward. I am afraid that these days I have my doubts about the Labour Government’s environmental credentials. We have seen some horrific decisions already in the first 100 days, or three months, so I sincerely hope that the Labour Government will accept this quite simple but, I think, very necessary amendment.

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I too rise in support of the very modest amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Forsyth. Woe betide any Government who fail to accept an amendment tabled by four such eminent Peers as the movers of this amendment. I hope that the Government will recognise that this very modest amendment is worthy of significant support.

I say that it is modest because internationally, as has been pointed out by my noble friend, salmon farms are banned in multiple countries—not only the countries that he has mentioned but Denmark and Australia, to name two more. The practices that have led to these bans differ. Some are concerned that, with thousands of fish in each pen, salmon farms can act as a breeding ground for diseases and pests, which is undoubtedly the case, particularly with sea lice. Almost half the salmon in Scottish salmon farms are said to be infested with the common salmon louse. The consequences of that were made very clear by my noble friend in his opening speech.

There is another reason. In Argentina the main concern was that a provincial government voted to ban intensive salmon fishing after campaigners successfully argued that it would wreak environmental havoc, close down local fishing fleets and threaten the nature tourism established there.

Budget Statement

Lord Moynihan Excerpts

Thursday 16th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Moynihan (Con)]

My Lords, I add to the much deserved congratulations to my noble friend Lady Moyo on her maiden speech today.

I turn—unsurprisingly to the Minister, I am sure—to the closing part of the first part of her speech: namely, the decision to arrest the closure of public swimming pools in this country. First and foremost, my congratulations go to the Government on responding to the powerful campaign, of which I was a part, for additional Budget funding for swimming pools. Public leisure facilities with swimming pools are a critical component of the strategy to promote the nation’s health and the safety of children, and the £63 million package is indeed a welcome lifeline. I agree that Sport England is best placed to manage the one-year funding package, and local authorities will be able to avoid the wholesale closure of pools predicted in the absence of such support. Too many of our pools face underinvestment and further pressures, including escalating operational and maintenance costs, in the face of unprecedentedly high energy bills.

I suggest to the Minister that, of that £63 million package, the £40 million of the fund which has been allocated to decarbonisation and long-term energy efficiency is a masterstroke and should not be limited to a one-off, one-year policy. Pool operators that use imaginative ways of improving energy efficiency—for example, as the Minister mentioned earlier, capturing the heat generated in data centres—should not be rushed to compete in a one-off, one-year competition. I hope this initiative will be built on in the future as we move towards net zero. I also hope that the initiative taken by the Chancellor, a former Secretary of State at DCMS, will now be adopted in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland to support the many council pools that are under threat of closure there.

The backcloth to this announcement is not optimistic. If we look back at the decade which started with the London Olympic and Paralympic Games, in which I declare an interest, since 2010 we have lost nearly 25% of our public pools—we have lost 382 of them. Pools play a vital role in helping communities engage with sport and physical activity. The Covid pandemic and soaring energy costs accelerated the decline in those aquatic facilities at the tail-end of that decade which should have seen the sports legacy from the Olympic Games increase, not decrease, the number of facilities in the UK. More than 85 pools have been closed and not replaced since 2019—a sad decade indeed. That was made worse by the fact that the provision of sport, recreation and leisure activities by local authorities is a discretionary line item, not a mandatory line item as it is, for example, in Scotland. If we really want to address these issues, not just in swimming pools but in leisure and an active lifestyle, we need to recognise and concentrate on putting the right amount of money behind local authorities in particular and making that a mandatory, not a discretionary, line item.

This measure goes further. It recognises that swimming pools play an important role in our communities for all ages and all people. Swimming is more than a recreation; it is a key life skill. Physical inactivity is associated with one in six deaths in the UK and is estimated by the Government to cost the UK £7.4 billion annually. Deloitte has published research which shows that improving the level of physical activity in the workforce would benefit the UK economy by up to £17 billion a year.

As pointed out in the report by your Lordships’ National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee, which was debated on 9 February this year, it is recognised that the time has come to have a radical rethink of financial incentives and health policies, both within and outside the workforce. Members serving on that committee unanimously called for a national plan for sport, health and well-being. It was pointed out that successive Governments over decades have tried to address stagnating activity levels, with disappointing results. Nearly 40% of all adults are active for fewer than 2.5 hours not a day, but a week, which includes walking to work and the shops. It is not surprising that the noble Lord, Lord Willis, who chaired that committee, reflected:

“How is it possible that the UK is world-leading in elite and professional sports, that 3 billion people across the world watch our Premier League matches in over 187 different countries and that … at Olympics after Olympics … we have failed at grass-roots level to get more people from more diverse backgrounds to be more active, despite all the investment that successive Governments have made?”—[Official Report, 2/2/22; col. 1208.]


With schoolchildren facing growing obesity, with PE marginalised in the school curriculum and no longer inspected by Ofsted, with many primary school teachers getting fewer than three hours’ training in a three-year degree course, it is not surprising that physical literacy in most of our primary schools means nothing. With the closing of swimming pools and leisure facilities, tragically we have become one of the most inactive nations in the world.

When looking for solutions, the Chancellor could do worse than turn to New Zealand, whose strength at elite level is celebrated across the globe for a nation of just 5 million people and whose success lies in a strong emphasis on participation and opportunity for all. There is a pathway for all local communities and all people wherever they live in New Zealand to become engaged in sport, health and well-being activities. From that platform, podium success for the elite is delivered because every child is assessed in order to be able to deliver their potential and every community is offered help for health, well-being and physical activity.

However, the chancellor in New Zealand goes further. The country has a well-being budget that brings health, sport and well-being together into one policy framework, delivered to Parliament by its Finance Minister, who happens to be the Deputy Prime Minister. The only way in which that could be delivered here would be to move responsibility for sport and recreation into the Department of Health, as proposed by your Lordships’ committee. Being embedded in the Department of Health, by moving the 25 civil servants responsible for the sector from the DCMS to the centre of government, would enable the Department of Health and Social Care to live up to its name—not a department of treatment but a department taking an important lead in the area of health promotion, with all the benefits that are so needed in this country today.

The evidence is clear. Systemic reforms to taxation, regulation and policy can allow the fitness, sport and leisure sector to play its fullest role in getting the UK workforce moving more and supporting our national productivity. The time for action is now. A National Plan for Sport, Health and Well-being provides an excellent starting point and, like Sir Patrick Vallance’s first published report into the regulation of emerging digital technologies referred to yesterday, the sport, health and well-being report of your Lordships’ House should have all its recommendations accepted in full.

We desperately need changes in departmental responsibility, budgetary support and enlightened policy thinking if we are to address the steady closures of sport and leisure facilities, increasing levels of inactivity and obesity and the consistent, corrosive decline in participation and active lifestyles that we have witnessed since the wonderful hosting of the Olympic and Paralympic Games here in London, now over a decade ago. Helping to save our swimming pools is very welcome, but facing the wider challenges that I have outlined is long overdue.