Oil and Gas: Subsidies and Licensing

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2022 Grand Committee

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords—

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, can we have a little order? Also, I need to remind future speakers that the Minister needs to be speaking by 3.47 pm.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Offord, to his place and look forward to hearing his—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for stepping in. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Offord, to his place and look forward to his maiden speech. I cannot help noting, although I am very pleased we heard his point of view, that the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, was allowed to speak having arrived about three minutes late, when only recently in a debate on the nuclear industry, the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, was refused the opportunity to speak despite arriving at almost exactly the same time. There cannot be one rule for members of the governing party and another for members of the Opposition. I hope the Government Whips will take note of that. However, I am glad we heard from the noble Lord.

The urgent need for the North Sea industry is not further subsidies or contradictory policy-making by a Government who on the one hand say that they are in favour of net zero and on the other continue to endorse the maximum economic recovery policy. The urgent need for the North Sea industry is transition. If there are tax breaks and subsidies, they must be directed at transitioning that skilled workforce out of the oil and gas industry, because that fossil fuel industry is coming to an end. That is what will happen. It is the reality, and those who think they are standing up for workers in the industry by backing further drilling are simply sending people down a blind alley.

As I mentioned during debate on the Financial Services Bill, the last part of my title—Lord Oates of Denby Grange—is taken from a colliery in Yorkshire where my grandfather and uncles all worked as coal miners. I have great respect for the people who work in the fossil fuel industry; they powered our industry and heated our homes, often working in very dangerous circumstances. However, we know what happened to the coal industry: it came to a dead stop. There was no proper transition and, as a result, communities were stranded and suffered massive social and economic deprivation that remains to this day.

Let us not pretend we are doing any favours if we go down this maximum economic recovery route and keep going until the dead stop happens. It will happen; as the International Energy Agency has stated, we cannot burn all the reserves we have already identified if we are to have any hope of keeping to 1.5 degrees. We cannot do it. The argument of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, is that we have this stuff so let us burn it. If everybody else takes the same view, we will get nowhere near even 2 degrees but go far beyond it. That is not a problem for the noble Lord, because these things do not matter to him. He thinks the whole net-zero thing is ridiculous and absurd, and he calls anyone who stands against that an eco-fanatic. But, for those of us who care about it, there must be a logical policy.

The Government have set ambitious targets for net zero which the Liberal Democrats welcome. However, it is no good having those targets if your policy tools contradict them. Maximum economic recovery in the North Sea, and the tax subsidies, absolutely do that. The noble Lord, Lord Lilley, said that the reserves in the North Sea should be used for the benefit of the people. The benefit of the people would be to keep those reserves where they are, not to burn them. It would certainly be to the benefit of future generations.

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

How long—or how shortly—does the noble Lord think it will be before we cease to use gas, both to heat homes and as the natural source of power to deal with the intermittency from renewables? Most people think we will still be using it in 30 years’ time.

[Lord Oates (LD)]

We have to transition away from using it by 2050, or at least without abatement of it. Exploiting the North Sea resources when we are trying to lead the world is not going to work. It is rank hypocrisy, and it is deeply damaging.

Let me just pick up on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, made about energy costs. It is a complete fallacy that the way to reduce energy costs is by scrapping all the green levies, as the GWPF and other people want to do. If you look at what happened to energy costs between 2010 and 2020, in terms of the bills that people paid, you see that total household expenditure on energy fell. It did not rise. One of the reasons it fell was because the levies funded insulation of properties and measures to reduce consumption. Consumption of gas and electricity fell significantly during that time. In fact, the eco levies save people money.

I understand the position of the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, of not worrying about net zero. I do not understand the Government’s position, because they claim to worry about net zero but take actions that show the exact opposite.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Oates Excerpts

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech started with Brexit and ended with the estimates and other measures but, in reality, we all know that Brexit is the beginning and will most likely be the end of this Parliament, and that is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because the UK has so many pressing challenges from which we will be distracted by a process which will do us incalculable harm. It is a tragedy because already the country is poorer. The slide in sterling, the consequent rise in prices and stagnation in wages have made us all worse off. It is a tragedy because we are more divided than ever. The referendum split us almost down the middle. The election, which was supposed to deliver a decisive mandate, instead left the Prime Minister and Government weakened and served only to underline the continuing division in the country. Today, the Conservative Cabinet is unable to maintain even the semblance of a united front on Brexit. Its divisions are daily played out in public for everyone to see.

It is a tragedy because as a country we are already diminished, our integrity sacrificed to the absurd and morally bankrupt notion that you can or should carry out your negotiations on the backs of the lives of millions of fellow European citizens who, because of our failure to honour our promises, live today in uncertainty and continuing distress. We had a solemn obligation to provide those European citizens with the guarantees that the Vote Leave campaign had promised them. By doing so, we would also have helped to provide the reassurance that British citizens in the EU also so desperately need, but we did not. Instead the Government waited more than a year and then, on Monday, published a policy paper that offers no certainty at all. Instead of upholding our promises to EU citizens, we have offered a set of proposals for negotiation and nothing more. It is, therefore, worth recalling the commitment that was made by the leave campaign; on this at least they spoke clearly and unequivocally:

“There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present”.


There is no ambiguity in that, no caveat that these matters would be dependent on negotiations, no qualification at all. Every Brexiteer in the Government, every Brexiteer in the House of Commons and every Brexiteer in this House should be reminded of that statement every single day. It is their badge of shame, but they have hung it around the neck of this country.

Though I decry the failure to provide certainty, I at least give a muted welcome to the publication of the Government’s policy paper on safeguarding the rights of EU citizens and British citizens in the EU. I do so because it at least sets out some sort of framework for the rights that EU citizens will have post-Brexit and a bad deal, as we know, is better than no deal at all. The Government state in their policy paper that a fair and reasonable fee will be charged for EU citizens gaining settled status in the United Kingdom. I put it to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, that as the EU citizens concerned find their status changed and their lives disrupted as a result of a decision in which they had no part, the only fair and reasonable fee is no fee at all. If he will not accept that, will he at least agree with me that the current fee of nearly £2,000 for indefinite leave to remain would be neither fair nor reasonable but an outrage?

The gracious Speech tells us that repealing the European Communities Act will provide certainty for individuals and business, when it will do the opposite. It tells us that legislation will ensure that the United Kingdom makes a success of Brexit, when legislation alone can do no such thing. It tells us that a new national policy on immigration will help achieve that success, when it is far more likely to impoverish us all.

The people who will pay the price for Brexit in lost jobs, squeezed living standards and reduced opportunities will not be the champions of Brexit—the super-elite of proprietors and editors, offshore millionaires and former Cabinet Ministers. It will be, as it always is, those who can least afford it who will have to pay the price for the ideological zeal of others.

I hope and pray that in this Parliament some sense will return and that the majority who could ensure a sensible and pragmatic approach to Brexit will come together across party lines and prevail. I will make my contribution tonight by supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in the Division Lobby.