Brexit: Aerospace Industry

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Berkeley

Monday 6th February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

The noble Lord raises such an interesting question that I cannot actually answer him, so I will have to write to him afterwards.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain why, in the case of the air and the medical agencies that have just been discussed, the Government are looking into how this can be integrated with Brexit, but they have already made a decision to leave Euratom without any debate at all? They are all the same kind of safety regulators: what is the difference?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I think that the difference is that the Euratom treaty was inextricably linked to the original European Communities treaty. When we exercise Article 50, it will automatically have an effect on the Euratom agreement, whereas the other issues that we are looking at are regulatory issues in which we have a much greater degree of discretion about how we work together in the future.

Energy: Storage

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Berkeley

Wednesday 1st February 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, battery technology could offer huge benefits to the way that we both generate and store electricity and could provide better capacity to our electricity system in the UK. It could also enable us better to deal with the more intermittent nature of some renewable energy. The work done by Imperial College indicates that the savings per annum for producing electricity in this country could run at between £1 billion and £2 billion a year, so it is very important that we get the regulatory system right.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lord, the Government recently announced a special tariff addition to people’s electricity bills to cover emergency stand-by generation to meet the peaks in—I think this was the wording—“weekday evenings”. Apparently, they are particularly targeting coal-fired power stations and nuclear power stations. How do you switch them on and off just like that for a peak in one evening?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I do not think that there is any intention to switch nuclear power stations on and off to cover short-term peaks in demand; coal-fired generation, on the other hand, is much more flexible in that regard. The whole point of these new smart systems is to allow much better demand management over the peaks and troughs of energy demand so that, hopefully, we will need less generation capacity in the future than we have done in the past.

Electricity Supply: International Interconnectors

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Berkeley

Thursday 26th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I am aware of the small modular nuclear reactor programme. I will have to write to the noble Lord to tell him where we have got to in that process.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain his answer on the Government wanting more nuclear? There are reports in France that there is a very serious shortage of power because so many of the nuclear power stations are on stop because they are breaking down—and that is before France starts operating its new one. Is it therefore not likely that there will be nothing coming from the interconnector for quite a few years, so should we not have alternative arrangements for the interim?

Green Investment Bank

Debate between Lord Prior of Brampton and Lord Berkeley

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I can give an absolute assurance that, in assessing which company or organisation might acquire the Green Investment Bank, the integrity and commitment of that company to the green purposes of the bank is crucial.

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

One of the interesting comments in last Sunday’s press about the issue was that Macquarie bank was one of the favourites to buy the Green Investment Bank. The Minister will be aware of Macquarie’s ownership of Thames Water, where it has stripped probably three-quarters of the assets of the company, to the extent that it will be unable to fund the Thames tideway tunnel. Is that a good example of integrity?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

As the noble Lord will know, the Government signed confidentiality agreements as part of the sale process and I cannot comment on any individual purchase or otherwise.