Climate and Ecology Bill [HL]

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Committee stage
Friday 18th November 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

1: Clause 1, page 1, line 2, leave out “objectives in subsection (2) (“the objectives”)” and insert “objective in subsection (2) (“the objective”)”

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, In moving Amendment 1, I shall speak also to Amendments 2 to 18. I thank the Minister for turning up to answer today, although he is a Climate Change Minister, but he will notice that my amendments remove most of the climate change provisions from the Bill. This is not because I do not believe they were valuable measures. The problem with Private Members’ Bills is that you have to make sure that you have something that could pass the House of Commons. I am very hopeful that at the end of proceedings today, the Minister will see the value of what we are proposing and might even suggest that it be adopted as a government Bill and go forward to the Commons.

I shall give some background to the amendments and why we have tabled them. I plan not to make a Second Reading speech, but because I am speaking to 18 amendments in one area, I want to set out our position.

The UK is one of the most nature-depleted nations on earth. That is a horrendous thing to say in this House, when we are so proud of our green and pleasant land. More than 40% of UK species are in decline. More than 600 million birds have been lost from our skies over the past 40 years, which is a staggering statistic, and a quarter of UK mammals are threatened with extinction, including many once common species, such as hedgehogs and, in particular, red squirrels—an issue I have been looking at for a long time. Not only are they directly affected by climate change, they have also been affected by invasive species such as the grey squirrel. I know that this is an issue on which the noble Lord, Lord Benyon, has spoken on a number of occasions.

Therefore, as my amendments make clear, we should scale up actions that protect and restore the natural world. As the Government have themselves agreed on dozens of occasions over recent years, we need the right targets to drive action to reverse biodiversity loss and deliver a nature-positive UK by 2030. The problem is that when we lose elements of the natural habitat, including ancient woodlands, we will not be able to reverse that loss in our lifetime. We need to ensure that any actions we take are taken extremely seriously. Without action, we will be unable to tackle the joint nature and climate crisis that we face. Biodiversity is also critical to solving the climate crisis, as the Government, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee, the Climate Change Committee and countless businesses, NGOs, scientists and campaigners are telling us.

I am sure the Minister will welcome that this will now be a very simple Bill. Since Second Reading, we have focused on making it an ecology Bill, which would require the Government to do just one thing; namely, to require the Secretary of State to achieve a nature target for the UK—a target that would ensure that the UK halts and reverses its overall contribution to the degradation and loss of nature by 2030.

We have had many debates on the loss of nature, but the problem I have here is that we are talking about a halt only by 2030, yet we are seeing a massive degradation of species going forward. So how does the Bill set out how the targets should work? First, by increasing the health, abundance, diversity and resilience of species, populations, habitats and ecosystems so that by 2030, measured in against a baseline of 2020, nature is visibly and measurably on the path to recovery. Secondly, by fulfilling the Government’s existing obligations under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the commitments set out in the Leaders Pledge for Nature.

This is a straightforward, one could say almost procedural matter, reversing nature loss by 2030. With COP 15 around the corner, the Government would surely welcome this. The importance of this Private Member’s Bill is that it is oven-ready and the Government could give time to it and adopt it in law, so that it can be presented at COP 15 as the UK’s commitment.

I am certain that the Minister will not welcome a Private Member’s Bill with open arms—Ministers very rarely do—but I thank all the organisations, including Zero Hour and many faith groups, for their work on the Bill and for spreading the message. Whatever reaction I get from the Minister, the aim of reversing the decline in nature should be taken very seriously. I beg to move.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my conservation interests as a council member of the RSPB, a trustee of the Bat Conservation Trust and quite a few others; they are all on the register. I am delighted to see the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. I was not able to speak at Second Reading, but the amendments have improved the Bill by concentrating the mind on ecology. One of the problems we face is that, although we hear from some people about the biodiversity crisis, it can often be subsumed by the much bigger climate change crisis. I am sure noble Lords realise that the two are interconnected, but we have got to concentrate on ecology, the environment and so on.

My noble friend, who is a very generous and warm-spirited gentleman, may not be entirely happy with some of these things, but he will try to be as nice as possible, as is his way. However, I shall give some encouragement to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. Back in 2000, I think it was, in the other place, I introduced the Marine Wildlife Conservation Bill. I was number one in the ballot, and I was overenthusiastic. I had this wonderful Bill, which passed through the Commons—and was then scuppered in this very Chamber. What eventually came from the Commons to the Lords was a much reduced Bill, and then it did not pass, as the phrase has it. In fact, it led to the Marine and Coastal Access Act, which was much harder and harsher in the view of those lobby interests that tried hard to stop it. Sometimes, it is not a bad thing for a Government to let something go, so they can tick a box—not that any box-ticking exercise is going on here. There is a chance that, even if this Bill is not accepted, it will be a further reminder; it knocks the whole issue up the political agenda. In fact, the Government are not slow in trying implement a lot of measures. I am sure we will hear about them shortly from my noble friend.

We are talking about stopping the loss, but we should be increasing our biodiversity at the same time. Someone used a wonderful expression the other day: we are looking at biodiversity but if we are not careful, we will end up with bio-uniformity. We will have a lot more of the same species, and if habitats are not looked after properly, there might be—God forbid—a lot more grey squirrels, for example.

We must do something. This is a very important Bill. Many people have written to me about it, passionate people who want it to succeed. I feel a bit guilty, because they are probably being a bit optimistic about this Parliament’s processes. I hope I am wrong; we will see. They have my assurance, and I am sure that of many other noble Lords, that this issue will not disappear from the political agenda.

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I thank the noble Lord for bringing the Bill to the House and enabling this very useful and informative debate. I assure noble Lords that we remain firmly committed to tackling the twin challenges of biodiversity loss and climate change, and we will continue to implement the measures required to do so.

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this short debate on the amendments. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Randall, for talking about the difficulties in getting Private Members’ Bills through, especially with the Government not often being receptive. The purpose of Private Members’ Bills is often to prod the Government to do something that they should do as part of their obligations.

I thank the Minister for setting out the Government’s response. Many of their aspirations are worthy of the points set out in the Bill. However, considering that we are looking at reducing and reversing biodiversity loss globally, it seems odd that we cannot actually bring forward the Bill and place it as an obligation for the Secretary of State. The Minister mentioned that we are looking at a plan for 2023 but, if we are to achieve this by 2030, we are only seven and a half years away. By 2023-24, we will be talking about trying to undertake this in five years, which does not bode very well. While I recognise the enormous amount of work being done by Defra and its officials to try to move this forward, there will be a major issue coming up with the amount of money available to undertake these policies, especially in the present economic crisis.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Green, for his contribution. The Natural History Museum is one of our premier institutions, and I am very glad that Dippy is back—that was a great loss. I remember taking my nephew when he was five years old, and he almost fell over when he saw it; it is one of the most impactful exhibits I have ever come across. The scientific database is amazing; it is quite marked how differently the people who began the collections from 18th century onwards would have seen the world, compared to today.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, asked about the overseas territories, in which I know that she has a particular interest. I apologise to her, because I did not talk about the overseas territories; however, it is incredibly important that we work closely there, especially with introduced species. I know that albatrosses have been heavily impacted by the import of mice that eat chicks, so ensuring that they have the finance to halt some of the degradation that we have brought to those environments is important.

I thank the Labour Front Bench for its support for the Bill. I know that there are many from the Labour Party in the Commons who might look to take this Bill forward. I just say to the Minister that I do not think it is a party-political Bill. We did some research and 255 of his colleagues in the other place have already signed petitions to achieve the objectives in the Bill. Therefore, if it went to the other place, I think it would be quite a popular measure. I very much hope that the Minister could take that back and, before COP 15, maybe grab this proposal and give it government time. It would be a simple measure that would move towards the Government’s targets—maybe moving us a little further, though not a great deal.

Amendment 1 agreed.

Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out “objectives are” and insert “objective is”

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Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

5: Clause 5, page 4, line 11, leave out “The targets in section 1 apply” and insert “The target in section 1 applies”

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Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

13: Clause 7, page 5, line 22, leave out “, including for the implementation of the strategy”

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Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

14: Clause 8, page 5, line 28, leave out from beginning to end of line 10 on page 6

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Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

16: Clause 9, page 6, line 28, leave out “Climate and”

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Moved by

[Lord Redesdale]

17: In the title, line 1, leave out “climate and nature targets” and insert “the nature target”

Energy Prices Bill

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 19th October 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I will be extremely brief at this time of the evening, because although the Bill offers a cornucopia of issues that I would wish to speak on—I see the usual faces who participate in these debates and have followed many of the points raised, especially on energy efficiency—I have only two questions to raise.

We obviously support the Bill, and it is going through very quickly, but there has been a complete lack of consultation. One area that has not been covered in discussions is that, at the beginning of the energy crisis, it was energy retailers who were collapsing and causing a number of problems. Indeed, the Government have had to pick up billions of pounds’ worth of contracts from Bulb. My first question is: have the Minister or the department had any consultation with energy retailers? While we can focus on the suppliers and the issues they face, this is an area that will affect people in the way they are billed, especially with these measures.

A particular worry in relation to the Secretary of State—as mentioned, mostly recently, by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone—is that regulatory risk is coming down the line. You could almost envisage that the Government will nationalise the retail space; they do not have to go down through the generator space but could nationalise energy retailers. Has this been any part of the discussions? I must declare my interest in another field as the chief executive of a water retail company. We do the same thing in the water sector, but if I were working for an energy retailer at the moment, I would be extremely worried about the way that the department has taken powers away from Ofgem—which would have given the retailers some form of security—and given itself unlimited powers. So my second question for the Minister is: has he considered a sunset clause on the powers they have taken in this Bill, so that when we move, hopefully, towards a more stable form of energy pricing, Ofgem can be given back the powers that the Secretary of State has taken? This would give some degree of certainty to the energy retailers that their business model will not be destroyed.

The retail marketplace was in trouble before the price increases made their business case very difficult—one of the big retailers, npower, left the marketplace. Therefore, can the Minister first say whether there was consultation and, secondly, whether he would consider a sunset clause?

Winter Heating Initiatives

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Thursday 7th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

Well, we could spend the whole of this Question Time debating those issues. The noble Baroness makes some good points. I am sure that we will have some extensive discussions on those issues during the passage of the Energy Bill. On energy efficiency, I agree with her, of course. It is no secret that I have been working with energy suppliers to try to put in place additional energy-efficiency measures. We will continue to take those forward.

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

The simplest way of saving money on household bills is through insulation. Will the Government say whether they will redirect their successful efforts in insulating people’s roofs into draught-proofing people’s houses? Some 15% of the energy in a house is wasted through draughts, and a cost-effective method of dealing with that would be a national campaign to deal with draughts in people’s homes.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The House and I need no convincing of the value of energy efficiency. As I constantly remind the House, we are already spending considerable sums on energy-efficiency schemes, but I am sure that there is always more that can be done.

Pollution Prevention and Control (Fees) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2022

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to the regulations very briefly. This is one of the briefest SIs I have ever had to speak to, and it seems utterly bizarre that we are having this discussion about a very minor matter. This is an area I have interest in because I was on the Science and Technology Committee in 1996, looking at the decommissioning of oil and gas rigs. I even went out to one of the rigs at the time.

I want to raise two questions. When we conducted the original committee report and it was debated, it was assumed that metal pipework that was to be laid would be left in the ground and forgotten about. I declare my interest as chairman of the UK Metals Expo. I went to an interesting presentation on the value of the metal in the pipework in the North Sea. Of course, if it has value it is quite likely to be dredged up again, but that will have environmental issues associated with it. Is this being taken into account by OPRED? Is the value of that metalwork being assessed?

The second question concerns the Government’s long-term views on removing large structures. The very large gas rigs still in place are surrounded by drilling offsets, which was a normal aspect, but of course a lot of oil and pollution is then tied up around the base of these structures. If they are to be removed from the seabed, there will be a great deal of localised pollution in that operation. Have the Government looked at a recent report? No report had been carried out on that issue at that point.

I will finish there because it is so brief a report. On that basis I actually read the whole report, and I was quite amused by a slight error in paragraph 8.1 of the Explanatory Memorandum.

[Lord Lennie (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for putting forward these proposals, which are, as we have heard, rather inconsequential and unremarkable. There is nothing I want to add by way of commentary, but I have a few questions.

First, as the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked, can the Minister explain why the fee for specialists has risen at the same time as the fee for non-specialists has fallen? If it is to do with numbers, can he explain the reason for this change in the balance between specialists and non-specialists?

Secondly, the fees received have remained the same as the previous average, £6.2 million. In the Government’s assessment, is this is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future, bearing in mind what the noble Lord has said?

Thirdly, while I understand that no formal representations were made by the industry regarding OPRED’s plans, can the Minister say whether any informal opinions were given and whether the industry as a whole is satisfied by the proposals? I look forward to his response.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, as speaker number 49, I realise that we are now galloping into the last straight. As Graham Norton said on Eurovision, it is all about where you are placed. I very much hope that if I ask a couple of questions at this stage, the Minister might remember to answer them at the very end. Obviously, we were robbed by Ukraine, but that is another thing.

I was going to talk at great length about the Private Member’s Bill that I put in on ecology and climate. However, I have been lucky enough to secure eighth position so very much hope to regale the House at Second Reading—unless, of course, we have an election in the preceding time, which would derail that.

I will raise only two real points. The first is to ask the Government whether in this Session they will look at strengthening provisions to make sure that companies report on the streamlined energy and carbon reporting scheme, SECR. This was brought in by this Government to replace the carbon reduction commitment, CRC, and mandatory greenhouse gas reporting, and is the only measure that companies must take to report on their carbon. In their annual reports, companies must put down the scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, including gas, electricity and other fuels, principal energy efficiency measures and a metric to show whether their emissions are growing or shrinking. This measure, which is part of the law, is not being undertaken by many companies, just from a lack of knowledge. Companies understand ESOS, the energy savings opportunity scheme, which happens every four years, but many just do not understand that they should undertake SECR. This measure would help them understand not only the carbon they are producing but ways of limiting that and limiting their costs.

That leads me to the second point. I work with many companies understanding their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. Scope 1 emissions under the GHG protocols are direct emissions such as burning gas. Scope 2 are indirect emissions such as electricity, and scope 3 are emissions from their supply chain. Unless we move forward and get companies to understand how to report on this and how to convey that information down the supply chain, it does not matter what targets we have for reducing carbon dioxide; they will not be achievable. The majority of carbon that most companies emit is through all the actions undertaken in their supply chain.

I very much hope that the Government can look, maybe in the energy Bill, at ways in which BEIS could increase the knowledge base around how companies should understand looking at their carbon footprint through their supply chain. One of the problems I face, with a number of companies I work for, is that you go and talk to their boards and for the first 10 minutes it is all smiling and happy because they can understand scopes 1 and 2, but then it becomes more serious and you spend an hour talking about scope 3, at which point the very size of the climate change problem we face becomes understandable and very complicated for many companies. Are there any plans to increase work on SECR? Secondly, will the Government consider working through BEIS to help industry understand its scope 3 emissions?

Net-Zero Carbon Emissions

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I must first declare my interests on the register as a director of SECR Reporting Ltd and Climate Change Professionals, and as a board member of the Energy Managers Association. As part of the work I undertake I advise companies and local authorities on net-zero targets, the policies they would need to put in place to achieve that, and the strategies they would have to undertake. Unfortunately, it is very clear from this work that there is a massive difference between aspiration and reality. A lot of greenwash is going on as well. One local authority I spoke to came up with a 2038 target. I asked how it came up with that. It said, “Well, the authority next door made a 2040 target, so we thought we’d go with 2038.” On digging into the details, it had no idea how it was going to achieve that. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, set out, a large number of local authorities have made this pledge, but from the work that I have done very few know how they will achieve it.

I thank my noble friend Lord Teverson for bringing this debate forward. It is usually at this point that I go into a great deal of detail on what the Government are getting wrong. However, I have a solution that the Minister could take on board. He might be interested in it because—and I never thought I would say this—it would be based on the Conservative Government’s own policy and would be Brexit-friendly, but I will go into that a bit later. It could have a major effect on how companies understand their carbon targets.

I know from working with companies that there is a problem, because the net zero carbon targets are quite complicated. They are based on reducing emissions in scope 1, scope 2 and scope 3, based on the GHG protocol. I will run through them.

A lot of companies understand their scope 1 emissions to a degree—obviously, that is their electricity use—and if you have half-hourly data, that can be useful. However, I have been utterly amazed at how even large companies do not have a handle on how much energy they use. Gas is fairly simple, as it is based on therms. Transport fuel, however, is not simple to work out; most of the energy managers I work with have never had to deal with transport before. I was talking to a company—a call centre—which had 140 spaces in its car park and which was looking at the energy used in the building. I said, “The energy used in the building is actually a fraction of what is being used in your transport requirement to get everybody into the office at any time.” Of course, understanding how you calculate transport fuel is difficult, because you could do it on mileage, litres or cost of fuel, and a number of calculations need to take place. Many organisations have left transport out.

Scope 2 emissions are those that you have bought on behalf of another company or organisation, and some companies are getting that under way, especially with grey fleet. I have been amazed by how local authorities do not understand the emissions from grey fleet; that is, cars that are used as company cars. Of course, that is a very large emission factor that often does not get added to the emissions of the company itself.

On scope 3, which is the supply chain, very few apart from the largest companies have an understanding of the emissions from their supply chain, and of course that supply chain could dwarf any emissions they have taken out. When you work with companies it is often interesting to realise that we really do not understand our scope 3 emissions. One of the areas that is of particular interest is IT. I was talking to a company which was marketing and which had worked out how much electricity it was using on its computers, but it then proudly told me that it had sent 1 million emails that month, which of course has a massive effect on servers around the world. Gaming is horrendous for that, as is the mining of Bitcoin. However, many companies just do not understand the cost of computing, which is a real issue because it is very difficult to get that information. Amazon will give it to you, while Microsoft will not, so companies have a difficulty in understanding their emissions.

Once you have understood the emissions, that is not the problem; the problem is then building policies around them and understanding what those policies should be. A lot of companies and local authorities have made blank commitments to go to net zero by 2030, 2040 or 2050, but that policy is not linked to any deliverable outcomes. Obviously, the next step is to develop a strategy for going forward from that. We also talk to companies about responsibility: who in the company is responsible for delivering those directives? This seems to be a problem not only for companies and local authorities but for government. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that perhaps we should have a Minister in charge of climate change, but we had that and then DECC was taken out, which was short-sighted. Perhaps we should look at reinstating a department on that basis.

Once you have a policy strategy and somebody responsible, companies need to understand that getting to net zero will have costs, so they will have to look at a CapEx solution. A lot of companies are just not prepared to spend money, even though they realise that in the longer term this could save them in energy savings. They also need to look at OpEx. Companies need to start understanding that what they are responsible for in managing their organisations has often been farmed out to third parties, especially in facilities management areas. Therefore, you might be running buildings, the contracts for which are based on a like- for-like replacement rather than replacing old equipment for more energy-efficient equipment.

We also look at transport, where there is of course the Government’s target to move to electrification. This is a major area of greenwash in a way, because there is, I think, a lack of understanding of how significant this will be for our electrical infrastructure. I talked to one company that had 100 car parking spaces and which said, “We’re going to electrify our fleet and we’re putting in three charging points.” I said, “That means you could probably charge nine cars during the working day—and you have 100 cars out there.” They then said that they would put in a lot of charging points. But, of course, if you put in more charging points you need a bigger transformer, and you need more electrical supply. At a lecture recently, I was interested to learn that those fast-charging points on motorways have an energy use equivalent to 250 houses. We realised that when we put them in, we were talking about a small village’s energy supply just for that.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, talked about behaviour change. One area where we have been trying to work with companies is in getting people to realise that this is not just a policy. If we are to hit net zero, everybody in the company has to understand how they have to change their energy usage.

I have set out these small problems—slight mountains to climb—but I did say that I would suggest a solution to the Minister that could be helpful, which is to change the SECR reporting regime. In 2019, the Government brought forward a new GHG reporting regime: streamlined energy and carbon reporting, or SECR—it does not really roll off the tongue. It basically means that large companies—large as defined under the Companies Act—must report all their energy data, show which metric they have used and do an intensity metric. They also then have to list all their principal energy-efficiency measures and whether any are not undertaken. Each company has to do this by law and then report it to Companies House, with the information made available in its company report.

A very simple change that could be done very quickly through a statutory instrument—I know that PwC is doing some work for BEIS at the moment looking at whether this could be brought forward—would be to make it an obligation on companies to put their net zero plan into their company reports. It could be done in a way that was not very expensive. To make it Brexit-friendly, ESOS—the energy savings opportunity scheme—which was part of the European directive, could be scrapped, which would create a saving to companies. Some of the information that was needed for ESOS could then be incorporated into SECR, which is a second obligation on companies.

If companies were required to put their net zero plans into their company reports, it would allow stakeholders to understand where they are going forward. One area that we found most interesting is that companies are finding that their stakeholders are not just their shareholders any more but their employees, their customers and, interestingly, their banks, finance companies and insurers, which look very carefully at sustainability and climate change criteria when they are looking at investment opportunities.

Would the Minister be open to talking to his officials about whether SECR could be changed to include the net zero target and looking at whether we could introduce a statutory instrument to achieve this? If a statutory instrument were brought forward, it would mean that companies—before COP 26—would start having to set out their net zero plans. The cost would not be high, but it would mean that Britain would be a world leader in moving forward on how companies can adapt to climate change.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is not on the call, so I call the noble Lord, Lord Stunell.

Greenhouse Gas Emissions (Kyoto Protocol Registry) Regulations 2021

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, as this is an SI, there is obviously little we could do to change it, even if we wanted to, but it makes sense that this SI goes through post Brexit. Its importance is its link to the trading regime. I have always been a sceptic of the trading regime, unlike my noble friend Lord Teverson—we have both been in the House long enough that we were debating this between 2006 and 2009. However, trading has taken place, with differing levels of success. A friend of mine was a carbon trader and I asked him how he made up his mind whether to buy or sell. He said, “It’s very simple. When it’s sunny, I sell, because people want to buy on a sunny day, and when it’s raining, I buy, because people want to sell.” It was as simple as that, and he made quite a lot of money using just that simple methodology, which shows that it had less to do with the actual price of carbon and more with how traders felt about carbon on that particular day.

As we are moving to a registry, I will ask the Minister one thing. We now perhaps have the opportunity to become a little innovative in the way we move forward. Could we not look at a registry not just of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases but based around methane? Methane constitutes 23% of our emissions and we could do a great deal to focus on it. There is a great deal that we could do internally on the methane marketplace that would have a major effect on climate change, because methane production is not always linked to fossil fuels.

Carbon-neutral Homes

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Thursday 10th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I understand my noble friend’s scepticism on this, but I point him to offshore wind, the cost of which has plummeted over recent years. It is possible that we can meet the standards, but of course we have to be fully aware of the potential for cost overruns in the future.

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interest in the register as the CEO of the Energy Managers Association. Covid has led to millions of employees working from home, and while this would not have had a major effect during the first lockdown, due to the lack of heating, the second lockdown is of course during the winter and there has been a marked increase in the amount of gas used by people working from home and putting their heating on at times when they would not have in the past. Have the Minister and BEIS looked into the amount of carbon emissions that this has led to in the UK? Are plans afoot to allow companies to install energy efficiency measures if they are contributing to the fuel cost—as they can under the Treasury rules—so that the home becomes a place of work?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord makes some interesting points. I think we are all aware of the limitations of working from home, but companies should be as open and transparent as possible in their reports about the energy and emissions that they are responsible for. This includes employees who work from home.

Electricity and Gas (Internal Markets and Network Codes) (Amendment etc.) (EU Exit) Regulations 2020

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I plan to be brief at this point on a Thursday night because electricity markets are often seen as dry and boring. Considering the recent moves on Northern Ireland, it seems the Government are moving headlong to a no deal. This was counted as an outside possibility until now. If it does happen—and the legislation is preparing for it—the tariffs on electricity will go back to World Trade Organization, I believe. Can the Minister say which body will be responsible for the management of those tariffs and how they will be charged? With the French and Dutch interconnectors, we are looking at between 6% and 10% of our base load capacity coming from France especially, with the nuclear power stations there. Is it going to be National Grid, will it be Elexon? It does not seem clear in the Government’s memorandum, which gives the impression it is business as usual. Can the Minister say what calculations have taken place? Who calculates the tariff? Can the Minister give an indication of what the tariff will be? Obviously, he will have that information to hand. I see the Minister laughs, but I do not see why considering we are talking about only a few months ago and it is integral to the price of electricity in the country. Consumers will have to bear the burden of this tariff. Why has that not been worked out and understood? Surely, BEIS has undertaken that work.

Second, looking at the paperwork and working with some of the organisations, such as Elexon, it appears that most of the forward planning on electricity marketplaces is based on business as usual and that we will just slot in quite happily with the European marketplace. Under a tariff system, I am not sure that is feasible because there will be a price differential between member states and the UK. Therefore, we will not be able to take part in these organisations. Will the Minister give an indication of the future in a no deal situation for such initiatives as project air, which is looking at an integrated European marketplace?

Science Research Funding in Universities (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Redesdale Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Grand Committee

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, I must first declare an interest. It is a financial interest; I am not an eminent vice-chancellor or visiting professor. Two of my children—my son, Bertie, and my daughter, Clementine—are at university or are going to university. I mention this not just as a point of paternal pride that they have managed to do something I really am not intelligent enough to have managed myself, but because they are both studying mechanical engineering.

As a side point, despite the complete nightmare of the grading system, which seemed to cause particular problems for those taking sciences, my daughter has a place at Manchester. During the open day visits, it was clear from the people in the audience how we are failing at dealing with the gender gap in the STEM subjects. We should be looking at that.

I raise this as a financial issue because the report talks about differentiation in fee structures. It is a not inconsiderable amount considering that many students will come out the other end with considerable debt. It is also an issue because many of those debts are met by families. For the poorest students, that will be a real issue. It will be an issue of whether they can take a STEM subject or will have to look for a humanities course at a cheaper price.

Universities are clearly caught between a rock and a hard place on this, but I found the report an interesting example of just how schizophrenic universities are. The problem is, are they there for the teaching of students or are they bodies for the creation of new knowledge? They cover both, obviously, but universities’ finances are based far more on the first, although they are subsidised by the second.

I will not go into research, because that has already been covered a great deal. It is something of a perennial. I remember being a member of the Science and Technology Committee when it looked at this subject back in 1993. But obviously we are living in a new age now.

I do not believe that the Minister will be able to answer any questions on Brexit, because we seem to be heading straight for a no-deal situation where all bets are off, but I will say that we are in a new world not just because of Covid but because, as my son’s course has shown, almost all the courses and lecture notes are now online. We are moving to a situation where universities may in future be far more on the web than in person.