Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Lord Roborough and Lord Howell of Guildford

Committee stage
Monday 13th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)]

My Lords, it must be maddening for the Minister that a Bill specifically designed to exclude investment in the nuclear sector keeps on dragging back to the nuclear sector. This is for the obvious reason that these issues are completely and utterly inseparable. Investment in the energy sector generally has got to take account of all the different aspects, and nuclear is obviously one of them.

The Minister raised the question yet again of Sizewell C being a replica, and obviously he thinks I am being very boring on this, but can I plead with him to go back to his department and point out the obvious fallacies in the whole replica concept? If Sizewell C were to go ahead, it would be being constructed in the late 2020s and the early 2030s, probably for completion and producing kilowatts in the late 2030s or later. That will be approximately 25 years beyond the original design of Hinkley C, which was originally conceived under the Blair/Brown Government in the late 2010s.

Everyone in the civil nuclear sector knows that this is a highly fluid situation in which technology is rapidly developing and is going to create, along with the arrival of new things such as AI, a completely new set of designs, which will mean that by the late 2020s the Hinkley design will be frankly out of date. The idea that something that is 20 years old should be replicated is absurd in any advanced technology, and particularly absurd when it comes to electricity generation and civil nuclear power. If one just thinks about it for a moment, one will realise the replica argument carries absolutely no weight at all. I very much hope that any new nuclear installations—whether 300, 500 or gigawatt size—are definitely not going to be a replica of what has occurred at Hinkley C.

This is a view that is held very widely in France, where they say this design is unbuildable and should never be repeated, and it is the view of many other technicians involved in new nuclear development, which I strongly welcome in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but the idea that we should build a replica 20 years after the last one is frankly absurd. Please would the Minister go back to his department and point this out?

[Lord Roborough (Con)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendments in this group. It is clear from this and other groups that the mood of the Committee is in favour of fuller accountability to this House of the activities of GB Energy. This is not micromanaging; it is simply accountability and transparency. How the actions that are taken by GB Energy are directed, as is addressed by Amendment 66 in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and addressed more fully in Amendment 87 in the name of my noble friend Lady McIntosh of Pickering, is an essential part of that.

Financial markets have periods of irrational exuberance where greed triumphs over caution and experience. Most recently, we have seen the ill-fated wave of SPACs: special purpose acquisition companies. They are generally launched with great excitement and fanfare and with very loose objectives and end in disappointment. GB Energy is clearly a serious undertaking and its chances of success will be greatly aided by rigorous discipline and concentration of force. Applying strong parliamentary oversight of its directions can only aid that.

Amendment 86 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Cameron of Dillington, and Amendment 86A in the name of my noble friend Lord Trenchard, will help in the rigour of those directions. The clause as drafted is simply too vague, as has been pointed out by other noble Lords. There is great and relevant knowledge in the five bodies nominated between these two amendments. It would seem essential for all directions that the Secretary of State should access this knowledge to ensure that these directions are as beneficial as possible.

I ask the Minister: how specific do his Government intend those directions to be? Will they prioritise jobs, bills, net zero or the commerciality of GB Energy itself? Having such directions is vital to ensure that GB Energy does not drift off course and stays aligned with the Government’s will. But the risk of conflicting objectives is confusion and muddle.