Great British Energy Bill

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I have a short but crucial amendment in this group—Amendment 51A—which deals with the key issue of employment. It rather shocked me when I checked the wording of the Bill that the words “employment”, “skills” “training”, “retraining”, “upgrading” or even “fair transition” are not mentioned in it. At one of his briefing meetings, I asked my noble friend the Minister for a clear chart of the various bodies we are now envisaging having influence on energy policy—NESO, Ofgem and now Great British Energy and Great British Nuclear. None of them have as a central mission to provide the new and upskilled workforce that will be needed to deliver both the grid and the new forms of energy which will take us to clean energy by 2030 or 2035.

I also looked through the previous Act of the last government—the Energy Act 2023—which is 473 pages long. It provides much of the body of approach to energy policy which the new Government have largely adopted. From a rough-and-ready word check, I do not think that the words “employment”, “skills” and “new skills” appear in that either.

If we are to deliver a clean energy system, from generation to delivery, and energy efficiency in our homes, offices and buildings, as well as a transformation of our industry and transport, we will need a much more skilled, or differently skilled, workforce than the one we have at the moment. That requires somebody to take responsibility for that. None of the bodies has that as one of its central tasks. That needs to be remedied before this Bill disappears from this House.

We need to ensure that those currently employed in sectors of energy which will reduce in gas and oil have a high level of skills which will be relatively easily transformed into skills delivering the new clean energy—or those further down the line delivering home efficiency and other forms. We do not have that in the energy policy. It is mentioned in passing in one of the White Papers, but it is nowhere in proposed legislation. This amendment would at least put it in the statement of priorities required to be issued by NESO early in the transition. It will need following up; it will need more than that. It will need substantial intervention, provision of retraining, apprenticeships and skills, and redefinition of jobs if we are to achieve the timescale and trajectory to net zero that we are envisaging.

This amendment, which is supported by the TUC, would put a marker down that we need to address this issue. Without a transformation and extension of the workforce, we will not deliver the full energy system in anything like the timescale currently envisaged. Can my noble friend the Minister ensure that the Government come back with some way of reflecting in this Bill that employment and the transformation of employment are an important priority, as is assigning responsibility for them to one of the many bodies now in this arena? It may not be regarded by many as central to this Bill, but it is central to the delivery of the outcome. I put down this simple amendment at this point, and I will return to it at a later stage.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, there are a number of interesting and thought-provoking amendments in this group. I am delighted to follow the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in speaking to his. I will speak to my Amendment 55 and ask the Minister to respond on a number of issues when he winds up on this group.

I felt that this amendment was necessary to probe the thinking of the Government. Clause 5(7), on strategic priorities and plans, says:

“The duties to consult imposed by subsections (4) to (6) may be satisfied by consultation carried out before this Act comes into force”.


What is the timetable for those consultations? Can the Minister assure the Committee that they will be meaningful and last, as in the terms of my Amendment 55, for the usual 12 weeks—ideally not covering the summer or Christmas holidays, which is so often the case? Will they be meaningful and be over a 12-week period, and will they consult farmers, fishermen and local communities?

Why are those three groups important? With farmers, as the Minister knows because we debated this in Questions and earlier in Committee, the Government are minded to take over highly productive land—often grade 2 or 3 land—for solar farms. In preparing for today, I have been issued information from David Rogers, an emeritus professor of ecology at the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford. He is not personally known to me, but he has some very good figures.

I think the Government are underestimating, as of today, the amount of agricultural land that will be taken out of useful production. Let us look at the five most affected constituencies. In Newark, it is a land take of 7.9%. In Rayleigh and Wickford—I declare that I represented Rayleigh many years ago in the European Parliament—4.9% would be taken out of production. Sleaford and North Hykeham will have a reduction of 4.62%. In Newport East, the figure will be 4.6%, and Bicester and Woodstock will see 3.96% out of production.

We have to have a very grown-up debate about what the land use framework will be. I do not think that it will be published before this Bill passes, but I pay tribute to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, in this regard. She has put an inordinate amount of work into this. There will be other opportunities to discuss the impact on farming. I hope the Minister will give us an assurance today that farmers will be included in the consultation and say what form the consultation will take.

I turn now to fishers and the spatial squeeze they face. The National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations provided a briefing, at my request. It is the first to understand that fishers must share the sea, and if other industries expand so much that fishing is squeezed out of its traditional grounds, they obviously do not want to see the industry collapse. In the NFFO’s view, it is a mistake that when a new wind power station is built or protected areas are designated, the fishers who previously worked there are deemed simply to go and fish somewhere else; that is often not the case. Fish can be caught only in the places where they live and breed. They have been caught commercially in UK waters for centuries, and the areas where they feed, migrate and breed are well known, so expecting displaced fishing efforts to simply resume somewhere else entirely misses the point.

In the NFFO’s view, there is an absolute need for a strategic approach. The UK’s needs for food, energy, communication, transportation, waste disposal and recreation all intersect at sea, and the interests of fishers —and, in fact, of all users—can be met only with a strategic approach to using the marine space. How will the Government use the consultation to ensure that that is achieved, and that fishers’ voices will be heard when such a plan is developed, to ensure their future?

I turn to the work we did on the EU Environment Sub-Committee, chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. We took evidence on the environmental impacts of these developments, particularly offshore wind farms and their future replacements, on marine life and the future of the fishers. The NFFO views with increasing concern the environmental impacts of such vast industrial developments in the sea. It makes a plea that, as we go forward, any strategic overview will be consulted on. A ban on fishing is obviously not an option, in its view. We hope that fishing will not be automatically damaged through any development of the marine environment, but that common ground will be found, so to speak, in any consultations on developing strategic priorities and plans within the remit of Clause 5.

I turn finally to local communities. It is regrettable that in the past, planning permission has been granted separately for offshore and onshore wind farms, because then, a separate planning application takes place, particularly for offshore windfarms, wherever the energy reaches the shore. That poses all sorts of problems that really came to life during the general election. Perhaps it is no surprise that we have a Green Member of Parliament for part of the Suffolk coast, because if you are going to have a large substation created separately from the original planning application for the offshore windfarm, that poses problems for the Government—whichever Government it happens to be.

Also, there is alarm that the Government are planning to take back control, so to speak, of planning decisions. Under the proposals the Government envisage, we are taking the decision away from local communities— I pay tribute to all who have served and who continue to serve as local council representatives—and giving it to the Secretary of State. That is wrong, because local communities should be asked to decide where these electricity substation superstructures will be placed and, just as woefully, where the overhead pylons will be placed. I still bear the scars, as the then newly elected Member for the Vale of York, from when we were deemed to take an additional, second overhead line of pylons. This does not go down well with local communities.

I hope the Minister will look kindly on the points I have made and listen to the voices of the farmers, fishermen and local communities as the Government proceed to develop their strategic priorities and plans.

--- Later in debate ---

Tabled by

[Lord Whitty]

51A: Clause 5, page 3, line 8, at end insert—
“(1A) The statement of strategic priorities under subsection (1) must further the goals of a fair transition for energy workers and the creation of quality energy sector jobs.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

I advise my noble friend that, while I will not move Amendment 51A now, I will return to this subject, because I do not consider that we have dealt properly with the transformation of the workforce to deliver the net-zero targets.

Amendment 51A not moved.

EV Strategy: (ECC Committee Report)

Lord Whitty Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I will try not to repeat too much, but I repeat noble Lords’ words of appreciation to the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, for her introduction to this debate and her chairing of the committee’s report. It was a truly remarkable effort. I couple with that my praise to the committee for making a coherent, if not universally supported, report; and I praise the staff for making sense of such a vast area of different expertise.

There are multiple markets in this area: the company car market, which differs from the private car market; the used car market; the leased market; and the commercial vehicle market. They are all different markets but, actually, the issues involved here are much wider than that. Surface transport, and road transport within that, makes a big contribution to our carbon emissions. Unless we resolve that, we are not going to be anywhere near our targets for the transition to net zero. The Minister who is about to reply is from the net zero department and therefore has a considerable strategic interest in this issue but, of course, other departments— the Department for Transport and His Majesty’s Treasury—are going to make the key decisions here.

The range of topics which impinge on this go from what you can do with a lamp-post outside your house to what are effectively geopolitical issues—namely, what form of trade we will encourage with China, with the transfer of technology and therefore the cost, and possible production here, of what are in China relatively cheap electric vehicles.

The timescale for the last propulsion switch in transport modes, from reliance on horsepower to the internal combustion engine, was about 40 or 50 years; we are attempting to make a very dramatic change in six years. That requires very real focus by the new Government on all aspects in all departments, and I join in the call for a Statement from them at an early stage on how they will deliver this key part of our net-zero ambition. Incidentally, in terms of timescale, roughly 120 years ago the main means of propulsion may have been electric. The world speed record was held in the 1890s by an electric car. Unfortunately, we took the wrong decision at that point, and the consequences are still with us. We must address all aspects of the road system, the traffic system and the taxation system, to get this delivered.

I agree with my noble friend Lady Young on the need for misinformation to be countered by the Government as well as the advertising industry. That is very important. There has been a lot of misinformation in this area. Regarding the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lilley, I do not disagree that the subsidies and encouragement have been misplaced. Where I do disagree is that you can avoid a significant degree of taxation, manipulation or subsidy to meet our objectives. The big misapplication has been, as he says, that the main subsidy in recent years has been to the company sector. That has a double problem: it means that the pre-existing subsidies to the private sector and individual owners of cars has been dropped, and those need to be restored.

However, the bigger effect is the recent slowdown in the move to electric vehicles, which has been completely dominated by the fleet schemes and affects both ends. Within the companies, those who switched to electric vehicles for their fleets four, five or six years ago are now trying to sell them off on the second-hand market, but the cars are too big and too expensive for the second-hand market, and not the kinds of cars which most car-owning households want. As a result, the price that the companies get for second-hand cars is not what was forecast, and they are therefore slowing down the take-up even of fleet cars at this point.

Therefore, we need action on both fronts. We need to focus largely on the markets in which individual car owners operate. This includes second-hand and upfront costs of new cars, because there is a virtual equalisation of a total lifetime cost already while the upfront cost is still deeply prohibitive for a lot of potential owners. We need to change the economics for the fleet cars so that they produce smaller fleets and therefore solve their problem in five or six years’ time of producing cars in the second-hand market which they can sell at a price that most car owners will be prepared to pay. To switch the subsidy and the tax incentive while at the same time addressing all the different markets that are involved is quite a complex thing to do.

On top of that, we have the problem of disincentives. The biggest disincentive to buying an electric car has been anxieties about range. Those are gradually diminishing, but the fact remains that the number of charge points available to that 40% or so of the population who cannot connect their car to a charge point from their own home means that there is a social division among people who can afford electric cars, over and above the price differential. It means that the cost of running an electric car for those people who live in flats or terraced houses, or any kind of house that fronts straight on to the street, is substantial. The taxation differential aggravates that.

There are a lot of things that need addressing. Some are being addressed, but most, as yet, frankly, are not. We are behind even the targets we set ourselves for motorway stations, so those who use their car for work and transport are faced with higher prices than those using them for pleasure or for short-term purposes. All these things can be addressed, but they need to be addressed across government pretty rapidly. I would like to hear from the Minister how, and over what timescale, we will see progress on this front.

There are three things we decided not to tackle, but which we will need to tackle. They are not in the report, but I hope that some of them are at least in the new Government’s strategy.

The first is the question of hybrids, and I declare an interest as a hybrid owner. The previous Government more or less said—and I think this is the general view—that hybrids will be phased out, and that they are, in effect, a dead-end technology. Yet people who bought hybrids hoped, by and large, to contribute towards saving carbon. They at least need to have some way of transferring into the full electric mode within the next few years.

Secondly, we need investment in manufacturing, as my noble friend Lord Woodley said. I disagree with his analysis of where the money should go, but I do not disagree with him that we need a strategy for UK-based production. We also need a strategy for battery production. We need more than a strategy; we need to recognise that battery production will have to become more sophisticated and that we will have to address in that same context, both in the UK and worldwide, the whole question of scarce mineral resources, the availability of lithium in particular, and the Chinese control of large parts of the lithium supply chain.

Finally, we will have to face the fact of how we change motor taxation, as Norway already has as the most successful adopter of new electric vehicles. The switch to EVs, with the failure to raise fuel duty, has meant that the Treasury’s income from motor transport has diminished and will diminish even more drastically. At some point, the Government will have to face the issue of how we tax road transport in future. It might well be that the issue of road mileage taxation comes back on to the agenda.

I remember, some 25 years ago, as a Minister in the Ministry of Transport, we produced a worked-out plan for a partial mileage taxation. I was quite convinced by this and went to see my old boss, John Prescott. He said, “Don’t be so bloody stupid”. I understand the politics of it, but it is no longer stupid. We need to ensure that we have a basis for motor taxation that meets the needs of making a major contribution towards reducing our carbon emissions. That requires a new and imaginative approach to road taxation.