Great British Energy Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 18th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I am not entirely sure that it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, for reasons that will become clear in a moment. I think it would have been better in my case if I had preceded the noble Lord; nevertheless, it is obviously a pleasure to follow him, not least because he is a fellow Deputy Speaker of the House.

I rise in support of the Bill and its objectives. I begin by congratulating my noble friend Lady Beckett on her maiden speech and the noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, on his. The House is very fortunate to have heard two such remarkable maiden speeches in the same debate.

My noble friend Lady Beckett is someone with enormous parliamentary experience. She was first elected to another place over 50 years ago; I well remember her as the candidate for Lincoln in 1974. She was later the able—if only temporary—leader of my own party. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Falconer, has said everything that one might wish to be said about her remarkable career. She is very welcome to this House. She mentioned that she knows something of it in advance through chairing the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. As a member of that committee, I know what she means.

I also pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay of Richborough. What a remarkable personal story. He has attracted the most universal admiration for what he has been through. I do not know about other noble Lords, but I, for one, will never forget the reception he got when he returned to another place just before the end of the last Parliament—which was itself remarkable.

The Bill is the centrepiece of the Government’s strategy to achieve net zero and, as such, will pave the way for a wide range of measures in the years ahead. Noble Lords have spoken about a wide variety of different aspects of energy policy. If I may say so, I thought the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, gave a pretty comprehensive description of the range of current relevant factors in the energy debate. Other noble Lords have used their speeches to focus on other areas.

In directing my remarks to Clause 5(1), I will make one point that I wanted to bring to the House’s attention. It is a pity that the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, has temporarily left his place, because I wanted to raise the issue of long-duration energy storage. LDES is not exactly an acronym that trips off the tongue, but it is vital to the transformation to net zero which the Bill hopes to promote.

Your Lordships’ Committee on Science and Technology—of which I am a member—looked at this issue earlier this year, and today is a relevant moment to bring our main conclusions to the attention of the House. Your Lordships may want to know what long-duration energy storage is. Medium-duration energy storage refers to technologies best suited to storing energy for between four and 24 hours—batteries, for example—or up to a few days at most. Long-duration energy storage applies to technologies that store energy across multiple days, weeks, months or even years.

In this country we are going to need both medium- and long-duration storage, but in my remarks today I want to refer only to long-duration energy storage and the technologies that could provide it. We are going to need government policies in support of long-duration energy storage in the UK and wider changes in the energy system required to facilitate its deployment.

To reach the UK’s net-zero targets, our energy system, as other noble Lords have mentioned, must be transformed. This is going to involve its substantial electrification, where fossil-fuel use in transportation, heating and industry will need to be replaced by electricity, in parallel with the expansion and decarbonisation of the electricity supply. This will replace fossil-fuelled electricity generation with low-carbon alternatives. Renewable energy, predominantly from wind and solar, is expected to play a major role in the UK. The Climate Change Committee forecast in its balanced pathway scenario that electricity demand is likely to double by 2050.

However, renewable energy from wind and solar will deliver a variable supply of electricity due to changes in the weather. If noble Lords want an example, they need look no further than what life was like in the UK two weeks ago. At the beginning of November, the UK experienced a period of anticyclonic gloom, which occurs when an anticyclone of high pressure traps pockets of wet weather close to the ground. In turn, this creates a period of dull, grey and cloudy weather, with a high chance of mist and fog. If noble Lords look back just two weeks, the weather was dull, grim and grey—not remotely windy or sunny. In fact, a place called Odiham in Hampshire received zero minutes of sunshine for the first week of November.

By contrast, about a month earlier, just over half of UK electricity came from zero-carbon sources—including solar, which briefly at that point during the day peaked at providing 83% of all the electricity being used that day. The noble Lord, Lord Duncan of Springbank, is not the only person who looks up the amount of energy being used at any given moment.

The balance between renewable sources and baseload provided by nuclear and gas can and does change. That is just a fact of energy life. The electrification of heating and transport means that demand for electricity will be larger and more variable over time. Climate change and its effects on weather will also impact renewable energy demand. The electricity system will need to be substantially expanded and made more resilient—another word I emphasise to your Lordships tonight—to ensure that it can deliver a secure power supply whatever the load demands or weather systems that we experience. This question of resilience is a key factor behind what makes long-duration energy storage so important. Energy storage technologies that allow energy generated by renewables to be stored over time and used when required will be increasingly essential in achieving net zero.

The one sentence that I would like your Lordships to remember tonight is this: I believe that a strategic reserve of stored energy will be an indispensable part of our future energy policy, and that it will be for the body set up by this Bill to deliver it. I would be interested to hear what the Minister says on this point. The Royal Society estimates that a substantial volume of long-duration storage, enough to supply approximately one-third of current annual UK electricity generation, could ultimately be needed. This could fulfil different roles on the grid and there are facilities for the storage of it. Hydrogen is probably the leading candidate for long-duration energy storage over weeks and months. Low-carbon hydrogen can be produced—for example, from electrolysis, where electricity is used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. The hydrogen can then be stored under moderate pressure in, for example, underground salt caverns, as has already been mentioned, or converted in depleted gas fields and later burned to produce electricity or converted into gases that are easier to transport, such as ammonia. Perhaps my noble friend the Minister can give an updated response in the light of the new Government’s deadlines and targets and some of the key institutions responsible for planning, operating and regulating the energy system.

The national grid used to be considered so boring that people went to sleep if you talked about it. Now, on the contrary, how we use our national grid and how, for example, we enable the vast new wind power resources to connect to it from the North Sea is anything but boring. In fact, it will be pretty controversial, not least because of the need for more high-tension pylons to carry the electricity from where it is generated to where it is needed onshore.

The scale of long-duration energy storage needed and the benefits to the grid are vital. The Select Committee report said:

“Domestic energy storage is not just about a resilient decarbonised grid—it is about the security and stability of the whole economy. The global energy crisis that began in 2021 has been an object lesson in the UK’s vulnerability to global wholesale energy price fluctuations, and the consequent effects on inflation. The UK had less storage capacity than comparator nations”.


In his reply, perhaps my noble friend the Minister can give some indication of what role he sees for long-duration energy storage in the future. I gently remind him that the subtitle of the Select Committee’s report published earlier this year was “Get on with it”. The Minister’s response will be an important clue as to the scale of the task ahead and our chances of success.

Hydrogen Energy

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Tuesday 14th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I hesitate to disagree with the noble Lord, but I think I will on this occasion. I would be interested to know where on the continent hydrogen is being rolled out, as he referred to. I am aware of one or two experimental schemes, but no widescale rollout. There is no question that it could work technically—indeed, two homes have been built in Gateshead as an experiment by Northern Gas Networks that currently are heated by hydrogen boilers and hydrogen hobs. Technically, it can work, although there are safety implications that we need to look at. The question we need to be answering is whether this is an efficient use of the country’s energy resources.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister says that hydrogen might play only a minor role, but does he accept that, in the future, this country is possibly going to need a strategic reserve of energy to take account of the times when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine, and that hydrogen might play an important part in the long-duration energy storage that we are going to need in this country? It could be a vital part of the country’s strategic energy future.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Viscount is absolutely right. I am a huge advocate of hydrogen precisely because of its role in long-term energy storage in the circumstances that he outlined—when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. We were debating whether it has a viable use in home heating. I submit that electrification and heat pumps are a much more efficient way of heating homes.

Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 23rd April 2024 Grand Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Stansgate) (Lab)]

My Lords, we are reliably informed that there will be a Division in the Chamber in about half an hour—hint, hint.

Clause 2: Extent, commencement and short title

Amendment 20

Moved by

Civil Nuclear Road Map

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 15th January 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

I am happy to reassure my noble friend. We have given Rolls-Royce £210 million to help in the development of the next phase of small modular reactors. There are a number of competing technologies. Great British Nuclear will be making progress on selecting the most appropriate technology in the months and years to come.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, on page 28 of the road map document, reference is made to the fact that additional sites will be needed beyond those already designated. In the light of what the Minister has just said about the process of consultation, when does he expect the Government to be in a position to make announcements as to which sites have been chosen?

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

There is quite a process to go through before then. We announced today the consultation on the national policy statement on siting, and we look forward to seeking the views of various interested parties and communities. There will be a further consultation once we have produced the national policy statement. There are a few steps to go through yet, but we want the process to be as transparent as possible, involving communities, residents and companies looking to take this work forward.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Consideration of Commons amendments
Tuesday 6th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, from my perspective, the way in which the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, moved and explained his Motion was extraordinarily powerful. My summation is that this is an existential issue—we are way down a slippery slope. I respect the views of the elected Chamber. Had we been subject to a general election or a referendum which asked the British people whether they wanted control given to an Executive, consisting of a number of Ministers, or to each of their elected Members of Parliament equally, and the British people had supported the idea that we become an elected dictatorship of some kind, that would be a different matter. However, I do not believe that that has been put to the British people. I believe that the constitutional safeguards which this House represents, and which are there to protect ordinary citizens, need to be better safeguarded. I will therefore support Motion B1.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I was not intending to speak so I shall be brief. This House is not elected—we know that—but that is not to say that it does not have a role, which it does. We heard a speech just a moment ago suggesting that ping-pong, the stage in which we are at the moment, is a game that should have just one exchange and leave it at that. There is no urgency about the time that it might take to ask the elected Chamber to think again. I am in favour of allowing the other place to think again. When you consider the wider history—we have just had reference made to it, quite rightly—we are going to allow a Bill of such magnitude to go through, shifting the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature in such a way, that people later on will look back and wonder why on earth the House did not express some degree of steadfastness in its view that the Government should think again. I shall vote for the amendment for that reason.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, and I will not prolong it much. On Motion B1, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and indeed the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, who is unable to be here today, deserve, as they have already received, great congratulations. The Minister also should be commended on his flexibility in assuring and reassuring us that we will get the information we need. I hope the Minister can either talk to my noble friend’s question as to the timing and mechanics of keeping the dashboard up to date or give us a detailed letter at some point to let us know how that would happen; that would be helpful.

The substantive debate is around Motion E1. Again, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, outlined with great detail and clarity the mechanics of how his amendment would work. He made it very clear that the debate in the Commons on the previous amendment has been taken on board very thoroughly in the formulation of this further amendment.

The noble Lord, Lord Jackson, used the word “invalidate” twice, but if he looks at this amendment again he will find that it does not invalidate anything around the purpose and intent of the Bill. What it would do is bring Parliament back into the frame, which is what the majority of your Lordships have been talking about today. That is important. Clause 15 takes very wide powers to revoke and replace retained EU regulation, and as the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, said, the level of this regulation is not normal bits-and-pieces regulation but is essentially primary law. It is not appropriate for statutory instruments to be used to not just change but completely replace primary law without a substantial role for Parliament.

The Minister talked about parliamentary scrutiny being at an appropriate level. It is clear that your Lordships have set out that we do not consider the current level to be appropriate, which is why this amendment is very important. The Government see it as a slippery slope, and will use that argument, but clearly, the exceptional nature of this situation means that it is not so.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 15th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

With the greatest respect to the noble and learned Lord, I think the main substance of sunsetting has been removed by the amendments put forward by my noble friend because we do not reach a cliff edge at the end of this year, or such a later date as might have been put in place, for the whole of retained EU law to disappear if it had not been dealt with. That is the issue that I was referring to.

Perhaps I could just complete what I was saying. I hope that between now and our next day on Report we can have some constructive dialogue with my noble friend the Minister about how we can have some kind of process, information sources, or whatever, to ensure that what we have lost with these amendments—which is ensuring that we deal with the whole of retained EU law—can be salvaged.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is not my intention to detain the House for long, because I think the House wants to move to a decision, but I will make one point about what might be described as the big picture. Today’s debate takes its place in the long history of debates about Europe and will be interesting to read afterwards. However, about a couple of weeks ago—I forget exactly how long ago it was—we had a short debate in this Chamber on the state of parliamentary democracy. The noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, replied to it as the Minister. We did not have enough time, but it was a useful debate to have. I suggest to the House only that the sense expressed during that debate, that over a long period Parliament has lost power to the Executive and that what we need is to reclaim power for Parliament over the Executive, is best encapsulated by Amendment 2 in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope. I very much hope that the House passes it.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of Amendment 16, tabled in my name alongside those of the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay of Llandaff. and the noble Lords, Lord Clarke of Nottingham and Lord Collins of Highbury. I declare an interest as president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents, RoSPA. I am sure I speak on behalf of many Peers from across the House in expressing relief at the U-turn. It is testament to the House, as well as to organisations such as RoSPA, that swathes of life-saving health and safety legislation are saved from the REUL bonfire.

Health and safety impacts every area of our lives and it is not limited to certain sectors. I hope the debate around the specifics of the Bill has shone a light on the need for a holistic approach when addressing these issues. The House will have heard me say before that the UK is a global beacon for safety. Thanks to the Minister’s amendment, I am hugely reassured and say that this continues to be the case.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 2nd March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

The Minister has not heard what points I make; I do not know how he can say I am making the same points. The Bill affects sectors right across the UK—people, businesses, trade unions and consumers—and that is why I am raising this. I think the Minister should not have intervened. It is Committee and I have every right to make a minute’s worth of comment.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a very educational debate. On Monday this week, two groups of sixth-formers came to visit me here and we discussed things upstairs in Committee Room 1, chosen specifically because of its judicial resonance. They are studying for their A-level exams and the question they put to me was about Parliament’s role in scrutinising the Executive: how effective is it? They were very sharp and on the ball, and they wanted to know and to have examples. But when it comes to the Bill we are discussing today, I could not possibly say that this is a good example of Parliament’s ability to scrutinise the Executive. This Government, we know, claim that their major policy success was to take back control—but in my view it was never to take back control to the Executive but to Parliament. I am heartened by the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hamilton and Lord Hodgson, because I see reflected in both of them a wish to see Parliament as the centre of decision-making in Britain—the Executive are a part of it but Parliament is the heart of it.

We have a number of amendments before us, Amendments 32, 141A, 43, 44, 62A and so on, and each in its own way has a contribution to make. I would be minded to support them all because, whatever happens as a result of the debates we have on the Bill, everybody knows we need proper parliamentary scrutiny of what is about to happen—we do not even know what is going to happen to the vast range of legislation to be covered by the Bill.

History will not regard this Government well if future students of politics, of the kind I talked to on Monday, reach the conclusion that Parliament has lost its ability to scrutinise the Executive. In finishing, I quote one Member’s explanatory statement for one of the amendments we are discussing today: it seeks to give

“Parliament the ability to scrutinise these decisions. It would also allow Parliament to overrule the Executive”.

That is exactly what parliamentary democracy is supposed to be about.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I shall be very brief, because I can see we are testing the Minister’s patience. He perhaps needs to indulge in some breathing exercises or something—maybe yoga, I do not know. We are not deliberately detaining Ministers here; we are trying to do our jobs thoroughly.

I quite rudely interrupted the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, earlier, in my enthusiasm to understand the point he was trying to make. He needed no help from me in making his case, but I do not want the point to get lost when the Minister responds. The noble Lord asked a really important question about what is going to happen if a piece of law is lost because the search process did not identify it. How will a court know that it should not be adjudicating based on that piece of law? How will a citizen know that a piece of law is no longer applicable because it was lost as a result of this process? This is such an important point that has not come up before this group of amendments. It will be very difficult for us to engage positively with subsequent groups without having a full, comprehensive answer to the question of the noble Lord, Lord Kerr. I do not want that to get lost in what I am sure is going to be a comprehensive and enlightening response from the Minister.

Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Inglewood (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, forgive me declaring my interests in the register—I am personally an environmental sympathiser. I will briefly talk about land. It is obvious, but sometimes overlooked, that every square inch of this country belongs to somebody. Therefore, every square inch of this land has to be managed by somebody. The legislation seriously affects land of all types everywhere, regardless of whether it is owned by the National Trust, the Church of England, a great duke, a pension fund, a small farmer or a speculative builder.

If you are managing land, you need certainty and you need to know the framework within which you are operating. What is proposed in the Bill, as it was described this afternoon, is precisely the opposite: we are looking into a void of not necessarily even uncertainty but a lack of knowledge. If we were talking about the commercial activities in the City of London, it is inconceivable that anyone would seriously suggest that this approach to dealing with this kind of problem was sensible and in the national interest. If you are going to effect change of the kind we are discussing, you need lead times for people to adapt what they are proposing to do—land management is a long-term business—and to therefore get themselves in a position to respond and operate in the world that is coming into effect.

Of course, as the noble Baroness, Lady Lawlor, said, it is not necessarily that we cannot introduce legislation in this country to improve environmental controls and protections—we are and will continue to do so. Indeed, the same will happen on the other side of the channel in the European Union. As an aside, it is worth remembering that a lot of this legislation is part of the single market. If we are to continue to export into the single market—albeit that there may be certain greater formalities through which we have to proceed—and if we manage to tweak our environmental legislation in certain minor respects, we may find that we are excluding a considerable amount of exports for no material advantage to our nation’s economy.

Finally, against this background, the way the mechanism of the sunset clause has been introduced in the Bill has rightly been excoriated by almost every speaker. It is far too short, quite apart from anything else, and it does not provide for any form of parliamentary control or consultation. One of the interesting characteristics of environmental legislation over the last few years and decades has been the value of consultation: you end up with better legislation, which benefits everyone affected.

In simple terms, people in this country who are in control of and managing land need to know the rules of engagement in order to operate the best that they can. The Bill proposes something that does not enable them to do that.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, this is a very unsatisfactory and frustrating Bill in which to take part. I am sorry that I missed most of the first day of Committee—I was on a committee visit—but I have listened to a great deal of the debate, and I was present in the Chamber on Thursday to hear the remarkably idiosyncratic triage description of my noble friend Lady Young of Old Scone. Like other Members, I listened to some of the exchanges on the previous group, which show that the Bill is being done in the wrong way and should be withdrawn. At the very least, the deadline should be put back several years so that we do not inflict upon ourselves the harm that we are about to.

I point out that the Environment Minister, who is with us today and for whom I believe there is an enormous amount of good will around the Committee, will nevertheless have a very difficult job to persuade the Committee that his department has the sheer capacity to process the large number of regulations that are covered by the Bill.

I will speak strongly in favour of Amendment 37, ably spoken to by my noble friend from the Front Bench. Of course, that list is very good—she said it was not exhaustive, and that is certainly the case. I add my voice to that of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who is not in his place but lurking, on the importance of the REACH regulations, for example. For Members who do not know, this is an enormous and substantial body of work that was in fact the largest piece of legislation ever considered by the European Parliament, for a very good reason: it is really important and covers such a wide range of areas. To adapt the phrase used by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, it is about human health as much as anything else.

I would be happy to vote for Amendment 37 but, to be quite honest, even if I did and it passed, would it be the complete list of all of the environmental protections that we want to see retained? Would it fulfil the Minister’s own commitment, which I am sure that he will make from the Dispatch Box, that the Government remain committed to supporting environmental legislation? The best thing that the Minister can do, apart from withdrawing the Bill, is get up at the Dispatch Box and say, “Amendment 37 is very good and I support it, but it leaves out all of these other measures that I have unearthed by Google-searching the National Archives. If we want to be a Government and Parliament that fully support the environmental legislation that we are so proud of, I would like to add the following range of other matters to the amendment”. We could then perhaps make a better attempt at improving what is, I am afraid, a very bad Bill.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present for very much of the Second Reading— I had other parliamentary duties.

We have had some very wise, brief speeches just now, from the noble Viscount, Lord Stansgate, and my noble friend sitting behind me, who made a very good brief speech. Various things stand out. It is never good to legislate by deadline. When you are dealing with such a vast amount of regulations—some complex, some simple —to say that all of them have to be effectively expunged by the end of the year, apart from some that may be retained, is not a sensible way to behave. It places an enormous burden upon Parliament and places enormous power into the hands of Ministers.

I share the respect and affection that people feel for my noble friend Lord Benyon, whose father and I entered the House of Commons on the same day, way back in 1970, along with my noble friend, Lord Clarke of Nottingham, who is with us this evening. He was an environmentalist par excellence, and I know that his son has inherited his love for the countryside and his determination that it should be properly preserved and used.

Many of the directives listed in Amendment 37 are of great importance. We have to remember—I do not want to cross swords with my noble friend Lady Lawlor, who made one very good point about the selling of caged birds—that we do not have the best record in this country. On loss of species, you have to look only at what were very common birds when I entered the House of Commons, such as the starling and the sparrow and many others. Some of them are hanging on by a thread. The wonderful counterexample of the red kite is not unique, but not many fall into that category. It seems very silly to decide that the Bill has to go through in this form.

We had a very good example yesterday of the Prime Minister realising, after painstaking negotiation, that the protocol Bill, which many of us in this House opposed and were determined not to let through, should be dropped. He achieved more than that Bill would ever have achieved, and not only that but he achieved a wonderful improvement in our relations with our European friends and neighbours, which is a very good example to take.

--- Later in debate ---

Amendment 37 seeks to exclude whole swathes of environmental retained law from the sunset. I stress again that these amendments are not necessary, as the Government have been clear that we will uphold our environmental protections. The UK is a world leader in environmental protection. In reviewing our retained EU law, we want to ensure that environmental law is fit for purpose and able to drive improved environmental outcomes. I referred earlier to the extension mechanism. That exists when the sunset date approaches and there is more work to do.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

The Minister raises this point about the extension mechanism. Does that mean in effect that the Government’s approach is now to retain, reform, remove or delay a decision? If so, we may be talking about four buckets.

[Lord Benyon (Con)]

A delay is reform, because it gives more time to get it right. There may be specific technical issues relating to a regulation that require more work to be done than can be allowed in the timeframe of the sunset.

On the marine issues, which the noble Viscount raised, we are committed to 30% of seas being protected. We have very clear policies on restoring fisheries and fish biomass in the sea, and we have provisions through the marine strategy framework and others to see that achieved.

A number of Peers have raised the issue of resources. We are putting huge resources into this. The noble Lord, Lord Fox, is right to raise this, and I understand the concerns. We want to make sure that we understand each and every one of the more than 1,700 areas of retained EU law. Our default position is to retain. Resources for retained EU law legislation will be needed from a range of policy officials, such as analysts and lawyers, to deliver a significant legislative programme. My officials are working closely with BEIS and the Cabinet Office to ensure that Defra has sufficient resources. Our aim will be to ensure that important work unrelated to retained EU law will continue.

Strikes (Minimum Service Levels) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 21st February 2023 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, although I disagree with him. I begin by congratulating the two maiden speakers, in a way, in this debate: the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill of Bexley, and, if I can put it this way, my noble friend Lady O’Grady, who I believe was speaking from the Front Bench for the first time—and what a very good speech it was.

This Government are beginning to lose their way, and the Bill before us today proves it. In the face of today’s prolonged industrial action by many in our society, including the nurses, ambulance drivers and—by a margin of 98%, I read today—junior doctors, who not so long ago we stood on our doorsteps to cheer during the darkest days of the Covid pandemic, this Government have now been driven to introduce a Bill that will not solve any of the underlying problems.

No one is denying the strike action that is taking place or the number of days lost; the ONS tells us that it is the greatest number since 1990. However, the Government should use their existing powers to allow negotiations between employers and trade unions to succeed and create the conditions in which they can succeed, not bring in a Bill that takes up valuable parliamentary time and, in my view, offers no prospect that its passage would make any contribution to solving the problems caused, because significant sections of the public sector workforce in the UK have become worse off in recent years. That is a fact—that is what we call the cost of living crisis and why the Government themselves have recognised the need to take action and help with energy bills. The Government know that working people have become worse off. You can hardly blame those who have been driven to take strike action when many of them would have preferred not to.

The real arguments to be made in the current situation are about unfairness—of all kinds—and not about inventing a new law to attack both the rights of trade unions and the workplace rights of individuals. This is a good point at which to put on the record that I myself, like many Members on this side of the House and no doubt in various places around the Chamber as well, am a member of a trade union. I suppose I should also say, in the interests of transparency, that my son is a teacher whom I last met when he was on strike, walking outside this building.

I am no expert on the various public sector pay bodies. Fortunately, we now have Members in the House of Lords with the most enormous expertise from the trade union world, many of whom we have heard from today or will hear from later. This is a debate and not a history lesson—although if the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, was in his place, I would say that I think the matchgirls’ strike was in 1888, not 1881—but the House knows of the struggles of the last 200 years for the establishment of trade unions and rights at work. Just because these rights have been hard won does not mean that they do not always need to be defended—because they do, and they certainly do now.

I want to give an example—I ask your Lordships to forgive me; coming late in the order, I find myself thinking that most people have made most of the points I want to make—of the individual right against unfair dismissal. As I understand it—and I am grateful to the Library for its briefing—trade unions are protected from liability for such acts by the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, provided that the union complies with all other legal requirements such as those dealing with strike ballots and giving proper notice. This Bill would remove this protected status from trade unions for any strike they induced people to take part in where they failed to “take reasonable steps” to ensure that all workers identified and requested to work by a work notice complied with that notice. Moreover, the Bill would remove this protection

“for any employee who takes part in a strike contrary to a valid work notice. Any such employee will not be automatically regarded as unfairly dismissed under … the Employment Rights Act 1996 if the reason … for the dismissal is because they took part in the strike.”

In other words, the individual rights of workers are at stake in the Bill, as well as those of trade unions as a whole.

There are two other points I want to make. First, as others have said, this is yet another example of a skeleton Bill. At some point, somewhere, whether in this House or another place, someone is going to have to say that enough is enough, because otherwise the Executive will fatally undermine the legislature. In my hand I have a single sheet of paper, and that is the entire content of the Bill right there—others have made this point very well.

Noble Lords may remember we had a debate in the Chamber about a year ago, triggered by the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, on skeleton Bills. The House would be wise to remember what was said then. We have grown all too accustomed to skeleton Bills but that does not mean that we should be. Laws affect our lives and rights; they should not be made by bypassing the very institutions which are supposed to be a check on power. At the time, the noble Baroness, Lady Cavendish, gave her own explanation as to why she thought they were used. She said, in summary, that when you are in government, you are so anxious to get stuff done that if a Minister is told they can do it by way of statutory instrument rather than by primary legislation, of course that is going to be attractive to them. Very few people would react otherwise. Who would not be relieved to think that you could do it that way? I daresay there are former Ministers in the Chamber, on all sides of the House, who understand these sentiments.

In fairness, I also want to refer to the words of then Cabinet Office Minister—who is now the Lord Privy Seal and Leader of the House—in defence of the skeleton Bill approach. He said, over a year ago, that rigorous processes are in place within government to justify the use of proposed secondary legislation contained in Bills and that

“This process ensures that there is a steady flow of statutory instruments being laid before Parliament and therefore, I hope, facilitates better scrutiny.”—[Official Report, 6/1/2022; col. 791.]


It may be that the flow of statutory instruments has been steady but that does not mean to say that the amount of them has not been too great.

If I may, I will quote a Member of this House who is staring at me at this moment. When he was Lord Chief Justice, as I understand it, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, said that if Whitehall gets into the habit of using Henry VIII clauses

“we are … in … danger of becoming indifferent to them”.

In summary, if the Government persist—as they do in this legislation—in using such Bills to push all the detail to later, ultimately Parliament will not really know what it is that we are being asked to approve, and that is dangerous for democracy. In view of the time, I will leave it there, but this is an area for scrutiny in Committee, if nothing else.