Spring Statement

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 27th March 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Viscount; he has far greater expertise in these matters than I do. The Secretary of State, when she presented the package of reforms to Parliament, said that the costings that she was setting out were subject to final costings by the OBR. The OBR has now set out its final assessment of costings and confirmed that this welfare package will reduce welfare spending by £4.8 billion in 2029-30. Following the OBR’s final assessment of the welfare savings from the package, taking account of the £1.4 billion of investment the Government are putting towards the reforms, including the £1 billion of employment support, the net welfare savings of this investment is around £3.4 billion.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

Can my noble friend confirm that the Statement’s provision for capital spending is crucial if the UK is to sustain and safeguard its research and development budget and infrastructure, such as data centres, that will be vital for future growth? Does he agree that we will need a combination of our world-class universities, entrepreneurs, emerging AI companies and others not only to start up but to scale up businesses in this country? As your Lordships’ House’s Science and Technology Committee is now investigating, it is the scale-up that is the real challenge.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

My noble friend is right. The Autumn Budget increased capital investment by £100 billion over the Parliament, including investment to protect record R&D funding, which, as my noble friend said, is vital for growth. The OBR has looked at the growth impact of that investment across a decade and it has been clear that those capital investments—which, incidentally, the party opposite opposed—will lead to a significant 0.4% increase in growth over the longer term. Not cutting capital spending, which the party opposite did time and again, was one of the most significant growth measures that the Chancellor outlined in her Statement.

My noble friend also talked about start-ups and scale-ups. He knows that I agree with him 100% on that. This country is extremely good at start-up; it is much less good at scale-up. Getting the necessary capital to those scale-ups is one of the most important things that we can do.

Growing the UK Economy

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord. As he stood up, I was reminded that he contacted me last week on this point and I owe him a response. I apologise to him for not having got back to him quickly enough. What he said dovetails perfectly with what the Chancellor said in her speech. Clearly, the Cambridge Growth Company has been very successful under the leadership of Peter Freeman. We have now set up a growth commission for Oxford to review the barriers to growth that are holding the city back from reaching its full potential. At the moment, that is a specific team within MHCLG, but it has the potential to grow into something similar to what is happening in Cambridge. I do not think we would see any problem in that happening and developing in that way. What the noble Lord, Lord Vallance, is doing is complementary to that in terms of joining it up.

The whole point of the growth corridor is that we do not see it as two separate cities doing their own thing but instead join them up and see the benefits. People talk about it being Europe’s equivalent of Silicon Valley. All the business reaction post the announcement has been incredibly positive in terms of what it can do and the benefits that it can achieve in attracting businesses into the area. The big problem businesses have is a lack of affordable housing and fast transport to move people about within that region. We are looking to address both of those things. I think we will be very supportive of what the noble Lord says about Oxford.

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Chancellor’s speech and the positive statement of intent that it conveys. I put it to my noble friend that one key ingredient is investment in science and technology. I draw the Minister’s attention to one example. We know that we have strengths in the life sciences. A recent report by your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee, of which I am a member, on engineering biology, indicated an enormous new range of potential growth opportunities. When the Minister and his noble friend Lord Vallance come to consider what to do, I hope that special attention will be paid to reports of that kind, because that is the future.

[Lord Livermore (Lab)]

I 100% agree with everything that my noble friend said. Innovation is one of the seven pillars of the growth strategy. R&D and innovation are absolutely vital when it comes to growth. He will know that life sciences are one of the eight sectors we have selected as part of the industrial strategy, because of the huge competitive advantage we potentially hold in that area. I held a round table last week with representatives of the life sciences sector. They have some incredibly exciting proposals to bring forward. They will be captured when it comes to the life sciences sector plan that we will bring forward as part of the industrial strategy before the spring.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Grand Committee

Amendment 5 not moved.

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

We now move on to the next group. I call Amendment 6 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe.

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

My Lords, before we start on that amendment, it is 7.28 pm and the Committee is due to finish at 7.45 pm. It always used to be the custom that if we would cover only a very short part of a group, we would normally draw stumps at that stage. That is the way it has always been done in the past. Obviously, we do not absolutely have to finish every group, but we do not normally start a quite significant group with a large number of amendments when there are so few minutes left, so I would like clarification on what will happen in this Committee.

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

In answer to the noble Baroness, I am in the hands of the usual channels.

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)]

Good God.

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

They were once described as some of the most polluted waterways in Europe.

[Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)]

I understand that we have the grace of an extra 10 minutes after 7.45 pm. My understanding was that we would like to carry on and that noble Lords would come back if we do not finish the group. However, the Minister says that he is fine to break now, so if that is the will of the Committee then I am happy to do so. We seemed to be making real progress; I apologise for breaking any convention, but I am happy to be reasonable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Noakes (Con)]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for those comments. In the spirit of good will in the Committee, this would be an appropriate time for us to draw stumps.

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

In the spirit of good will, the Committee is adjourned.

Committee adjourned at 7.30 pm.

Long-duration Energy Storage (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Viscount Stansgate Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Stansgate (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in today’s debate. I join all speakers—or perhaps all—who have congratulated my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Brown of Cambridge, on securing it and on chairing the committee with great skill and good humour. I also thank the staff for their tremendous help in producing today’s report. I am glad that the House has had an opportunity to debate it relatively soon after its publication. That may seem strange to some new Members—January 2025 is not particularly close to March 2024—but, considering our subtitle “get on with it”, I hope the new Government will react to this report and debate in that spirit. I say “new Government” because most of this inquiry was conducted under the old Government. Like all other Members, I look forward to the maiden speech of my noble friend Lady Gustafsson, who will join that relatively rare and select group of Members who make their maiden speeches as Ministers and not as Back Benchers.

I have been reflecting on the coincidence that we are having our debate on the same day as the state funeral of President Jimmy Carter. You may think there is no connection but, looking back, one of his achievements was to set up the Department of Energy in the United States in reaction to the oil crisis of the 1970s when OPEC became a well-known word throughout the world. We had set up our own Department of Energy a little earlier; it was 50 years ago this year that the first of the North Sea oil came through.

So, 50 years later, we find the energy landscape transformed and the public are now well adapted to the fact that energy policy shapes their lives. They instinctively realise that the phrase “net zero” is a further transformation which will dominate lives, even if they are not familiar with some of the details of this change. Today’s report should be seen in that context, given that many of the details may not be easily grasped by the public.

As you would expect, we took a lot of very detailed evidence for the report from a wide range of experts. Even on some of the most important areas, such as the need for a strategic energy reserve, there were widely varying views on how large that reserve should be. We know that the Government’s targets are ambitious and the wish to be largely decarbonised by 2030 brings forward the date, so it is all the more important that a committee such as ours takes on an issue such as this and gives it the prominence it deserves. Let us face it, LDES as an acronym does not exactly trip off the tongue, but it represents an important and vital ingredient of our future energy policy. The net-zero policy to which we are committed will mean that we use electricity far more than we do now, and it will be derived from renewable sources. We will specifically use wind and solar, both of which we have a great capacity for.

The residents of a place called Odiham in Hampshire, as noble Lords will recall, last autumn went for an entire week without any recorded sunshine or wind. There is a special word to describe this—I think the chair has already beaten me to get it into Hansard—but we have got to deal with a world in which the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow, otherwise we run the risk of power cuts. The chair alluded to how close we came relatively recently to what many in the world would call “load-shedding”, which is something a first-world country such as ours should not countenance.

In the short time available, I have a few questions for the Minister. First, what is the Government’s current assessment of the scale of the need for LDES and how will it fit into the new energy system? Secondly, what progress is being made in setting up the National Energy System Operator and what effect will future reforms to the planning system have on implementing decisions once ministerial approval is given?

Thirdly, what plans do the Government have for a strategic energy reserve? Will that reserve be gas or might it be an alternative such as hydrogen? Fourthly, if it will involve green hydrogen as a long-duration energy store, how will this fit into the Government’s wider hydrogen policy? What plans do they have for a domestic electrolyser industry, not to mention greater public consultation on its potential use?

Fifthly, what progress is being made towards a strategic spatial energy plan? Sixthly, what plans do the Government have for speeding up the ability of renewable energy sources to connect to the national grid? When we look back on this in years to come, it will be a scandal that it took so long. Seventhly, when the grid connection queue has finally been shortened, what steps do they plan to take to enable electricity to be transferred across the country—even across beautiful parts of this country—by the building of new pylon networks? Can this be achieved without timely reform of planning laws?

Eighthly, is there anything the Government can tell the House about plans to minimise the need for long-duration energy storage, including the use of interconnectors—always bearing in mind that, in today’s dangerous world, as undersea cables are severed, so could undersea connectors? Ninthly, what government support is being given to R&D into other LDES technologies, such as compressed air and battery chemistries? Tenthly, can the Government explain how LDES can and will fit into their longer-term net-zero objectives? Will gas-fired plants be used for LDES? If so, will they be fitted with CCUS?

In conclusion, when a major committee such as the Science and Technology Committee tells the Government that they should get on with it, I want the Minister to know that it is meant in the kindest, friendliest way—but it is meant.