Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 18th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ms Ghani]

I find this extraordinary. The devolved authorities have the right to make decisions on devolved laws. Why would that not be embraced, instead of being rejected?

I must comment on the Bar Council’s evidence. Barrister Tom Sharpe KC noted that the Bar Council

“is our trade union, and it does not speak on my behalf on this political matter…obviously”.––[Official Report, Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Public Bill Committee, 8 November 2022; c. 24, Q43.]

An issue about deregulation was raised. It is not enshrined in any of the clauses, but the Bill says that overall burdens must be reduced.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I have been involved in European policymaking over a period of about 20 years, including being Europe editor of The Times. Something that struck me is that it is very difficult to get agreement between 27 or 28 countries, so once a law is passed it is almost impossible to change. EU laws get frozen in time and things move on. With EU laws stagnant across the economy, does the Minister think it is right that EU laws should be reviewed across the entire economy, in all different sectors?

[Ms Ghani]

That is what the Bill proposes, so that we are not stuck in time with EU laws made elsewhere.

This is the Parliament of one of the oldest continuous representative democracies in the world, of which the UK is rightly proud. The Bill will restore Acts of Parliament as the highest law of the land by ensuring that domestic law will take precedence over retained direct EU law. This is all part of what the British public voted for in the referendum and the general election—for Britain to be left to do things differently and to be the supreme arbiter of our own laws. That is all that this Bill is proposing.

To conclude, the Bill will allow the United Kingdom to take the next steps in reasserting the sovereignty of Parliament. It will end the special status of retained EU law in the UK statute book and enable the Government more easily to amend, revoke and replace retained EU law, and to seize the opportunities of Brexit. I therefore ask hon. Members to support the Government’s amendments, withdraw their own amendments and support the Bill.

Question put and agreed to.

New clause 1 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

Clause 1

Sunset of EU-derived subordinate legislation and retained direct EU legislation

Amendment proposed: 18, page 1, line 4, leave out “2023” and insert “2026”.—(Justin Madders.)

This amendment moves the sunset of legislation from 2023 to 2026.

Question put, That the amendment be made.

Shale Gas Production

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

We have comprehensive investments going on through the heat and buildings strategy and other initiatives to ensure that energy demand is also addressed. But may I say this, because I think the hon. Member missed the last couple of occasions to put questions to the Dispatch Box? One thing I am sure of is that I am glad we did not follow the advice of the Green party back in 1989, when it scored its record result in an election with 15%. Its advice was that it was impossible to take action on emissions while simultaneously growing the economy. I am really glad that we decided to ignore that advice, because in the intervening 30 years we have grown the economy by 78% and reduced our emissions by 44%, comprehensively proving the Green party totally wrong.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I speak as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment. After the 1973 oil price shock wreaked economic havoc across the western world, different countries responded in different ways to ensure it never happened again. Denmark went for increasing wind power, Japan went for increasing solar, France went for increasing nuclear power and in Britain we went for increasing oil production in the North sea. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should learn the lessons of history to ensure that we do not repeat the mistakes, and that the response to high international energy, oil and gas prices should not be to press pause on net zero, but to push full steam ahead with it, growing renewables and nuclear power?

[Greg Hands]

I think I am meeting my hon. Friend’s APPG either this week or next, and I am looking forward to that. He makes some strong points. Net zero is not part of the problem; it is part of the solution when it comes to both the transition and energy security. He talks about not repeating the mistakes of the past and he mentions nuclear. I will put on record that I am glad to see the conversion of the Labour party from saying it was anti-nuclear in its 1997 manifesto to now backing the Government’s nuclear programme. I welcome that conversion.

Corporate Transparency and Economic Crime

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Monday 28th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I have been very clear that it is the responsibility of every Member of this House to engage with these issues. I have not been informed about that interdiction by my Department and I would love to hear more about it. However, as I have said, every Member of this House has an obligation to engage directly with those tackling these kinds of abuses.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

This House is united in agreeing that we need to get rid of dirty money from the so-called London laundromat, and I very much welcome these proposals on reforming Companies House, which is a big step in that direction. As a recent Treasury Committee report showed, the economic crime landscape is littered with agencies that are too weak to clamp down on money laundering and fraud. Will the Secretary of State confirm that Companies House will have not just the right resources—other Members have mentioned that—but sufficient powers to really clamp down on the oligarchs, who will no doubt be determined to try to block this?

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend will appreciate that the legislation proposed will set up a range of criminal offences. As is always the case with criminal offences, we will absolutely make sure that the people who are enforcing those penalties are properly resourced. I am very keen to work with him to make sure that we get this right.

Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

2nd reading
Wednesday 3rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Olney]

My remarks are about the UK power sector, but I take the hon. Gentleman’s point about Germany. Clearly, as I think I have clearly stated, we want to move towards carbon-free alternatives to coal. I also want to make it clear that it is not our position that we should be closing down nuclear power stations; we support the ones that are currently operational and where contracts have been signed to open new ones. As I want to go on to make clear, our position is very much that there should not be new nuclear power stations. We need to go further to make sure that we can completely decarbonise our energy sector. We want to support renewables and household and community energy. It will create jobs. To pick up on the point made by the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris) about jobs in the nuclear sector, let me say that the advantage of jobs in the renewables sector and in other alternative energy supplies is that they can be spread over a much larger area of the country. I believe he said that there are probably 18 viable sites for new nuclear power stations, many of which are concentrated in his part of the world. I am interested in job creation right across the country, and renewables offer much better opportunities for us on that.

Of course, we want to cut fossil fuel imports. On that basis, I strongly back the Government in what they are trying to achieve here, but not for nuclear. I wish to reiterate the Liberal Democrat position: there is currently no economic or environmental case for the construction of any further nuclear stations in the UK. The hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) set out, in his extensive and detailed speech, very much what we believe: there really is not a case for such construction.

A further point I wish to make is that it will take 20 years to build a new nuclear power station, however it is funded. We have very ambitious net zero targets. As the Minister said, we want to be net zero in our power sector by 2030, which is much sooner than in 20 years. We need to move considerably faster than that, and we already have the tools and technology to cut carbon significantly in our power sector in a much shorter period, so we need to accelerate the deployment of renewable power. We need to remove restrictions on solar and wind. We need to build more interconnectors to guarantee the security of supply. If we did that, we could reach at least 80% renewable electricity by 2030, which would be consistent with the Government’s aims to achieve net zero.

Notwithstanding the points made by other Members about the growth in demand for electricity from electric cars, we can do much more to reduce demand for electricity from existing sources.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a strong case against nuclear power. Is she aware that it was her own party leader who signed off the Hinkley Point C deal?

[Sarah Olney]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am fully aware of that; I just want to reiterate that Liberal Democrat policy is that we are against any further nuclear power stations. We want to redouble our efforts on renewables, and I think I have probably said that several times now. We believe there is no economic or environmental case for further nuclear power stations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green). I speak wearing my hat as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, and I want to touch on some of the environmental issues addressed by some Opposition Members.

Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima: the names of the world’s nuclear accidents haunt people around the planet to this day. Fears of lethal invisible radiation killing thousands of people and laying waste swathes of the planet—these are very audible concerns. But then there are the facts. No one died from Three Mile Island, and studies afterwards showed that there was no measurable increase in cancer rates. One person died from Fukushima. Again, post-accident studies showed no measurable impact on cancer rates.

Then there is Chernobyl. I have been to Chernobyl—to Chernobyl village itself. I went with the United Nations, which spent a long time studying the medical impact of the world’s worst nuclear accident for 15 years after it happened. There I saw the alarming sight of happy villagers who had refused to leave after the accident and were taking the opportunity to restore the beautiful Chernobyl village church; they took a delight in showing me around it. I met a mother in Chernobyl village who had conceived and given birth to a totally healthy baby. Yes, 41 rescuers died of acute radiation sickness in the immediate aftermath of the accident, and there was a measurable increase in childhood thyroid cancer, which is, luckily, vanishingly rare, but otherwise the UN scientists found no measurable negative medical effects from the nuclear accident itself and concluded they had been vastly exaggerated.

We have now had nuclear power around the world for nigh on 70 years, and it has proven to be just about the safest and greenest form of energy. Safety is measured in the industry in terms of deaths per terawatt-hour of energy production, taking all direct and indirect deaths into account, including through the supply chain. For coal, it is 24.6 deaths per terawatt hour; for oil, 18.4; for biomass, 4.6; and for gas, 2.8. For nuclear, it is 0.07. Yes, that is a bit higher than wind, solar and hydropower, although in roughly the same ballpark, but several orders of magnitude lower than other forms of power, and in terms of CO₂ emissions, nuclear produces less than hydropower. It is about the cleanest and safest form of energy in the world, and it is, as we have heard today, massively scalable.

So why have we not embraced it? I will tell you why:

“Opposition to nuclear energy is based on irrational fear fed by Hollywood-style fiction, the Green lobbies and the media.”

Those are not my words but those of James Lovelock, one of the most eminent environmental scientists, who founded the whole Gaia thesis. As a former environment editor of The Observer and The Times, and as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, I believe that the environment movement has been one of the most important and positive movements of the last half century. The fact that we are all environmentalists now—including the Queen, I note—proves the positive impact the movement has had. However, the environment movement made a major strategic error by campaigning so hard against nuclear power. Increasingly, many environmentalists agree. Even as Fukushima was still smoking, George Monbiot, the environmental leader, had a damascene conversion and started making the moral case for nuclear power.

If we believe that climate change is the biggest threat to the planet, we have to use every tool in the toolbox to combat it. We have a moral obligation not to campaign against the one technology that can probably help more than almost any other to get to net zero.

[Chris Green]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that with nuclear we have existing established technologies that can be used and rolled out, even though the timescale in the Bill is reasonably long, but other technologies that we would desire to come down the line in the future are not established and currently cannot work at the scale we need?

[Anthony Browne]

I absolutely agree. As I said, we have had nuclear for 70 years and we know that it works. The point I was about to come to, which my hon. Friend touched on earlier, is that the French have 70% of electricity produced by nuclear and they have a very well-established industry. It is not politically controversial at all. They have made it work and made it cost-effective. That is one of the reasons why France has far lower carbon dioxide emissions that we do in the UK. We should change to other technologies. We heard mention of tidal power earlier—yes, absolutely. However, there have been many projects to try to make tidal power work over the past few decades and none of them has yet quite succeeded, although we should still carry on trying.

As I have said many times in this House, the UK has had a really good track record in reducing carbon dioxide emissions, roughly halving them. Our per-capita emissions are now lower than those of many other countries, including green icons such as Denmark and Norway, but France has had lower emissions than us for decades because of nuclear power. I used to live in Belgium and got my electricity bills from France, and they used to have to say where the electricity came from: “nonante-neuf pour cent nucléaire”, which is—in Belgian French, not French French—“99% nuclear power”. That was always a delight for me. Driving around France, nuclear power stations are all over the place. It is not a political issue; people are very comfortable with it.

The environment movement has been very successful in demonising nuclear power beyond any scientific justification. That in part is why UK Governments have been so nervous, and it has meant as a country we have gone from being a world leader in nuclear power and one of the first to introduce it to being a straggler with a semi-clapped-out sector, as we have heard, with all these power plants going out and without much expertise, so that we end up depending on foreign companies and foreign Governments to be able to do anything. We have to build up our capacity again as a country. As we move away from nuclear fuels, we need a strong nuclear sector more than ever.

[Alan Brown]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about demonising nuclear, but is having a £132 billion waste legacy to clean up demonising nuclear, or pointing out a harsh reality?

[Anthony Browne]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point, which I was going to come to. Clearly nuclear has to be cost-effective throughout the whole lifecycle, and there is a burden of responsibility on the Government to ensure that is the case, although I must admit I do not recognise the £132 billion figure.

As we move away from fossil fuels, we need nuclear power more than we did in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s when we were developing it. As we start using electricity to heat our homes and power our cars, we need more production capacity that is resilient and secure. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) made a point about energy efficiency, and I completely and utterly support that, but as we move away from fossil fuels across other areas of the economy and our lives, the demand for electricity will go up rather than down, whatever we do with efficiency. That is inevitable, so we need to ensure we have more production and more secure production.

The recent spike in gas prices has shown our national vulnerability if we do not have resilient energy suppliers, and we must guard against that happening to electricity suppliers. We cannot risk windless days and dark days leading to blackouts in future. Wind, solar and hydrogen power are wonderful. We have done great in rolling them out—wind power produces more energy than any other source and that is great—but they are not the sole solution. We need every tool in the toolbox. We need to ensure that we can provide the stable, resilient base-load that we will increasingly need as we move away from fossil fuels.

In the various debates I have had about nuclear power over the decades, anti-nuclear campaigners normally pipe up at this point with, “Nuclear power is not a good use of taxpayers’ money.” That is when I know they have largely run out of other arguments. Obviously nuclear has to be value-for-money. I am an economic, fiscal Conservative. We want to go for the best value forms of energy, not the expensive ones. It needs to be financially sustainable, and we need to look at the whole lifecycle costs of nuclear power. Clearly the Government have a duty to do that, and that is what the Bill is about. The Government have to ensure we have the right financial framework to ensure that the nuclear industry can survive and thrive and in the most cost-effective way possible. If companies are to invest multiple billions of pounds to build nuclear reactors, they need to do it in the lowest risk way, otherwise the cost of capital becomes prohibitive and the projects are not viable.

I used to work at Morgan Stanley, the US investment bank, and we had a big infrastructure fund investing in projects around the world—not nuclear, I have to say, but many other different sectors. When assessing new infrastructure investment, we have to factor in many of the risks. There is construction risk: can we build the thing? There is technology risk: if it is a new technology, will it work? There is political risk: what if there is a new Government who change their mind and say no? Then there is demand risk or volume risk: will there be enough demand for the product and will it be at the right price to generate the revenues to pay for the cost of capital being put up front to build it?

The trouble with the previous financing regime is that it did not deal with the first risks and expected companies to bear all those risks up front at cost to themselves. That meant that many companies found they had just too much risk to make the projects viable. It is not surprising that some companies ended up pulling out of nuclear power stations they had been planning to build.

The regulated asset base model that the Bill brings about is a far better model for financing the building of nuclear power stations, because it properly shares construction risk, political risk and technology risk between the public sector, consumers and companies. The RAB model is a completely standard model that has been widely used in other areas of infrastructure for decades and is well understood, as various Members have pointed out. The Government and companies have experience of the RAB model. We know it works well and we know how to make it work well in the interests of both parties. I am delighted that we are on the front foot again with nuclear power as a country. As we progress and improve our expertise as a nation, as we have heard we need to do, nuclear power will get more standardised, easier to build and better value for money. The Government must continue to have courage in their convictions with nuclear power. I fully commend the Bill to the House.

Employment and Trade Union Rights (Dismissal and Re-engagement) Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Friday 22nd October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Imran Hussain]

This is a serious debate, where working people are looking towards this House for guidance on an important issue. The hon. Gentleman, I have to say, may on occasion make a decent point, but today is not that day for him. He needs to look again at the point he made.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I want to follow up on that point. The hon. Gentleman says we are fabricating news. Would he like to explain why a senior Labour MP is reported as criticising Labour’s employment practices? They have said:

“To learn that our party are now using what can only be described as fire and rehire appals me. It is everything we as a party should be aggressively opposing.”

That is after the Labour party made a whole load of redundancies and then appointed people in exactly the same departments. It is not fake news.

[Imran Hussain]

That point has already been clarified. Let me echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North made earlier. Fire and rehire is an abhorrent practice, regardless of who is involved. I do not understand why Conservative Members seems to think this is an opportunity for them to stand up one after the other and make a point that has already been addressed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller]

Certainly not, which is why Labour Members are on the Opposition Benches, and the Conservative party, which supports working people, is in government.

I should like to say a few more words about the detail of the Bill and to support some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury.

[Anthony Browne]

The shadow Front-Bench spokesman said earlier that various European countries were ahead of the UK, citing Germany, Spain and Ireland. I actually agree with him—they are ahead of the UK in unemployment. In Ireland, unemployment is 50% higher than in the UK. In France it is twice as high. In Germany it is three times as high. Youth unemployment in Spain is about 30%. It is a real tragedy for young people. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a connection between the flexible labour market and the low unemployment in the UK?

[Richard Fuller]

Well of course I do. Who would not agree with my hon. Friend? He will accept that, should we as a House decide that the better approach is through a code of practice, that places great responsibilities on boards of directors and chief executives to abide by that code of practice. It is a better approach. When pressures require extraordinary measures to be taken, time is critical, and everyone is busy—not just within the business, but the advisers and so on, too. That is why the legal approach proposed by the hon. Member for Brent North would in those circumstances be too bureaucratic, not flexible enough and would end up with a worse outcome for employees than is his honourable intention. A code of practice gives those entrusted to make those decisions the right set of things that might otherwise miss their attention. Directors are absolutely aware of their responsibilities under certain aspects of law, but also of their responsibilities under a code of practice.

Climate Change Committee Progress Report 2021

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the UK’s Climate Progress: the Committee on Climate Change’s 2021 Progress Report.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. It is slightly regrettable that a similar debate is taking place in the main Chamber as we speak; it would have been nice to be able to speak in both, but this is one of the scheduling things that happens.

I think we all agree that tackling climate change is the biggest challenge facing humankind at present. Global temperatures have so far risen by 1.2° centigrade over the last century, and they are currently rising at about 0.25° per decade. That is being driven by the rise in greenhouse gas emissions—most significantly, carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is now 429 parts per million in the atmosphere, which is 50% higher than before the industrial revolution. Human civilisation is destroying the benign climate that our planet has enjoyed for the last 20,000 years and that enabled human civilisation to flourish in the first place. Our generation has a moral duty to pass on to future generations a planet that is sustainable, but it is also in our generation’s self-interest to achieve that.

I am not a natural doom-monger but an optimist at heart. We have had far more than our share of dark times over the last couple of years, so I want to highlight some good news. According to Our World in Data, a fantastic source of information, the UK emitted less carbon dioxide per capita in 2019 than in any year since 1859, when the industrial revolution was just gathering pace—with the one exception of 1926, which was the year of the general strike. Our per-capita CO₂ emissions are the lowest they have been for a century and a half. In total, our CO₂ emissions have declined by almost a half since the benchmark year of 1990. That is not just a bigger decline than in any other G7 country; it is actually a bigger decline than in any G20 country.

“World-leading” may be a much-abused phrase, but it really is true that the UK is world-leading on reaching towards net zero. Our emissions per capita are now less than those of China, and they are one third of the levels in US, Canada and Australia. We emit less per capita than the EU average, less per person than Germany and less even than the eco-leaders Norway and Denmark. When I meet parliamentarians from other countries who are interested in environmental issues, the most frequent question they ask is: what is the UK’s secret to doing so well in reaching towards net zero?

At the beginning of the industrial revolution, the UK was responsible for almost exactly 100% of global greenhouse gas emissions. We are now responsible for just 1%. That is a tribute to the hard work and leadership of this and past UK Governments, and I welcome the announcements that we had this week, which I will refer to later. It is also a tribute to those in environment groups and industry who have worked so hard to raise awareness of climate change and help tackle it. Their efforts are bearing fruit.

In its 2021 report to Parliament on reducing emissions, the Climate Change Committee recognises the UK’s achievements. It says:

“The UK has a leading record in reducing its own emissions”.

That leadership role really matters as we head off to Glasgow for COP26, which the UK is obviously leading. We have enshrined in law not just reaching net zero by 2050, but a 78% reduction in emissions by 2035. That is the most ambitious nationally determined contribution that any country in the world is bringing to COP26—I hope that point is being made in the debate taking place in the main Chamber. Fingers crossed, such leadership will help us achieve more ambitious contributions from other countries. In turn, that will hopefully keep global warming down to a maximum of 1.5° centigrade—we need to keep 1.5 alive.

When it comes to net zero, we as a country can be justifiably be proud of what we have achieved so far. That is absolutely no excuse for complacency, but it means that our efforts so far have been worth while—they are paying off. But now the bad news: we are still not doing enough. That is the overriding message from the Climate Change Committee’s 2021 progress report. If we are to get to net zero by 2050, the hard work has yet to come. We have reduced emissions by around a half over the past three decades, as I said, but it will be far more difficult to do the same over the next three decades. The CCC says:

“UK emissions are nearly 50% below 1990 levels, but the journey to Net Zero is far from half done.”

In policy terms, we have cut the fat but we are now down to the bone.

Most of our cuts in emissions have come from decarbonising the power sector. We are on the brink of phasing out coal, and wind power is now our main source of electricity—that was unthinkable when I was environment editor of The Observer and The Times 20 years ago. Other sectors have done well: emissions from industry have fallen by 53% since 1990 and emissions from waste are down by 69% as a result of sending less biodegradable matter to landfills. More topically, the CCC has reported that we had the biggest ever drop in emissions last year; as a result of the pandemic, they fell by 13%. Unsurprisingly, the biggest fall was in aviation emissions, which were down 60% last year alone. However, clearly that is a one-off and already bouncing back.

The good news is that our reductions in emissions mean that, in purely numerical terms, as of now we are on track to meet net zero by 2050. Our reductions have been big enough to get there. The CCC said that the rate of the reduction since 2012—over the last nine years—is enough to get us to net zero by 2050 if we carry on reducing at that rate. This is a very big “if”. The CCC report, using charts and graphs, said that we do not have the policies in place to keep reducing at that rate. The key message was that

“The Government has made historic climate promises in the past year, for which it deserves credit. However, it has been too slow to follow these with delivery.”

It warned that we will not meet our emission targets for 2028 to 2032—the so-called fifth carbon budget—let alone the sixth carbon budget of 2033 to 2037. At the time of its publication in June, it estimated that the credible policies covered only about 20% of the reductions to meet the sixth carbon budget.

This is all very perplexing: how can we be both on track, as I said earlier, but also off track? The best analogy that I can come up with is the 2010 film “Unstoppable”, about a runaway train—a very good film for those who want to pass a couple of hours. Our heroes, Denzel Washington and Chris Pine, keep the speeding, out-of-control train on track, but they know there is a sharp bend ahead. It is inevitable that when the train reaches that bend it will fly off the track and kill lots of people in houses, unless they do something dramatic. Likewise, we need to do something dramatic to stay on track for net zero by 2050. That means we cannot just keep on with the policies that have served us so far.

The decarbonisation of power generation is a one-off that cannot be done forever: once we have phased out coal, we cannot phase it out again. The Government have just committed to making all power generation net zero by 2035—something that I have publicly called for and welcome. However, that means that power, the sector that has done most of the heavy lifting to net zero, will not be able to do any more from 2035. Other sectors will have to make up the difference.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate today and for making a very thoughtful speech. In his remarks, will he address the point about energy usage and not just energy production? What more would he suggest to the Government that we could do to minimise energy usage and therefore reduce carbon emissions?

[Anthony Browne]

That is a very good point and I will come to it briefly. We need absolutely to try and get to net zero, but also to promote measures such as insulation and energy efficiency in housing and industry to reduce consumption.

We need other measures, rather than just decarbonising power. These other measures are where the potential political pain comes. Decarbonising electricity production did not really require consumers to change anything. The electricity supply to their homes and their sockets was the same as before, but produced in a climate-friendly way. They had the same cars and same central heating systems. However, with other sectors needing to decarbonise, future policies will inevitably have a more direct impact on consumers. That is why we need more political will in the coming decades, not less. This should be doable. The public are very supportive; a large majority say they want stronger action on climate change.

The CCC did welcome the advances in policy that have already been made. In last year’s report they made 92 different recommendations; this year’s report says that 72—over 75% of them—have either been achieved, partly achieved or are underway. That is a good record. However, it thought that things were going too slowly. It concluded that clearly policy progress is being made, but it is not yet happening at the necessary pace. Only 11 of the 72 recommendations have been achieved in full.

The report states that in 21 areas of abatement—places where we can make real changes—sufficient ambition is being maintained in only four. The report welcomes the Government’s ambitions until 2025 on electric cars and vans, off-shore wind and tree planting. I very much welcome that here the Government are in line with the committee’s recommendations. In last year’s 10-point plan for climate change, the Government committed to 40 GW of offshore wind power by 2030, which is what the CCC is calling for—tick! They also committed to 30,000 hectares of tree planting a year by 2025, which again is what the CCC is calling for—tick!

In some ways, the Government have arguably gone further than the CCC wanted. It wanted to ban the sale of new petrol and diesel cars by 2032, but the Government are bringing in the ban from 2030—two years earlier. That really is a world-leading ambition. Sales of electric vehicles are already escalating rapidly, and although the charging point infrastructure is not being rolled out quite fast enough for some electric car drivers, it is going at pace. Industry is taking the lead from the Government, with Jaguar having committed to selling only electric vehicles from 2025, and Ford has just announced that it will make parts for electric cars at its Halewood plant in Liverpool, giving it a new lease of life.

I am delighted to say that there has been significant progress since the CCC published its report in June and since this debate was applied for. In particular, the CCC was critical of the Government for not having published their transport decarbonisation plan, their hydrogen strategy, their heat and building strategy and their overall net zero strategy—it criticised them for the uncertainty and delay. To their credit, the Government published the first two, on transport and hydrogen, in the summer, and the heat and building strategy and the net zero strategy were published just a couple of days ago. Those included measures such as: a £5,000 grant to make clean-heat heat pumps affordable for homeowners; working with industry to ensure that clean heat is as cheap as gas-fired central heating by 2030; and a target to stop any new gas boilers from being installed by 2035—another world-first commitment.

The CCC has also chastised the Government for a lack of ambition on carbon capture and storage, which was the subject of a debate in this Chamber yesterday. It has said that we need to capture 22 million tonnes of CO₂ a year by 2030 while the Government were targeting only 10 million tonnes a year by then. It noted that that was the biggest single gap between what it had called for and what the Government were planning. When I drafted my speech at the beginning of the week, I was going to call on the Government to be more ambitious on CCS. Then, on Tuesday, they were: they announced two new clusters and a target of between 20 million and 30 million tonnes a year by 2030, which is potentially more than the CCC asked for. Hurrah! Those targets must be turned into reality, but the announcement is a big step forward.

[Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the Government could be even more ambitious on carbon capture and storage by progressing the Scottish cluster on track 1 as well, instead of having it stuck as a reserve?

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

The more ambitious the Government are, the happier I will be, but I totally bow to the Government’s metrics. The first two projects are right for the first phase, and the Acorn project is in reserve. I think the Minister said yesterday that being the reserve puts the project in a more advanced position for the second phase of the next two that will come—I am not sure whether anyone picked that up.

[Alan Brown]

It is still in reserve.

[Anthony Browne]

Hopefully it will get there in the second phase.

In my draft speech, I was also going to echo the Climate Change Committee’s call on the Government to commit to greenhouse gas removal targets, for which they had no target at all. The CCC said that the UK Government need to target 5 million tonnes of removal by 2030. In the net zero strategy this week, I discovered as I read through it that the Government committed to do exactly that—I did not see that reported anywhere, however. They also committed to a robust monitoring, reporting and verification process for greenhouse gas removal, which the CCC called for and which I was going to call for. In short, many of the policy gaps between the CCC’s report and Government policy have been closed since the report was published. Four months is an extremely long time in politics.

I strongly welcome this week’s announcements, even though it meant I had to rewrite my speech. Yes, the strategies have been delayed, but I am sympathetic to how the Government’s machinery has been distracted by the worst pandemic for 100 years. It is much better to have a good strategy late than a bad strategy early. However, there are still a few areas where more progress would be good. One of our biggest carbon sinks is peatland, and the Government are aiming for 32,000 hectares of peatland to be restored each year by the middle of the decade, but the CCC would like to see 67,000 hectares restored. That is quite a big difference. The CCC also says that the Government need to do more on consumer choice and behaviour: in particular, diet change—eating less meat, presumably—and reducing demand for flights. Those are indeed sensitive areas. I am hopeful that new technologies such as cultured meat and synthetic aviation fuels will help bridge that gap.

[Dr Poulter]

Picking up on the issue of diet change, concerns about meat eating always strike me as a contradiction in this discussion, when quinoa and other products are imported from overseas with huge numbers of food miles. Does my hon. Friend agree? Will he elaborate on his thoughts on how the British farming industry can contribute to the carbon reduction debate?

[Anthony Browne]

I welcome that intervention. I believe that any change in diet to reduce greenhouse gas emissions would be, first, voluntary for consumers and, secondly, based on science. I do not know anything about the carbon dioxide emissions of quinoa flown in from other parts of the world. It clearly makes absolutely no sense for people to change their diet to eat food that increases carbon dioxide production. There is no point in doing things for tokenistic reasons to appear good or for someone to be able to claim that they are doing something good, when it is not actually good. I would certainly like to see more science. We cannot go into it now, but there is quite a lot of debate about the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that come from livestock farming.

The other technologies are not yet commercially available. It might be that changes in behaviour might be needed at some point in the future, as well as new technologies.

I am also a supporter of nuclear power, which is one of the safest and cleanest forms of energy in the world. As many leading environmental thinkers such as George Monbiot now recognise, the green movement’s long campaign against nuclear was a major strategic error. The reason why France’s greenhouse gas emissions are lower than ours is that it properly embraced nuclear power. As a country, we have been wavering on nuclear for decades. I welcome the Government’s new-found commitment to nuclear power and I look forward to future announcements. As I said in yesterday’s debate on carbon capture and storage, I ask the Government to have the courage of their convictions.

We clearly need to do more to tackle climate change. Having ambition is not enough. We need plans to achieve those ambitions, and we need to implement those plans. The CCC report had some valid criticisms of the Government’s plans at the time it was published, but the Government’s plans have now largely caught up. For next year’s CCC report, we should be well placed to get an A for effort. We will see.

I get frustrated when the more extreme environment campaigners often write to me and attack the UK Government for doing nothing about climate change. Where have they been? A huge amount is being done. Cutting emissions by nearly half in the last 30 years is not doing nothing. Closing down all coal-fired power stations was unthinkable when I was an environment editor—so was banning the sale of petrol and diesel cars; so was phasing out new gas boilers in people’s homes. These are deep and wide-ranging changes that will directly affect us all and are genuinely world-leading, but we need to keep up the pace of progress. There is no room for complacency. We need to deliver. The CCC said that this is the decade of delivery. Let that decade of delivery begin.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Lloyd]

I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman, because I was going to come to that point. He is right. Of course, as a homeowner, I have an incentive to make improvements in my own home; I get the benefit of the more comfortable home and the lower fuel costs. However, a private landlord has no such incentive and a private tenant has no such ability to bring about those changes. The hon. Gentleman makes a very real point, particularly because we have an increasing number of private lets. As someone who, by force of occupation, has needed to rent privately in London, I have lived in places that I wish the landlord had had an incentive to improve, because very little effort was put in. It is a serious and important point, which I hope the Minister will pick up on.

The point I am making about buildings is that we lack the skills, and we are not delivering the training packages to introduce those skills. We also lack the confidence of the would-be consumer—whether a private landlord, an owner-occupier or whatever—to know that what is on the market is valid and can be trusted. If I were to ask Conservative MPs, even the esteemed former journalist, the hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire, which heat pump they would recommend for my home—

[Anthony Browne]

indicated dissent.

[Tony Lloyd]

The hon. Gentleman has the good grace to admit that, like me, he has not got a clue. However, we need to have an educated consumer and we need to change the way people see this matter. These issues are not trivial if we are to make a real difference.

Similarly, in the industrial sectors, some of the same kinds of issues arise. Asking huge organisations around the world, such as Amazon or Manchester United football club, that have the intellectual and surplus capacity to decarbonise is one thing, but for a small firm, which focuses just on its core business, being informed about how they can and ought to make a difference is much more difficult unless we begin to look seriously at the issue of consumer education.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire mentioned the need to change our diets, and possibly our attitudes to air travel. We have to take the country with us, and frankly we are not yet in a position to do so. This week there was a statement about the Government’s net zero ambitions, but the media did not seem to pick up that issue and say, “This is the one we have got to go with.” Education and taking the public with us was mentioned in the report, but we are still in the foothills of such a debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

I thank everyone for what has been an excellent debate, as various other Members have commented. We clearly have a shared ambition and this afternoon’s discussion has been 90% policy and only about 10% politics. It has been incredibly civilised—although I am rather worried that the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) praising me so much has completely ruined my political career before it has even begun.

I will not go through all the different points because the Minister did it so effectively and he is in charge of the policy, but I want to highlight a few things that people have said. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test rightly pointed out that power had gone down very quickly and had gone down less in other sectors. There is some rationale behind that. I wrote about electric vehicles and I test-drove them about 20 years ago. The common complaint then was that they were transferring pollution from city centres up to the valleys where the power stations were, because electricity was largely produced by coal then.

It is not any greener to drive an electric car if the electricity that powers it comes from coal. Electric vehicles and other aspects of the transportation system, such as electric trains, as well as the heat pumps that we have been talking about, can be far greener if the electricity they use is decarbonised. I do not know whether that is deliberate on the part of the Government, but decarbonising electricity first and then going to the other sectors that are more difficult to decarbonise does make a sort of sense from a climate point of view.

A couple of comments were made about airport expansion, such as by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), and someone mentioned road expansion. The Minister said that any expansion of airports would only be compliant with our commitments to net zero, and that is absolutely right. I get very involved in road conversations in my constituency because it is a big issue locally. When cars reach net zero—when we all have fully electric cars and the production of cars is carbon-neutral as well, which if we decarbonise industry will happen—having more cars driving around will not have any impact on climate change. I realise that that is some way off and that congestion would then be more of an issue, so the different rationales for adjusting cars, airports or whatever will be different. I think net zero aviation is a very long way away.

One thing that I did not touch on, but which the Minister and others did, is the economic opportunity. I have been an economics correspondent, I am on the Treasury Committee, and I used to run the British Bankers Association. I focus very closely on economic issues and I have become more convinced that all the talk about green jobs is not just greenwashing but is actually genuine. There really are economic opportunities for us, particularly if we become a world leader in sectors ahead of other countries. We have been a bit behind on heat pumps so far, but if we make the progress that I hope we will make, it will create an industry that we can start exporting to other countries a lot more. We talked about that when we debated carbon capture, utilisation and storage yesterday. There is a huge economic opportunity in terms of exports.

We have had various discussions on nuclear. There was a bit of disagreement—some of us like nuclear, but some of us do not. I want to share a little observation. I went to Chernobyl village once—again, it was about 20 years ago. I went with the United Nations, which had done an investigation of the long-term health consequences of Chernobyl and concluded that they were absolutely minimal. From memory, I think about 40 people died of acute radiation sickness at the time of the explosion in Chernobyl, but most of the other health consequences were because of other factors. About 30,000 people were moved out of Pripyat, which is the town near Chernobyl. They were moved to other parts of Ukraine, without jobs and communities. A lot of them became alcoholic and depressed, and they died of alcoholism rather than the impacts of Chernobyl.

There have been a lot of scary stories about nuclear, but it is one of the safest forms of power. I will quote some figures—these are measured by deaths per terawatt hours, which is a huge amount of energy produced. Taking into account all factors, such as air pollution, deaths in production and so on, coal is 24.6 deaths per terawatt hour, oil is 18.4, biomass is 4.6, gas is 2.8 and nuclear is 0.07, and that includes all the deaths in Fukushima and Chernobyl.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that we are summing up now.

[Anthony Browne]

I will wind up by saying that nuclear is very safe and we do not need to worry about it. It has been an excellent debate.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the UK’s Climate Progress: the Committee on Climate Change’s 2021 Progress Report.

Carbon Capture and Storage

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 20th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I encourage Members to wear masks when they are not speaking, in line with the current guidance, and also to give people space when moving in and out of the room.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered carbon capture and storage.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Miller. Two decades ago, when I was environment editor of The Times, a report came across my desk of a new-fangled concept called carbon capture and storage—CCS. I phoned an environment group, whose blushes I will spare, and asked them what they thought. They took a big pause, and then said, “We don’t like it.” I asked them why they did not like it. They said, “Not sure.” A few months later I wrote another article on carbon capture and storage; I phoned the same environment group and asked what they thought. They said, “We’ve worked out why we don’t like it now.”

Carbon capture and storage, more trendily and officially now known as carbon capture, usage and storage, is often seen as a surreal, “Dr Strangelove” type of technology that mad scientists and big businesses have concocted. However, the truth is that carbon capture and storage is natural; it is what nature has been doing for 3.5 billion years. When life on Earth started, the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was about 4,000 parts per million. First bacteria, then multicellular organisms and then plants started sucking up the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and burying it. Life sucked trillions of tonnes of CO₂ out of the atmosphere and stuck it under ground as coal, as natural gas, as oil, and as carboniferous rocks such as limestone and chalk—the Grand Canyon and the white cliffs of Dover are made of rocks created by life out of the carbon in the atmosphere and then buried underground. Nature has continuously captured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and stores it temporarily in the biosphere as plant and animal matter, and stores it permanently in the geosphere. [Interruption.]

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Order. The Division bell has rung. I understand there might be up to five Divisions. If we can reconvene here as quickly as possible after the final Division, I will start the debate again when we are quorate. I urge Mr Browne to be in his seat quickly after the final Division. It will probably be about an hour.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Anthony Browne]

I will resume where I finished, if I remember rightly. I was saying that nature has continuously captured carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and stored it temporarily in the biosphere and permanently in the geosphere. The process has continued for billions of years, and the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide fell steadily to 200 parts per million about 20,000 years ago, which was a staggering 95% drop. However, atmospheric carbon dioxide started rising again. By the start of the industrial revolution, it had crept up to 280 parts per million, but in the last century we have reversed natural carbon capture and storage at an astonishing rate as we have dug up the fossil fuels and cut down the trees and stuck the carbon within them back into the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is now at about 420 parts per million—a jump of about 50% in a geological blink of the eye.

The last 10,000 years—the Holocene period in which we live—has been remarkably benign from a climate point of view. Steady, moderate temperatures have allowed human civilisation to flourish, but we are now undoing that. The whole point of the net zero mission is to stop carbon dioxide levels rising further so that we can keep our benign environment.

We can and should promote natural carbon capture and storage. We should plant more trees, restore peatlands and increase the carbon-rich organic content in soil. However, there is only so much land that we can plant with trees, so that can only ever be a small part of the solution. What we are talking about today is therefore industrial carbon capture and storage.

Many people in the environment movement are worried about industrial carbon capture and storage, and some are outright opposed. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the environment, I think that those fears need to be taken seriously. We can all agree that we should do CCS only if it is robust and locks away carbon away permanently. Otherwise, there is literally no point. The overriding fear is that CCS will create a moral hazard that means we will give up on other ways to get to net zero, but the UK and other Governments are totally committed to getting to net zero by the middle of the century and there is no scenario in which CCS can get us to net zero on its own. Whatever we do with CCS, we must increase renewable energy production, move to electric vehicles and phase out coal power and gas boilers. That is already happening, as we have seen with the announcements this week.

What CCS can do is enable us to transition to net zero more quickly and at far lower economic cost. Do not just take my word for it: the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee both see carbon capture and storage as essential for reaching net zero. The CCC’s sixth climate budget declared that CCS was a necessity, not an option, and that the UK needs to capture between 75 million and 180 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year by 2050, starting off with 22 million tonnes by early 2030, which is just nine years away.

CCS is currently the only technology we know of that can significantly decarbonise industries such as steel, cement, glass and chemicals. Unless we go back to the middle ages, we will still need those industries, and only CCS can ensure that we get to net zero without forcing those industries overseas, which would just export our pollution and lose us jobs. CCS can help produce low-carbon hydrogen that can power carbon-neutral boats, trucks and trains, and other industrial processes. CCS can also cut the cost of getting to net zero, which is an issue of rising political concern. The International Energy Agency has estimated that the cost of tackling climate change will be 70% higher without CCS.

There are various offshoots of CCS. The normal CCS will not reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere; it will just dramatically slow down the increase. But there are technologies that will reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere: greenhouse gas removal. Biomass energy with carbon capture and storage—BECCS—is one being piloted by Drax, and direct air capture is another. Greenhouse gas removal could help mop up residual emissions that are otherwise impossible to eliminate, but BECCS has become controversial in the environment movement partly because of concerns about how sustainable it is to grow the biomass. That must be addressed. There is also concern about the carbon accounting from BECCS: when we import biomass from other countries, we are taking credit for carbon captured in another country. That is a valid criticism, but it is an argument about adjusting our carbon figures rather than giving up on BECCS.

Last year, I hosted virtually the global launch of the Coalition for Negative Emissions, bringing together stakeholders from around the world who are interested in removing greenhouse gases. The potential impact is enormous, particularly if economies of scale mean that the costs of removing a tonne of carbon dioxide come down. I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement yesterday, in the net zero strategy, that they will target greenhouse gas removal of 10 million tonnes a year by 2030, and that they will amend the Climate Change Act 2008 to include engineered CO₂ removals. That might be controversial among some environmental groups, but it is simply irrational and unscientific to include CO₂ molecules removed from the atmosphere by a tree but not those removed by humans.

I have participated in many debates on CCS, and normally at this stage someone says that we should not support it because it is an unproven technology, but that is not true. The science is actually quite straightforward: it is stripping carbon dioxide out of the emissions from power plants and factories, liquifying it, transporting it by pipeline or boat, and then storing it. Most aspects of this are already done. For example, there are already 8,000 km of pipeline carrying CO₂ around the US for industrial use.

The storage point is more complex. It needs to be stored permanently, and the preferred place to do that is in geological formations, up to 3 km below the surface of the earth. One such perfect place to do that is under the North sea, where natural gas and oil have been stored by nature safely for millions of years without leaking out. Again, this is not untried technology. The first commercial CCS site in the world was opened in 1996, some 25 years ago, at the Sleipner gas field between Norway and Scotland. Since then, it has been taking 1 million tonnes of CO₂ out of emissions every year and sticking it a kilometre underground. That single CCS plant has reduced Norway’s greenhouse gas emissions by 3%, compared to what they would otherwise have been. That site is monitored closely and there has been no leakage. The Global CCS Institute, a US think-tank, now reports there are 26 operating CCS facilities worldwide in the US, China, Australia, the middle east, Canada and Europe.

However, it is true that CCS is untried and untested technology in the UK. We do not have CCS yet— we have fallen behind. That is why I welcome the announcement yesterday that the Government are pushing ahead with two new CCS clusters at HyNet North West and the east coast cluster. I look forward to hearing more from the Minister and colleagues about that.

There are lots of very powerful reasons why the UK should lead on CCS. The UK has a particular national advantage when it comes to CCS, and CCS could bring particular benefits to the UK. Our oil and gas industry means we already have the skills and infrastructure to develop CCS. As gas and oil extraction declines, CCS can take over. It is estimated that rolling out CCS will save 50,000 jobs in industries such as steel, cement, chemicals, ceramics and glass, and CCS can become a sector in its own right, creating 10,000 more jobs. The ideal locations for these jobs would be in the former industrial heartlands of north-east Scotland, Teesside, Humberside, south Wales and Merseyside. There could be no better example of levelling up.

We have the natural geological features. We have as much carbon storage capacity underground as the rest of the EU combined. Many European countries will not be able to do their own CCS, as they have neither the geology nor the industry, and this creates a huge export opportunity for the UK, capturing carbon dioxide and burying it underground on behalf of other countries. The UK is not doing any CCS yet, but we are almost uniquely positioned to be a CCS superpower.

The creation of a CCS industry is not going to happen by itself. We have companies that can develop CCS, but they have no financial incentive to do it. They are not going to invest billions of pounds only to find out there is no possibility of generating revenue. What they need is a predictable, long-term regime that makes CCS commercially viable, and that is the lesson from Sleipner in Norway. That was not built as a loss-making experiment; it was the result of a commercial decision by the Norwegian state oil company, now Equinor, to avoid paying carbon taxes by burying the carbon instead.

In the UK, we know how to set up regimes to nurture the creation of a new industry. We did it with offshore wind power. By setting up the contracts for difference regime, the Government facilitated the creation of a world-leading power industry that has worked better than almost anyone dared to dream. Costs have fallen so much that it has become competitive and wind now produces more electricity than any other source.

The good news is that this Government are committed to CCS, more than any previous Government, and I strongly commend them for it. They underlined their commitments in last year’s 10-point plan for climate change, promising to invest £1 billion a year in the technology. They reinforced that commitment yesterday with the announcement that they are moving ahead with support for the first two CCS clusters. They also raised their ambition, which was a surprise to me, saying they wanted to capture 20 million or 30 million tonnes of CO₂, up from just 10 million tonnes, which was the previous announcement, bringing the amount in line with what the Committee on Climate Change says is needed.

This is all welcome news, but it would not be much of a debate if I just said that the Government are doing everything perfectly. Indeed, I have some asks, although the announcements yesterday address some of them. My first ask is simply this: please keep calm and carry on. In 2007 and 2012, the Government launched competitions for CCS, but in both cases they subsequently cancelled them. That was so damaging to confidence in the industry. Such a stop-start approach risks repeating the mistakes of nuclear. Where once we were a world leader in nuclear power, successive Government wavering over decades meant that we ended up dependent on other countries. On CCS, will the Government please have the courage of their convictions?

My second ask is that the Government support CCS in next week’s spending review. Given yesterday’s announcement, I presume that that is a foregone conclusion. The Carbon Capture and Storage Association states that its members can reach the 10-milion tonne removal target for a maximum cost of £1.2 billion a year—that target has now gone up to 20 million tonnes, so the big question is whether it can still be done for £1.2 billion. That is about one quarter of the peak annual subsidy that launched the wind power industry, so as economies of scale kick in for renewables and as subsidies decline, they can be redirected to CCS.

My third ask is that the Government produce a long-term financial structure for the industry, so that companies can invest with certainty. That is the biggest ask of the industry. The levy control framework was a huge success for offshore wind, largely because it gave companies a 10-year funding horizon, within which they knew the revenues that they could make. That gave companies the confidence to invest at scale.

Yesterday, the Government announced the industrial decarbonisation and hydrogen revenue support or IDHRS scheme. That is very welcome, but I understand that it is only for the current spending review period and that the first two CCS clusters announced yesterday will not be operational within that time. Therefore, I would welcome confirmation of how the Government will ensure that CCS clusters have sustainable revenue once they are operational. If the CCS funding is subject to three-year spending review horizons, rather than a 10-year horizon, businesses will be reluctant to invest in the sector as much as they otherwise would. The Government should give CCS the same long-term certainty that they previously gave wind power.

My fourth ask is that the Government should set out a long-term vision for the development of CCS—we had a taste of that yesterday—for it to become a fully competitive, financially sustainable sector. That is a vision that would go above and beyond the clusters it would initially fund. To reap the full benefits of CCS, practice needs to be embedded across industry and the country. The Government need to establish a fully functioning market for carbon in the UK now that we have left the European emissions trading scheme.

My fifth ask is about the need for independent monitoring of the CCS clusters that go ahead. Environmental groups will rightly be looking like hawks for signs of any leakage of CO₂ out of the ground, or for game-playing by the industry. CCS companies cannot be allowed to mark their own homework. We also need clarity on the Track-2 process as soon as possible, to keep up momentum in the industry. I also urge the Government to look at the 1 GW hydrogen target as a minimum, because industry feels that it could do far more than that, which would be welcome.

Finally, I have a request to make of environmental groups. We all agree that tackling climate change is the most important challenge we face. Yes, they must hold Government and industry to account, but for all our sakes they should please not start campaigning against CCS itself. Let the debate be driven by science, not other motives. Rather, they should work with the Government and industry to ensure that CCS plays the vital role in getting to net zero that the IPCC and CCC expect of it.

The Government are committed to supporting CCS. They must now ensure that the UK is no longer left behind, but can reap all the environmental and economic benefits of becoming a CCS superpower. We did it with wind power and we can do it with CCS. We can deliver another great green success.

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

For complete clarity, we restarted the debate at 5.29 pm, so the wind-ups will start at about 6.05 pm. My maths says that if Members can speak for under four minutes, we will get everyone in—just as a guide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anthony Browne]

I thank the Minister for his clarification on various points, particularly on my key question about the future funding envelope, which he said would be announced next year. I very much look forward to that announcement.

I am blushing slightly, because everyone sung the praises not only of my introduction but of carbon capture and storage. Almost everyone, with one slight exception, the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse)—

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Anthony Browne]

Yes—

[Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)]

Order. No, you have just one minute left.

[Anthony Browne]

Basically, there is cross-party agreement that we need to move ahead with carbon capture and storage and the Government are doing a good job on that. This is one area where the House can come together and promote this whole agenda.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered carbon capture and storage.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency Bill

Anthony Browne Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 23rd March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

If you do not mind, Mr Deputy Speaker, I wish to make a slight confession: I am suffering from a rather extreme out-of-body experience. I have spent the past three and a half hours listening to Members from all parties—from not just the Conservatives but Labour, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats and the DUP—praising the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. I am having an out-of-body experience not because the House is the most united it has been since I arrived in this place, but because it is so united behind an idea promoted by Dominic Cummings. That shows what an indisputably good idea it must be.

It is absolutely right that the Government do everything they can to promote innovation, which has been the single engine for human progress over the past few centuries. Innovation is the single main reason why our health and wealth are immeasurably better than they were in generations past. Cambridge, my city, is the capital of innovation in the UK and, indeed, in Europe—perhaps in the world. It has had many successes, which have been referred to by a lot of colleagues—it is the global headquarters of AstraZeneca and it has had more Nobel prize winners than almost any country in the world.

One strange feature of innovation is that people often cannot tell where it will lead to when they are doing it. To give one topical example, when the Cambridge researcher Francis Crick was decoding DNA, he had no idea that more than half a century later, it would lead to the Wellcome Sanger Institute in my constituency doing more decoding and genome sequencing of the coronavirus than the rest of the world put together, helping us to track and tackle this pandemic.

The Government do a huge amount to promote innovation already, and we have heard a lot about it this afternoon, so why do we need another agency? Why do we need ARIA? ARIA will help tackle one of the main obstacles of innovation in the public sector, which is that in the public sector, as compared with the private sector, the costs of failure are higher and the rewards for success are lower. What do I mean by that? In the public sector, if somebody fails, they get pilloried in the press and they get the Opposition after them. Ministers have to resign and civil servants lose their job. That does not happen in the private sector. In the public sector, if someone does something that succeeds massively, they do not get bonuses. They are not rewarded by an increase in profits and share prices. The incentives are less.

What we need to do with ARIA is reduce the costs of failure, and that is why it is so important to have a separate, stand-alone organisation that is not part of UKRI—one that has a culture of taking risks and knows that sometimes it is worth having failure. Indeed, if there are not occasional failures, it is not really succeeding in its objective of disrupting and taking risks.

It is important—I urge the Minister to do this—that we help ARIA get more of the rewards for success. Several of my hon. Friends touched on this point earlier. ARIA is able to commercialise and go into business, but let it keep some of the rewards from success, if those projects succeed. That would be a huge incentive for it to try to make sure that those things work.

I have four general points about ARIA. The first is that it must be additional to other forms of research and development. If it is just funding projects that get funded by UKRI already, it is not really doing what it should be. Secondly, it is very important that it can experiment to try out different forms of funding. It has to be able to do a whole range of different types of funding for different projects as it sees fit, and it should be flexible in doing that. For example, we can have a company or academics doing some sort of research that we think is disruptive and amazingly good, but it does not fit into any of the general pots we already have. ARIA needs to be able to give grants to projects that it thinks are worthwhile. It has to have flexibility, and that means not going through the public procurement rules as they exist at the moment.

When I worked in City Hall in London, I was responsible for the London Development Agency, and I did a whole range of projects with public procurement. All I can say is that the only people who think that public procurement rules do not strangle innovation are people who do not have direct experience of them. It is absolutely right that ARIA is exempted from the worst parts of those rules.

Thirdly, picking up on value for money, which some Opposition Members mentioned, it is absolutely right that the Treasury and the Government ensure value for money from public investments across the piece. The Treasury Green Book does that, but it is also right that the Government have a portfolio approach, like a private investor. They might have some lower risk investments in Treasury bonds and then some higher risk investments in venture capital, and they are not all judged by the same rules. We absolutely should not judge ARIA by the same blanket value-for-money rules as we would if we were building a bridge. That would strangle ARIA.

Fourthly, it is absolutely right, as a couple of Members have touched on, that ARIA has multi-annual budgets inasmuch as the Government and the Treasury can allow. Funding disruptive research often takes many years, and simply giving a drip-drip of funding one year at a time will mean a lot of disruptive technologies cannot take flight.

When I was chair of the Government’s Regulatory Policy Committee, I remember civil servants at the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy saying to me sagely, “Governments have always set up organisations as independent, and then the politicians realise all the problems of independence and then chip away at the independence over coming years, and the organisations gradually get brought down to heel.” It is very important that does not happen to ARIA, otherwise it will lose the reason for its existence. We have heard Opposition Members in particular talk about the need for FOI requests, for procurement rules, for mission statements and value for money assessments. I ask the Minister and the Government not to listen to those siren calls, which will clip ARIA’s wings at birth, and it will then never take flight.

Finally, I just want to settle one little discussion or dispute that we have had this afternoon. Many of my hon. Friends have been making bids for the location of ARIA; we have heard about Bristol, Bolton, Sedgefield, Doncaster and Guildford. I can sort this for the Government. Put the innovation agency where the innovators are: Cambridge—done.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Doncaster.

Research and Development Funding

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 17th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner)— a fellow Cambridge city MP. I have the south of the city. It is fantastic to have this debate on this issue, which is really important for all the reasons he highlighted. It is enormously important for the country but also for my constituency.

Research and development is clearly absolutely vital for economic growth. We are a largely knowledge-based economy. It is a growing sector globally. It is growing far faster than general economic growth. It is absolutely right that we position ourselves as a science superpower. I fully welcome the Government’s target of R&D being 2.4% of GDP by 2027.

One thing that the pandemic has shown, and that we have always known in South Cambridgeshire and Cambridge, is that we are already a life sciences superpower. We do more testing per capita than any G20 country. The AstraZeneca vaccine, which the hon. Gentleman talked about, has been rolled out not just in the UK, but around the world, despite some wobbles in Europe at the moment, which I am sure they will get over. In my constituency, the Wellcome Sanger Institute does more genome sequencing of the covid virus than the rest of the world put together—that is a huge achievement.

The life sciences are the largest R&D sector in the whole economy. In 2019, it brought in £2.8 billion of investment, up tenfold since 2012. Although there are great amounts of private investment there, there is a huge role for Government support. The reason for that is that in the life sciences, there are often very long lead times. After the research and development stage, many years can pass before getting any revenues. There is also a lot of fundamental blue-skies research that is not necessarily directly related to commercial opportunity.

I want to mention bit.bio, a start-up company in my constituency that I happened to meet virtually yesterday. It has the technology to use the DNA from a human hair to create every type of cell in the human body in a functioning way. It has created functioning human muscles from a human hair cell in a laboratory, not for Frankenstein reasons, but because those human cells can be used to treat a lot of diseases. The company is at least two years away from any commercial application, however.

[Jim Shannon]

Could they use my hair?

[Anthony Browne]

They might be able to use the hon. Gentleman’s hair—he has some left and they could use the DNA.

The Government support the life sciences industry, through the biomedical catalyst, with £30 million a year— that is a very welcome and successful scheme. An Ipsos MORI report last year showed that for every £1 of Government money put in, it leveraged £5 of private sector investment. The 150 companies that won grants from the scheme have raised £710 million. That is a 5:1 ratio compared with a 2:1 ratio across Government funding for R&D in general, so it is a far better sector in which to leverage private sector investment. Six firms in my constituency have won grants from the biomedical catalyst in recent years, and I thank the Government for that.

One sign of success is that the quality of applicants has increased dramatically. Five years ago, one third of projects of sufficiently good quality got funding, but now only one in 25 does, because there are so many high-quality applicants. That means that there is a lot more opportunity to fund, and if the Government wanted to maximise the leverage of private sector investment across R&D in all sectors, they should increase the budget of the biomedical catalyst from £30 million to, say, £100 million. There are definitely enough projects there.

I have some good news and some bad news about what is happening at the moment—the Minister and I have exchanged letters on this. The biomedical catalyst has had a competition this year, and has decided the winners, three of which are in my constituency. They are poised to make the announcement about their great funding so that they can go out to investors and get more private sector investment in, showing what a triumph both the Government programme and their technology are. The bad news is that the winners cannot be announced because the biomedical catalyst has no budget as we speak. The money is there in BEIS overall, but there are Departmental negotiations going on. In the industry as a whole, that has led to a fear that no news is bad news, and that the rug is going to be pulled from under the whole scheme. The industry is finding the silence rather ominous.

My plea to the Minister is to prove the worriers wrong. Will she announce the budget commitment to the biomedical catalyst, unlock the investment in the companies in my constituency and across the UK, and help Britain and South Cambridgeshire retain their position as life sciences superpowers of the world?

Border Carbon Adjustment Tariffs and Decarbonisation

Anthony Browne Excerpts

Wednesday 16th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jerome Mayhew]

My hon. Friend has anticipated a point in my speech

that I was coming to in a few minutes. He is absolutely right that, just in July this year, the EU started a formal consultation on the implementation of the border carbon adjustment process for the entire European Union—and not just there, but he will have to wait a moment or two before I come on to the other exciting news.

Let us look at steel. We can get a huge amount of tax benefit, plus increased competition, that will give a fair, competitive advantage to our domestic steel.

[Anthony Browne (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend and his campaign for border carbon adjustment payments, which makes absolute sense. There is no reason why people who are not green should get a competitive advantage over those countries that are leading in the battle to become carbon neutral. My question is a somewhat technical one: we have a very complex economy, how do we work out which products need border carbon adjustment payments and which ones do not, or do we just focus on one key industry, or do we try to do it across the board?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. The answer is that there are many different ways that we could approach it. The simplest would be to choose the five or six key carbon-heavy industries and start with them. As we get more knowledge of how to implement this kind of scheme, we could spread out to the wider economy. I suggest that the best way to do that would be to look at the carbon-emitting credentials of the energy market in the third country and assess in broad terms what its carbon contribution is. For example, in China, the coal contribution to the energy mix is between 70% and 80% and we would use that as the basis for the carbon contribution of its imports. When we get a bit more sophisticated, we could look at giving rebates to individual businesses that can demonstrate that they have a low-carbon approach despite the high-carbon attitude of their country as a whole. That would benefit behaviour and would not be protectionist, but would merely be a fair assessment of the carbon cost of transactions.

Moving on to energy, we naturally assume that we create all the energy that we use in this country domestically, but that is not the case. On average, we import, via undersea interconnectors, about 7% of the electricity that we use in this country. Members may recall that, last May, we trumpeted in the press that we had a two-week period in which we were coal free. We had coal-free electricity for two weeks. That was very exciting, but what the newspapers failed to mention was that, during that two-week period, we imported from Holland 40 GW of coal-fired electricity. The reason that we did that was not that we lacked generating capacity in the United Kingdom, but that it was cheaper to import coal-fired electricity from mainland Europe than it was to use our own. The reason why it was cheaper was that it was entirely tax-free, whereas we imposed a carbon tax on the generation of our own domestic electricity. Unbelievably, we actually incentivise the importation of high-carbon coal-generated electricity at the expense of our domestic manufacturing processes. How can that be right? A border carbon adjustment would sort that out in a jiffy.

What single better way is there to forward this Government’s levelling-up agenda than by putting in place the economic conditions for the market to want to re-industrialise in the UK, and all that with no need for Government subsidies. In fact, not only does it not require Government subsidies but it will actually produce an annual windfall for the Treasury year after year. Working out how big that windfall might be has a number of imponderables in it, but the Grantham Research Institute of Climate Change and the Environment has produced a report on this and, again, using the assessment of a carbon price between £50 and £75 a tonne, starting in 2020 and working up towards 2030, it assessed that the gross amount that the Treasury could recover under this process would max out at £36.7 billion a year. I stress that that is the gross amount. Members may well take the view that, rather like VAT, this is a tax that is consumer based and would impact poorer households disproportionately as a percentage of their gross income. The Government might very well want to use some of that £36.7 billion to cushion the blow and to make it more acceptable for lower-income families, perhaps by investing in insulation for their houses or other measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jerome Mayhew]

The example that my hon. Friend gives—that of Germany—would fall neatly into the European Union, which is consulting on this very issue, so in that case, it would be a coalition of the willing to allow us to go forward, I hope, with a form of equality between the European emissions trading scheme, or its successor, and the approach that we would take ourselves. However, I accept that that would be up to country-by-country negotiations.

Is there international support for this approach? Do we have a realistic prospect of bringing the world community together and with us at COP26? I say that there is, because President-elect Biden has already spoken about “carbon adjustment fees” against

“countries that are failing to meet their climate and environmental obligations.”

That is a clear indicator that the incoming Administration in America is taking this seriously. I know that there is many a slip between a statement of intent and action, but it is something that we can potentially get behind at COP26. The European Union, as has been mentioned, just this July launched a formal consultation on the implementation of a border carbon adjustment, and it is worth noting that for the President of the Commission—I think it was part of her manifesto when she was first appointed— this is one of the key objectives for her presidency.

[Anthony Browne]

I commend my hon. Friend on his absolutely fascinating speech. It is clearly good to try to get global co-operation on this as a coalition of the willing, as he put it, among as many countries and trading partners as possible. If we fail to do that, does he think that the UK should go on its own, or would that be too difficult and put us too much out on a limb in the global trading system?

[Jerome Mayhew]

I say that we go it alone. I think it is one of the great freedoms that we have from Brexit. We have taken the trouble to get our independence. What use is it if we are not prepared to use it—if we are too scared to use our independence to make a bold statement and say, “This is the right thing to do. We are going to do it. Follow us if you like.”?