Environmental Audit Committee

Claire Perry Excerpts

Thursday 7th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mary Creagh]

I did not have time to go into our examination of the green investment bank. Our previous report in the 2015 Parliament recommended a green share in a special purpose vehicle, and I am pleased that has been taken up by the Government. The green investment bank was set up in 2012 to address market failure in this area. The question is whether that market failure still exists, and the answer is yes. Do we still need an investment vehicle to create confidence and to create that pipeline? The answer, post Brexit, is emphatically yes, which is why I mentioned access to European Investment Bank finance. Had we known Brexit was going to happen, would we have taken the same decision to privatise the green investment bank? Perhaps not.

Macquarie got the green investment bank, which has now been rebadged as the Green Investment Group, and there are still market failures. There is market failure in green transport, and our Committee heard there is no intermediate body to broker between the City of London and locals authorities that want to decarbonise their local housing schemes and council housing through low-carbon combined heat and power plants. The bank could have been that bridge.

We looked at how the process of privatisation was very disrupted and took longer than we expected, and we are concerned the Green Investment Group is investing in less risky projects. Of the four projects it has financed since privatisation, one is in Ireland, one is offshore wind in Sweden, one is in India and, of course, one is in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, for which I can claim absolutely no credit—obviously it was an excellent decision.

The Committee has an anxiety about where the Green Investment Group is going to go and whether it will focus on easier-to-finance, safer and less risky overseas projects now it is part of an international bank and lose its focus on green investment in the UK. It would be a tragedy if it does that.

[The Minister for Energy and Clean Growth (Claire Perry)]

I did not intend to ask the hon. Lady a question, but this gives me an opportunity to thank her and the Committee most sincerely for an excellent report. Again, I salute her leadership in this area.

Does the hon. Lady agree that the fact we still have a very substantial, multi-billion pound commitment from the Green Investment Group to invest in exactly the sorts of low-carbon innovation she and I both want to see is a sign of reassurance that the group will continue to access funds, in this case global funds, to invest in the UK and Europe?

[Mary Creagh]

I certainly hope that will be the case but, as we mentioned in the report, the Bloomberg figures show there has been a huge collapse in green investment in the UK—it has gone down from about £26 billion to £10 billion. We questioned the Minister on whether things are cheaper, whether there is policy uncertainty and whether there is Brexit uncertainty. I am pleased the Green Investment Group is promising to do that, and we look forward to seeing some of this project pipeline coming through, because we need £22 billion a year. This year we are on £10 billion, so we need to get that ramped up very quickly. I look forward to hearing more about how she will make that happen from a policy point of view.