10-point Plan: Six Months On

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 19th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bradshaw (LD) [V]]

I have given notice to the Minister that I wish to concentrate on the role of the national grid. On a number of occasions that I have come across, the national grid has been shown to be operating at margins that are very close. For example, and this is an instance that I am familiar with, if you want to run a couple more freight trains up the east coast main line, immediately the shout goes up, “The power supplies will not support this!” It is the case that throughout the economy a lot of people are going to have to spend a lot more money on electricity both to charge their cars and run their trains, particularly freight trains. I am something of a hydro-sceptic, but even if you want hydrogen you are going to have to spend electricity money on it.

When I looked today at National Grid’s shareholders, many of them could hardly be described as friends of Great Britain. The sorts of friends that you see in that list are perhaps not always the sort with which you wish to be associated. So my question for the Minister is: is Ofgem up to the job of making sure that National Grid is preparing plans so that the electricity is available to do many of the things to which he has drawn attention? This is possibly a national fault, but we run too close to the margin and then, when we want to do something a bit extra, find that we cannot.

[Lord Callanan (Con)]

The noble Lord has drawn attention to some important questions. Of course, as we proceed with decarbonisation there will be an inevitable rise in electricity use and in the dispersion of electricity sources as we move away from fixed nodes to more dispersed forms of power generation. He is right to draw attention to the important role that Ofgem and the regulators, working in close partnership with the grid operators, will need to play to ensure that there is sufficient capacity, and I reassure him that we are doing exactly that. The Energy White Paper gave a commitment that the Government would consult on a strategic policy statement for Ofgem during the course of 2021, so we will absolutely ensure that it is up to the job—fit, battle-ready and taking part in important debates, negotiations and strategies to ensure that there is sufficient electricity capacity to meet the demand that he refers to.