Sharing Economy

Lord Clark of Windermere Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

Part of the process of developing the industrial strategy is of course to bring in information from other departments on how major changes in the economy are affecting them. One of the things that we ensure when consulting business is that we always include the sharing economy element in those discussions. I will write to my noble friend about the hubs.

[Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)]

My Lords, it is 60 years ago today that Britain became a world pioneer when Her Majesty the Queen opened the nuclear power station at Calder Hall. Nuclear power has plugged our energy gap for the past 60 years. When will the Government try to have some extra innovation and look at wave power so that we can plug the gap in the energy demands of the future?

[Baroness Neville-Rolfe]

As the new Energy Minister, I have been struck by the range of opportunities in energy. On nuclear, we have made the decision to go ahead with Hinkley and a potential whole new generation of nuclear power stations. We are looking at all these other areas and we have innovation expenditure. We will be sharing our thoughts further in due course—for example, in the context of the contract for difference decisions that are due in the coming weeks.