Lord Deben
Main Page: Lord Deben (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Jenkin of Roding
That is completely new. Does the Minister mean in advance of 2018-19? No, she is being advised from behind her. She may not have got that quite right.
I think that there is sufficient confusion on this that we must wait until we have the full details of how the scheme is going to work. That will require our having the details of the statutory instrument that implements it. I reserve my right to return to this matter.
Lord Deben
Can I underline what my noble friend has just said? It is extremely difficult to discuss these issues without having the details, and all the details have come very late. I have to say that it is extremely hard for us who may instinctively wish to support the Government if we do not have the information. This is another example of that. Either we have the information and can have a Committee stage or we do not have the information and have to spend our whole time making it difficult for the Minister, who herself does not have the information because she does not know—and it is not her fault—what will be in the statutory instrument. I therefore ask the Minister to go back and make sure that we can feel we are in charge of the facts, so that we can have a proper discussion.
Lord Deben
My Lords, this is an occasion when the Committee in the House of Lords is particularly valuable to the Government, because this is the moment when, perhaps, unexpected things in legislation can be found. There was a time when that used to happen in the House of Commons; it does not happen any longer, because of the way in which it has changed its mechanisms for dealing with these things—I think rather shamefully. So it is in our hands.
My noble friend will probably be pleased that we have debated this subject, because it is something that causes very considerable concern outside. If the mathematics stacked up, we might find ourselves supporting the very thing that we do not want to support. No one is suggesting for one moment that the Government intend that, but the consideration of the Bill leads one to discover those things. I remember sitting in the Minister’s position in the House of Commons, on a number of Bills, when one was very grateful for a discussion because issues were raised which made you think again about how you were going to do things, simply because one had not thought about that particular outcome. Although no doubt she will have some answers to this, I think that there is a real issue here that might be solved in a whole range of ways, which is why the noble Baroness is moving this probing amendment.
I do not think that many would call me a Thatcherite, but the idea that we were spending money to keep in operation entirely outdated systems would rather run against the grain of what I understand to be the view of the present Conservative-led coalition. I do not think that anybody in the coalition, whether from the right or the left, can possibly think that it is a good idea to continue with a mechanism that is manifestly unacceptable. I am sure that the Minister does not intend to do that.
I hope that the Minister will accept that there is sufficient doubt about how this might work out to make it important between now and Report to see whether there is a mechanism powerful enough at least to assuage those doubts. That is all the Committee can reasonably ask at this moment, but it is certainly something that we ought to ask and ask very strongly. If we cannot end up with that we may have to do find something ourselves at Report, but it would be very much better if the Government could reassure us and, if not, find something that will reassure us.
Baroness Worthington
I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. I want to clarify that I am not in any way saying that we should keep coal out of the capacity mechanism. I am stressing that we need to think very carefully about the design of the capacity mechanism so that it does not produce unintended consequences. I am also suggesting, as I have done in previous discussions, that there should be a back-stop measure to prevent the base-loading of coal should all the extra scenarios line up to make that the thing that they economically choose to do.
This is not about saying no to the capacity mechanism or to coal within that and I would not want to see coal closing unnecessarily. I want to see its role constrained to providing peaking and backup power rather than base-loading as it is today because it is so profitable.
Lord Deben
Before my noble friend sits down, I return to the question that I asked. This is not my amendment, and it is not one with which I agree. I did say that, as there is so much concern, it would be helpful to try to allay that concern. I wonder whether my noble friend feels that over the summer I could take her up on what she has just said so that we can allay the concern, which is widespread. People who are not known for being extreme, on either side, have suggested that this may work in a way that is inimical, so perhaps she would be willing to look at that and see what needs to be done to ensure that people are not unnecessarily concerned and do not unnecessarily attack a Bill that we all want to get through.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, as I said in my speaking notes, I and my officials will be happy to meet noble Lords. The invitation, of course, goes out to all noble Lords who are here today. I will make sure that that is extended to the Lords informal scrutiny committee.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will look at these amendments as probing amendments, because there are some important issues which we need to cover. I declare a past interest in the sense that I was involved in trying to get a particular interconnection. My experience from that is that there are many difficulties which are not systemic difficulties, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, might refer to them, but simply difficulties about the way in which we do things in this country which makes it very complex.
There are two different issues here which are covered in the first of the amendments, which was introduced earlier by my noble friend Lady Parminter. One is connection and the other is connection,
“in order to support the continued development of a European internal electricity market”.
Those are two different things, although I hope that they would run in parallel. Manifestly, in the long-distant future, it would be quite sensible to have a lot of windmills when there was wind and a lot of solar when there was sun. Being able to pass that along would be very good. Modern methods of transmission are very much less wasteful than previously and there is some indication that we will be able to move things very well in the future.
Obviously, therefore, there is a long-term interest in linking up the systems more effectively. I do not know what the latest figure is, but it has been estimated that if we made certain, not-very-difficult changes to the northern European connections, we could save about 11% of our emissions, simply because they are now wasted due to the connecting arrangement. That may have been updated now, but there are clearly savings to be made there. They are the sort of savings that we should make before we do other things. It always seems to me that wastage—I am glad that right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester came into this debate—is the least acceptable manner of putting emissions into the atmosphere. It just does not seem to be a right thing to do.
Even if it were not for that reason, we need to open up the opportunities for people to invest. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, is right that such investments are quite expensive, but if you open up the opportunities for people to invest, the market will sort out which investments are sensible and which are not. There will be an opportunity then for perhaps rather more cost-effective investment, which would involve interconnection.
The purpose of the amendments, so far as I can see, is to ask my noble friend the Minister, “Are we sure that we’ve looked at this sufficiently well in the general panoply?”. The climate change committee, of which I have the honour to be the chairman, has always talked about a portfolio of energy supplies as being the basis for energy sovereignty, for making sure that we do not become subject to very high prices of gas and for making sure that we fight against dangerous climate change—these three things come together. The portfolio approach is the one that I am always looking at. I am very keen that we should not write this Bill to exclude this. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, would probably go along with the concept that we should make sure that there is not an opportunity here. I am not sure that the Bill does that. If my noble friend could say to the Committee that she will make sure there is not a lacuna here, it would be a very helpful outcome of this debate.
Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan
I want to make this point to the noble Lord. We have a department that at the moment cannot provide us with important, immediately required, documents. We are asking them to produce a strategy in 12 months, a lot of which at the moment seems to be wishful thinking. Are this lot capable of doing it?
Lord Deben
I knew that I should not have raised the noble Lord’s name, because it gave him the opportunity to say what he so often does, which is anything that is not complimentary to the Government. I remind him of the early part of Wuthering Heights where there is a peculiarly nasty individual. He ransacked the Bible for the promises that he pulled to himself and the curses that he threw at other people. Sometimes, I am reminded of that in the speeches given by the noble Lord.