Great British Energy Bill

Lord Frost Excerpts

Report stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

I support Amendment 1, in the name of my noble friend Lady Noakes. I should declare at this point that I live about five miles away from Sizewell B nuclear power station and one that is about to be built, Sizewell C, and less than a mile away from other energy infrastructure that is still going through the planning process.

A lot of my time at the other end was taken up with considering the importance of energy, not only for a long-term sustainable future but the security issues rightly referred to in these objectives. The reason these objectives matter is that this is an unprecedented situation, where we are handing, in effect, a blank cheque to an arm’s-length body. Admittedly, it will have strategies set by the Secretary of State, but, as has been pointed out, there will be absolutely no reference to Parliament in its consideration. That is why the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Frost has attraction, in proposing at least having a direct connection with two Select Committees of the other place and a relationship with the chair of GB Energy. As my noble friend pointed out, these are the reasons that the Government gave us for having this new entity. Therefore, it would make a lot of sense for the Government to accept this amendment directly.

On Amendment 17, where I disagree with the noble Earl, Lord Russell, is that I do not believe we should get into legislation that dictates the amount of taxpayers’ money that will be spent. I have seen that happen before in legislation, and then all of a sudden money starts getting wasted. The whole purpose of this financial vehicle is to de-risk and bring in external private investment. That is a sensible approach, especially given the amount of uncertainty, which I appreciate the Government are trying to address in other ways. Nevertheless, for something such as energy security, a significant amount of investment is going to be required right across not just Great Britain but the United Kingdom, and this is a critical moment for our nation. That is why, while I think there will be money well spent, we should not be dictating a minimum.

The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, is really sensible. This company will be in an unusual situation—not unique, but unusual—and the extra information required, particularly in proposed new paragraph (d), is the core essence of why this company is being set up: it is stepping forward to try to get others to do so.

If anything, what has evolved over many years is the need for transparency and understanding. The amount of trust that people have in how their taxpayers’ money gets spent really matters in the contract that Parliament and government have with the electorate—the taxpayer. So, elements such as this will enforce the rationale rather than just necessarily seeing energy bills tick upwards, unfortunately.

So if Amendments 1 and 37 are pressed, I will certainly support them—although, regrettably, not Amendment 17 from the noble Earl, Lord Russell.

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 39 in my name. I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, for putting his name to it, and thank the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for his warm comments on at least aspects of this amendment.

The broad aim of Amendment 39 is to do what a lot of other amendments have sought to do, both in Committee and no doubt today, which is to ensure that GBE gets the kind of scrutiny that a major public company would get: that is, its internal procedures, processes and purposes get a degree of public attention and comment. I worry that we are setting up a company over which there will be relatively little oversight and perhaps rather idiosyncratic governance compared with a normal public company. So it is with that in mind that I have tabled Amendment 39.

There are two aspects to the amendment. One is about pre-appointment scrutiny and the other is about what happens once the chair has his feet under the desk, as it were. I share the view of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that the first part of this is the most important part of the Bill.

Before getting into the substance I should declare an interest, which is that I am an unpaid director of the group Net Zero Watch—I am sorry for not mentioning that at the very start.

On the first aspect of this amendment, its purpose is to make sure that the appointment at least attracts a degree of scrutiny and comment from relevant Select Committees. When I put this amendment down in Committee, I had in mind only the Treasury Select Committee in the Commons, but I have picked up the suggestions made by others that the Environment and Climate Change Committee also ought to have a role in this. I emphasise that this amendment would not give those committees a block. The right to make the appointment does not go to those committees; it is the right to comment on a decision that the Secretary of State proposes to make and which he or she will still be able to make after the Select Committees have looked at it. That degree of public scrutiny is important. The chair is a public figure in many ways, and in fact we have seen, from some of the statements he has made already, that he intends to use that public platform to make comments. It seems right in these circumstances that there should be a degree of political scrutiny of this.

The Minister said in Committee that this was not in line with the guidance of the Cabinet Office for such appointments. But I suggest that, even under the hard rein of the internal regimen of the noble and learned Lord the Attorney-General, guidance written by a department cannot constrain the Government, or indeed the legislature. Indeed, we see that in real life, because the appointments of the chairs of Ofgem, the Climate Change Committee and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, and so on, are all made in accordance with such a procedure. So there is really nothing novel here: it is the right thing to do for a major company of this nature and I hope the Minister will think hard about the defensibility of the position as it currently stands.

I will speak briefly to the second part of my amendment, which is really probing. The current arrangements for the accountability of the chair seem rather unclear. I guess formally he is accountable to shareholders, but the shareholder is obviously the Secretary of State and a chat with the Secretary of State is perhaps not enough for accountability for a company such as this. It may be that the auditors are not best placed to do that and it may be that there should be a degree of confidentiality to it, but there surely should be something that is formal and agreed and which can produce a degree of political debate. Perhaps the Minister can say exactly how this accountability will be achieved in practice, if it is not via some formal process of this nature. I repeat, to conclude, that the first subsection proposed by my amendment is the most important, and indeed, really quite substantively important to the nature of the body we are creating.