Brexit: Least Developed Countries

Lord Hughes of Woodside Excerpts

Thursday 16th November 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Hughes of Woodside (Lab)]

My Lords, I join the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, in congratulating my noble friend Lord Sandwich on bringing forward this very important subject. The noble Baroness and I shared many happy hours in the other place and, even then, more united us than divided us, and I am glad that that is still the case. We are talking about dealing with what we now call lesser developed countries. We used to call them underdeveloped countries; the jargon has changed quite a bit. I hope noble Lords realise that this is an extremely important issue.

People tend to speak about gross domestic product, the average wage and so on. I am going to take a slightly different approach. On 11 November, the Economist published a couple of very useful articles about Africa and the lack of capacity for people there to access electricity. That is a different approach but nevertheless quite useful. Some of the figures are astonishing. For example, in South Africa, which is arguably the most highly industrialised country in Africa, 28% of people still have no access to electricity. In Nigeria, the figure is between 25% and 49%. In Mozambique, it is between 50% and 70%. The astonishing thing is that the Cahora Bassa dam in Mozambique, which is a major power supplier, sends most of its electricity to South Africa. It does not stay within the country itself.

There is a conundrum as far as the future is concerned. Everyone wants industry to grow but it cannot grow without electricity, and the electricity supply cannot expand without businesses to buy the product. In Kenya in particular, a lot of work has been done on solar panels and innovative pricing methods for the product. Nevertheless, there will still be a need for large energy suppliers. We know from our own experience how difficult it is to arrive at a decision about when to build a new power station. If it is bad for us, how difficult must it be for countries without the capacity to do so? We have to grow these economies. Although the Kenyan experiment is useful, without large energy suppliers they cannot have the business. How are we going to square the circle and resolve that conundrum?

There is much to be done, possibly by the World Bank and other agencies, to take a risk and build the electricity supply before the demand is there; otherwise, things will never move. Unless we act soon and properly on the energy supply in what we call the lesser developed countries, we are in very great danger that in 10, 20 or 30 years from now, we will be in the same place, arguing the same questions but in a slightly different way. This is an extremely important issue and one which the Government need to take account of. When we go into the post-Brexit talks, a lot of technical matters will be involved. But much more important are the matters of principle and practice that need to be addressed. I unfortunately see no signs at the moment that the Government have any idea of how they are going to proceed. I hope that this debate helps to clear their mind.