Energy Bill [HL]

Lord Hutton of Furness Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 5th September 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I want briefly to speak in support of my noble friends’ Amendments 8 and 9, which touch on some important issues that we ought to debate in this House.

To their credit, the Government have brought forward legislation that imposes significant duties on the Secretary of State and the economic regulator. I am sure that we all welcome those duties. However, when it comes to parts of the Bill that create general overriding obligations and purposes, it is important for the legislation to be drafted correctly and coherently, otherwise we create a rod for our own backs—not just for this Government but for future Governments as well. There is always a general case to be made for as much clarity as possible around how those duties and responsibilities are defined. My noble friends’ amendments will certainly help to do that.

I have a specific point to raise with the Minister, and I hope that he will be in a position to respond to it. Having looked at Clause 1 as a whole, the provisions that concern me the most are those in Clause 1(3). One of the duties that we are imposing on the Secretary of State and the regulator is to promote at all times a culture of competition between providers in this sector.

I want to raise a concern with the Minister. Carbon capture, storage and utilisation are huge process engineering challenges for British industry to rise to. I welcome very much the direction of travel that the Government have set out for testing and developing business models for CCUS projects; it is an incredibly important step. My only concern is that, although I am generally a very strong supporter of competition in markets, we can take that ideology too far and apply it in a context which probably will not secure the objectives that we have in mind. Over the next few years, I want to see a mobilisation of British industry, particularly the engineering companies in this country, so that they can come together and work on these projects. It will take that sort of collaborative approach, rather than an approach based purely on competition. If we can pursue that path, it will deliver more of a result over a shorter period than pursuing a purely orthodox, competition-based approach would.

I know that there is no specific amendment tabled to Clause 1(3) today, but I want to put a marker down because this is a general issue of principle. The question is simply this: how are we best placed to mobilise all of the amazing engineering resources that we will need in this country to meet our carbon capture, utilisation and storage targets if it is to be driven purely by competition as opposed to collaboration? If we pursue purely the competitive approach, I suspect that quite a lot of the jobs that the Government have talked about in the Explanatory Memorandum will not come to UK companies; they will go to Finland, Poland, Germany and other countries that are slightly further ahead of us in developing and applying some of the technologies that we will need. There is a general issue here that needs to be raised.

I should have declared an interest at the beginning of my remarks. I am the chairman of Energy UK, which represents the energy companies in the UK, and of Make UK, which represents all the engineering companies.