UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL]

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 24th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, like all noble Lords—with one signal and articulate exception—I too support the establishment of the UK Infrastructure Bank. The Bill to give the bank a statutory basis is part of the essential and, I hope, accelerating effort to put the environment at the heart of everything that the Government do.

The bank has just two strategic objectives. The first is that its investments must help to tackle climate change. I have one point to make—speaking in the middle of the debate, it is not an entirely novel point, but I hope that the Minister will be persuaded by repeated advocacy—but that point needs a strategic context. The context is the massive strain that humankind is putting on the planet where we live.

To expand that context, I cite David Attenborough. A few years ago, he came to address the leadership conference of the Foreign Office. An ambassador asked him what the clearest thing he had learned was, after all his decades of travelling the world and filming nature. Sir David contemplated this, then answered as follows: “It is impossible to exaggerate the impact of humankind on the planet.” He illustrated this with a story from Madagascar. In 1961, he was part of the first expedition to film the indri, the largest lemur in the world. They had to be very patient but, eventually, they got their footage. Sixty years later, two amazing things have happened. First, this shy animal has got completely used to human beings. When guides take you into the mountains now, they whistle and the indri appears for its photo. Simultaneously, people have completely destroyed its environment. The indri is now critically endangered because the mountains it needs to live will not be available to it for much longer.

Although climate change is absolutely vital, I join others such as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, in advocating for nature to be on the face of the Bill. Climate change is important but biodiversity loss, plastic in the oceans, air pollution and deforestation are all vital too. Let us put nature and its restoration in the strategic objectives.

UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL]

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as chairman, president and vice-president of a range of environmental organisations. I too will speak to Amendment 4, to which I have added my name.

We absolutely must not miss this opportunity to make sure that the bank’s objectives are fully in line with the two biggest global challenges: climate change—mitigation and adaptation—and biodiversity decline. This amendment, as has been outlined, highlights the importance of the bank supporting investments that enable the UK to adapt to the implications of climate change and not just to reduce carbon. There is already enough carbon out there to have significantly influenced the climate—increased storminess; higher temperatures; impacts on human health, crops and the resilience of infrastructure; and flood risks to property, energy generation and distribution networks and transport. Some 85% of all major electricity distribution substations are on the flood plain. At high temperatures, as we already know, roads and rail melt. There are some real practical issues now which the infrastructure bank could get its teeth into.

I have read the successive reports of the Adaptation Committee to the Climate Change Committee, which I was privileged to help establish. I am delighted to see the noble Baroness, Lady Brown, in her place, and I am sure she will talk with huge authority about this. To steal her quote,

“adaptation remains the Cinderella of climate change, still sitting in rags by the stove: under-resourced, underfunded and often ignored.”

It almost makes you weep. Her reports also demonstrate that the gap between the level of risk we face in the UK from climate change impacts and the level of resilience we are developing has widened rather than narrowed. The UK is not in a good place with its readiness for and resilience against the impacts of climate change, and if the world misses its net-zero targets, we will be in an even worse place. The bank has a really valuable job to do in addressing these issues. It must do so, and therefore this should be in its objectives.

As others have said, the bank also needs to embed in its objectives a role in supporting action on the Government’s other key challenge of protection and restoration of natural capital—air, land, water and especially biodiversity—which has been on a steep decline for 50 years, and which the Government have committed to reverse by 2030.

I put the House on notice that I will become a complete bore. Having got my way with the Government yesterday when they announced that they would have a land use strategy, I can now stop banging on about that. My next subject to bang on about is the need to learn the childhood game, if noble Lords remember it, of trying to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. We need not just to learn that but to pull off the more difficult task of walking, talking and chewing gum at the same time. Pretty well every government policy and many public institutions should have three sets of objectives for the future: the key role that they play in whatever sphere of life they operate in, the climate change objective, and the natural capital and biodiversity decline objective. We have to become better at walking, talking and chewing gum at the same time.

As we see successive bits of legislation going through, I am sure your Lordships will hear me, the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and many others banging on about that need. Remember when you were patting your head and rubbing your stomach: it was difficult but it was doable. We have to learn how to do this—to make sure that every single policy has measures for climate change mitigation and adaptation for biodiversity recovery included in its objectives, equal to the main function that it is there to deliver. This amendment would do that job for the infrastructure bank, and it would enable the bank to work for natural capital as priority infrastructure and as a key factor in screening its lending priorities.

There are several other amendments grouped with Amendment 4—Amendments 2, 3, 5, 15 and 20—which are all variations on the theme of environmental objectives. I personally think that ours is the most all-embracing, elegant and comprehensive, but I am sure there will be a degree of haggling to bring together some combined objective before Report.

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, I too have put my name to Amendment 4, and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, that it is the most elegant in this group. At Second Reading, the Minister acknowledged that expanding the objectives of the bank to include biodiversity and the protection, enhancement and restoration of natural capital was the area that most parts of the House were most interested in promoting. More than that, the Minister said that everything that could be launched in the area of biodiversity was completely compatible with the climate change objective of the bank. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has reminded us today, this Bill decides the DNA of the bank. So if it is not included on the face of the Bill, biodiversity and the natural environment will be essentially down-prioritised. As the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, reminded us, if it is not there, people will think that it is not important. If it is as easily incorporated as the Minister suggested at Second Reading, could we please have this explicitly on the face of the Bill?

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord McDonald, and the contributions he has made to the House and to the International Relations and Defence Committee recently.

I see that two of our right reverend Prelates are present in the Chamber. I thank them for their unity and for their letter to the Times today, which I think was absolutely right. I congratulate them on that unity and that nationally important statement.

One of the things we debated in the Environment Bill—now Act—was whether we should have a statement of the biodiversity emergency in that Bill. At the end of the day, I withdrew my amendment on that, because the Minister pointed out at the time that the Prime Minister had written that there was a biodiversity and nature crisis in this country. Therefore, I find it very difficult to understand, from a government point of view, why we do not have both those crises reflected in this Bill’s objectives. Although they are very different crises, they are absolutely connected, and it is essential to solve them both. If nothing else, this bank must be part of that solution—it must be.

I come back to something that the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, said at Second Reading that I absolutely agreed with: one of the risks of this bank is that it just substitutes private investment for public sector investment. Relatively, one of the easiest areas for the private sector to invest in—because of all the schemes such as contracts for difference, ROCs in the past, and the incentive for renewable fuels—is clean energy. It is a relatively low-risk area, and we have seen that happen. In fact, it was much riskier when the Green Investment Bank started; now that we have come down the learning curve, it is quite an easy area in which to invest.

UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL]

Lord McDonald of Salford Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 4th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendments 7 and 10 in my name, but before I do I join others in congratulating my noble friend the Minister on tabling the government amendment on energy efficiency. It speaks to an amendment that I and others tabled in Committee, and it is certainly welcome that it will now, rightly, be included in the Bill.

Amendment 7 would insert just three words: “nature-based solutions”. There is a lot in the Bill about climate and carbon, but the reality is, as noble Lords are well aware, whatever we do and must do on that front, we will still be left with a pressing, urgent need for nature-based solutions. As other noble Lords have mentioned, we have “roads” in the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, has just pointed out, I do not think anybody would necessarily be against roads as a secondary, tertiary or lower-level aspect of an infrastructure project—to get to the shoreline for offshore wind, to give another example. However, that is at best a tertiary part of the bank’s investment, or of that particular infrastructure project, yet it is in the Bill. If “roads” can be there, surely “nature-based solutions” has at least an equal place in the Bill. Would my noble friend consider including “nature-based solutions” and, in exchange, taking “roads” out of the Bill? That would be a thoroughly good thing.

Finally, in similar terms, my Amendment 10 would insert “clean air”—perhaps one of the most significant, precious and essential parts of our infrastructure. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that it would not be difficult or controversial, and that it would be a thoroughly good thing, to have “clean air” on the face of our infrastructure bank Bill?

[Lord McDonald of Salford (CB)]

My Lords, the House this afternoon represents one of the Prime Minister’s favourite metaphors: a nest of singing birds. Everybody who has spoken agrees with each other; I agree with everything that has already been said, but particularly with what my noble friend Lady Hayman has said. I have added my name to her Amendment 1, and I will make just two additional points to the ones she made.

First, the Government agree that nature, nature recovery and nature-based solutions are important, and they say that all of that is encompassed within the Bill as drafted. But if nature is not mentioned on the face of the Bill, it will always look secondary; it will always nest behind climate. It will not have the same prominence or importance, yet all the facts suggest that the biodiversity crisis is at least as urgent as the climate crisis. These two things, according to the facts and the evidence, deserve to be side by side. If they are not, the bank and others will draw obvious conclusions.

Secondly, the only point I have heard made for why there is resistance to having nature on the face of the Bill is that there are not really any projects ready to go. My answer to that is: so what? This Bill is setting the course for the years ahead. It does not matter that there is not something ready to go in the next few months, because these projects will surely come. One issue that has detained your Lordships’ House time and again over the last year has been water quality and the fact that water companies are dumping sewage hundreds of thousands of times a year into our rivers and the sea. It is easy to imagine a project on water quality that would not really be about climate but would be all about nature. Surely that would deserve to be supported by the UK Infrastructure Bank. So I ask the Minister to reconsider one last time.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, first, I apologise for not attending the earlier stages of the Bill. I was caught out by conflicting diary commitments, but I have been following the debates and the developments around the Bill through all the stages, and my noble colleagues will know of my interest in this issue.

We have been grateful to the Minister for the continued dialogue on the contents of the Bill. However, as we heard today, there remains unfinished and unresolved business, and I am therefore grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and all noble Lords who set out the case for their amendments so clearly; we share their concerns. The number and range of amendments in this group on the environmental priorities demonstrate that there is a feeling across the House on this issue. The noble Lord, Lord McDonald, described it beautifully as a “nest of singing birds”. I concur with that description, because there is a concern that the ministerial responses in Committee simply have not been good enough to embed “nature-based solutions” and the “circular economy” into the bank’s founding legislation. However, we believe that these principles are crucial for the creation of green jobs, for harnessing the best science and technology, and for reshaping the economy away from the damaging fossil fuel mentality that exists at the current time.

Amendments 1 and 3 demonstrate our ongoing concerns about the implementation of the “biodiversity” and “natural capital” commitments of the Environment Act, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, quite rightly pointed out, were designed to underpin the very compelling evidence in the Dasgupta review. In that report, Dasgupta made it clear that enhancing nature and biodiversity are more than aspirational extras; they lie at the heart of our future economic and social well-being and are fundamental to delivering our climate change commitments. This is why we believe that these principles should be a major driver of the bank’s activities and spelled out in the Bill. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has made clear, the Chancellor’s strategic steer in March set out that the Government are already calling for the bank to grow natural capital markets through its investment. This Bill seems the proper vehicle to drive that policy through.

I have also added my name to Amendment 6A, which would make it clear that the definition of infrastructure projects should be widened to include “nature-based solutions”, rather than just concrete and metal. I also think that Amendment 9 of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, quite rightly challenges the emphasis on “roads”; surely public transport and green energy should be priorities in future. “Nature-based solutions” can be anything from creating natural flood defences to restoring our woodland, peatland and parks. The growing market for investment in nature-based land use is an illustration of its potential for delivering our climate change commitments.

The amendment also embeds the principle of the “circular economy”, putting greater emphasis on our scarce resources through better reuse, repair, recycling and remanufacturing. As noble Lords have said, these are principles to which the Government are already committed but have been slow to implement. Placing these in the Bill would provide the means for drawing in new revenue streams to transform our manufacturing processes. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has already set out a convincing argument for Amendment 6A and—depending on the Minister’s response—if she wishes to test the opinion of the House, we will support her.

We also have our Amendment 11 in this group, which seeks to expand the definition of “harmful pollutants” to include those

“which are not greenhouse gases but”

other forms of “particulate matter”, such as car tyre air dust, which can be just as

“detrimental to air quality and human health.”

Therefore, we think that the case for expanding that definition is vital. I am grateful to the Minister for her discussion with my noble friend Lord Tunnicliffe on this issue, and hope that some of those assurances can be placed on the record today.

As is the case with so many other Bills, there seems to be a significant gap between what the Government say they want to achieve and what they are willing to commit to in legislation. Whether it is biodiversity, air quality, the circular economy or ensuring that infrastructure projects use nature-based solutions, their record of delivery does not match their stated ambitions. There always seems to be a political or legal excuse for delay. All we are doing in these amendments is formalising policy commitments already agreed by the Government, and providing a mechanism for financial support. There is already a review process built into this, but, if we are not rightly ambitious about delivering projects outside the normal investment portfolios, we will find ourselves in the seven-year review stage facing a tally of missed opportunities. This is why it is so important for noble Lords to support the amendments in this group, and I hope that they will.