Tidal Range Energy Generation

Debate between Tim Farron and Mick Whitley

Wednesday 10th January 2024 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley]

I thank my two colleagues for their interventions; I totally agree with their contributions. I hope that after today we will see more movements in tidal power. I do not want the Minister to believe that I am under any illusions about the up-front costs of tidal range generation. They are undoubtedly significant, but these are ultra-long lifecycle assets, which will continue to provide clean, green power for more than a century.

As a case in point, 2024 marks the 58th anniversary of the world’s first tidal power station becoming operation on the Rance river in Brittany. Today, it is less than half way through its estimated lifespan of 120 years, and continues to supply green and affordable energy. As the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee said in 2021, when he urged the Business Secretary to seize the potential of our tides:

“Once these costs are paid off, the energy generated from range projects would be very low in cost and would be delivered over a longer time horizon than (for instance) energy generated from wind installations, which require repeated renewal.”

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his excellent speech. He is right to say that, although the up-front costs of developing tidal schemes can be expensive, the lifetime costs per year are absolutely not. We are in an election year and there is a tendency for us to think short term; we are rebuked for the fact that we need to look long term. If we build the tidal scheme we want to see across Morecambe bay and Duddon estuary, that will mean 7.8 TW of energy, 7,300 construction jobs and 7,400 long-term jobs. That is great for the economy and great for the environment. All we need is a Government that can act for the long term.

[Mick Whitley]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He makes a great point. As I have said, right down the west coast there is a need for tidal power, which I hope we can generate. I know it is an election year, but this matter is cross-party and not about being adversarial.

Last year, the Government passed legislation to ensure financial support for new nuclear power aimed at achieving what Ministers have described as a nuclear renaissance. As with tidal range projects, the capital costs of nuclear power plants are considerable, but the Government have nevertheless recognised them as necessary to securing a vital domestic supply of low-carbon energy. We will of course need to consider the optimum financing arrangements for new tidal range projects. In fact, establishing a sustainable financial mechanism was one of the key objectives of the amendments that I tabled to the Energy Bill in September last year, which would have established the tidal range assessment grant to fund an independent, evidence-led study into tidal range generation. Although the contract for difference scheme may be adapted to support the development of smaller tidal range projects, it is clearly not suitable for supporting the development of larger gigawatt-scale projects.

As I said when I last raised tidal range generation in the House, the Government need to be working with the industry to look seriously at the merits of employing a regulated asset-based model for funding tidal range, just as they did last year with new nuclear. There is considerable enthusiasm in industry to develop our tidal range capacities, but investor confidence remains low, largely because of a widespread—and I am afraid, for the time being, legitimate—concern that developers will not have the Government support.

Ministers have said that they want to continue a dialogue with the hydropower industry but if we are going to rescue the 10 GW of tidal range capacity currently stranded in development, the developers need assurances that they will have a proactive partner in Government. The British Hydropower Association has established just some steps that the Government could take to build investor confidence and create a favourable policy context for tidal range. Those include establishing a Government-industry partnership similar to the one established for offshore wind in 2012, which has had such success, the inclusion of tidal range as an explicit technology within the UK energy strategy and national policy statements, and building on the work that was undertaken through the tidal lagoon challenge. We also need Ministers to develop a road map for tidal range, which the EAC recommended in 2021. It called on the Government to set out a stated ambition for the sector in gigawatts of generating capacity, alongside an industry strategy for the sector that would ensure that the supply chain was onshore in the UK in order to support British businesses.

I have spoken so far about tidal range generation only in general terms, but now want to consider the specific proposals put forward by Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram and his colleagues in the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority for the Mersey tidal power project. I understand that the Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness met the team behind the Mersey tidal power project as recently as last autumn, so I hope that the substance of the proposals are familiar to the Minister representing the Government in this debate.

The project represents an unparalleled opportunity for our region. It has the potential to provide a predictable domestic green energy supply to a million homes on Merseyside and to create thousands of new jobs, including in my constituency of Birkenhead, while supporting hundreds of UK companies across the supply chain. If delivered successfully, the Mersey tidal power project would undoubtedly be transformative for our region, but its impact would also be felt nationwide, helping to bring us closer to achieving our legally binding targets to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

The Mersey is a relatively short estuary with shallow waters, and this geography makes the area the ideal location for a commercial pilot project of the kind that industry figures believe is essential to accelerating progress in this sector. By assigning the Mersey tidal power project pilot status, the Government could begin to resolve issues around regulation, planning restrictions and environmental impact before turning their attention to larger gigawatt-scale schemes such the Morecambe tidal barrage, of which I know the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) is an enthusiastic champion.

Here again, though, we need to see the Government working as an active collaborator with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority as well as industry. The Metro Mayor has, in particular, been keen to stress the importance of central Government making available the kind of funding and support that was provided to hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technologies, and of central and local governments developing a common approach towards the Crown Estate and Duchy of Lancaster so that the necessary seabed leases can be secured without prohibitively high entry costs.

When confronted by the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the middle east and the existential threat of climate breakdown, the question of how we secure our energy independence has never been so important. It is time for us to reckon seriously with how we can exploit our natural geography to secure a clean, green, and domestic energy supply for generations to come. It is time for us to harness the power of our tides.

Public Procurement Processes

Debate between Tim Farron and Mick Whitley

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Westminster Hall

[Mick Whitley]

Yes, I do agree with the right hon. Gentleman.

In December 2020, the Cabinet Office published a social value model that said there should be a requirement on Government Departments to evaluate social value when awarding contracts, and not, as previously, just to consider it. Yet when it came to publishing the Procurement Bill, there were no explicit references to social value, so Labour MPs and peers have raised it as something that should be integral to the Bill and the public procurement process.

Another problem with the Procurement Bill as it stands is that it contains no provisions to ensure that bad employers are prevented from winning contracts. Far too many bad employers exist and far too many of them profit from public procurement contracts. A decent Procurement Bill can address that with construction projects nationally and by legislating to tie local government contracts to a clear and fair employment charter of the kind that already exists in the Liverpool city region.

Contracting authorities should be obliged to build into every contract that involves even a penny of public money a cast-iron guarantee that fair employment practices and the right to trade union recognition will be respected. There are other aspects of public procurement, such as strict conditions regarding the need to meet our climate targets and helping to regenerate our country through a green industrial revolution, but I wish to finish on a very important principle that must be embedded into the reform of public procurement: a watertight mechanism to put an end to cronyism.

The Bill hands more powers to Ministers without any meaningful safeguards to ensure that decisions will not be determined by favouritism at best and cronyism at worst. This is not an abstract issue: it is, sadly, a real problem that has led to major scandals. While the country was rocked by the curse of covid, a VIP lane was opened to enrich friends of Conservative Ministers and donors to their party coffers. Taxpayers’ money was doled out without any proper scrutiny. As a result, orders of personal protective equipment were handed out to companies that had no track record of producing or providing medical equipment. More than half the £1.7 billion paid by the Government to politically connected VIP companies to supply PPE in the pandemic was spent on equipment that has not been used, according to new figures.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The hon. Member is making a really important speech. He talked about NHS procurement, and social value must surely include saving lives. I chair the all-party parliamentary group for radiotherapy and last week we met oncologists, radiotherapists and cancer-centre managers. They say that one reason why we are not saving as many cancer patients’ lives as equivalent countries around the world is that we do not have a centralised procurement system for linear accelerators. As a result, we are 120 machines down on where we should be, and hundreds of machines are more than 10 years old. Does he agree that the Minister ought to consider central procurement, so that every part of the country has the up-to-date machinery to save lives through radiotherapy?

[Mick Whitley]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Government must be aware that the supply chains are too long. Instead of offshoring, they need to inshore.

Public money has been wasted on an industrial scale, and the ability of Ministers to throw taxpayers’ money away is now being codified in the Procurement Bill. Conservative peers voted down an amendment to ban the use of VIP lanes in the awarding of contracts. Together, my Labour colleagues and I will do our level best to change that and get the VIP lanes closed for good. The High Court has agreed with us and ruled the VIP lanes illegal.