Part of Great British Energy Bill - Committee (2nd Day) – in the House of Lords at 6:00 pm on 17 December 2024.
Viscount Trenchard
Conservative
6:00,
17 December 2024
My Lords, I was interested to read the Amendment by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, and I tend to agree with it. It makes absolute sense that before the statement of priorities is published, these bodies should be consulted.
As many noble Lords said at Second Reading and on our previous day in Committee, there are many different bodies all trying to do much the same thing in this space. What was the UK Infrastructure Bank is now called the National Wealth Fund, and it is quite rich. It has, I think, £28 billion to deploy, and will no doubt be able to make many investments that will help not only the decarbonisation of the energy system but energy security. But as the Minister knows, I continue to believe that the Government’s energy policy so far does not take enough account of nuclear and its potential. For example, the consumers, whether households or companies—industrial consumers—do not have any say over where their subsidies go. A part of electricity Bills goes in subsidies to renewable energy projects, for example, but not to nuclear. This means that the market to date has been distorted to the disadvantage of nuclear projects.
That is one reason why there are not enough viable and financially well-funded United Kingdom nuclear projects. There are quite a lot coming to the UK from the United States, whose Government have been extremely generous in providing grants and financial help to American nuclear consortia. There is a danger that Great British Energy will operate too much in a silo and that Great British Nuclear, which does not have very much money, will not be required to co-ordinate its strategy and policy sufficiently with GBE, or indeed with what is now called the National Wealth Fund.
It is right—as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, has proposed, and the noble Lord, Lord Ravensdale, told us—that the Secretary of State should be required to consult those bodies, but we should also include Great British Nuclear and the National Wealth Fund, so that each of these three bodies knows what the others are doing, so that they have a greater chance of working out a co-ordinated policy, and so that we have some joined-up thinking.
That is why I tabled Amendment 56A as an amendment to Amendment 56. I beg to move.
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As a bill passes through Parliament, MPs and peers may suggest amendments - or changes - which they believe will improve the quality of the legislation.
Many hundreds of amendments are proposed by members to major bills as they pass through committee stage, report stage and third reading in both Houses of Parliament.
In the end only a handful of amendments will be incorporated into any bill.
The Speaker - or the chairman in the case of standing committees - has the power to select which amendments should be debated.
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