My Lords, I remind noble Lords of my interests as a chief engineer working for AtkinsRéalis, director of Peers for the Planet, and co-chair of Legislators for Nuclear.

We have had a number of discussions already in earlier groups about the tensions that potentially exist between competing objectives, such as growth, nature and net zero, and the issues with the regulators and the precautionary principle when it comes to large infrastructure. This has resulted in a regulatory system that is stopping large energy infrastructure being built—solar farms, wind farms, nuclear power stations—and is therefore destructive to our environment, not to mention the growth agenda.

Some of the well-known examples, such as bat tunnels and acoustic fish deterrents, have already come up in previous groups, but a lesser-known example is a worm called Sabellaria that builds and lives in tubes on the seabed—I hope noble Lords will bear with me for a minute. This information is courtesy of Catherine Howard, partner at HSF Kramer. For offshore wind projects, the conservation body advised compensation for impact to Sabellaria when placing rock on the seabed, even in areas where Sabellaria is not present—I repeat, even in areas where it is not present. That resulted in a two-year delay to offshore wind farms, including the trio of Norfolk offshore wind projects: Norfolk Vanguard East, Norfolk Vanguard West and Norfolk Boreas. These projects, consented to in 2021-2022 by Vattenfall and since sold to RWE, have been delayed by approximately two years due to the inability to satisfy seabed compensation requirements. This is holding up infrastructure that is a top priority for net zero and energy security for the UK.

Examples such as this are commonplace across our infrastructure, adding billions in cost and years in delay. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, mentioned the 44,000 pages of the Sizewell C environmental assessment: a stack of paper 5 metres high—taller than a double-decker bus. The planning application for the Lower Thames Crossing was 359,000 pages—if all that was laid end to end it would total 61 miles, five times the length of the crossing itself.

Part of the solution here comes later in the Bill, in Part 3. A really important piece of the puzzle is the regulators themselves and how they are set up. My Amendment 46 in effect would put duties on the relevant regulators, with a scope limited to electricity generation projects, to take account of the benefits as well as the local environmental impacts of projects. By putting a net-zero duty on the Environment Agency and the statutory nature conservation bodies, the regulators would be directed to consider the broader benefits of electrical generation infrastructure and balance these with the local environmental impacts. It is really that macro versus micro view.

At the moment, the regulators are concerned purely with the local environmental impact of a particular piece of infrastructure, not with the potential macro benefits that the piece of infrastructure may bring. There could be a number of different duties to consider here—for example, energy security—but a net-zero duty is easiest to define for coherence with government targets.

This duty is entirely consistent with government policy and recent work commissioned by the Government. I highlight the Corry review, undertaken recently by Defra, looking at Defra regulators. Recommendation 4 in that review was:

“Consolidate the statutory duties, principles and codes of Defra regulators to a core set, reflecting the Government’s priorities and helping to provide discretion, e.g. a duty to deliver on/consider climate change/net zero. This will address the increase in regulator-specific and regulator-generic legal obligations and resulting ‘regulatory overload’ which has emerged over time”.

It is also consistent with the “State of the Climate and Nature” announcements that the Secretary of State put forward in the other place on 14 July. Noble Lords have worked on the duties on regulators in previous years—for example, the duty placed on Ofgem as part of the Energy Act 2023. There is a chance here to get those duties on regulators consistent right across the piece, to ensure that system-level join-up.

As has been set out on previous groups, regulators are essential to the whole piece and the right duties placed on the regulators will help them better balance the tensions that noble Lords have referred to, between net zero, biodiversity and growth. It is all about that top-down cultural change in organisations, enabling better outcomes. What needs to be added to that is the bottom-up view on areas such as the habitats regulations, which we will come to later in Committee.

I urge the Minister to consider this important change, which would help resolve concerns from noble Lords that the Bill will not deliver for infrastructure, and help enable not only the 2030 target but broader economic competitiveness and growth.