Earl Russell:

Moved by Earl Russell

78: After Clause 17, insert the following new Clause—“Electricity distribution networks: land and access rights(1) The Secretary of State must, within 12 months of the passing of this Act, consult on and implement measures to give electricity distribution network operators powers in relation, but not limited, to—(a) the acquisition of rights over land for new and existing overhead lines and underground cables;(b) the acquisition of land for new substations or the extension of existing substations;(c) the entering into of land for the purposes of maintaining existing equipment;(d) the entering into of land for the purposes of managing vegetation growth which is interfering with the safety or operation of overhead equipment.(2) Any powers granted must be compatible with the need to complete works related to development in a timely, inexpensive and uncomplicated manner, and may include the provision of compensation to relevant landowners.”Member's explanatory statementThis new clause would require the Secretary of State to consult on giving electricity distribution network operators powers in relation to the acquisition of and access to land.

My Lords, the amendments in group three are all on electricity distribution and cabling. I apologise that there is quite a lot of crossover between my Amendment in this group and those in the other group; in retrospect, it might have been better to have kept them together. A lot of the overarching general points that I made in the last group apply to this group. I am introducing a series of practical measures that I would like the Government to take forward to help them achieve their stated aim, which I share, of getting to clean power.

My Amendment 78 is about land access rights. It would require the Secretary of State to consult on giving electricity distribution network operators powers in relation to the acquisition of and access to land. Land access rights need to extend to renewable energy operators as well, and that is my mistake; the drafting of my amendment was not as clear as it should have been. If the Minister, in responding to my speech, could also include the issue of renewable energy operators’ ability to access land in building renewable energy facilities, that would be greatly appreciated.

This is about using the opportunities the Bill provides. This measure, which the district network operators and industry bodies are calling for, is not in the Bill, which is why I have brought it forward. These are small, practical steps—like the British Cycling example I gave earlier—which, if implemented, would help to get done the things we all agree on.

If we do not address these issues, we will have delays, increased costs and issues in getting towards clean power. At present, electricity licence holders have fewer statutory rights when it comes to acquiring and accessing land compared with other utilities such as gas, water and telecommunications. I am not aware that the Government have done any consultation on this, but if the Minister could let me know when he responds whether consultations are ongoing, that would be greatly appreciated. We are looking to resolve the lack of parity, remove the unnecessary bureaucracy and make sure that we can get this stuff done.

The amendment would ensure that electricity distribution network operators are given carefully defined powers to acquire rights over land for overhead lines and cables, to purchase land for new substations, to enter land for the maintenance of existing equipment and to carry out vegetation management critical to the safety and reliability of the system. These powers will not be unlimited; they will be subject to both proper consultation and fair compensation for the landowners concerned, but they will mean that we can proceed with essential infrastructure works in a timely, straightforward and cost-effective way, in line with other utilities.

I welcome the fact that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero has launched a consultation on land rights, published last month. However, it falls short of what is required to make clean power 2030 a reality. It does not extend to renewable electricity generators themselves, despite their central role in the energy transition. Without legislative reform in this Bill, we risk kicking the issue down the road.

As I said, the amendment enjoys the backing of the sector, which has been lobbying Members of this House—and, no doubt, the Government, including the Minister—on it. It has long been called for by the Energy Networks Association. These are the people operating on the front line, investing in green power and taking the risks. They are the people with the contracts to deliver this stuff for the Government, so it is important that the Government do what they reasonably can to help these companies succeed, so that we can share that joint ambition and achieve things together.

To conclude, my intention is to help the Government; I share their intention to hit our clean power targets. I want to work with the Minister; I am happy to look at amending my amendment and to speak to him between now and Report. The intention is for further consultation with the industry to look at these things and try to find some practical solutions to these relatively easily surmountable issues. I hope that is possible. I will circle back to the other amendments in this group after they have been introduced. I beg to move.

My Lords, I would like to ask for a point of clarity from the noble Earl, of which I gave him due warning earlier today. As neither he nor the Minister picked up my question in the debate on Amendment 77, I hope that I will be luckier in this debate on Amendment 78.

Subsection (1)(a) of the proposed new Clause in Amendment 78 refers to

“the acquisition of rights over land” by network operators. Will the noble Earl confirm that he does not have in mind compulsory purchase powers? We will hear a lot about them later in the Bill—in fact, they probably should have had a Bill on their own, but we are where we are. Will he just confirm that? Giving operators compulsory purchase powers, in effect, has been a disaster in the radio mast arena. I would not want to see it happen again here.

That is not my intention. I apologise for not being able to respond to the noble Lord’s email this morning. It is not my intention to give compulsory purchase powers. This is wayleaves, not compulsory purchase.

My Lords, I will speak to my probing Amendment 79A. They say that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing again and again and expecting a different result. That could be extended to making the same point again and again and getting the same answer, which I have been doing over the past few months about burial and the different options for dealing with the great explosion we are going to witness of overhead power lines.

I am slightly nervous about the seeming consensus across the Committee this afternoon that nothing must stand in the way of the Government’s own date of 2030 for clean power, nothing must stop growth, and nothing must stand in the way of progress.

I fully concede that the Government have inherited a grid of which all Governments of every persuasion, over the last 20 or 30 years, have been neglectful. We have power being distributed in wrong parts of the country and shortages in other parts of the country, and the bearing loads of some of the grid are simply not up to the capacity that it is now required to meet. Additionally, we have an explosion in offshore wind, which has to be brought onshore, and that necessitates a great increase in the number of substations and, in turn, linkages to the grid.

I do not want to be accused of standing in the way of growth, but we owe it to our fellow countrymen to think very carefully about what we are proposing to do to large tracts of our landscape. My noble friend Lord Roborough, who speaks for the Opposition on the front bench, talked about public opinion. The Government need to pay a little more attention to public opinion, not only because the public are the voters but because, if the Government take some positive action, they will carry the public with them and so achieve their stated aim of cutting through the bureaucracy and getting a better, more modern grid.

However, every time I and others have raised the alternative to overhead power lines—their burial—we have been rebutted by the statistics about that being five or 10 times more expensive. Those figures have been produced, I think, by National Grid, but I do not believe that they have been properly examined. I also do not believe that other factors have been taken into consideration, such as the effect on quality of life and quality of landscape, as well as the effect on people coming to this country, should they be greeted by miles and miles of unsightly power lines marching over our hills.

The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, spoke quite rightly at the beginning of the debate about new technology. There is new technology in how we can deal with burying power lines: ploughing, trenching, horizontal boring—which I suspect I am in danger of being—directional drilling and duct banks. Now that we can do all that and see that the technology is increasing, have the Government spoken to farmers to see whether they would be prepared to take on some of those jobs? I should think they would. Equally, have we spent enough time examining where the load could be increased on the existing grid, which would therefore not necessitate an increase in the footprint?

I will not rehearse all the arguments I have made in the past about bird life and the destruction of great swathes of our agricultural land and landscape, but I draw your Lordships’ attention to what has happened in Greece over the summer because of wildfires, some of which were caused by overhead power lines. Is it the most intelligent thing we can do in the long term to have more overhead power lines, which are more susceptible to power outages and which could cause wildfires, as we have witnessed elsewhere in Europe?

I am going to sit down now and look forward to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Khan of Burnley, rebuffing all the points I have made by talking about the disproportionate cost. I hope that he and others in this Chamber will be content when they look back in 20 or 30 years’ time to see what will come out of the Bill, if it is to be enacted without addressing some of the issues that I and others have raised in trying to put a presumption in favour of burying power lines and making the operators argue why they should not be there. That is all we are asking in this probing amendment: to switch the emphasis and get them to explain why they cannot do it and why it is disproportionate. In that small way, the Minister will find that the public will be more on side than they are at the moment.

My Lords, I am sympathetic to what my noble friend Lord Swire just said. I think it is fair to say that it was actually the previous Conservative Administration who changed aspects of a policy statement that there be a strong presumption in terms of overhead distribution. I will not pretend otherwise. I did try and fight that at the time, but failed. It is fair to say that the cost comparison has actually fallen considerably. It is still about four or four and a half times the cost of doing it via pylons, but I think there is a lot to be said for what my noble friend has put forward.

I was somewhat relieved by the clarity brought by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that he was not considering this to be compulsory purchase, given some of the issues that I have been contesting for some time. That is what has led to my Amendment 94FA—in the supplementary list—which provides for

“Electrical or communications cables under land in active agricultural use”.

I have shared with your Lordships before that I have quite a lot of experience dealing with energy projects and NSIPs, recognising the concentration of such projects on the Suffolk coast, and that is a theme that I will return to later. One thing that struck me was that, in consideration of getting the cabling underground because these projects were going principally through an AONB—I do not know if it is in legislation, but by default what has happened is that any cabling in an AONB ends up being underground—what was clear was a complete lack of understanding of what was there underground already. In agricultural areas, one thing that is significantly underground and is very sensitive infrastructure, which is not put in by the Government, water companies or the like but is actually put in by local farmers, is underground networks for water. Considering quite how much less water there is, particularly in the east of the country, these are critical in order to make sure that we can continue to have food being grown.

Something that is very important for water and other networks is the production of Christmas trees. Christmas trees are very hungry for water in their development, which takes some time. One thing that came to light in the consideration of the creation of various substations and cabling is the fact that the electricity companies had no clue at all about this important infrastructure that is just below the surface. Of course, there is no doubt that having the cables as close to the surface as possible is definitely an economic interest, but, candidly, it ends up disrupting the agricultural potential for a lot of this land. I do not think there is any chance that Christmas trees can be grown above electricity cables. Unfortunately, Redhouse Barn, a farm that I would recommend, grows a lot of Christmas trees—it supplied No. 10 Downing Street one year—and I know that the family there was concerned, but somewhat understood and accepted that sometimes these things happen, although I hope that the compensation they get for this is a lot more generous than they were initially offered.

Nevertheless, the Government should consider speaking a lot more to the internal drainage boards around the country. We do not have internal drainage boards in every part of this country, but I expect that, where a lot of the energy generation is happening and the initial connections through cabling need to go, there will be. They will have intricate knowledge of exactly what you need to navigate. One way to avoid having to do site-by-site surveys, which we have already been told cost a hell of a lot of money, and to do all this pre-consultation, is simply to make sure that, when cabling is put in place, those trenches go sufficiently deep that we can continue to have agricultural production as well as the benefits of the transmission of electricity.

That is why I hope that the Government, although I expect they will firmly reject my proposals, will at least start to consider what is happening in reality in our productive countryside when we are trying to have this rather complicated map of cabling, pylons and the like, in order to make sure that we continue, as far as possible, to keep farming our land as well as making sure that that land—of course I will give way.

Has my noble friend heard about the possibility of growing tomatoes over these cables?

I am sure that the heat that my noble friend was about to allude to will make it attractive to certain kinds of rapid acceleration of growth. It is not the only thing that would benefit there, but it is more about trying to neutralise the impact of what seemed to be necessary infrastructure with the ongoing operations rather than disrupting those who are already farming our land for the food that we need for continued food security. With that, I put forward the benefits of my Amendment.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Association of Drainage Authorities. I commend the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for his Amendment and for introducing this group. I will speak to Amendments 79A and 94FA—if your Lordships will pardon the expression—tabled by my noble friends Lord Swire and Lady Coffey and will end with a question for the Minister.

There are environmental and financial reasons for undergrounding these transmission wires. The environmental reasons are mostly because they are wasteful. It is debatable how much they waste, but I think it is between 7% and 10% of the energy that is transmitted, which seems nonsensical. As my noble friend Lord Swire said, they are also unsightly, which in tourist areas is very unwelcome. They are also extremely vulnerable to storm and extreme weather conditions. We have just had the first storm names for the forthcoming season—I do not know whether my niece and god-daughter will be delighted that Storm Amy will be the first one to hit us, but there we go. I remind the Minister that Storm Arwen caused such damage to the north-east of England and North Yorkshire that large swathes of north-east England and North Yorkshire had no electricity for up to 10 days. That is unacceptable.

The second power lines, which I think I referred to at Second Reading, run through the spine of North Yorkshire, from Middlesbrough all the way down to York, where they join the national grid. Only three months prior to those being built, an ethanol pipeline had been laid, tracking more or less the same route through agricultural land that the overhead pylons were following. It makes sense that if you are digging the land up once then at the same time you put the transmission lines there. Underground lines are less vulnerable to storms, extreme weather and extreme frost. In one year, we had temperatures of minus 17 degrees for six days running in North Yorkshire in the winter. Those are the environmental reasons that I put to the Minister.

We are frequently told that we cannot afford to place these transmission wires underground. I remind noble Lords that every single customer is paying, through the standing charge, for the infrastructure. Why do we not have a say, as customers, on the infrastructure that is being used? I give three examples of the latest profits for electricity companies. They are eye-watering and beg the question: why are we told that it is not affordable to place these transmission wires underground? The latest figures I have seen from Octopus Energy are of a 0.7% profit margin, delivering a net profit of £83 million. For OVO Energy, the latest figures I can find are for 2023—I cannot find the figures for 2024, though they are probably available—when OVO Energy announced a pre-tax profit of £1 billion. That is one electricity-generating company alone. For Centrica, there was a £1 billion profit for 2024. Why are we being told that it is unaffordable when there are monstrous profits to which we are all contributing as consumers?

To sum up my short contribution, I strongly support Amendments 79A and 94FA, and argue that there are absolutely no environmental and financial reasons not to underground these transmission wires.

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Swire’s application that these things should be buried. I am the director of the Global Warming Policy Foundation; that is not relevant to this debate, but it is somewhat relevant to the discussion about renewables.

My noble friend raised a few points about how previous Governments over the last 30 years have been somewhat deficient in managing the grid. The grid was perfectly adequate when we had large, central power stations, whether coal, gas or nuclear. Of course, our nuclear fleet is diminishing and nearly all those stations will be turned off by the end of this decade—probably before any of the new ones are turned on. We have obviously closed down all our coal power stations now, and gas is rather intermittent; it has to be put on stream when renewables fail us, which unfortunately happens more and more regularly. The old system worked when we had centralised, big power stations. The problem now occurs because we have decentralised that.

We could put that right by going down a domestic gas route, which I would recommend to this nation as a means to bridge the gap before nuclear is properly on stream. We could put small modular reactors in the places where old gas and coal stations used to be, because we have the huge grids, supplies and existing pylons that served that old infrastructure, which is now a redundant and dead infrastructure.

We are being asked to despoil our countryside because of the dash to renewables, in trying to link up offshore and onshore wind farms. Each of those produces fairly small amounts of energy, but we need new pylons to get it into the grid. I agree entirely with my noble friend that the required cables should be underground. I have never believed that some behemoth of an aluminium and steel platform to carry cables can be that much cheaper than an underground cable, which does not require such support. I recommend that the Government ask for some independent advice on what these things really cost.

I am very surprised to have had a discussion—started, again, by my noble friend Lady Coffey—about Christmas trees. I will discuss Christmas trees at the appropriate time, because my family was very involved with Christmas trees and, as a young lad, every winter I bore scars all the way up my arms from selling them. I hope to discuss that in the future.

The whole concept of electrification and the problem of serious storms was raised very well by my noble friend Lady McIntosh. I do worry. As I said at the time, if you live in that part of the world—and I think another storm hit Scotland at almost the same time—you rely entirely on electricity cables to run your internet, which runs your telephone, as the old 50-volt copper system is being wound down. You obviously need electricity for the internet generally, and one will need electricity to power one’s car, if the Government have their way and traditional cars are put on the scrap heap. One will also need electricity to heat one’s home. Storms go through parts of this country with some regularity, and I have always made the point that you can lend a neighbour a bucket of logs but you cannot lend them a bucket of electricity.

I agree with the Amendment that was put by my noble friend Lord Swire. I request that the Government look at this rather more carefully, rather than say flippantly that “Thou shalt have dirty great pylons”. Norfolk and Suffolk in particular will be hit by this massively. I think my noble friend who is following me will make some similar observations about what will be hitting parts of Kent, including those that I used to represent.

My Lords, I support Amendment 79A in the name of my noble friend Lord Swire about the presumption in favour of burying cables as the default method. He spoke of insanity, but I did not think I was going mad—I believed and agreed with every word he said. Not only is burying cables less visually intrusive but, storms notwithstanding, as we have seen in the Ukrainian conflict, surface infrastructure is more vulnerable to malign and military disruption. I have not seen any calculation anywhere that takes that national security angle into account. That is an omission that should be corrected, and would be if my noble friend’s amendment is accepted.

I do not stand entirely shoulder to shoulder with those who accept the construction of pylons in any circumstance but I am not the Luddite who is in denial about the difficulties of strengthening and hardening the grid. We all need to be realistic about what it takes for the lights to come on when you flick that switch, with fluctuating renewables on the one hand and new demands from electrical vehicles on the other. But that should not give National Grid a right to be judge and jury in its own court and carte blanche to ride roughshod.

My interest in the amendment has been piqued because I have experienced at first hand the process undertaken by National Grid when it seeks to promote a new pylon power line, in this case from Norwich to Tilbury to transport electricity from the wind farms off the Norfolk coast down to the smoke. At that time, I was leader of the South Norfolk Council, an area to be bisected across its entire height by new HV power lines. What I experienced was institutional arrogance from National Grid and its agents. It thought that a single consultation event, offered at short notice on an afternoon in a remote village hall for an area of 400 square miles, was sufficient. It had a boneheaded refusal to accept that burying was even an option—even just in part across the picturesque Waveney Valley or the Roydon Fen county wildlife reserve.

National Grid exhibited a steadfast refusal to demonstrate or explain why the option of providing a future-proof offshore ring main, connecting the existing infrastructure that used to serve the redundant Bradwell nuclear power station, was even a possibility. The suggestion that offshore was impractical was wholly disproven by the offshore link that is currently proposed from Sizewell to the Richborough marshes—I am stood next to the noble Lord, Lord Mackinlay of Richborough, and I expect him to intervene in a moment to say how wonderful that part of the world is and how it should not be despoiled.

National Grid had unevidenced assertions relating to the unaffordability of burying lines, as opposed to having them overhead, without either explaining or quantifying the quantum of those extra costs for the whole line or just per kilometre. There was a failure to consider parallel running to the existing pylon line to minimize visual impact, with the result that the wonderful and historic market town of Diss is now proposed to be fenced in on all four sides by huge steel pylons to an unacceptable degree. This lack of understanding, further, that the mooted community compensation schemes for overhead lines, but not for buried cables, might undermine the business case for pylons now turns out to be the case because it stands as part of Clause 26 of the Bill. There were other questions to answer, which I will not detain the Committee with.

Now, of course, there may have been good reasons why National Grid might be right on all the points I mentioned, though I struggle to see how, but with friends like these, who needs enemies? National Grid has gone out of its way to pick fights rather than bringing people together. As a council leader, I met officials from National Grid and put the points privately, to try to have a neutral forum where it could make an improved case for the proposals and build consensus. That olive branch was spurned, so it is little wonder that there is now widespread resistance to new pylon routes. Opposition has been carelessly and recklessly whipped up by a ham-fisted approach from the people who need all the friends they can get.

I like this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Swire because it would set the default expectation that new lines will be buried. Of course, that does not mean that they must be buried, but for the operator to go above ground as the preferred option, he will need to make the evidential case and have it scrutinised, and to build friendships and not enemies. That is a much better approach and balance of power, literally, between the parties than the regrettable and aggravating behaviours that we have seen thus far, where the lazy overhead option is chosen and everybody else be damned.

I just underline that the missing ingredient in this debate is actual numbers on the costs. There is a lot of theoretical toing and froing this afternoon but what we really need in this discussion is a hard number cost for, say, 100 metres of buried cable as opposed to, say, the cost of a pylon. I asked a Written Question about a pylon some months ago and got a wonderfully “Yes Minister” Answer: “Of course, all pylons are different and some pylons are more equal than others, but it is all very difficult so I can’t give you an answer”.

I hope that we can do a bit better than that. It would be great to know the cost of, say, 100 metres or 500 metres—whatever is the right metric—of buried cable and pylon with the equivalent cable. Until that answer is before us—I suspect that it will be a lot more expensive—we are not going to lay this debate to rest. I think that everybody, on all sides of this Committee, would like to see the cables buried. The question is at what cost and whether that cost is worth it. Until we have that number, we are just talking theory.

My Lords, Amendment 78 from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, and Amendment 79A from my noble friend Lord Swire deal with the critical issue of grid capacity and connectivity, which sits at the heart of the Government’s ambitions to decarbonise the UK’s energy system and deliver the infrastructure necessary to meet their ideological clean power 2030 target.

Amendment 78 would place a duty on the Secretary of State to consult on and implement measures to give electricity distribution operators new powers. The distribution and transmission of electricity is intrinsic to the production and utilisation of clean energy. Without access to the grid, energy infrastructure remains little more than an expensive stranded asset.

The case for action is clear. As we know, the great grid upgrade is a vital part of our pathway to net zero, yet, at present, new energy developments such as wind farms and solar parks are experiencing unacceptable delays when it comes to grid connection. Some projects face waiting times of up to 10 years—delays that threaten both investor confidence and the credibility of our decarbonisation goals. That is why the previous Conservative Government took decisive steps in commissioning the Winser review, which examined the obstacles to timely grid connectivity. We are of course proud to say that all 43 recommendations of the Winser review were accepted by the Government—a clear signal of our commitment to reforming the system and bringing forward vital improvements.

Yet we must recognise the scale of the challenge. Even with those reforms under way, projects without current grid connectivity may not come online until the mid-2030s. That is simply not compatible with the Government’s aim of a decarbonised grid by 2030. It is essential that the development of the national grid moves in lockstep with the pace of renewable energy production and infrastructure delivery.

Therefore, Amendments 78 and 79A raise serious and timely issues. We must ensure that our grid strategy is not only fit for today but future-proofed for the decades to come. The principles of transparency—clear delivery timelines and strategy—and strategic planning for capacity must be at the core of that effort. That said, I note that Amendment 78 would require the Secretary of State to consult on and implement measures to establish these new powers. There is perhaps a case to make for Parliament to have a say before the Secretary of State takes steps to implement powers that have come up as part of the consultation. I would be interested to hear whether the noble Earl, Lord Russell, might be open to strengthening parliamentary oversight here.

Amendment 79A from my noble friend Lord Swire is a good and thoughtful probing amendment. I recognise his continual efforts in drawing this issue to this House’s attention. It seeks to explore how the planning system might better encourage the use of buried cabling as an alternative to overhead powerlines. This is an important point, particularly for rural communities where overhead transmission infrastructure can have a significant visual, environmental and social impact. Although undergrounding is not without cost or technical complexity, the long-term benefits in certain locations can outweigh those challenges. My noble friend is right to raise this. I hope that the Government will consider whether there are planning reforms that could help to support a more strategic and locally sensitive approach to powerline deployment.

The Minister may not be aware of the very active groups in Wales resisting the march of pylons through the Teifi and Tywi valleys. These groups are uniting the Opposition parties against the Senedd Labour Government. The one I know particularly well is the Llandeilo Community Group Against Pylons.

On a more positive note, my noble friend Lord Fuller should take heed. National Grid is undergrounding part of the overhead power lines between the Bryncir and Trawsfynydd substations in Gwynedd. So there is hope that it can do this and that the great grid upgrade will take account of the reduction in the relative cost of undergrounding. Although I cannot give accurate details of the relative cost of undergrounding, I do believe that it has come down substantially from a few years ago, when it was 10 times the cost, to more like three times the cost. It is still at a premium but, in certain circumstances, it must be well worth considering.

In that context, I speak to Amendment 94FA in the name of my noble friend Lady Coffey. This amendment seeks to ensure that new cables for development on agricultural land must be buried at a depth of at least two metres in order to avoid interference with any watering systems or networks required for agricultural use. This appears to be a sensible and practical amendment—one that balances infrastructure development with the operational needs of farming and food production.

In conclusion, I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government are taking forward the essential work on developing our grid capacity. I hope that he will provide reassurance to the Committee that grid reform remains an urgent and co-ordinated priority as we take this Bill forward.

My Lords, I just want to welcome that speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield. It was excellent in its tone and entirely different from that of her colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Offord, when he spoke from the front bench. I congratulate the noble Baroness.

My Lords, let me take this opportunity to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, to her place on the front bench. I look forward to the exchanges ahead.

I turn to Amendments 78 and 79A, tabled by the noble Earl, Lord Russell, the noble Lord, Lord Swire, and the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey. I thank them both for tabling these amendments and for their interest in and commitment to improving grid capacity and electricity distribution infrastructure.

Amendment 78 seeks to require the Secretary of State to consult on and implement measures to grant distribution network operator powers in relation to the acquisition of and access to land, with the aim of accelerating electricity distribution network infrastructure build and maintenance. The Government are fully committed to achieving clean power by 2030. It is clear that a rapid expansion of the electricity network is essential to delivering that mission. Although we agree with the intent behind this amendment, we do not believe that it is appropriate to legislate on these matters through this Bill.

As previously outlined, the Government launched a public consultation on 8 July; it closes tomorrow, on 2 September. That consultation includes proposals on land access and rights and seeks views from a wide range of stakeholders, including network operators, landowners and local authorities. Once the consultation closes, the Government will undertake a thorough evaluation of the responses to understand stakeholder concerns and to assess any potential unintended impacts ahead of implementation. Introducing changes now, before that work has been done, would pre-empt that process and risk undermining the careful balance that we are trying to strike between speeding up delivery and protecting landowner rights.

We are committed to acting quickly once the consultation process is complete but we must do so in a way that is informed, proportionate and legally sound. I hope that the noble Earl, Lord Russell, is reassured by this response; I kindly ask him to withdraw his amendment. I will take his offer forward with my officials and look forward to meeting the noble Earl, alongside my noble friend Lady Taylor, on the issues raised in this area.

I move on to Amendment 79A in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Swire. This amendment would introduce a statutory presumption in favour of undergrounding power lines. It would require developers to demonstrate that undergrounding was their preferred and initial option, and that it was infeasible on cost or engineering grounds, before overhead lines could be approved. We understand that some communities hold strong views in favour of undergrounding, particularly due to concerns about the visual impact of overhead lines. We are aware that the support is partly driven by examples seen internationally, where undergrounding is used in certain contexts.

The Government’s position is that overhead transmission lines should be the starting presumption for electricity network developments except in nationally designated landscapes, where undergrounding is the starting presumption. That is because overhead lines are significantly cheaper, as undergrounding can cost up to four and a half times more, with costs ultimately passed on to bill payers. Overhead lines are also quicker to build, cause less environmental disruption and are easier to maintain and connect to existing networks.

That said, we totally understand the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell. I reassure him that neither I nor my noble friend Lady Taylor answered the Question that he asked in relation to pylons, but we look forward to speaking to and working with officials to get more detailed examples of costs and how they work in different ways in different combinations. The noble Lord asked a question that I did not previously answer on whether the network permitted development rights proposals in the current consultation cover compulsory purchase. I can confirm they do not, but there will be a huge debate—well, hopefully not a debate, but a huge discussion—on compulsory purchases in due course.

Strategic network planning is critical to ensuring that transmission infrastructure is designed and delivered in a way that meets system-wide needs. The National Energy System Operator, NESO, through the forthcoming centralised strategic network plan, will assess technology options against key criteria—including cost, deliverability, operability and community and environmental impact—and recommend optimal solutions. Developers will then apply those recommendations at a project level, refining routes and designs within existing planning and regulatory frameworks.

Accepting the amendment would move us away from a strategic, co-ordinated, system-wide approach to grid development and towards a more fragmented process. While undergrounding is already used on a case-by-case basis where justified, the amendment could lead to more frequent project-level decisions, undermining strategic system-wide planning. That risks creating inconsistency, reducing efficiency and ultimately slowing down the delivery of the infrastructure. We need to meet our clean power 2030 and net-zero targets. Further, the amendment would shift the burden of proof onto the developer, which would add complexity, legal risk and delay to an already lengthy consenting process. Given the significantly higher costs and technical complexity of underground lines compared with overhead, the amendment is unlikely to increase the use of undergrounding but would add additional time to the planning and delivery process.

Amendment 94, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, would require that electrical or communications cables under land in active agricultural use must be buried to a minimum depth of two metres from the surface level, and deeper if required. Existing legislation for electrical cabling is contained in the Electricity Safety, Quality and Continuity Regulations 2002. They require that:

“Every underground cable shall be kept at such depth or be otherwise protected so as to avoid, so far as is reasonably practicable, any damage or danger by reason of such uses of the land which can be reasonably expected”.

This legislation is supported by industry codes that provide the specific standards for the relevant minimum burial depth, considering different factors and use cases. These industry codes must comply with the legislation that forms the quality standards that network operators must legally operate within.

For agricultural land, the minimum recommended depth for electricity cables, set out in the Energy Networks Association’s engineering recommendation G57 for cable laying on agricultural land, is 910 millimetres. This is intended

“to provide sufficient depth to safeguard against damage from deep ploughing and cultivation, and from the mechanical installation of drainage systems”.

Recommendation G57 says:

“This depth requirement takes account of the wishes of the National Farmers’ Union”.

Agricultural activities including deep cultivations, subsoiling and mole draining rarely extend deeper than 700 millimetres below the soil surface. Installing cables at depths greater than 910 millimetres can introduce engineering and environmental constraints, such as increased heat generation from the cables, which may require additional mitigation measures such as increased pole spacing. Deeper installation would necessitate a wider and deeper trench, raising the risk of potential detrimental impacts on the soil resource due to soil handling and storage. The existing legislation is supported by detailed industry standards, ensuring an agile framework whereby the relevant standards can be flexibly updated and refined in line with evolving circumstances such as innovation while minimising potential impacts on agricultural land.

To conclude, similarly for communication cables, the Electronic Communications Code (Conditions and Restrictions) Regulations 2003 include a requirement that code operators must install apparatus such as cabling at a depth that does not interfere with the use of the land. This ensures that the land can continue to be used for the purpose that the landowner wishes, even where there is electronic equipment buried in the ground. Introducing a new requirement for the depth of communications cables could increase digital infrastructure deployment costs substantially, slowing network build and potentially preventing the Government’s ambition of a nationwide coverage of stand-alone 5G and gigabit-capable broadband.

For the reasons outlined, I do not think that these amendments are necessary and I therefore kindly ask the noble Earl to withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, this has been an interesting group of amendments, and I thank everyone who has tabled an Amendment or taken part in the debate. I thank the Minister for responding so thoroughly and welcome his commitment to work with me between now and Report in relation to Amendment 78.

My only real concern is that I am aware that renewable energy operators are not included in the Government’s consultation. Equally, they were not included in my amendment, but they are an important part of the picture. If we could work together to try to find a solution so that they could be included in the process, preferably prior to Report, it would be appreciated.

I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, to her place and recognise the point that she made on parliamentary scrutiny in relation to my amendment. I will take that on board. It was not my intention to exclude it.

On the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Swire, it is important that these issues are raised. I welcome the fact that this was put forward as a probing amendment. These are difficult issues that need to be balanced. I do not think that anybody knows the true cost of burying cables, because it depends on what you are burying them in, so I do not think there is an absolute answer. It seems clear that some of these costs are coming down. That may be something that the Government want to look at again.

There is an important need in this debate to balance the cost, which ultimately goes to consumers, with the need for the Government to be open, able to listen, to vary plans in response to communities’ concerns and to be able to persuade and hold the energy companies to account to take more expensive options where there are particular impacts. To that end, I also welcome that the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Swire, would be against the EN-1, the overriding energy policy statement. I ask the Government to be open to the idea. I know that there are legislative conditions around areas of outstanding natural beauty, but the Government should be open and mindful of community concerns and make sure that budgets are available for burying cables where communities raise particular concerns or there are particular types of landscapes. I welcome the news that we had yesterday of the cable from Norfolk going south. In response to the consultation that took place with communities, bits of that have been buried. I think that is the right approach. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 78 withdrawn.

Amendments 79 and 79A not moved.

Clause 18: Consents for generating stations and overhead lines: applications