59: Clause 6, page 3, line 38, at end insert—
“(1A) The Secretary of State must give a specific direction to Great British Energy that it must report to the Secretary of State on the progress made by Great British Energy towards the strategic priority of reducing household energy bills by £300 in real terms by 1 January 2030. (1B) A report under subsection (1A) must include a projection of how Great British Energy’s activities are likely to affect consumer energy bills over the following five years. (1C) A report under subsection (1A) must be made within two years of the day on which this Act is passed, and annually thereafter.(1D) The Secretary of State must lay a report made under subsection (1A) before Parliament.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment would require an annual report to be laid before Parliament on how Great British Energy’s activities are contributing towards taking £300 off consumer energy bills.
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 59 and to speak to Amendments 60, 61, 63, 65, 69, 70, 72 and 76 in my name.
Amendment 59 requires an annual report on how Great British Energy’s activities are contributing to reducing consumer household energy bills by £300. This frequently repeated claim, that the purpose of Great British Energy is to save each household £300 on their energy bills, seems conspicuously absent from the legislation, which states that the “objects” of Great British Energy are only to facilitate, encourage and participate in the production of energy,
“the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions … improvements”
in
“energy efficiency, and … measures for ensuring security of … supply”.
It is imperative that the Government be held accountable for their promises. The Secretary of State has reiterated that clean energy will deliver cheaper energy, and this has been repeated in this House, in the other place, on the campaign trail, in videos and on leaflets. It is therefore important to enshrine accountability for that ambition in the Bill that creates the institution of Great British Energy. We must introduce a mechanism by which the Secretary of State and Great British Energy are accountable to households for their pledge to reduce bills through investment in renewables, and for their specific promise to reduce household bills by £300 per household.
Amendment 60 in my name also seeks to introduce a mechanism by which the Secretary of State and Great British Energy are held accountable. Amendment 60 holds the Government to their word by requiring Great British Energy to report to the Secretary of State on the progress made towards creating 650,000 new jobs—another election pledge.
Amendment 61 in my name introduces a specific strategic priority for Great British Energy to develop UK energy supply chains and requires that an annual report be produced on the progress of meeting this strategic priority. It is essential that our transition to net zero does not increase our reliance on foreign states, particularly hostile foreign states. I am sure we can all agree that we want the so-called “clean energy” transition to utilise British industry, whereby offshore wind turbines and solar panels are produced by domestic manufacturing companies and erected by British workers. It is with that in mind that I bring Amendments 61 and 76.
“would require … 75 per cent of all materials purchased as part of an investment by Great British Energy”
to be produced in the UK. I will speak only briefly, as my noble friend Lord Offord of Garvel’s Amendment 61, for which I thank him, similarly requires a fixed percentage of materials sourced or purchased as part of any investment made by Great British Energy to be produced in the UK and supplied by UK manufacturers. However, I will make some additional points.
It is essential that the race to clean energy by 2030 and net zero by 2050 benefit British industry. As my noble friend Lord Offord explained, we must not outsource our energy transition. I draw attention to the warning from the former head of MI6 that the courting of Chinese investment risks handing power to Beijing. Up to 40% of solar panels in Britain are produced by companies linked to forced Uighur labour in eastern China. Furthermore, Chinese businesses have funded or provided parts for at least 14 of the 15 offshore wind projects in, or about to be in, operation. Firms owned by the Chinese Government have large stakes in three projects, together producing the energy for 2 million homes. While the Government’s energy agenda is overly ambitious, it could benefit the domestic manufacturing industry if we look to prioritise British industry over that of foreign states.
I am sure that the Government will have no hesitation in supporting my amendment, considering that the Secretary of State has repeatedly said that Great British Energy will deliver jobs for the British people. Can the Minister tell the Committee what impact Great British Energy will have on British industry? Will he confirm that the Government’s clean energy targets will not increase our reliance on foreign supply chains?
My Lords, I declare my nuclear power-related interests, as stated in the register. I support my noble friend Lord Offord of Garvel, who has moved Amendment 59 which, together with other amendments in this group, seeks to align the objectives of GBE with claims made by the Government before the general election as to what GBE would achieve for consumers.
I think it is fair to say that the pledge to cut consumers’ bills by £300 per household was a specific promise, and it was repeated often. I understand that the £300 pledge was made on the back of a report by the energy think tank Ember, but that it was based on the energy price cap that applied in 2023. Is it not also based on the less ambitious plan for transition to net zero, to which the previous Government had committed? However, the previous Government had not planned on setting up GBE. Will the Minister please explain where the savings figure of £300 came from, and whether the Government still support it? In that case, is it not right that it should be made a specific objective of GBE?
Will the Minister also tell the Committee whether my noble friend Lord Frost was correct in his warning, in his debate on 14 November, that NESO’s figures predicting the cost of electricity generated from offshore wind were rather optimistic at £44 per megawatt hour? My noble friend told your Lordships that recent payments to offshore wind farms under contracts for difference suggest that the real cost may be three times as much, at some £150 per megawatt hour. If that is so, NESO’s report on the Government’s plan to decarbonise the grid by 2030 may need some adjustment.
I still do not understand why the Government choose to subsidise only wind and solar schemes rather than nuclear. If consumers are required to subsidise only intermittent sources of energy, it follows that the total energy mix will be disproportionately dependent on intermittent sources. We need much more nuclear, which should not be seen as an add-on, to ensure that we can keep the lights on when the wind does not blow and the sun does not shine. It should be seen as a core and important part of our firm baseload energy system.
My Lords, Amendment 74 in this group is in my name. It seeks to ensure, in the creation of GB Energy and the delivery of its objectives, a specific consideration of decarbonisation challenges faced by the 1.7 million households in the UK that are not connected to the gas grid—I declare an interest in that I am one. An awful lot of other people—including many noble Lords opposite, I am sure—are not connected to gas and will have to use electric. The amendment provides for direction to be given to GB Energy to review the decarbonisation challenges that these households face but also, importantly, to consider the solutions that exist to help them do so practically and affordably. They include the value of adopting renewable liquid fuels.
Taking into account the recommendations of GB Energy, the amendment would also require the Secretary of State to implement existing measures within the Energy Act 2023 that would help off-grid households—namely, to hold a consultation on the benefits of introducing a renewable liquid heating fuel obligation or RLHFO. This measure secured all-party support in the last Parliament but has not yet been implemented. I hope that my noble friend will look at this again.
To go into a bit more detail, the challenges facing off-grid households, which are mostly in the countryside, are their existing energy efficiency, location, age and construction. As many noble Lords will understand, this means that these households will face substantial challenges to decarbonise using technology based on electrification. The research undertaken by the department and the Scottish Government shows that installing a heat pump in such a house, including full retrospective costs and the cost of servicing, will cost off-grid homes on average over £21,000, which is unaffordable for many.
I am concerned that there will also be an impact on the local grid. We tend to forget about the local grid. If everything is to be heated by electricity, placing unmanageable pressures on the grid, we need to have a good grid. In the National Grid’s Future Energy Scenarios report, the scenario “Leading the Way” has estimated that to achieve clean power by 2030, 1 million properties in the UK will require a solution other than electric heating, due to the high cost of local networks.
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When it comes to the supply of fuel—of course, it does not work without a decent supply—the latest production and supply data highlights that the global production of HVO is increasing rapidly; there is more than enough supply to cater for UK homes’ heating demands. Production in the US is already 10 billion litres and is expected to increase to 22 billion litres by 2025; the EU is seeing similar increases.
It is also interesting that the Scottish Government have already classed these fuels as net-zero fuels for home heating. The Northern Ireland Executive last week published their own consultation on the importance of the use of biofuels to decarbonise off-grid homes—I am sure my noble friend will not want to be left behind by Northern Ireland. It is also expected that the Irish Government will soon announce their own renewable fuel obligation for home heating. They all work off the same supply data as the UK Government, and the decision should give my noble friend and GB Energy the necessary confidence to move ahead.
HVO is a by-product of the sustainable aviation fuel production process, and I am sure we will hear a lot about that in the future. I would welcome any further information that my noble friend can share about what the Government and his department are doing on this, and how he is working with the other Governments. There appears to be a clear consensus on the value of these fuels and that we must avoid a mismatch emerging across the UK.
I hope that my noble friend will engage with the industry. Maybe he will agree to have a meeting with me and some of the people who have been briefing me. We could meet urgently with the fuel industry to discuss the supply and the benefits and to see how further it can help the Government and GB Energy make this a reality.
My Lords, I rise to discuss Amendment 80. It proposes that GBE be required to produce both quarterly unaudited and annual audited reports. These should disclose the rate of returns for each investment and the carbon emissions resulting from each investment. This amendment is a matter not only of transparency but of accountability. It will ensure that taxpayers are fully informed about how their money is being spent.
Let me address first the rationale behind requiring disclosure of carbon emissions. This is standard practice. Indeed, the Secretary of State has compared GBE to Ørsted in Denmark; Octopus in the UK is another possible comparison. Both companies measure scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, following certain protocols. These align with the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures and EU taxonomy. Will the Minister confirm whether GBE will follow the same practice and taxonomy?
The principle behind the amendment in my name on financial returns is abundantly clear: if the Government are going to use public funds to invest in energy projects, they must be duty-bound to report the results of those investments. This proposal is an essential part of providing insight and knowledge of the operation of GBE. It is a principle of good governance to avoid taxpayers writing blank checks; it aligns with the notion that taxpayers should know not only how their money is being spent but how it is being invested and managed to ensure it delivers adequate returns.
I remind the Committee that GBE will be not an operating company but an investing company owning minority stakes in a large number of projects of different sizes. This will be complex, and the only way to track and measure performance will be to look at individual investment returns. I also remind the Committee that there is no investment committee yet set up and no reference—it looks as if the Secretary of State, ultimately, is in charge of making decisions on these investments. I have never seen this in an investment company. No private equity firm would be run like this.
My Lords, I support the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Offord of Garvel, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield, and Amendments 60 and 61, which they spoke to, particularly what the noble Lord said about reducing our dependency on foreign states. I will not repeat the remarks I made on day one in Committee, or indeed during our debate on China on 20 December, but I will add two or three germane points to what has been said to the Committee this afternoon.
Since we had our debate in Committee, I have sent the Minister a report by Ignites Asia that identifies funds run by global managers who had at least £1.4 billion linked to 14 solar and EV companies using slave labour in Xinjiang—a point referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield. These amendments are primarily about accountability; Parliament has a right to understand on a regular annual basis, as the noble Lord said, precisely how what will become the Great British Energy Act is working out in practice. It has a right to know what we are doing about supply chains and around the objective to create, as Amendment 60 mentions, some 650,000 jobs. How are we getting on with those things and how are we doing on the other side of the coin?
Already we are seeing the loss of jobs—in companies such as Vauxhall, for instance—not because of fair competition or trade, which most of us in this House support, but because of unfair trade that is based on massive subsidies for companies operating in China that use slave labour. We will never be able to compete on fair terms with companies that do that, but we aid and abet those practices by simply turning a blind eye to what is happening. As well as looking at the jobs we might gain, let us look at the jobs we are likely to lose.
We should think seriously about the supply chain question. The amendment I tabled for day one did not come out of thin air. I am glad to say it had been promoted as an idea in earlier debates in another place by Sarah Champion, chair of the House of Commons International Development Select Committee. That shows that it is a bipartisan and bicameral concern. People from all parties and none have anxieties about the kind of things that can go on in our supply chains and the lack of resilience and increase in dependency implicit in this. I remind your Lordships of the excellent report produced in 2023 by the Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, chaired by Sir Julian Lewis MP, which reminded us of the massive security dangers we have to address as a result of the threat that the People’s Republic of China undoubtedly poses to us.
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Amendment 61 requires a fixed percentage of materials sourced or purchased as part of any investment made by Great British Energy to be produced in the UK and supplied from UK manufacturers. The transition to net zero presents our country with a great opportunity for investment and job creation; we must ensure that it is domestic companies and the British people who benefit from the increased investment promised by Great British Energy.
We must not outsource our energy transition. Amendment 72 in my name requires Great British Energy to report on the impact it has on imported energy. The Government’s target to achieve clean energy by 2030 must not increase our reliance on imported energy, which risks jeopardising our energy security and exposing British consumers to price spikes. It is already concerning, given that the hike in the windfall tax to 78% is already cutting investment in UK natural resources and oil and gas production, and will make the UK increasingly dependent on imported supply.
The distribution and transmission of electricity is intrinsic to the production of clean energy as set out in Clause 3. It is therefore critical that Great British Energy should take all reasonable steps to ensure that access to the national grid is ready for any energy infrastructure invested in by Great British Energy, and Amendment 65 in my name works to do just that.
The “Great Grid Upgrade” is without doubt a necessary component of our journey to net zero by 2050. Currently, new energy infrastructure—new wind turbines and new solar farms—have a significant wait time for grid connection. That is why the previous Government commissioned the Winser review, setting out recommendations on how to reduce this timeframe. The previous Government accepted advice on all areas—all 43 recommendations—to ensure that we could continue the work to drive down construction and connection times.
Despite the work that we on these Benches initiated in government by accepting these recommendations, the timeframe for obtaining grid connections for a new project can be as long as 10 years. In fact, a project without grid connectivity today might not come online until the mid-2030s, well beyond the Government’s ambitious goal of grid decarbonisation by 2030. It is therefore essential that the development of the national grid coincide with the development of renewable energy production.
Amendments 69 and 70, in my name, require GBE to report to the Secretary of State on the impact of each investment on carbon emissions and on the progress made by GBE towards reducing those emissions. I am grateful to my noble friends Lord Petitgas and Lord Trenchard, whose Amendment 80 would require Great British Energy to produce a quarterly unaudited and an annual audited report, including on the rate of returns for and the carbon emissions resulting from each investment. I support my noble friends’ amendment, which neatly covers both emissions resulting from, and the rate of return of, each investment. I expect that the latter will be debated thoroughly in the following group.
Supposedly, Great British Energy is to be established to drive the Government’s clean energy by 2030 goal and net-zero target, yet the Bill makes no provision for reporting on the impact of each investment on carbon emissions, which is critical if the Government are to achieve that pledge. Amendments 69 and 70 in my name, and Amendment 80 in my noble friend Lord Petitgas’s name, seek to rectify that, as does Amendment 85A in my noble friend Lord Hamilton of Epsom’s name, which I wholeheartedly support.
Finally, I return to the strategic priorities of Great British Energy as set out under Clause 5. As I have discussed previously, it is critical that we have sufficient oversight of and reporting measures on the financial assistance provided to Great British Energy. In that vein, Amendment 63 requires Great British Energy to report on the projected cost of fulfilling all its strategic priorities.
I trust that the Minister has listened to and carefully considered the array of issues raised in the amendments in my name and in those in my noble friends’. We must not lose sight of the sweeping powers that the Bill provides to the Secretary of State in issuing Great British Energy with directions over which Parliament will have no oversight. We must give due consideration to the purpose and impact of each direction. I beg to move.
Indeed, we were once global leaders in nuclear power, but we now have a severe shortage of skilled workers with experience in the sector. Those we have are relatively old, and we need to train many more younger workers in nuclear technologies, and rebuild the supply chain. I am talking not just of gigawatt scale large plants like Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C, but small SMRs and AMRs which are flexible and very cost effective. That is why I have added my name to Amendment 61, also in the name of my noble friend Lord Offord. We must ensure that we benefit from the so-called clean energy transition, which is particularly relevant in the case of nuclear technologies. It is right that GBE, as a publicly owned company, should report annually to the Secretary of State on progress in re-establishing supply chains as a strategic priority.
There is not much about nuclear in the Government’s new publication Clean Power 2030 Action Plan, published on 13 December. It refers to GBE’s founding statement published in July. That document explains GBE’s five functions, of which building supply chains in “every corner of the UK” is listed fourth out of five, in two short paragraphs. “Working with GBN” is listed last, in a short single paragraph.
I have also added my name in support of Amendment 63. It is essential that GBE must understand what fulfilling its strategic priorities will cost—otherwise, how can the Secretary of State exercise his powers of direction in a responsible manner? Similarly, Amendment 65 would ensure that GBE must not waste money by investing in schemes that are too far from a grid connection or have no cost-effective access to the grid and no realistic prospect of acquiring one in a timely manner.
I have also added my name to Amendments 69 and 70 in the name of my noble friend, who has eloquently explained to your Lordships the purposes of these amendments: namely, to require GBE to consider carbon emissions from each investment and to do the same in respect of its whole investment portfolio, reporting to Parliament annually. We may not agree on the absolute prioritisation, regardless of cost and damage to our industrial base, of the elimination of all fossil fuels from our energy generation system, but we can all agree that it is a good thing that public money should be spent in such a way that increases clean power at the expense of less clean power—that is, as long as the benefits gained justify the cost. The Committee will have a chance to debate this matter in the next group.
Among the investments that GBE will make, I very much hope there will be some investments in nuclear power schemes, particularly in SMR and AMR technologies. As the Minister told your Lordships in his briefing before Second Reading, he does not expect GBE to make investments in nuclear, at least initially. I think this is because the Government think that it is not possible to deploy any of these new technologies before the 2030 target for clean power. The 13-page press release accompanying the release of the Clean Power 2030 Action Plan contains “nuclear” only once, explaining that the Government’s clean power mission is the solution to this crisis,
“by sprinting to clean, homegrown energy, including renewables and nuclear”.
But the action plan’s sparse references to nuclear comprise only a single reference to the GBN-led SMR programme, and a reference to the extension to the life of the four existing AGR reactors as a stopgap measure. I cannot find any evidence that the authors of the action plan see nuclear as playing much of a role in sprinting to clean energy.
I have also put my name to Amendment 72, which requires an annual report by GBE of its impact on the amount of imported energy. In preparing for this debate on Saturday morning, I took a look at the National Grid’s energy dashboard, which revealed at 10.15 am that we were drawing 14.7% of our electricity from imports, which is too high. Indeed, the name of the Minister’s own department emphasises the importance of energy security. The winter sun was shining brightly, but solar contributed only 4.3% and wind a mere 8.8%, less than the 11.4% generated by our existing, ageing nuclear power stations. Noble Lords will appreciate that the electricity grid accounts for around 20% of total energy consumption, which means that wind power on Saturday morning was supplying around 1.76% of the country’s total energy requirement, and solar less than 1%, even on a sunny day. Overreliance on intermittent energy sources does not help energy security—quite the reverse.
I have added my name to Amendment 80, tabled by my noble friend Lord Petitgas. Of course, it must be right that GBE should be required to produce quarterly accounts and audited accounts annually. As far as the requirements for reports on carbon emissions are concerned, the amendment duplicates Amendments 69 and 70. If the Minister can assure the Committee that the Government will bring their own amendments to satisfy these requirements, I am sure that such duplication can be avoided.
Lastly, I support Amendment 85A in the name of my noble friend Lord Hamilton, which seeks to achieve substantially the same result. Amendment 80 is also necessary to ensure proper scrutiny of GBE’s decision-making process with regard to its investments. Will the Minister explain his view on GBE’s role as a potential investor in joint public and private partnerships?
There are probably several solutions, but the one I want to describe briefly is that renewable liquid fuel can make decarbonisation affordable and practical for off-grid consumers, significantly reducing emissions and delivering on the carbon budget. It will help deliver clean power by 2030 and the commitment that no one who does not want to will be forced to remove a boiler.
In Cornwall, where I live, a fuel distributor has successfully created the country’s first renewable liquid fuel village, in the coastal village of Kehelland, converting homes, businesses and the local church and schools to a fuel called HVO. It has been a fantastic success in helping residents to reduce their carbon emissions and allowing them to play their part.
I appreciate that my noble friend’s ministerial colleague in the other place gave evidence on this issue the other week, but she referred to issues of supply and cost to consumers. I was concerned to hear that the department may be delaying the Energy Act consultation. I hope that is not the case, because this consultation needs to go ahead. I know that the industries that support off-grid households found that she said something rather surprising, given that there is clear evidence that should reassure my noble friend and his colleagues.
Operating companies produce classic annual reports and accounts, but GBE will be more akin to a permanent capital venture fund. Therefore, its annual report and accounts really should be supplemented by disclosure of the rates of return on its investments.
I will address a comment made by the Secretary of State during the Bill’s Second Reading in the other place. He made an interesting argument about the potential of state-owned companies. In his own words:
“State ownership is the right idea for creating wealth for Britain”,
as GBE’s investments
“will help generate return for the taxpayer”.—[Official Report, Commons, 5/9/24; col. 456.]
GBE, he argued, would not only contribute to energy security but create jobs and foster economic growth. While I am encouraged by the potential for GBE to generate wealth and drive the economic growth that we need badly, I will ask the Minister to clarify a few points in relation to this statement.
First, if GBE is indeed intended to generate returns for the taxpayer, can the Minister confirm the expected rate of return on investment for these projects? In particular, will these returns be sufficient to justify the use of £8.3 billion of taxpayers’ money? To be clear, the £8.3 billion of capital for GBE will be borrowed by the Government. I do not need to tell your Lordships this as it is everywhere, but the long-term gilt yield stands now sadly at 5.5%—up more than 50 bps in the last three weeks. Infrastructure returns typically are above 10% and venture capital is above 15%. Therefore, the benchmark that GBE should be aiming at must be in the range of 10% to 15%.
We all know that we get what we measure. I worried when I read the evidence given by GBE’s chairman-elect, Jürgen Maier, in the Public Bill Committee debate in the other House on 8 October, when he said that GBE’s success will ultimately be measured by the number of projects it is able to finance and the quantum of energy it is able to deliver to the grid. So are we measuring returns or the number of projects? Therefore, it is critical that we understand the financial viability of these investments and ensure that they will not end up being a burden on the public purse.
Secondly, there is significant concern about the risk of GBE becoming a dumping ground for less profitable or riskier energy projects, especially those that private sector companies are unwilling to back. I should add that there was no shortage of capital for net zero when I was in No. 10, so I have to assume that GBE will back transactions that are perhaps less profitable. This concern was raised in Committee and by my right honourable friend Claire Coutinho, who questioned whether the Government’s aim to derisk projects could result in throwing taxpayers’ money into unprofitable ventures.
Representatives of energy trade associations such as RenewableUK and Energy UK have also raised questions. In particular, Adam Berman from Energy UK identified what he described as two competing priorities for GBE: making profitable investment and addressing problems in the energy system arising from market failures. He said that the company might struggle to resolve this potential conflict if it was not addressed in the Bill. Can the Minister provide assurances that GBE will not be disproportionately directed towards these high-risk, low-return projects, which could undermine the Government’s goal of creating wealth for Britain?
The Secretary of State and the honourable Member for Rutherglen, Michael Shanks, have cited Ørsted as a model and precedent for GBE. Ørsted is not only an operating company—it is the main energy entity in Denmark—but is 49% owned by the stock market. Its equity is researched by 20 investment banks, creating public and financial scrutiny each quarter. That is certainly a very different picture from GBE. GBE will invest in illiquid, minority positions, yet will be a large operation, at £8.3 billion of capital. Incidentally, this is about half the market value of Ørsted. This compels us to scrutinise it seriously and to ensure disciplined governance and oversight.
In summary, it is crucial for the Minister to provide further clarification on the financial viability of the investments to be made by GBE, the risks involved, and how the Government will ensure that taxpayers’ money is used wisely. Transparency and accountability, as we have discussed through Amendment 80, will be key to answering these questions and demonstrating that GBE is indeed acting in the best interests of the British taxpayer.
We should learn the lessons of the pandemic. We bought billions of PPE items with millions and millions of pounds of public money—taxpayers’ money—when many of those products could have been made in this country by British workers. We have to be a lot more careful than we have been so far. The noble Lord, Lord Offord of Garvel, is right to point us in his amendment towards justifying the case made by the Government in favour of the Bill.
I tabled a Written Question to the Minister that I hope he will be able to answer, if not today during our oral exchanges then at least in writing before Report, about how many solar panels we intend to buy to fulfil the ambitions of the Bill: how many, and at what cost? What are the alternatives? Can they be made elsewhere? Only this morning I heard from a company that operates out of South Africa that says it can produce solar panels without any of the risks involved in using slave labour from Xinjiang. There must be others—we should be doing more to look for those alternatives.
We have to take the issue of genocide more seriously than we have, not least because of what we would be placing on the shoulders of those companies that will be encouraged through this legislation to buy these products. They can be prosecuted under the 2015 legislation that was promoted in an incredibly enlightened way by the then Home Secretary, the noble Baroness, Lady May, who we referred to in our Question Time exchanges earlier today. The Joint Committee on Human Rights is about to embark on a new inquiry looking at supply chain transparency and the effects on modern day slavery. I hope that the noble Baroness might be one of those who comes to give evidence.
We have to take this issue more seriously. There was a good example of pre-legislative scrutiny when both Houses looked at this, amendments were made and there was a coming together; that should happen again this time. The House of Commons declared that a genocide is under way in Xinjiang. This is the crime above all crimes. I do not need to convince the Minister of this—I know that—but it seems that I have to convince the Government. Whenever Mr Miliband is questioned on this, he simply says, “We care about human rights”. We all care about human rights, but this is the crime above all crimes. The 1948 convention on the crime of genocide requires us to prevent, to protect and to punish. We do not do any of those things very well.