That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty as follows:
“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.
My Lords, it is a great honour for me to open our six-day debate on the gracious Speech. I start by thanking my predecessor at the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the noble Lord, Lord Callanan, for his contribution to the department and his considerable efforts to keep noble Lords informed and debate vigorously with them. I also very much welcome the noble Lord, Lord Fuller, who is making his maiden speech during our debate. I am sure that it will be the first of many important contributions.
Since I was last a Minister in what was the Department of Energy and Climate Change, 14 years have passed. While the office still looks familiar—and the Secretary of State is certainly familiar—the challenges we face are undoubtedly more profound. The vulnerabilities in our energy system have been laid bare by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his weaponisation of international fossil fuel markets. Families are still in a cost of living crisis, exacerbated by energy bills that remain high. There is also a deep and urgent demand for good jobs, good houses and good economic opportunities across the UK, particularly in former industrial heartlands, which feel like they have been left behind in recent years. All the while, the climate crisis is no longer a future threat: it is happening right now, all around us. We are seeing the effect of warming in droughts, wildfires and floods across the world, and feeling it in extreme temperatures, with June this year the 13th consecutive month to set a record global high.
As was set out in the gracious Speech, the Government are on a mission to address these challenges. At the heart of that mission is the plan to make Britain a clean energy superpower. If we want to wean ourselves off our dependence on fossil fuels and become more energy secure, we need clean energy. If we want to tackle the cost of living crisis and make sure that British people feel better off, we need to harness our domestic potential for cheap clean energy. If we want skilled jobs with good wages, bringing a new wave of prosperity to every corner of the country, we need an industrial strategy focused on clean energy. If we want to halt climate change and protect our planet, we need clean energy.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on his appointment as Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero. We have the utmost respect for his abilities and integrity, and I wish him well in his duties. I also congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, on her appointment as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Her depth of knowledge and commitment to this area of government are clear. Indeed, I wish the whole of His Majesty’s Government great success for the benefit of our country.
Before I begin, I would like to declare my relevant interests. I have a dairy farm, a solar farm and forestry, and I am a residential and agricultural landlord. I own land targeting development for new forestry planting, carbon sequestration, wind energy and residential housing. I am a director of a wind energy development company. I am an investor in companies developing technology for natural capital and carbon sequestration as well as global companies providing oilfield services and growing agricultural products.
Government investment decision-making does not have a good track record. Indeed, it is private capital that has driven the rollout of renewables and infrastructure in our country, and it appears that Great British Energy will be targeting investments that private capital alone will not finance. That does not fill our Benches with confidence that these investments will necessarily be judicious. Please can the Minister assure the House that GB Energy will report on the performance of its investments regularly and in detail and that the Government will be held accountable in this House for the performance of those investments?
The Government have committed to substantially increase the rate of renewables development. This would build on our track record of increasing renewable energy from 7% of our electricity supply in 2010 to around 50% today, versus 14% globally. However, these objectives clash with others in the Government’s manifesto. How do we increase our food security while tripling solar capacity, which is often placed on some of our most fertile land in southern England? How do we restore and protect our natural environment if we are installing gigawatts of wind turbines in the fragile and beautiful environments where the wind blows most consistently? How will these conflicting objectives be reconciled within the planning system while also protecting the interests of those who live and work in these areas?
My Lords, I congratulate Labour on securing a historic win and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, on his appointment.
This Parliament has a powerful mandate for bold action to fight the climate emergency and ensure an unprecedented revolution in the deployment of renewable energy. We must ensure a return to the all-party consensus on climate change. This June marked the 12th consecutive month of global temperatures of 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels. Global sea surface temperatures have also breached the 1.5-degree Celsius threshold for each of the last 15 months. We are running out of time. Our global climate goals are melting before we transition away from fossil fuels.
Although the Conservatives passed a ground-breaking Climate Change Act and cut our CO2 emissions to their lowest levels since 1879, ultimately Sunak prioritised the perceived electoral benefits of climate polarisation over climate action. Dither and delay and climate culture wars have meant that UK energy bills were £22 billion higher over the past decade than they would have been had we taken action earlier to rid ourselves of our overdependence on fossil fuels. Precious time, inward investment and our international reputation were all sacrificed.
The Climate Change Committee is clear that we are off course to meet the fifth and sixth rounds of our carbon budgets, particularly for heating and transport. Were someone to ask, “How would you get to net zero by 2050?”, the answer would come back, “I would not start from here after nine years of Conservative government”. Labour have made their job more difficult as well by deciding to cut their own £28 billion annual budget for climate change. I call on Labour to revisit these budget decisions. We have a historic opportunity to turn to the next chapter in the fight against climate change and transform the United Kingdom into the world’s leading innovative and successful green economy.
My Lords, I declare my interest as chair of Peers for the Planet. It is obviously on topics related to that role that I will mainly speak today, but I hope the House will indulge me on just a couple of sentences on House of Lords reform, as evidently I will not be able to participate in Tuesday’s debate.
I am glad that the Government’s manifesto set out a commitment to a smaller House and to ensuring that those who populate it will be appointed because of their ability and commitment to making a real contribution to our work. The Bill we were promised yesterday will obviously help those commitments by reducing the size of the House and ending a pathway to membership which simply is not acceptable in the 21st century. But when we look at the issue of the contribution which Members make, the effects of that Bill will inevitably make us consider whether some nuance may be needed, and that need to balance objectives will become even more apparent if we look at a hard-stop age limit on membership.
I much welcome the tone of the Leader of the House’s remarks yesterday. I hope that the House will be given an opportunity to work out the best and most effective way to reduce its size further, the need for which I am in no doubt, but without damaging its effectiveness as a scrutinising and revising Chamber or sacrificing expertise and experience. I am tempted to pursue the analogy of babies and bathwater, but in discussing an age limit of 80 that is perhaps not appropriate. What is essential—I hope the new Government will look urgently and seriously at this—is a cap on the overall size of the House and the concomitant reduction of the absolute power of prerogative which currently lies with the Prime Minister. That cap and a statutory appointments commission are, in my view, essential building blocks to ensure an effectively functioning second Chamber in which we can justifiably take pride.
Turning to the substance of today’s debate, I have a list of welcomes: a welcome for the recognition in the gracious Speech of
My Lords, I declare my interest as president of the Rural Coalition and add my congratulations to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, on her new role.
As a long-term advocate for rural areas and the people who live and work in them, I know that our farmers and rural communities are uniquely placed to deliver the Government’s missions of clean energy, increased building and the need to protect and restore our environment. Rural communities and rural businesses play an absolutely crucial role in the economic and social fabric of our country.
I welcome His Majesty’s Government’s plans to introduce measures to tackle pollution in our rivers, lakes and waterways. In my diocese of St Albans, covering Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, we are home to several of this country’s beautiful chalk streams, which, despite being extraordinarily rare and precious habitats, have been utterly devastated by both extraction and pollution. For example, the River Ver in Hertfordshire has been found to have six times higher levels of E. coli than is acceptable in bathing water. Between March and June this year, sewage was discharged directly into the River Ver for more than 2,400 hours.
I appreciate that agricultural run-off is also a problem when it comes to ensuring that our rivers are kept clean and healthy. That is why it is vital that the Government work closely with Britain’s farmers, as well as investing in research and development for better fertilisers and solutions to reduce the volume of manure and slurry. There have, in fact, been planning applications for slurry storage or energy-efficient greenhouses turned down as a result of environmental considerations—an outcome that is not only frustrating but counterproductive to what we are trying to achieve. Local authorities need to have access to the appropriate expertise when making decisions on these applications. The planning practice guidance needs to be much clearer, with more flexibility built in so that farm businesses are able to build the infrastructure they need to become more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
My Lords, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Hunt on the Front Bench; he has a distinguished career behind him and I think he has an even more distinguished career before him. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Hayman of Ullock, who will probably be pestered by me for quite some time. I declare two interests: I am the honorary president of the Carbon Capture and Storage Association and I am also the honorary president of Energy Action Scotland, which is Scotland’s pre-eminent fuel poverty charity.
I was not going to say anything about housing, but I would like to put one point into everyone’s minds. In a cold country like Scotland—and it is a cold and wet country—how houses are built and made available to people is of great importance in dealing with fuel poverty. Fuel poverty is a terrible thing; I have seen it when I was a Member of Parliament, and I would not wish it on anyone.
I was absolutely delighted to see Great British Energy in the King’s Speech yesterday. It took me back to when I was a young economist for the Scottish Trades Union Congress at the time when oil and gas was discovered in the North Sea. Organisations such as BNOC, which became Britoil, settled in Scotland. Not only did we have the engineers, but we also had the people building and those who were dealing with the economic consequences of such a vast industry. That still contributes enormously to the Scottish economy, so it is fantastic that there will be Great British Energy in Scotland as a public energy company.
Great British Energy needs to look at the whole system, including CO2 and hydrogen infrastructure, which is required for the decarbonisation of industry. I suspect that very few people in the Chamber will be aware that the UK has almost one-third of Europe’s geological storage capability. The potential of all of that is even greater for Britain than it is for all of the EU. There is huge potential in terms of jobs. Something like 70,000 jobs could be created in the energy sector, and, of course, there are great opportunities for taxation. There is an estimated £30 billion of tax revenues once we get to 2030 and on to 2050 and beyond. There is a great opportunity for us to move ahead. Carbon capture, utilisation and storage is an essential solution for reaching net-zero emissions. It plays a vital role in reducing emissions from industries such as steel, cement, chemicals and refining.
My Lords, I begin by congratulating, from the Opposition Back Benches, noble Lords opposite on their election victory. I wish them well in the challenges that lie ahead. In particular, I welcome the Ministers here today and congratulate them on their appointments. As someone who was recalled to the colours way past my retirement age on many occasions, I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, back on the Front Bench, particularly with the noble Baronesses, Lady Hayman and Lady Taylor, whose speeches in the last Parliament I will reread for any unguarded commitments.
Further to the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on your Lordships’ House, I note in passing that the last time we had a King’s Speech with a Labour Government, your Lordships’ House had 863 Members, including 99 Viscounts, 175 Earls, 39 Marquesses, 26 Dukes and four Peers of royal blood. However, that is a matter for our debate on Tuesday, and I want to focus on the humbler end of our constitution: local government and housing.
Labour’s election manifesto states:
“Labour will not increase taxes on working people”.
What does that mean for next year’s council tax? As the name clearly implies, it is a tax, and it is clearly paid by working people. Keeping that commitment can be done only by a generous increase in the revenue support grant in December. But the Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that, far from having more resources at their disposal, unprotected departments such as DLUHC face a real-terms reduction of between 1.2% and 2.9% over the next few years. Reserves of local authorities are low; eight have gone bankrupt, many other well-run local authorities are in some difficulty, and there is relentless pressure from adult social services and children with special needs, whose fortunes the Government rightly want to improve.
My Lords, is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, who raised important questions on taxation, which I will come back to in a moment. I congratulate Ministers on their appointments and wish them well in their roles. We look forward to working with them constructively in the months and years ahead. I look forward very much to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Fuller. Since I will address one or two local government issues, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
I wish the Government a fair wind. The public are crying out for stable and responsible government with a clear sense of direction. We need an end to the boosterism of recent Governments, an end to poorly drafted Bills, and an end to Governments announcing policies that cannot be delivered. The electorate expect this new Government to pursue a reform agenda, and they are clearly doing that. I am pleased that their intentions were demonstrated by early announcements, such as the decision on onshore wind turbines, and by the gracious Speech yesterday. Public expectations are high, so the Government’s pace is most welcome.
We will all have our lists of priorities for the Government to undertake to make a difference in this first Session of the Parliament. For me, the drive to clean up our rivers and watercourses and the need for adequate water supplies to support growth are paramount. I want the Government to address child poverty. They should urgently abolish the two-child limit. It would cost just £1.7 billion and make a huge difference to those children and their families, and to their health and well-being.
I want the Government to find a solution to bed-blocking and the crisis in social care. I think there is to be a royal commission to fix social care, but it was not announced in the King’s Speech yesterday. It would be helpful to know what is planned for that, because bed-blocking is causing serious problems for both the National Health Service and local government finances.
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Instead of having to choose between security, sustainability and affordability—what is known as the energy trilemma—we have an extraordinary opportunity to boost all three by investing in clean energy at speed and scale. That is why the Government are focused on achieving clean electricity by 2030, with a system based on renewables and nuclear power, and then building on that momentum to achieve the ultimate goal of net zero by 2050, which means we will then be no longer adding to the total amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and therefore no longer contributing to climate change.
The Great British Energy Bill, put forward in the gracious Speech, will establish a publicly owned company to spearhead our mission to become a clean energy superpower. Headquartered in Scotland, Great British Energy will encourage, own and develop clean energy projects of all sizes across the country. It is highly unlikely that the scale and pace of investment required to decarbonise the electricity system could be achieved by the private sector alone within the current institutional and policy framework. This new public energy company, alongside additional electricity market reforms, can provide the spark we need, supporting and encouraging private investment. Working in conjunction with industry, Great British Energy will help substantially expand our renewable capacity by the end of this decade.
The Bill will establish GBE, which will develop, own and operate assets, investing in partnership with the private sector, and will have a capitalisation of £8.3 billion of new money over the lifetime of this Parliament. Through these investments, GBE will take a stake for the British people in projects and supply chains that accelerate technologies for the future, reaping benefits at home in cheap clean power and securing Britain at the front of the global race for technology, which has such major global export potential.
GBE will also facilitate, encourage and participate in the production, distribution, storage and supply of clean energy, and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from energy produced by fossil fuels, as well as measures for furthering the transition to clean energy and improving energy efficiency. The Bill gives the Secretary of State the ability to provide GBE with the financial backing needed to meet its aims and ambitions. The Secretary of State will be required under the Bill to prepare a strategic priority statement for GBE, to ensure it focuses its effort on government priorities. GBE will also, of course, accelerate ground-breaking new developments, with public investment helping to crowd in investment from the private sector and supporting the development of municipal and community energy.
Renewables are not only greener but the fastest to deploy, cheapest to build and operate, and more secure. A renewables-led system is the cheapest foundation for a decarbonised grid. It also gives us energy security, because renewables are not sold on markets controlled by foreign powers. By accelerating the clean energy transition, GBE will not just put us firmly on track for net zero but will boost our energy security and create those skilled jobs we need. Further, it will ensure that electricity bills are no longer exposed to the kinds of gas price shocks that helped to drive increases in the electricity price cap of over £1,300 for a typical household during winter 2022-23.
GBE will work alongside our new mission control centre, which is exactly what it sounds like—a strategic hub in government that will set out the path, and monitor and drive our progress, to reaching clean power by 2030. It will draw upon the unique expertise of industry leaders, in a format unprecedented in government, bringing together the best possible people to shape how we achieve decarbonised electricity. I share the Secretary of State’s delight in having such a credible expert at the helm in Chris Stark, the former chief executive of the Climate Change Committee.
If anyone needed proof of the pace at which this Government are willing to move, they need look only at the lifting of the onshore wind ban, after just 72 hours. Onshore wind accounts for roughly a quarter of all electricity generated from renewables. We already have a strong pipeline of projects in the planning system, but planning and grid constraints in England and Wales mean we have seen little investment in onshore wind outside Scotland in recent years. We have removed the de facto ban in England by deleting onshore wind- specific planning tests that have been in the National Planning Policy Framework for almost a decade. What this essentially does is place onshore wind on the same footing as other energy developments.
We are very eager for communities to benefit from hosting local renewable energy infrastructure, which is why we will soon publish an update to the community benefits protocol for onshore wind in England.
We are building on the strategic spatial energy plan, which is being developed by the National Energy System Operator. This is about speeding up the rollout of clean power, giving more certainty to the planning and consenting process, and seeking to expand the use of spatial planning to other infrastructure sectors.
Work is under way on a host of other vital reforms, including energy system reform to ensure that our regulator can hold companies to account for wrongdoing, and the warm homes plan, which will offer grants and low-interest loans to support insulation, as well as the installation of solar panels, batteries and low-carbon heating. We will seek to extend the lifetime of existing nuclear power plants while supporting the completion of new sites, such as Sizewell C.
The Chancellor has already committed to a national wealth fund to drive investment in the industries of the future and create thousands of jobs in clean energy. This new national wealth fund task force will be led by the people who know best, including the former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, the CEO of Barclays Bank, and Aviva CEO, Dame Amanda Blanc.
I turn to the environment. At the heart of our net zero plans is, of course, a determination to protect our natural environment for generations to come. For too long our natural world has been destroyed, and our farmers and rural communities neglected. Action is needed to urgently reverse this damage and bring about lasting and positive results.
It is surely a national shame that there are record levels of sewage in our rivers, lakes and seas. Cleaning this up is a priority that can no longer be ignored. That is why we are bringing forward legislation this Session that will take the first important step towards substantial reform in the waste sector. We want to hold water companies to account, putting them under special measures through strengthened regulation, but there is much more that has to happen if we are to support economic growth and minimise environmental harm.
We are committed to creating a circular economy that uses our resources in a more environmentally, economically and socially sustainable way, creating a road map that will finally move Britain to a zero-waste economy. We recognise that food security is critical to our national security, so will be working hard to support our farmers and rural communities, and will do more to protect communities from the devastating damage that flooding causes.
We should surely be proud of our country’s remarkable natural beauty, but the fact is that we are currently one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world. So we will take action to meet the targets set out in the Environment Act and work in partnership with communities to restore and protect nature.
Another central pillar of the Government’s agenda for change is housing. A safe, secure, affordable home is the foundation of a good life, but we know that for too many people it is increasingly out of reach. In hostels throughout the country, there are children in temporary accommodation. Couples are stuck living with parents, unable to move out and start a family, and millions of lives are put on hold because of the failure to address our housing emergency. This is holding us all back because new homes do not just provide families with security to make plans and get on but help create well-paid jobs, attract investment into local infrastructure and spark the economic growth that Britain desperately needs.
As some of the biggest contributors to our carbon emissions, homes also hold the key to a greener, cleaner future that brings down people’s bills while doing our best for the planet. That is why we have made it a mission to get Britain building again with 1.5 million new homes across the country, including the biggest wave of affordable, social and council homes for a generation. These new homes will be energy efficient, with proper insulation to bring down bills. To achieve this, the Government are reintroducing local housing targets, reforming the National Planning Policy Framework, kick-starting the next generation of new towns and creating a new task force to accelerate stalled housing projects, including hiring 300 more planning officers. In doing this, we will focus on nature-friendly planning, starting with the development of poor-quality grey-belt land—disused wasteland—and prioritising building on brownfield sites. We also need to address the real reasons that many people oppose homes being built in their neighbourhood, so we will make sure that more homes also means more doctors, more schools and better transport.
Government is often about making difficult decisions, and it can sometimes feel like a Catch-22 situation where every positive choice seems to involve some sort of push-back. The energy crisis is not a Catch-22. Nor is the need to protect our natural environment, nor the demand for good-quality housing. In all those areas we have an extraordinary opportunity at this time. By investing in clean energy, protecting our environment and building hundreds of thousands of good-quality homes, we can make ordinary working people better off and build a more secure and prosperous future for all. I beg to move.
There are two further challenges for renewables development. First, grid capacity and the ability of distribution network operators to process applications from developers remain significant constraints. I would like to understand how and when the Government plan to free these up. Secondly, cost inflation has significantly increased the levelised cost of electricity from new renewable developments, making it harder to compete with the marginal cost of electricity from gas turbines. How will the Government ensure that the incentives are effective for developers without penalising the consumer?
The Government have summarily ceased issuing new licences for exploration and production of oil and gas in the North Sea. This weakens our energy independence and threatens the 90,000 people employed directly by the oil and gas sector, often in local economies that rely on those jobs. At least another 100,000 jobs are reliant on this industry. Under our previous Government, with continued development, we expected oil and gas production to fall by 7% per annum, faster than the average global decline needed to align with the IPCC’s 1.5 degrees Celsius pathway. Without new licensing, this will fall at an accelerating rate, increasing our reliance on imported oil and gas. The UK still depends on fossil fuels for meeting around 75% of our total energy demand, and that cannot be changed overnight. A Robert Gordon University study found that a faster decline in our oil and gas could halve this workforce by 2030 and would be a
“significant loss of skills for the future energy sector”.
I would like the Minister to reassure this House and the 200,000 men and women dependent on this industry that they will find equally highly skilled and well-paid jobs and that we will not be held to ransom by foreign powers in future.
There is universal acceptance that the water industry can and must do better. The challenges are unchanged: the water and wastewater infrastructure was designed and built by our Victorian ancestors 150 years ago. The standards and capacity it was built to are obsolete. How will increasing the powers of the regulator change those facts? I remind the House that the previous Government had a fully funded plan to address the issues. In a few weeks, the Thames Tideway tunnel will be put to use after investment of more than £4 billion, despite much opposition in this House, significantly improving the quality of water in the Thames.
The Government’s intention to develop a land use framework, which was not mentioned today but was stated in previous commitments, is in line with our plan, which was recently confirmed by my noble friend Lord Douglas-Miller at the Dispatch Box. It can and should allow for streamlining management and planning decisions. However, I would like the Minister to reassure the House that this will enable, rather than force, private landowners to pursue developments that the Government find desirable.
Families dependent on farming were disappointed with the lack of clarity or ambition around this Government’s intentions towards farming, without any mention of it in His Majesty’s gracious Speech. We had promised £1 billion of extra funding to farmers to support increased productivity while improving animal welfare and environmental standards. The year 2024 has been stressful for farmers due to extreme rainfall. What concrete reassurance can the Minister give that helping them remains a priority?
I sincerely hope that the Government can use the world-leading environment, agriculture and fisheries Acts to continue to drive the country to fulfil its legal commitment to reverse the declines in nature by 2030. Ministers in the last Government pushed Defra to act as enablers rather than regulators. Success requires land managers and farmers to be weaponised, in the words of my noble friend Lord Benyon. They are the ones who will sequester carbon, increase biodiversity and produce food more sustainably, not the Government.
This is about leveraging Defra resources to stimulate private sector green finance. I urge the Minister to continue to partner with the British Standards Institution on standards and excellent organisations such as the Green Finance Institute to see the UK as developing high-integrity accessible markets for land managers and investors. It is also important that our Woodland Carbon Code and Peatland Code should be certified with the excellent Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market’s core carbon principles while also being admitted to the UK Emissions Trading Scheme.
We should not overlook the massive international role that we have played in managing the environment under the previous Government. Defra’s international biodiversity responsibilities were key to fulfilling what was agreed at COP 26 in Glasgow and at CBD COP 15 in Montreal—for example, our £500 million Blue Planet Fund, helping smaller countries to manage their coastal areas and oceans. Please could the Minister confirm that she will continue to work closely with colleagues at DESNZ and the FCDO to continue this leadership?
The Government described the badger cull as ineffective in their manifesto, but the reality is quite different, with a reduction of 51% in bovine TB in three regions of Cheshire between 2016 and 2023. My own dairy farm has gone from TB infections at least once every other year to three years TB-free since the badger cull. I am pleased that His Majesty’s Government plan to continue working with farmers and scientists to eradicate bovine TB. A candidate vaccine, CattleBCG, has been identified, and the Animal and Plant Health Agency has developed a companion candidate test. Significant progress is being made, but I urge the Government not to abandon a proven strategy until there is complete confidence that a better solution is available.
I hope I have given sufficient evidence that the last Government were the greenest ever, leading the world in so many areas. We applaud the new Government’s ambition to build and expand on that work while bolstering our food and energy security. We will support His Majesty’s Government when they do good things, perhaps chiding them to do better and holding them to account when they fail.
I am very much looking forward to my noble friend Lord Fuller’s maiden speech, no doubt the first of many meaningful contributions to this House.
The international frameworks, legislation and policy are all largely in place. The job of government is to implement change at an unprecedented pace and scale, and that means taking critical decisions and building lots of infrastructure. The initial signs are encouraging: in particular, the ending of the effective nine-year ban on new onshore wind farms, the launch of the National Wealth Fund, the approval of three big new solar farms and the masterful appointment of Chris Stark as the head of mission control. This is all good for our energy security, reducing energy bills and ensuring a future for humanity.
I am proud of my party’s manifesto, which was judged by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to be better than Labour’s for the environment and nature. We on these Benches are committed to achieving net zero by 2045. I encourage Labour to be bold. As Ed Davey said, please steal our ideas, especially on tackling the failing water companies and the sewage scandal. We welcome Labour’s plan to make the UK a clean energy superpower, doubling offshore wind, trebling solar and quadrupling offshore wind, along with the Government’s commitment to decarbonise our energy generation by 2030, including the creation of Great British Energy.
The Liberal Democrats have always been and will always be champions of renewable energy. The UK has the third-best wind resources in the world. Renewable energy is cheap and proven and has short delivery times. It provides energy security and lowers costs to consumers. It is entirely possible to decarbonise our power generation by 2030, but no nation has ever fully decarbonised their national power generation within such a short timeframe.
Success will require an intergovernmental approach across Whitehall, the devolved regions and local government. It will also involve rapid societal change not seen here since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It means building a massive amount of infrastructure, equivalent to some seven times more over the next 10 years than was built over the previous three. The “how, not if” reforms to planning will need to be carefully balanced and communicated to ensure that we do not get bogged down in nimby infrastructure wars. The Government need to balance building with spatial strategies that include brownfield first and enhanced, larger geographical areas of nature protection.
The Government must make a number of key policy decisions urgently and set out a comprehensive policy programme. The solutions are well known: onshore and offshore wind power; rooftop solar; a huge home insulation programme; the delivery of affordable home heat pumps, the take-up of electric vehicles; a massive update to the grid and interconnectors, generating more power in the south, where it is consumed; and decisions on carbon capture and storage, medium and long-term power storage and how we get cheap energy to heavy industry and nuclear power.
We await the Bills and will scrutinise them carefully when they arrive to ensure that they work. We will hold Labour to account and push them to be ambitious. Great British Energy is welcome, but I encourage Labour to invest in community energy schemes, and I caution against on an overreliance of nuclear projects that are often over budget and delivered late.
Adaptation and resilience is the bit that no one wants to talk about, but we can no longer afford to ignore it. From our health systems to urban planning, water infrastructure, transport, flood defences, the resilience of critical infrastructure, food security and the control of wildfires, there is little joined-up comprehensive thinking going on across government. The recommendations of the Adaptation Committee of the Climate Change Committee need to be fed into Whitehall and delivered across government.
The key to success in all these projects lies in the Government’s ability to bring the public along for the transition. That requires providing real cost of living benefits to people early on. To make the green revolution work, it must provide jobs, wages and economic growth. The Government must work to provide the educated skills workforce required.
I believe passionately in the need for a just climate transition. It is essential that our citizens see tangible benefits. Another spike in the international energy markets could cost the UK an extra £50 billion. We welcome Labour’s foreign policy plans to establish co-ordinated global action on climate change. I want Labour to form ever-closer relations with Europe, and to see a return to having shared environmental standards with the EU. Global finance mitigation and adaption will be key issues at COP 29. This is an ideal opportunity for the Labour Government to show leadership. We encourage His Majesty’s Government to act with speed, but to bring society with them.
“the urgency of the global climate challenge and the new … opportunities that can come from leading the development of the technologies of the future”,
and for what has already been announced by the Government in lifting the de facto ban on onshore wind developments, an issue on which cognoscenti of debates on it in this House will know I have been campaigning for many years. I give congratulations on reviving the solar power task force and the much needed co-ordinating mechanism to ensure the achievement of the Government’s 2030 target for clean electricity. Equally, I welcome the legislative proposal to establish Great British Energy and
“to help the country achieve energy independence and unlock investment in energy infrastructure”.
There will be plenty to get our collective teeth into in the forthcoming Session of Parliament, so I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, who I congratulate on his speech, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, to the formidable workload outlined. We have worked constructively together in the past. I look forward to continuing to do so and of course, if necessary, keeping their feet to the non-fossil fuel fire. I also want very sincerely to welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Swinburne, and the noble Lord, Lord Roborough—who we recognise, from his speech, has tremendous and wide-ranging lived experience in these issues—to their position on the Front Bench, and to express my hope to work constructively with them as well.
It is almost exactly five years since the UK became the first G7 nation to legislate legally binding targets on net zero under the leadership of the then Prime Minister, Theresa May. The impressive progress that this country has made, of which I think we are all proud, would not have been possible without a broad and deep consensus in Parliament, and way beyond it, on the importance of tackling climate change. That consensus has, in the words of the Climate Change Committee’s report published today, “begun to fray”, but there is an opportunity for it to be rebuilt. Of course there will be differences of approach and debate about mechanisms, costs and timescales, but consensus on the seriousness of the issue and the urgency of taking effective action are prerequisites to creating opportunities for growth, for jobs, for cleaner air and rivers, and for global leadership on this most global of issues.
We cannot pretend, as some do, that the UK’s performance on climate change does not matter because it accounts for only a small percentage of global emissions. Half of all global emissions come from countries like us, responsible for less than 3% of the global total. If all those countries took that attitude then, frankly, the world would not make any progress on this issue. Without a sense of urgency at home, we cannot credibly lead from the front in combating international climate change as countries prepare to submit updated plans ahead of COP 30 next year.
We know that we must transition away from fossil fuels and need a clear and transparent plan for that transition which recognises the need to support affected workers and for them to be equipped for the new jobs of the green economy. I hope that the Government will pick up on our discussions from the end of the previous Parliament on continued exploration of taking fuel from the North Sea, and end the wasteful and polluting practice of venting and flaring. I also urge the Government to publish a land use strategy sooner rather than later to underpin the contested decisions that will inevitably need to be made in this area.
As well as building that cross-party approach, the other necessity to our work is urgency. The science is warning us that we are running out of road to make the changes needed to avoid climate tipping points. This Parliament needs to be the Parliament of climate delivery. Globally, we have seen records broken for extreme weather events. The eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2014 and we have just experienced the wettest 18 months ever recorded in England. But recently UK policy has stalled in critical areas, from improving the energy efficiency of people’s homes to readying our national grid for electrification, and to restoring nature and cleaning up our waterways.
Restructuring our economy to tackle climate change will not be straightforward and it will mean balancing off multiple factors. The challenge will be to make sure that, on each of these issues, we have the strategic focus but also the careful analysis to make informed decisions about how best to manage the risks and seize the net-zero opportunities before us. I suspect that the phrase already being used—trade-offs—will be a recurrent motif of debates in this Parliament.
It is really important that, five years out from the scientific and symbolic climate milestone of 2030, we make sure that the next stage of transition will be more visible to people and communities. This will therefore demand a new approach to secure public consent on how we implement it, but if people understand the detail and are engaged in discussion on the trade-offs and the benefits that change can bring locally and nationally, we will be much more likely to win hearts and minds. With renewed leadership and science-led decision-making, we can deliver on the issues that are vital today and will be critical to the legacy we leave for the future.
I welcome warmly this Government’s recognition of the fact that food security is part of national security. I was pleased to see the pledge to source a minimum of 50% of government-procured food from British producers. It is encouraging to see that the security of British farming is high up on the agenda both for the public and the Government. This is why I echo the National Farmers’ Union’s call for an increased, multi-year agricultural budget to secure the future of Britain’s farming industry and to ensure that farmers and government can work together to move forward towards sustainable food production, environment targets and net zero. We need to work in collaboration with, not in opposition to, our vitally important farming sector.
Several noble colleagues on these Benches raised concerns during the passage of the recent Animal Welfare (Livestock Exports) Act that the import of animals and animal product raised under welfare standards that would be illegal here are damaging British agricultural business. Battery-cage eggs and poultry production is banned here, yet our producers have been undercut by imported eggs and poultry reared to lower standards. I look forward to hearing more detail on His Majesty’s Government’s plans to ensure that our own producers are provided with a level playing field and to ensure that these safeguards are a central bedrock of any trade deals.
Finally, I would like to make a few comments on housing. We are all aware that this is a huge challenge; if there were lots of quick wins, the previous Government would have grabbed them straightaway. I am grateful for the approach being taken by Homes for All, the coalition trying to take a strategic and systemic approach to increasing housebuilding. My particular interest, over many years, is rural housing and the rural housing crisis. It is a problem that is different from the challenge of building in many urban centres. It is crucial the Government recognise the specificity of the housing crisis in rural areas and the way that this impacts rural communities differently, not least in ensuring long- term rural sustainability. We had hoped our previous Government would provide us with a long-term strategy; I hope that this Government will consider doing so.
Over many years, we have seen the closure of rural shops, schools and services from rural areas, partly linked to the lack of genuinely affordable housing. We have also seen the drain of young people and families—indeed, sometimes the elderly—as they are being forced to leave homes and communities, often where they have deep roots and have lived all their lives. Local communities need to be informing decisions around building new houses to ensure that they fit into the locality, as well as being well-designed and of good quality; ultimately, they need to strengthen the community. I call on His Majesty’s Government to consider, as part of their reforms to planning, introducing a planning passport for rural exemption sites which have been highlighted as an avenue of great potential for mitigating the housing crisis. Future policies need to be sensitive to rural housing. That is not just the responsibility of Defra; it must happen across all government departments. It is why we need proper rural-proofing applied systematically to all legislation that comes to your Lordships’ House.
With the right support and investment, the rural economy can add billions to the national economy, contributing towards this Government’s mission to kick-start economic growth, as well as holding the potential to play a vital part in making Britain a clean energy superpower. I look forward to working with the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, in the coming years on these issues and others for the common good of our nation.
There is a vision for CCUS. One of the things that really buoyed me up in the run-up to the general election—like most people, I am always nervous of general elections being committed to one party—was that every time Rachel Reeves, now Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a major speech, she mentioned carbon capture and storage, so we know that in the heart of the Treasury there is an understanding of what can be created. Last night, the Secretary of State for Scotland raised with me the issue of carbon capture and storage, and I felt like dancing out of Dover House for the first time in a very long time, knowing there is that level of support across government.
There are some areas where we need the Government to act. There is the priority of low-carbon energy. We welcome the national wealth fund, because it can be used to secure private investment in industrial decarbonisation technologies, which is very important indeed. The Labour manifesto pledged £1 billion of the fund to support carbon capture, utilisation and storage.
We find ourselves in a situation where, as I mentioned, £30 billion of private investment is waiting to be deployed into CCUS, which could provide great revenue to the UK, but the Government have a window of opportunity to secure the first final investment decisions on track 1 CCUS clusters in the north-west and north-east of England by September this year. That CO2 infra- structure will deliver industrial decarbonisation, clean hydrogen and flexible low-carbon power. This is such an exciting opportunity to start construction this year on the world’s first large-scale integrated CCUS clusters, and I urge my colleagues on the Front Bench not to forget how great these opportunities are.
The track 1 expansion could be followed by track 2, which is needed to maintain the investment pipeline. The Secretary of State for Scotland mentioned track 2 to me last night. Unless we see progress towards CO2 infrastructure throughout the regions, and in Scotland in particular, large employers such as our refineries will face an uncertain future and could find themselves in real difficulty participating in the low-carbon fuels market that will emerge around the world. Clarity is urgently needed for the expansion of the first two clusters and the development of track 2 clusters, not just in Scotland but in south Humber. This will enable developers to continue with their planned investment, securing jobs and economic growth where it is most needed. Can my colleagues on the Front Bench give some indication of when we will hear more about what will happen on track 2 clusters?
I am grateful for this opportunity to talk about carbon capture and storage; I came to it as Energy Minister. We do not fully appreciate the extent to which there are opportunities out there that have been untouched until now. We have an oil and gas industry in Scotland and in the north of England that provides great opportunities for jobs, not just here but around the world. Let us add to our investment by getting carbon capture, utilisation and storage up and running.
I would like to be a fly on the wall when Angela Rayner, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State at DLUHC, meets Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, for a bilateral on the RSG. Irresistible force meets immovable object. The fiscal rules are not negotiable; Liz Truss discovered what happens when you spook the markets by overborrowing.
I believe that that commitment on tax will be broken. That should concern noble Lords opposite, not just because of a broken promise but because, while income tax, national insurance and VAT are progressive taxes—VAT is not levied on essentials—council tax is regressive, taking a higher proportion of the income of the less well off than of the more well off. The council tax on Buckingham Palace is less than that on the average three-bed semi in Blackpool and, perversely, Labour has ruled out rebanding. When she winds up, perhaps the Minister will explain how the dilemma I have just outlined might be resolved.
On a happier note, I welcome the commitment to restore housing targets for local authorities. That was my party’s policy until an inexcusable aberration some 18 months ago. I recall saying many times that you cannot rely on the generosity of local councils to provide the homes the country needs. This is a welcome return to an essential component of a national housing strategy.
That commitment was confirmed by the Chancellor last week, but was I alone in finding it strange that a keynote speech on housing, planning and onshore wind was given by the Chancellor and not the Deputy Prime Minister, who is Secretary of State at DLUHC, in charge of housing and planning? I ask myself: is there some “Succession”-like power struggle going on between the two most powerful women in the Government for control of the Labour dynasty?
I also welcome the decision mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to recruit an additional 300 planning officers. There is a shortage, impeding the prompt processing of planning applications and the preparation of local plans, but this is a short-term fix. There were proposals in the last Parliament to allow local authorities to increase planning fees to cover their costs instead of the fees being determined centrally by Whitehall. Will the Government consider that, as part of their policy of returning autonomy to local government?
I also welcome the re-introduction of a renters reform Bill. Crucially, however, that Bill should be accompanied by measures to increase the supply of rented accommodation. In Europe, long-term institutional finance provides well-managed rented accommodation with security of tenure; here, it provides only 2%. We need to progressively reduce our overdependence on the private landlord—who is withdrawing from the market, pushing up rents—and get the pension funds and insurance industry to invest in long-term good-quality accommodation for rent. Historically, that would have done better than equities. Will Ministers get those institutions in the room with the Treasury and unlock those barriers to growth?
The manifesto promises to
“prioritise the building of new social rented homes”.
I welcome that but, given how the business model works, if you prioritise the building of new social rented homes over homes at affordable rents, you get fewer houses because the social rented homes require a bigger grant. That will make the Government’s target of 1.5 million homes harder to achieve. This is an even more ambitious target than the previous Government’s one of 300,000 homes a year, which we never got anywhere close to reaching. Given that the UK housebuilding workforce has shrunk post Brexit and that new investment in skills and capacity is needed, how confident are Ministers that they have not overreached themselves with that target? If the Prime Minister is really in favour of the builders and not the blockers, perhaps he should revisit the nutrient neutrality rules, which are blocking 100,000 homes.
Finally, there is unfinished business on building safety and leasehold reform. On leasehold, who can forget the impassioned contributions of the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in the last Parliament on abolishing this feudal system? His most recent one was less than two months ago, on 24 May:
“I certainly hope that, whoever is in power, the necessary action is taken and the leaseholder problems are dealt with”.—[Official Report, 24/5/24; col. 1317.]
His hopes were met with a draft Bill, which I welcome. However, a particular problem faces leaseholders in blocks with safety issues post Grenfell. This cannot wait, and it is an issue on which I and others campaigned in the last Parliament. Of the 4,329 buildings identified with unsafe cladding, over half had not started remediation at the end of March this year, seven years after Grenfell. Only 23%—976 buildings—have completed remediation work. The manifesto says:
“Labour will also take decisive action to improve building safety”.
Can the Minister outline what decisive action Labour will take to help the many thousands of leaseholders who are in difficulties, living in unsafe buildings and facing bankruptcy and repossession, as well as those living in blocks under 11 metres, who get no help from the Building Safety Act? The noble Baroness, Lady Taylor, understands the problem, and I hope she can make progress.
There is much to be done, and I wish the Government well. I shall provide the same critical support to this Government as I did to the last one.
The noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, talked about regressive taxation. For me, it is a priority to end this. During the election, Labour talked a lot about not raising taxes, but it meant only income tax, national insurance and VAT. What about the social care precept and council tax? They are regressive taxes, and I hope the Government will agree to stop adding to the social care precept. As a regressive tax, it impacts most on people who are already poor.
I welcome greater investment in the UK by our pension funds—I hope that will happen—as well as plans generally to enhance private investment in our infrastructure. I welcome the plans to build more homes, but please can these be genuinely affordable for people on average incomes? I wish the Government would cease the use of the term “affordable” when they are nothing of the sort for many aspiring to secure their own homes. Rent levels should not exceed a third of household income. In London, for example, it is often over 50%. I particularly welcome plans to introduce the leasehold and common- hold reform Bill and the renters reform Bill, both of which are urgently needed.
On the planning and infrastructure Bill, I say that the need for more housing is clearly extremely important. I am pleased to see the aim of increasing community gain from planning permissions. It is also good to see the commitment to building more homes, particularly homes for social rent, without which the crisis of homelessness cannot be addressed. The number of homes for social rent fell by 260,000 over the last 10 years, through demolitions, the right to buy and the re-designation of homes from social rent to affordable rent. Over the years, right to buy has been abused by private landlords who buy up social rented homes and place them in the private rented sector. I hope this problem will be addressed as part of this Bill, not least the level of the right-to-buy discount.
The major cause of the high cost of housing has been a lack of supply. Demand was encouraged through schemes such as Help to Buy but, in the end, while helping some new owners, this increased prices and boosted demand but left supply at too low a level. The Government now commit to building 1.5 million new homes over five years, at an average of 300,000 a year. But what about the 1.2 million existing planning permissions awaiting buildout? It is reported that, since 2015, 2.7 million homes have been granted planning permission but only 1.5 million have actually been built. I hope Ministers might clarify the numbers, either now or in writing. Are the Government talking about 1.5 million additional to the existing 1 to 1.2 million homes that have planning permission but have not been built? If it is both added together, that means that the Government plan to deliver some 2.7 million houses for people to live in. This would be most welcome, but I have not understood the numbers. Will the Government confirm that they will not count office conversions to small, single-person units as part of that? Will they penalise slow buildout once permission is secured?
Our failure to build enough homes is not just down to the planning system. Ministers need to consider incentives to increase the number of small local builders. They need to look at greater use state-owned land, which represents 6% of all freehold land in the UK. They are committed, I think—I would like to hear them repeat it—to building homes that are sustainable to low-carbon standards and to improving nature conservancy as they do that. That can be done. There are many examples of it being done, but I hope the Government are committed to doing it.
Mention has been made of 300 more planning officers. It is actually a very low number. I hope that the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Young of Cookham, of increasing planning fees to help pay for it will be taken on board.
The Government need too to look carefully at how they deliver improvements in infrastructure such as transport, health facilities and schools earlier than currently, when they often follow the building as opposed to being built alongside it.
I think there will be a big row about the setting of targets—the “how, not if”, as the Government have said. Whose responsibility will it be to agree those targets? Is it Whitehall? Is it the mayoral combined authorities? Is it the local planning authority? I am in favour of targets—they help to deliver the outcomes we want and to give a common understanding of need and ambition—but I hope the Government can clarify who is in charge of the “how” rather than the “if”.