Viscount Trenchard (Con)

My Lords, it is disappointing that no financial framework details were included in the Bill, as they should have been. Amendment 125, which will be spoken to by my noble friend Lord Offord, would ensure that the Bill cannot come into force until the Secretary of State has laid before Parliament, together with a Motion for resolution in each House, a revised financial framework document. This would improve transparency and accountability, which are in short supply in this Bill, as has been noted by many noble Lords. I have also added my name to Amendments 126 and 127 in this group, which would essentially require the Government to explain the impact of their proposals on the number of jobs in Aberdeen and would require a report on the cost and viability of their net-zero targets. I fear that the negative approach to the oil and gas industry based in Aberdeen will lead to more job losses than will be created by the location of GBE in that city. I am also not at all sure that the type of people being made redundant by oil and gas enterprises being forced to destroy economically beneficial businesses are the same type of people GBE will wish to recruit. It is clear that the Government’s decision to locate in Aberdeen was intended to mitigate the damage to that city’s economy, but I am not at all sure that that will be the case. I support my noble friend Lord Hamilton in calling the Government to account on these matters through tabling these two amendments. As I said at Second Reading, we cannot rely on renewables to continue to decarbonise the grid, or even begin to replace our much larger industrial energy consumption, which is still dependent largely on oil and gas. My noble friend Lord Frost explained on 14 November, and again today, how serious a problem the intermittency of renewables is. It is essential that the Government think again before confirming the premature ending of oil and gas, at least until more serious attention has been paid to the possibilities that nuclear may offer. In this regard, we should be a little bit more like France.