Contribution
My Lords, I do listen carefully to what noble Lords have said. Our final debate in Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, suggests, takes us back to some of the early debates and concerns that noble Lords have. I am particularly grateful to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for his support. The point he made is that the cost of doing nothing will, in the end, be much more expensive than the cost of net zero. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, that sticking to oil and gas is certainly not a free lunch, either. The noble Earl also pointed to the declining reserves in the UK continental shelf. This is a fact of life and why there were losses of jobs in Aberdeen under the previous Government. I will come back to the issue of Aberdeen in a moment.
Clearly, the effect of the amendments will be to defer the commencement of most provisions in the Bill until several requirements have been met. They include the laying before and approval by Parliament of a framework document and statement of strategic priorities, the publication of an outline statement of strategic priorities, the publication of an assessment on the expected impact of the Act on the number of jobs in Aberdeen and the publication of a report on the cost and viability of the Government’s net-zero targets. We have already discussed many of these matters in Committee and the Committee will be aware of the Government’s views and intents on this.
Our aim is to get this Bill on the statute book as soon as we can. It is also our clear intention that the statement of strategic priorities cannot be produced without the full involvement of Great British Energy in order to get its expertise, including that of the newly appointed non-executive directors, to inform the statement. This is why we do not believe that we can publish the statement of strategic priorities either during the passage of the Bill or before Royal Assent. Once parliamentary approval is given, we will ensure that we move as quickly as we possibly can to produce the statement.
On accountability, in the end, Ministers will agree with the statement that we are accountable to Parliament. I do not think your Lordships’ House is backward in holding Ministers to account for what they do. We have the Select Committee process, there are numerous opportunities for scrutiny of what we decide in relation to the statement and, of course, the statement is also subject to revision from time to time.
On the framework document, I suppose I can only repeat what I said before. We are committed to producing a framework document. It will, as framework documents do, cover the governance structure, the requirements for reporting and information sharing, and the financial responsibilities and controls. I have given this assurance from the Dispatch Box, so that is a government statement of what is going to happen. The framework document will be extensive and will follow the normal course of action. I hope that assures noble Lords that everything is being done in a proper way and with proper accountability, ensuring that Great British Energy is subject to the appropriate controls—as is only right for a body that is ultimately responsible to the Secretary of State for its activities.
We think that it is a very good thing that GBE will be based in Aberdeen; a significant proportion of GBE’s staff will certainly be based there. We think that Aberdeen will benefit from new jobs in the economy created because of GBE’s investment in renewable energy projects. I understand and very much accept the need to ensure, as we have talked about, a just transition for the people involved in the oil and gas sector. We want to do everything we can to enable offshore workers to lead the world in the industries of the future, which is why we are working very hard with businesses, employees and workers to manage our existing fields for the entirety of their lifetime and are putting in place programmes to support a transition. It is interesting that research from Robert Gordon University shows that 90% of oil and gas workers have medium to high transferable skills for offshore renewable jobs; knowing the skills that people who work in the North Sea bring to the jobs they do, that does not surprise me.
This is all I will say to the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, in relation to President Trump’s decisions: it is interesting that, in his first term, the US actually saw quite a drive into renewable energy. It may be that we will still see the same direction under the new Administration in the end; that is for the US Government to decide. We as a Government are sticking to the Paris Agreement and to the need to get to net zero and clean power as soon as we possibly can.