Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)

My Lords, I was going to stand aside from this debate early in the process because of the mountain of expertise that is building up on all sides of this Committee against many aspects of the Bill. It is not our job to turn it down in this House, but it is our job to try to improve and rescue some of the bits that may be particularly dangerous and damaging, of which there are several that we will no doubt come to. I was going to stay silent, but my noble friend Lord Effingham’s splendid speech touched on so many of the fundamental problems that are so obvious in this exercise—setting up this kind of body with this kind of money. We have of course been here before. We went over this again and again in the 1960s, with the Industrial Reorganisation Corporation, when almost exactly the same arguments were used. Many of us on all sides—it was not partisan—questioned whether that bright idea of Harold Wilson and a Mr Cant, one of its designers, would work. I hope now that we leave our mark of doubt and scepticism about whether this whole approach works. The IRC failed because the belief prevalent among economists at the time was that if you built big and created such things as British Leyland, size would deliver. Unfortunately, size did not deliver and there was a mood and a realisation—this was long before the digital revolution—that size might have diseconomies, as was then proved with projects such as British Leyland, a disaster from which Japanese inward investment 10 or 20 years later saved us. That was the third reason why I was not going to say very much at this stage. I apologise for being a few minutes late for the Minister’s excellent speech on the last set of amendments, but there was a gap, something which he did not mention. My noble friend Lord Hamilton intervened about Sizewell. The Minister then produced the standard line on Sizewell, but he did not mention money. Yet money is the whole issue in organising our resources for the energy transition to come, which will be fearfully expensive, particularly if we have to leave unused a very large chunk of intermittent supporting energy—nuclear and other sorts—for the 3,000 hours every year when the wind does not blow. Until we get to the hydrogen stage, which we are a decade or so off, I suspect, that will leave a big gap to fill with otherwise idle machinery—which is very expensive indeed if it is not earning or producing. None of that has been touched on yet. The more that I listen to this, the more I see that we are heading into a nightmare of expenditure problems and dilemmas. The noble Lord, Lord Vaux, with his ruthless clarity, hinted that this is the way things are going. The only saving grace from here is to have a system of accountability, a strategy and a clear and honest recognition of the colossal dilemmas ahead and the timescale, particularly for nuclear. Perhaps we will not discuss nuclear very much, although there are related amendments, but the issues of not only cost but timescale have been totally ignored. There is chatter around, although even the Government estimate that Sizewell C will cost about £20 billion, as opposed to whatever Hinkley C is now running at. My bet would be that it is much nearer to £30 billion than £20 billion, but never mind about that. The question is: who has the money? The Government have not got it. Governments all across the world, and certainly our Government, are underwater on debt, understandably reluctant to tax more and not really able to borrow more. It will have to be done with the private sector, but the private sector will not touch something like Sizewell C, which is a dodgy EPR design that has not worked well anywhere in the world so far. The timescale for Sizewell C is probably the mid to late 2030s. The alternatives of the new technologies in nuclear—I am sorry to bring this into a non-nuclear discussion—are massive. Rolls-Royce is talking about being able to deliver clean green electricity by 2030 or 2031. No one, even a super-optimist, believes that Sizewell C can touch our electricity supply before 2037 or 2038; I bet it will turn out to be 2040 or later still. These things have not been touched on yet, so goodness knows how we will deal with them as we come to all the amendments lying ahead. The one saving grace is that we would have a chance for both Houses and those who are informed about these things to point out at every point some of the further dangers and damages into which this entire structure will slump. That is what one has to add at this stage. I am afraid that the Minister will not be pleased to hear that ahead lies a vast pile of questions and doubts about this project and the philosophy behind it—a philosophy of setting up large, semi-state-owned or state-owned organisations to push through things that apparently cannot be produced by the private sector alone. The philosophy simply does not work in the digital age. It did not work with the IRC before the digital age, it will not work in the digital age, and it will not work in the AI age. The nature of the economy is quite different from even 20 or 30 years ago. These are the problems which now have to be addressed, and they certainly will not be addressed by this. I am afraid that we are heading for a lot more amendments on the detail of everything I have said. In the meantime, both the amendments that have been debated are excellent and should be accepted by the Government as part of the vital need for Parliament to have a regular, continuous, accountable and effective say, maybe with a special Select Committee. We invented Select Committees in the 1960s and they worked very well for departments. The Select Committees here are excellent and produce superb reports. Maybe this is an area where we need to beef up our own penetrating techniques on Select Committees and reports, to ensure that there are no more blunders ahead. I would bet $100 or more, if I was a betting man, which I am not, that there are plenty of blunders coming along, written into the Bill as it stands.