Lord Harper (Con)

My Lords, I will speak briefly in support of my noble friend Lord Moylan’s Amendment 11. He set out the point of it in great detail so I will not repeat what he said but will just emphasise two of the points. The first is about transparency. It is very important that we are transparent about what we are doing here. Having sustainable aviation fuel and making aviation more sustainable is an important policy goal. It is one that we supported in government and the present Government support, and the principle of it was also supported by the Liberal Democrats. We should just be open about the cost involved in doing it. There are two reasons to be transparent. First, that is how you generate confidence among the public as they can see that aviation is becoming more sustainable. There is a cost involved but that cost is sensible and one they are prepared to pay. Secondly, transparency enables there to be competition or downward pressure on the costs, which is easily missing if the costs are obscured. Having the costs transparent is very helpful and will also mean that different suppliers are not able to hide these costs in their invoicing. The second point is that I am still unclear about how a mechanism based on market share would work. As well as the lack of clarity and the risk of that leading to overcharging, there is a risk of being backward-looking and looking at historic market share. I am also not clear whether the intention is that different suppliers would, in effect, have different costs being added to what they have to charge, which would seem to have an adverse competitive effect. We want people to bear the cost of the levy, but do not want different suppliers to be picking up a different proportion of that based on their historic market share and then having to charge a different price per litre to competitors. That seems to me to lock in a previous competitive structure and outcome. Part of what we are trying to do here is to encourage new producers and new people to come into the marketplace with new fuels and to enable that competitive process to take place. It is that competitive process that will make sure that we get SAF produced at the lowest possible cost, which is important for consumers. I would welcome some clarity from the Minister and would urge for that clear price per litre of fuel that can be placed on people’s invoices and for transparency. I also want to speak briefly to Amendment 26 in the name of my noble friend Lord Grayling. It would place a sunrise clause or a commencement period on Section 6 so that it does not come into force until the first SAF producer is six months away from producing that sustainable aviation fuel in the UK. I think what my noble friend is driving at in this amendment is to make sure that the costs of producing SAF do not start being paid until a domestic plant is almost ready to go and payments to that producer ready to go—that, in effect, we are not starting to charge people in advance and saving up the money on the basis that at some point many years down the road a producer is going to start producing. There is merit in this amendment. Six months may not be the right period but it would be helpful to understand whether the Minister is broadly supportive of the principle and for him to set out the Government’s view on that. That may be an issue that the Government can return to on Report, as the Minister has indicated he will on the earlier group of amendments, or he may have a different way of dealing with the issue raised by my noble friend.