UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL] — House of Lords, 2022-06-14
Topic: Energy
John Gummer (Conservative, Centre-right): I do not think we should add too many details, so that the thing becomes a Christmas tree. Although I think I agreed with every suggestion that my noble friend Lord Holmes put forward as a principle, I am not sure that all of them are of equal value in this. However, I think the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett—she will be pleased, on this occasion, to find we are entirely aligned—are absolutely right. The Climate Change Committee has sought for a very long time to get the Government to take energy efficiency and demand reduction seriously, and there seems to be some utterly inexplicable reason that they can never do this I am beginning to think that this is a kind of male thing: they want to build big things—"Nuclear power stations; let’s do that"—instead of doing much simpler things. I am in favour of nuclear power, but the much simpler things are reducing the need to generate, reducing the need to use and understanding that this is as crucial a part of what we are doing as anything else. I hope that, because we have so eminent a female Minister here, she will push against this rather aggressive view of dealing with climate change, which is always to do big things. I think it is because the Government think they get votes for that, whereas with energy efficiency it is very difficult to get people to feel you have done something useful, but we are going to have to do it Take the electric motor car. If we are not careful, we will all be driving too much, as I do. What fun and how much better the electric motor car is than anything else, but I have to say that I ought to be careful about how often I use it, because there are resources involved which one ought to think about. If we do not have that attitude throughout, frankly, we will get the infrastructure arrangements wrong. Taking a wider view of infrastructure without thinking about the resources we are using and a reduction, within the infrastructure rules, in the use of those resources, seems to me to misunderstand what we should be doing Although I would not want to add all sorts of examples of things we ought to be doing, I want to make it very clear that the last speaker, as so often, got it absolutely right: if we have a list, something as important as this should not be left out, or the answer will be, as it always is, "Well, our priorities are laid down in the Act". The Government have done that and, really, this is only an auxiliary, an addition. I want it to be central because it actually is central. It is not a question of my inventing it—it is utterly central I also want it to be here because this is what the Government’s advisers have said to them again and again. It really is difficult. We saw this yesterday with the so-called food strategy—it is not a strategy at all, of course. I had to ask why the Government have not even addressed the advice of the Climate Change Committee, or half the recommendations of the Dimbleby report. I think the Government have to think much more seriously about the fact that if they have advice and do not intend to do what that advice suggests, that is perfectly all right—they are the Government—but they must explain to their advisers why they do not think that energy efficiency is central to this, when that is the advice that has been consistently given.