UK-EU Customs Union

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Gill, and the noble Lords, Lord Docherty of Milngavie, Lord Pitt-Watson and Lord Doyle, on their maiden speeches today. Their thoughtful, witty and heartfelt contributions demonstrate that they will be a huge asset to your Lordships’ House, and we look forward to hearing more from them in the years to come. We will miss the noble Lord, Lord Offord of Garvel, and we are sorry to see him leave in this way.

Many of the arguments in today’s debate will be very familiar to the House. I do not intend to relitigate the referendum or to reopen the entire Brexit debate. However, I will address directly the core proposition of the Motion before us today: the case for a United Kingdom and European Union customs union and the related question of closer connection to the EU single market.

It is important at the outset to be clear about terms, because this debate often proceeds as though the single market and the customs union were flexible or à la carte arrangements. They are not. Participation in the EU single market entails acceptance of the four freedoms, including the free movement of people, which is set out explicitly in the EU treaties and has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the European Court of Justice. There is no precedent for participation in a single market without freedom of movement, and the European Commission has consistently ruled out such an arrangement. As my noble friend Lord Tugendhat correctly pointed out, we have to be realistic.

Equally, a customs union with the European Union requires the participating state to align its external tariffs with those of the EU and, crucially, to accept trade policy as set by the EU. This means allowing Brussels to negotiate and conclude trade agreements on our behalf. This is not compatible with an independent trade policy or consistent with the Labour Party’s manifesto commitments, which ruled out rejoining the customs union or the single market. The proposition before us today therefore sits uneasily not only with the outcome of the referendum but with the stated positions of parties across this House—and, ultimately, is against what the British people have voted for repeatedly over the past decade. My noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough rightly cautions against such an approach.

The EU customs union is open only to EU member states. Norway and Iceland, frequently cited in these debates, are not in a customs union with the EU. They participate in aspects of the single market through the European Economic Area but retain their own external trade policy and sit outside the customs union. The only large non-member state in a customs union with the European Union is Turkey, which entered into a customs union with the EU in 1995. It did so in the expectation that this would be a stepping stone to full EU membership; that expectation has not been fulfilled.

Under the terms of the customs union, Turkey is required to align its external tariffs with those of the EU and to grant market access to countries with which the EU concludes free trade agreements. However, those third countries are under no reciprocal obligation to grant equivalent access to Turkish exports; it is an asymmetrical trading relationship, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and my noble friend Lord Lilley have made clear. The EU has concluded trade agreements with countries such as South Korea, Mexico and South Africa; Turkey has been obliged to open its markets to those countries, while in some cases Turkish exporters have faced barriers in return. Under that arrangement, Turkey has, for instance, been forced into a non-reciprocal trading relationship with South Korea, which does not provide the country with open access to its own market. Turkey still experiences queues at the border. A customs union does not remove regulatory checks, rules of origin procedures or non-tariff barriers. In short, it does not deliver frictionless trade. Most importantly, Turkey has no seat at the table when EU trade policy is decided; it is bound by decisions that are taken elsewhere.

As a member of the EU, the UK had a vote in the Council, representation in the Commission and elected members of the European Parliament. Under a customs union without membership, we would have none of these things. We would be obliged to follow a common external tariff and trade policy over which we exercised no formal control. It is therefore difficult to see how such an arrangement could be described as a stable or acceptable long-term settlement. It would mean ending our independent trade policy while accepting a democratic deficit greater than one that existed before we left the European Union. It would mean leaving our existing trade agreements with India and the Pacific trade pact. As the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and my noble friends Lord Lilley and Lord Moynihan of Chelsea have pointed out, this would not be beneficial.

Businesses across the country have spent several years adapting to the post-exit trading framework. They have invested heavily in new systems, technology and infrastructure to comply with the regime put in place by Parliament. Dynamic alignment, as currently envisaged by the Government, risks constraining the areas where the United Kingdom has already chosen to divert from EU rules to address domestic priorities. A clear example is bovine tuberculosis, which costs farmers around £150 million a year. The UK is trialling vaccination as a practical solution, yet EU law prohibits the use of bovine TB vaccines in cattle. Alignment risks preventing the UK from pursuing an effective domestic response. The noble Lord, Lord Dodds, has highlighted the problems of dynamic alignment in Northern Ireland.

As my noble friend Lord Elliott has rightly observed, membership of a customs union would also prevent the United Kingdom from pursuing an independent approach to technology and AI policy. In short, dynamic alignment risks closing off innovation, weakening resilience and undermining British agriculture. The Prime Minister has said that he is not prepared to rip up the benefits of Brexit. Does the Minister agree that the risks that I have outlined threaten exactly that?

Businesses do not want perpetual renegotiation of our relationship with the EU but clarity, consistency and confidence. Threatening to upend the regulatory and trading environment yet again, simply to pursue closer alignment for its own sake, undermines all three. Will the Government commit to publishing, as the noble Lord, Lord Verdirame, has suggested, a policy paper on the objectives of their negotiations?

There are only two coherent options: full membership of the European Union or an independent United Kingdom outside its customs union. A stand-alone customs union is not a stable resting place; it would bind us to obligations without influence and leave us with less control than we had before we left. The British people were asked what they wanted, and they chose an independent United Kingdom. This is a position that we on these Benches recognise and respect.

In their pursuit of a closer relationship with the European Union, the Government are potentially in danger of undermining the very freedoms this country regained by leaving the bloc. We must be clear that surrendering our ability to innovate, to respond flexibly to domestic challenges and to support our own economy would amount to abandoning the principles that underpinned the decision to leave in the first place. Seeking to improve the UK’s trade and investment relationship with the EU and to remove genuinely unnecessary barriers to trade is a legitimate and worthwhile objective, but it can succeed only if the Prime Minister is firm and unambiguous about his red lines. Without that firmness, pragmatism slides into concessions that the British people have consistently voted against. It is vital that the Government negotiate in a way that consistently safeguards the interests of the British people, and I hope the Minister can assuage these concerns in her response.

The UK’s Demographic Future

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 11th December 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I begin by putting on record my gratitude for the contributions in this House by my noble friend Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts over 25 years, ahead of his retirement. I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House for only 10 of those years, but it has been an honour and a pleasure to serve alongside him during this time. He has been an active and effective Member of your Lordships’ House and will be greatly missed. The heartfelt tributes from noble Lords across the House today are testimony to this undeniable truth.

I am delighted to take part in this debate to take note of the report Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow. The issues it raises speak to one of the most consequential policy challenges of our age—the demographic future of the United Kingdom. Its authors demand that we confront an unavoidable truth: demographics shape everything. They shape our economy, public services, environment, culture, infrastructure and welfare system. Demographic change is one of the least discussed, understood and planned-for forces in British public life. As the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, pointed out, we should not be afraid to discuss it. My noble friend Lady Verma made an eloquent case in her extraordinarily powerful speech that issues of demography and integration have been swerved for far too long.

My noble friend’s report is wide ranging and detailed. It is evidently the result of extensive research and proposes a number of recommendations which we should consider carefully. I congratulate him on it. One of its most impressive features is that it shines a light on so many of the areas impacted by rapid population growth—biodiversity, national security, water and food security, public services and our ageing population.

Increasing migration is undoubtedly a major challenge, as the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, among many others, has consistently warned. This report makes the point that, without firm population controls and forward planning, the pressures on public services, infrastructure and the environment will become unmanageable. We need to consider how to develop a mechanism to ensure that migration numbers are sustainable, predictable and aligned with the nation’s capacity to absorb them, delivering in effect the long-term planning framework that the report calls for.

The report emphasises that current demographic trends, in particular high net migration, are placing substantial burdens on housing, healthcare, education and welfare infrastructure, and warns that, if present patterns continue, the United Kingdom could become one of the most populous countries in Europe within a few decades. Yet, crucially, population growth does not guarantee an increase in living standards. Indeed, as the report notes, rising aggregate GDP often masks falling GDP per capita, stagnant productivity and declining real wages. Relying on ever-increasing population levels to boost headline GDP is a false economy. This point was well made by my noble friend Lord Horam. What matters is what working families feel and living standards per person, not size of the population as a whole.

Economic success must be built on higher productivity, better skills and strong domestic labour participation, not continually importing labour to compensate for structural weaknesses. Relying on low-skilled migration is not the answer, as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, emphasised. We must prioritise our own skills programmes and address urgently and directly the challenge of upskilling our own workforce.

The report warns repeatedly that using immigration to prop up GDP growth or to compensate for an ageing population will lead to long-term fiscal strain. My noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe spoke persuasively on this point. Even if population growth does not reach that extreme, the medium-term projections still point to the UK adding around 10 million people in the next 20 years, driven overwhelmingly by immigration. For this reason, we need some kind of mechanism to manage migration, combined with reforms to the visa system to ensure that only genuinely high-skilled applicants earning at or above the required thresholds can come to the UK. This is about controlling a rate of change so that population levels remain manageable, aligned with public sentiment and consistent with the nation’s capacity to provide.

The report underscores the need to align population growth with housing and infrastructure. The Government have pledged 1.5 million new homes in the next Parliament. Although that is an important commitment, the report rightly notes that, without careful planning, new supply will struggle to keep pace with population increase. Again, this point was picked up by my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe. House prices have already been driven up significantly, in part because demand has far outstripped supply. If the population grows by over 6 million by 2035, as some projections suggest, then 1.5 million homes alone will not stabilise prices or alleviate overcrowding, unless accompanied by strategic planning and major infrastructure investment.

The report rightly highlights public services, with strain already evident across the NHS, as the noble Baroness, Lady Stuart, pointed out. Waiting lists remain above pre-pandemic levels, and the report’s projections make it clear that, without careful planning, an additional 10 million would further exacerbate pressures. As the report notes, migration-driven growth increases demand for healthcare, while the fiscal contributions of migrants vary considerably depending on skill level and integration.

We need to shift our immigration system firmly toward high-skilled, high-contributing migrants, while simultaneously investing in domestic training. This is particularly the case when it comes to medicine, social care and essential public service roles. At present, over 20,000 British-trained doctors each year do not secure specialist training places, yet we continue to rely heavily on internationally trained staff to fill NHS vacancies. This is not sustainable. We need to expand domestic clinical training capacity and apprenticeships to ensure that young people in the UK can enter professions where they are desperately needed.

On welfare, the report emphasises the importance of fiscal sustainability, noting that population growth alone will not resolve pressures on the welfare state and pensions. Indeed, depending on the composition and productivity of the population, it can worsen them. That is why we must prioritise making work pay, tightening welfare eligibility and strengthening incentives for labour market participation.

This report paints a picture of a country at a demographic crossroads, as the noble Lord, Lord Frost, demonstrated. There is no doubt that, if we continue with unmanaged population growth, relying on immigration as a short-term economic remedy, we will face mounting pressures on service housing, infrastructure and social cohesion—although my noble friend Lord Sarfraz did make an excellent case for robots to swerve these problems. We need to consider more carefully how we manage migration, with a focus on selective high-skill immigration, domestic skills investment, welfare reform and a coherent long-term housing and infrastructure strategy.

Can the Minister explain how the Government intend to develop a long-term demographic strategy that addresses these points? Will the Government ensure that population projections inform policy across departments, from housing and transport to healthcare and welfare? Will they finally accept that migration cannot remain the default solution to labour shortages and economic challenges? There can be no doubt that, as we consider the current challenges our country faces and the country our children stand to inherit, we cannot shy away from these issues. We must consider the issues that this report raises and have an answer to the central question of how we intend to reduce our reliance on immigration and focus much more on increasing our productivity and domestic skills and on building a sustainable economy.

These are just some of the key challenges and questions which the Government face. It is not possible to reflect the full range of challenges that are highlighted in the report in my remarks today, but I am pleased that noble Lords have been able to bring so many of these themes and core challenges to the fore in their contributions, such as the environmental factors that were referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, the fertility issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Frost, and especially the strains on social cohesion, which a number of noble Lords, such as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester and my noble friend Lord Blencathra highlighted. Other issues and problems were eloquently demonstrated by my noble friend Lady Buscombe.

As my noble friend Lord Hodgson highlights in the foreword of his report, the British have been repeatedly promised a policy by political parties of all stripes that would focus on admitting a limited number of highly skilled or creative individuals: a policy with which few would disagree. Instead, they have seen virtually uncontrolled numbers of primarily lower-skilled individuals. The debate today has been a good opportunity to consider why we have seen those levels of immigration, with their consequential impact, in the past, and, most importantly, to ask ourselves what steps must be taken to put us on the right track for the future.

Looking to the recommendations, my noble friend proposes a twin-track approach, with a new responsibility placed on government alongside a new body to monitor the Government’s objectives and provide research on that policy. I entirely accept the premise that demographic policy currently lacks coherence. With responsibility fragmented across the Home Office, the Department for Education, the DWP and the Cabinet Office, each one pursuing its own objectives with little regard for the whole, we have a system that is nobody’s responsibility.

On data, the report recommends that the Government should be required to monitor and disclose the likely level of population change in the near and long term. This touches on a point of real concern to noble Lords on these Benches. It was a little over two weeks ago that my noble friend Lord Jackson of Peterborough forced Ministers to review and publish the data that is held on the number of students who have had their visas revoked due to criminality during the progress of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill. The Government initially resisted publication of that data. On issues as important as demography, the Government should be seeking to build greater trust with the British people. Refusing to publish data has the opposite effect. Can the Minister please reassure your Lordships’ House that the Government will take a more positive attitude towards requests for additional data in the future?

While we are on the issue of data, I briefly mention that my honourable friend Nick Timothy MP asked Ministers in the other place last month whether the Government planned to release data on the economic contributions by different profiles of migrants, in line with the Danish model. The Minister refused. As the report highlights, better data and greater transparency are essential. I hope that the Minister can give us an assurance that Ministers are seriously reviewing the current publications, with a view to improving transparency.

The report includes a recommendation for a new authority, to be called the Office for Demographic Change, ODC, or Office for Population Sustainability, OPS. My noble friend is right that Ministers should consider our existing structures for monitoring immigration and population over time—not to mention emigration, which is of such concern when those choosing to leave the country are our wealth creators and high-skilled young people starting out in their careers. We need the right mechanisms for monitoring and reporting, so that Parliament and, in turn, the British people have the information they need to make informed choices about the future of demographic policy. My noble friend Lord Horam brilliantly explained the importance of long-term monitoring. I am personally always sceptical of the creation of new NDPBs as, over time, public bodies often come to establish their own institutional views. I would be interested to hear from my noble friend how he would plan to mitigate that risk, but there is certainly a strong case for some such body.

My noble friend Lord Hodgson is absolutely right with his core thesis. Ministers must be held to account and we should continue to explore new and tougher processes by which we can hold the Government to account on the future demography of our country. Finally, it only remains to congratulate my noble friend on securing this debate on the day that he has chosen to make his valedictory speech. The debate, which has touched on so many of the core challenges we face as a nation, is a testament to his commitment to building a brighter future for our country as a devoted public servant. I know I speak for the whole House in wishing him all the very best in his next chapter outside your Lordships’ House.

Covid-19 Inquiry

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing to the House this Statement on the government response to the Covid-19 inquiry module 1 report. I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, for her leadership and the work of her team. I pay tribute to those who lost their lives and to the families who continue to grieve. Their loss is not just a memory but a standing rebuke to complacency—a warning against the easy comfort of forgetting. If this inquiry is to mean anything, it must ensure that the failures of the past are never repeated.

The Government’s response recognises those failures, but recognition is not the same as resolution. The inquiry lays bare what went wrong. Lives were lost not because those in government or on the front line lacked effort or intention but because the system they relied on was too slow, too complex and too poorly maintained. The structures for emergency response were fatally flawed, with too many competing voices and unclear lines of authority. When the crisis hit, leaders lacked the information they needed to make informed decisions quickly. Vital data was unavailable, inconsistent or siloed. Worst of all, preparedness had been allowed to slip down the priority list. Without a recent crisis to focus the mind, plans had gathered dust. When they were finally needed, they were out of date or prepared for another type of pandemic.

We broadly welcome the steps that the Government have taken, especially to ensure that the Cabinet Office has a clearer and stronger role in crisis and resilience co-ordination. I appreciate that the Government have clearly signalled their intention to build on the work started by the last Government. The Resilience Directorate should provide clearer leadership. The resilience academy will help build expertise. A full-scale pandemic exercise is a necessary step in testing our ability to respond. These are real improvements, and we support them.

However, there is still much more to do. Preparedness must not be something that the Government remember only when disaster strikes. A culture of resilience should be embedded across the system, with clear accountability for ensuring that it does not fade from view. The Government’s response does not go far enough in simplifying the system. Complexity was a core failing in our pandemic response, yet we are in danger of replacing one tangle of bureaucracy with another. Data sharing remains a critical weakness, and without an efficient way to collect, share and use real-time information, we will make the same mistakes again.

That is why recommendation 10 is the wrong answer. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hallett, calls for simplification, yet her recommendation to establish yet another arm’s-length body would add another layer of complexity. A new statutory body, given responsibility for strategic advice, assessment, local consultation and national capability planning, is simply too broad in scope. A body that is simultaneously an adviser, a regulator, a strategy setter and a watchdog will be a body that lacks focus. Instead of bringing clarity, it will muddy decision-making. Instead of streamlining the system, it will entangle it further. Instead of ensuring resilience, it will create yet another institution competing for influence within an already crowded space.

If independent oversight is needed, let it be exactly that—an assessment function that checks government preparedness against a clear framework set by Ministers, not a permanent fixture with an ever-growing remit. Otherwise, we risk creating a body that spends its time lobbying Ministers for its own recommendations, regardless of whether they are useful or practical. When disaster strikes, there must be no doubt about who is responsible, who is making the decisions and who is accountable to the public.

There are, of course, deeper questions that must be answered. How will we measure progress? Unless we have clear benchmarks, improvement is just an illusion. Without real accountability and framework clarity, the reviews, consultations and task forces risk being temporary solutions. Working out what to do is the easy part. The hard part is ensuring rigorous implementation backed up by data. Is there data to support the whole-system emergency strategy? In recommendation 7, the report asked for three-month publications to report back the findings of the nationwide investigations. Can the Minister speak to that?

Why is this inquiry taking so long? Lessons that could save lives should already be implemented. The Government speak of a duty of candour, but honesty is already required in the Civil Service Code. Yet as numerous inquiries such as Horizon, infected blood and Grenfell have demonstrated, it has not delivered transparency in the past, so how will this now be ensured? Above all, how do we ensure that this inquiry does not become just another exercise in bureaucratic introspection? We have seen too many reports whose conclusions are welcomed, debated, nodded at solemnly and quietly ignored. This cannot be one of them. The Government have not yet responded to last year’s House of Lords Statutory Inquiries Committee report on reforming the process by which public inquiries are conducted, and the committee has said it is unacceptable that so many recommendations have not been implemented. I call on the Government to consider last year’s report. Can the Minister provide an update on the timely implementation of the recommendations? So far, only one recommendation has been implemented.

Resilience is not built through process. It is not achieved by handing responsibly to another statutory body. It is built through strong leadership, clear accountability and a system that is ready to act when the moment demands. The Government’s response is a step in the right direction, but we must go further and move faster because the next crisis will not wait. When it comes, the true test will not be whether we have created another agency, or published another report, but whether we are finally and fully prepared to respond.

Civil Servants: Compulsory Office Attendance

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 9th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Farmer for securing this important debate on whether civil servants should be obliged to work from their offices or their own homes. It has been prompted by not only the recent strike action in the UK’s Land Registry but the broader shift in working practices in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. It is an issue that speaks to the heart of productivity and the future of public service delivery.

Amid the upheavals of the pandemic, our GDP remained surprisingly robust, in part thanks to the last Government’s furlough scheme. The resilience of the economy showed that remote work, for some parts of the workforce, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, observed, not only was feasible but could be effective. However, my noble friend Lord Frost is absolutely correct that, while the private sector continues to improve its output, public sector productivity continues to lag well behind. This disparity has contributed to the growing backlog in public services that in turn hinders wider economic growth. We face significant budget deficits, a high level of national indebtedness and backlogs in courts and hospitals and elsewhere. We simply cannot afford to ignore the need for drastically increased productivity within the public sector, particularly in our Civil Service.

Can the Minister provide statistics on the number of civil servants who, first, have contracts that expressly allow them to work from home, and what proportion of them exclusively so; secondly, have informal arrangements with their management that permit them to work from home but with no revised contracts; and, thirdly, have no formal arrangements but none the less continue to work remotely? Do the Government have plans to allow civil servants to make other revisions to their terms and conditions by stealth, or is the intention simply to let remote work arrangements proliferate unchecked? If so, what safeguards are in place to ensure that these changes do not undermine the effective delivery of public services? Who within the Government holds the authority to stop civil servants working from home? Does the Prime Minister or the Cabinet Secretary, or is such discretion left to individual departments with no overarching leadership on this issue?

There are also practical implications, such as how much unused government office space exists within Whitehall and beyond. Can the Minister provide us with statistics on these costs? As my noble friend Lord Farmer said, taxpayers deserve to know whether their money is being spent effectively, and users of public services—the public—deserve better services.

Senior civil servants should generally be required to return to the office full-time by default. Not only does this demonstrate that office working is important but it sends a strong message to junior colleagues. As my noble friends Lord Farmer and Lord Maude of Horsham observed, there is immense value in learning through observation, mentoring and collaboration with peers. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, argued, remote work has the advantage of flexibility, but it is no substitute for working alongside colleagues in an office environment.

A failure to grapple with an issue so fundamental raises serious concerns about the Government’s ability to tackle the more challenging issues of Civil Service reform. In lieu of ambitions to streamline the state to 2016 levels, we instead have the Cabinet Office’s voluntary redundancy scheme, which falls short of what is required. Recent inflation-busting pay rises for civil servants have not been linked to any measurable improvements in productivity.

The most successful organisations in the private sector have made office working most of the time compulsory. Working from home cannot be treated as a right. As my noble friend Lord Maude so rightly observed, business need must always be paramount. The Government must act decisively and embrace the necessary reforms to ensure that public services deliver what the public expect and need.

Renewable Energy: Costs

Baroness Finn Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as set out in the register, specifically my chairmanship of Project Tempo, a non-profit organisation which researches public attitudes towards the energy and climate transition. I thank my noble friend Lord Frost for this important and timely debate.

My right honourable friend the leader of His Majesty’s Opposition is right that we need to tell the truth. Over the last few years, successive Governments have set more and more ambitious emissions reduction targets, without a plan for how to meet them. We urgently need an honest debate about the different pathways to decarbonising our economy. The road is paved with trade-offs, and we must choose which ones to make.

I want to make two observations. The first is that British voters overwhelmingly support the ambition of getting to net zero. Project Tempo’s research shows that the public care about protecting the environment and want us, as a country, to do the right thing. However, it also shows that public support for green policies declines dramatically when individuals are asked to pay for them through higher energy bills, prices or taxes.

The second observation is that British energy prices are going in the wrong direction, and have been since well before the war in Ukraine. Data from the energy department shows that between 2010 and 2023, domestic electricity bills almost doubled in real terms, and data recently published in the Financial Times showed that the UK’s industrial electricity costs were among the highest in the world, more than four times those of the United States or China, and significantly higher than those of all other G7 economies. This is a profound challenge.

Our globally uncompetitive energy costs not only damage our productivity and economic growth, they risk undermining public support for the transition. If people come to associate green policies with higher bills, it will become much harder to maintain the public support that we need to reduce emissions and tackle climate change. That is why I was worried to read last week that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has said that Labour’s plans for clean power by 2030 will see green levies rise by an average of £120 per household by the end of the decade. The recent report from the National Energy System Operator also suggested that energy system costs could rise as a result of Labour’s plans.

We ought to pursue the mix of technologies that will reduce energy bills, protect national security and drive growth in our economy. Unfortunately, the Government’s policy will do exactly the opposite. Their ideological rush towards accelerated targets will send prices higher and exclude the development of other forms of clean energy such as nuclear, which would help us hedge the costs involved in decarbonising the grid. Can I press upon the Minister the importance of new nuclear and ask him to set out briefly the position on the Wylfa plant in Ynys Môn?

We must tell the truth about the challenges we face, not pretend that inconvenient facts do not exist. The reality is that many of the Energy Secretary’s current plans entail borrowing enormous amounts of money and spending it on subsidising technologies which are not otherwise viable on the open market, or on importing more products from China. Before the election, the then Opposition promised that their plans would cut consumer energy bills by £300. That claim—which they continue to stand by—is bogus. My fear is that false promises such as that, and their general rush to accelerate the transition, risk undermining the very environmental action which so many of us wish to see. I look forward to hearing how the Minister will address these legitimate concerns.