Carbon Budget 6

Lord Lilley Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords—

[Captain of the Honourable Corps of Gentlemen-at-Arms and Chief Whip (Lord Kennedy of Southwark) (Lab Co-op)]

We will hear from the Cross Benches and then from the Conservative Benches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, given that the pursuit of carbon budgets has so far given us the highest electricity prices in the OECD, can the Minister confirm that the pursuit of decarbonisation has so far primarily resulted in the deindustrialisation of Britian, and that our carbon budgets do not take account of the fact that we have simply exported carbon emissions to the rest of the world?

[Lord Whitehead (Lab)]

It is certainly not true that the pursuit of a low-carbon economy has led to deindustrialisation. The noble Lord need only look at the £60 billion of investment that is coming into the green economy and all that goes with it. Indeed, the low-carbon economy is growing three times as fast as the general economy. Many of the things that are coming in concerning low-carbon energy are very much concerned with industrial plants, grids, new forms of electricity generation and so on, which will not only produce large numbers of jobs but a very sound industrial base for the country.