UK Infrastructure Bank Bill [HL]

Lord Holmes of Richmond Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 14th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is pleasure to take part in this first group of amendments on the UK Infrastructure Bank. I support Amendment 1 tabled by my noble friend Lady Noakes. When my noble friend the Minister responds, will she fully explain why the bank would not wish to come under the auspices of the financial regulators—the FCA and the PRA—and why HM Treasury would not want it to do so?

My Amendments 38 and 42 have the same purpose: to underscore in the Bill the bank’s operational independence from HM Treasury. Amendment 38 would put on the face of the Bill that the bank will be able to lend to whatever level and by whatever means it chooses without having to have recourse to HM Treasury. Does the Minister agree that this is implicit in the Bill and that to have this statement in the Bill would make absolute sense?

On Amendment 42, I agree entirely with the point alluded to by my noble friend Lady Noakes. The reason I bring Amendment 42 forward again is to further assert in the Bill that the bank should have the ability to avail itself of the capital markets. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that, again, having this provision in the Bill would clearly underscore the operational independence of the bank, which is espoused in all the briefing notes on the Bill?

[Baroness Kramer (LD)]

My Lords, this group of amendments addresses two entirely different issues, as the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, identified. I rather fear that in the minds of the Treasury they are the same issue, which is slightly unfortunate but will probably explain a great deal of our debate today.

I will first address Amendment 42 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes of Richmond, which I very much support. This would allow the Bank to

“borrow on the international capital markets”,

putting that on the face of the Bill. We have a very small bank set-up here with only £4.2 billion in risk capital, which means that, for years, it will be able to do relatively little and will have to do it in such a way as to get substantial commercial returns to build up its equity base. That will allow it to grow and do rather larger things—but, since this is an important instrument for the whole goal of levelling up, you would think that impact and the need to act rapidly would be at the forefront of the Government’s thinking.

Obviously, being able to go to the international capital markets to access capital in the way that the European Investment Bank and KfW in Germany do—that is very well established—would be important. Also, given that there will be a green purpose to much that the bank does, it is important to note that one of the biggest movers in providing green financing has been the decision of the European Investment Bank as it goes to the capital markets to raise climate and sustainability awareness bonds to jet-propel finance into those markets. It is utterly beyond me to understand why those powers have not been given to the UK Infrastructure Bank; perhaps the Minister will explain.

Almost more importantly, perhaps, I want to address the issues raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, and the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I very much support his notion that we must find a way to incorporate the senior managers and certification regime. Frankly, it has been quite a weak straw in the hands of the FCA. I do not want to entertain folks here for too long by going through the instances in which the FCA should have used it but has declined to do so, or has used it very weakly; but at least it is something to make sure we have real responsibility sited where it should be in senior management.

I want to pick up a rather different issue, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes, only in passing: whistleblowing. I will talk about this in more depth in the group of amendments beginning with my Amendment 30 about the operational independence of this bank, but when we get later into the Bill we will find that a framework has been established allowing the shareholder—in other words, the Treasury and the Government—to give directions, both specific and general, to the bank. The framework elaborates on that but recognises that the board of directors of the bank may well look at these specific directions and wish to reject them. The grounds that may be given, not in a rejection but a “reservation notice” to the shareholders, include infringement of

“the requirements of propriety or regularity”

or various other things including on “value for money” or “strategic objectives” and so on; we can go into that later. In the two sections that I want to address, a reservation notice can be sent on grounds of infringement of “propriety or regularity”, or of being

“of questionable feasibility or … unethical”.

In that case, the shareholder—the Treasury, or the Government, in effect—can send a notice to the bank overriding its letter of reservation, forcing it to go ahead with the activity, even if it is considered by the bank to be unethical. The bank is supposed to provide a written direction, which, when you first read this, looks as though it will be published. However, very carefully written into the framework is the phrase

“published (unless the Shareholder has directed in writing to the Company that the matter must be kept confidential).”

I think we can guarantee that any direction that is unethical or infringes on propriety will come with an instruction to keep it confidential. At that point, for the public and Parliament to know, we rely on whistle- blowers.

That brings me to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Noakes. First, directors are not covered by the Public Interest Disclosure Act anyway. Senior employees would be, but to have any protection to be able to blow the whistle they would have to go to a regulator to make a protected disclosure. There is no regulator, therefore there is no mechanism for protected disclosure.

I want noble Lords to understand the jeopardy in which those directors or senior executives might find themselves. I suspect they will have been asked to sign some version of a non-disclosure agreement—it has many different names; I always tussle with the Government, because it turns out they have done it under a different name, such as a confidentiality agreement, but it is the same thing. There is even some talk of extending the scope of the Official Secrets Act, which could creep into this as well. I also noticed that the directors—I am sure those who have been appointed are excellent people—really would be taking steps of jeopardy if they blew the whistle, because most are making their careers as advisers to government or as chairs or directors of government-related entities, so they have a great deal of jeopardy at hand.

If this is unregulated, there is no mechanism for disclosure, even where actions within the view of the directors or senior employees of the bank infringe on propriety or are unethical. I would like the Minister to explain why the Government decided that that framework should be in place. I should also like her confirmation of whether there are non-disclosure agreements or their equivalent. If she cannot at this moment, by the time we get to the group beginning with Amendment 30 she will have had the opportunity to consult the Box. It will be a yes or no answer. I am certain we must get an answer either way.

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As we and the Minister know, it is always very tempting to treat these Bills as a Christmas tree, adding things on all the time. However, among these amendments, we have resisted that quite well in that we have the circular economy, do no harm, biodiversity and nature-based solutions. Those are the areas that really need to change in the Bill, and I hope that the Minister will be able to come back and reassure us on them.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in this second group and to agree with pretty much everything that has been said so far.

I will speak to Amendment 15 in my name, which seeks simply to insert “nature- based solutions” in the definition of infrastructure in the Bill. For every £1 invested in peatland restoration there is a return of £4.60, and for every £1 invested in woodland there is a return of £2.80. Does my noble friend the Minister agree that in both examples that is a multiple greater than what the bank is seeking to get as set out in its aspirations?

Similarly, as has eloquently been said with regard to climate and nature-based renewal, there is an economic boon to be had if we have nature-based solutions in the Bill for the bank to clearly be able to invest in: some £50 billion for the UK economy by 2050 and, with regard to levelling up, over 100,000 jobs.

Can my noble friend say whether the bank is able to invest in infrastructure—in this instance, nature-based solutions—in UK overseas territories? A number of things can be done there. Just one example is mangrove replanting, which can have a significant impact on addressing the current climate emergency and more impact than some of the projects that can be done alongside in the United Kingdom. Can the bank invest in such infrastructure projects in UK overseas territories?

I gently point my noble friend to a report from your Lordships’ Science and Technology Committee, on which I was lucky to serve, on nature-based solutions. It clearly sets out the advantages to be had from such investments, but also the criticality, has been said across your Lordships’ House. Even if we do everything towards the reduction and eventual eradication of carbon, we must still undertake nature-based solutions. To this end, with the economic, social and environmental benefits to be had, does my noble friend agree that it makes complete sense to have nature-based solutions as part of the definition of infrastructure in the Bill?

[Lord Ravensdale (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 6 in my name and start by declaring my interests as a project director and engineer with Atkins, and as a director of Peers for the Planet.

The problem we have, in my view, is that the second objective of the UK investment bank—to support local and regional economic growth—does not provide a clear policy intent for what the bank is to do in relation to levelling up. Getting these objectives right from the start is crucial. As the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, said at Second Reading,

“the most important debates will focus on the Government’s definition of infrastructure and the scope of the two core objectives. We must get these core components right from the off”—[Official Report, 24/5/22; cols. 824-5.]

As I said at Second Reading, the current wording leaves much open to interpretation. Almost any infrastructure investment anywhere in the country could be argued to support economic growth in the region or local area in which it sits. A new transport scheme in a wealthy area of Sussex, for example, would meet this criterion by supporting local and regional economic growth. There is nothing to clarify that this refers to levelling up, or to economically disadvantaged areas. I listened carefully to what the Minister had to say in response to this at Second Reading—she stated that the policy intent is clear—but I believe the Bill would benefit from setting out in more detail exactly what this goal entails, which I will come to shortly.

I briefly remind noble Lords of the issues we are facing here. The levelling-up White Paper stated:

“The UK has larger geographical differences than many other developed countries on multiple measures, including productivity, pay, educational attainment and health.”


As the Economist put it recently:

“Britain is highly geographically unequal ... It is as if America’s rust belt or the former East Germany were home to half the population.”


As an example, I took a walk through central Derby on Sunday and asked my sons to count the number of empty shop units. We counted 14 over a 200-metre stretch in the city centre, from Iron Gate to Corn Market. The only retail outlets that seemed to be thriving were betting shops—I counted five. This issue is repeated right across the Midlands region. Walking around comparable stretches in London, I see one or two empty units at most. I know the Government get this, and I am looking forward to seeing the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill come before this House, but it emphasises that we need to make clear what is meant by levelling up in this vital legislation. Although the intent is clear from the Chancellor on his strategic steer to the bank, it needs also to be clear in the legislation. Levelling up is a long-term, generational project, so legislation supporting it must be crystal clear as to what needs to be accomplished. The strategic steer will not set policy intent over the long term; having this clear on the face of the Bill will, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, powerfully argued.

My amendment is straightforward, and I also support Amendment 9 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans and Amendment 7 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, to which I would have added my name had I spotted them in time; they get at the same issues as my amendment. My amendment would strengthen the current wording by referring specifically to reducing

“geographical inequality through supporting regional and local economic growth in areas of economic disadvantage”.

This, I believe, clearly captures the Government’s policy intent for this objective and ensures that the legislation will deliver in the long term for disadvantaged areas, will deliver for the levelling-up agenda, and will make a real difference to the lives of people in those left-behind communities. I would be grateful if the Minister, in her summing up, could expand on how she believes the current wording provides a clear policy intent.

I also strongly support Amendment 4 tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman. As an example, the UN has called for climate finance to be split equally between efforts to curb and adapt to climate change, but most goes towards mitigation. However, I cannot beat the Cinderella analogy from the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone. Therefore, it is right that adaption should be split out from the core emissions targets as a specific aim, and I support the words of other noble Lords on why biodiversity should be placed on an equal stature with climate change within the objectives of the bank.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 10 I am rather aware from the Minister’s response to the previous group that this may have been grouped differently in her list compared to mine. I am just going to proceed anyway and if she says “I refer you to my previous answer” at the end, I will understand.

Amendment 10 refers to reducing “to sustainable levels” the UK’s

“use of natural resources and emissions of non-greenhouse pollutants”

and to securing “the interests of future generations.” To address the second part first, I am sure many noble Lords will recognise the language there, which is very much inspired by the Private Member’s Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, about protecting the well-being of future generations—and indeed by the progress made in Wales, with its future generations Act. It is perhaps another way of getting towards first do no harm, as we discussed in the previous group of amendments. But more than that, it is making a larger claim: we know that the natural world in the UK is in a parlous state with air pollution, water pollution, et cetera. It is saying that if we are looking after the well-being of future generations, the bank should be investing to improve the state of things, not just to make sure that they do not get any worse.

The first part of this amendment addresses something that your Lordships’ House and the Government really need to get more focused on, which is planetary limits. In the previous group, we started to talk about how we need to add attention to biodiversity, the state of nature and nature-based solutions, tying together those planetary limits which the world is crossing over. Actually, academics are telling us that we have now broken five of the nine planetary boundaries. Three of those are climate, biodiversity and land system change, which we have already covered to some degree, but we have also come to the other two broken planetary limits. These are biogeochemical flows and what is generally known as pollution from novel entities—in general terminology, we might talk there about chemicals. About 350,000 of these are used in the world, which includes pesticides, antibiotics, plastics, industrial chemicals in mining and pharmaceuticals.

The reason for this amendment adding an objective to the bank, so that it starts to address these issues and reduces the harm done by these chemicals is that we—globally and in the UK—are very much exceeding our share of the limits of these things. This amendment is thus supposed to address both biogeochemical flows and the novel chemicals.

Coming briefly to the biogeochemical flows, the rates of nitrate and phosphate use in the UK are both well above the global average and, according to a global footprint report, we must

“Reduce nitrogen and phosphorus use by at least 80%”

—yes, I did say 80. If we are to have a bank that is investing in the kind of economy we have to live within in future, given the planetary limits, it needs to be thinking about not just climate and nature but the damage being done. Here we get to our farming systems, which is why my previous amendment referred to infrastructure that deals with food production. This is overwhelmingly related to that when we come to phosphorus and nitrogen—although sewage plants have their place. We have to look at this as a whole and see that the bank is essentially investing, for shorthand, in a sustainable economy.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, had in the previous group an amendment on the circular economy. That is a necessary and essential step forward but it is not a sufficient step, because we have to make sure not only that we are not treating the planet as a dumping ground—mining materials out of the earth and just dumping them—but that we stop mining those materials, or at least vastly reduce the amount we are mining. That is what my first amendment seeks to achieve. If anyone wants to know where my research, particularly around novel entities, comes from, it is from the Stockholm Resilience Centre, published earlier this year in the journal Environmental Science & Technology.

I will address one other point, which very much goes back—as I think we will do several times in this group—to our debates on the Environment Act: reducing resource use. I refer noble Lords to a report that the WWF put out when we were debating the then Environment Bill on the UK’s overseas land-use footprint. That showed that

“between 2016 and 2018, an average annual area of 21.3 million hectares … was required to supply the UK’s demand for the seven commodities”.

When thinking about what the bank is investing in, we cannot be putting further pressure on other parts of the world through that. This is an attempt to bring in a systems-thinking approach.

I come now to the other amendments in my name in this group, which noble Lords may be pleased to hear are both simpler and shorter. The first is Amendment 18. When we look at the way this Bill is written, it is quite surprising that on infrastructure it says

“roads or other forms of transport”.

This seems a rather odd way round for a Bill that is supposed to be addressing the climate emergency. My amendment seeks to take out the word “roads”. I do not believe that the UK Infrastructure Bank should be investing in any new roads. We know that new roads generate more traffic. For the foreseeable future, on the crucial point of keeping the rise in world temperature below 1.5 degrees, roads and traffic are going to generate significant amounts of greenhouse gases, not to mention all the other impacts such as air and noise pollution. If this investment is going into disadvantaged areas, the last thing they need is more air and noise pollution. Electric vehicles also produce air pollution, with a large amount of the pollution they produce being particulate matter pollution from tyres and brakes. Building new roads in disadvantaged areas makes no environmental, social, economic or well-being sense. I have simply sought to take out the word “roads” and insert “mass” transport. That is obviously what the bank should be investing in, for both environmental and social reasons.

My final point is on my Amendment 25, on something that a number of noble Lords raised at Second Reading. The activities of the bank cover a large number of utilities, obviously including electricity and water, et cetera. The Bill talks about “services” but it is not clear whether “services” includes demand reduction and efficiency. The cleanest, greenest energy we can possibly have is the energy we do not need to use. The UK Infrastructure Bank surely has to be investing in reducing the demand for electricity, heating and water use—in these islands water stress is becoming an increasing issue with the reality of climate change and the adaptation issues we were discussing earlier. The Minister may say that the Bill already covers these demand reduction issues, but I feel that it should say explicitly that the bank should be investing in demand reduction of that which it is investing in the generation of. I beg to move.

[Lord Holmes of Richmond (Con)]

I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and speak to the amendments in my name in this group. My amendments, grouped under two headings, “environmental restoration” and “human enablement and empowerment”, start with Amendment 13. I think we should have in the Bill that the bank should be prohibited from investing in any projects that are not inclusive by design. What does “inclusive by design” mean? It is simply this: that all users are enabled in whatever that system, infrastructure or structure itself actually is.

I can give a quick example, of where so-called shared space has been laid out across the country, with local authorities using public money to take areas—be that a local piece of public realm, a high street or whatever—which previously were independently accessible by all members of the community. When so-called shared space is put in, kerbs, crossings, road markings and barriers are taken out, and it becomes a free-for-all whereby toddlers and tankers, buses and blind people are somehow able to coexist because of this misguided concept. Public money is being used to take spaces that were previously accessible and make them effectively inaccessible. It is being used effectively to plan out of their local public realm more than one-third of the community. It is critical that in the Bill there is a clear statement of intent that anything that the bank invests in is inclusive by design.

Amendment 19 highlights the critical importance of energy efficiency and security. Much has already been said on energy efficiency, so I shall focus on energy security. There could hardly be a more significant time to make the point of the UK’s need to have greater energy security, and for that to be dramatically enhanced through understanding what it means to have a more local and more environmentally sound supply.

On Amendment 21, there could barely be a more significant piece of infrastructure than clean air. Air in so many parts of this city and other cities across the United Kingdom is actually killing our citizens. If the bank’s objectives are so clearly set as economic, with a capital “E”, clean air fits clearly within that. If we want our citizens, at whatever age or whatever stage they are at, to be fit, happy, healthy and able to develop and deploy all their talents, what they breathe could barely be more significant.

Amendment 22 looks at the UK cash infrastructure. I believe that, for reasons of financial inclusion and resilience, this again should be designated as infrastructure for the purposes of the bank—and perhaps even one stage above that, and designated as critical national infrastructure. For all the arguments around financial inclusion that we ran through in the Financial Services Act 2021—I intend to return to them when the financial services and markets Bill comes to your Lordships’ House—but also for the times in which we live, we need to have resilience in our financial systems. Cash would currently seem to be incredibly significant in providing that resilience, if and when things happen to the digital platforms and systems at local and national level.