European Union Bill

Lord Willoughby de Broke Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am afraid to say that I believe that the noble Lord is wrong on this. He has used a particular example of which he has very great experience. It is extremely interesting for the House to hear that example, but it is not very typical. It does not deal at all with the issue, for example, of whether it might be in the interests of the European Union in the not distant future to give a negotiating mandate to a body—whether it is the Commission or the presidency or whatever it is—to negotiate for energy supplies from outside the European Union, particularly gas, and to negotiate as a single unit. That would require new powers. It is as simple as that, and is, I am afraid to say, nothing whatever to do with building a pipeline between Ireland and Northern Ireland, interesting and important though that was.

I think there is serious matter in the energy field, the climate change field and the pollution field to reflect on here and a need for greater flexibility. I plead with the Government that we do not have the preprandial/postprandial schizophrenia that we have had in recent Committee stages in which in one session we are told that we need not worry about this enormous number of referendums because none of them will ever take place and we will stop anything happening in Brussels that will cause them to take place and then immediately afterwards we are told that we need not worry because the European Union does not work that way, and there will be a big package and we will all be able to find some nice sugar-plums in it for ourselves. I thought that was where we came in and decided that that was nothing that we wished to encourage in future. I think the Government need to make up their mind whether they are trying to lock the door and throw the key away, which is what this Bill does, and the consequences of that are pretty damaging for this country, or whether they are trying to propel the European Union towards another big institutional package, which I do not believe to be in the interests of this country. I would like to hear a response on Amendments 23C, 23D and 23E.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

My Lords, on the issue of climate change, the subject of the amendment that we are supposed to be talking about, several hours ago the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, said that Amendment 21 was the most useless, superfluous amendment that he had come across during the hours of Committee stage. I believe that Amendment 23C actually takes the palm as the most useless and redundant amendment we have had. The idea that the European Union is effective in climate change is frankly laughable. Let me remind your Lordships that our policy on emissions is guided entirely by the EU and we have to have 20 per cent of our energy from renewables by 2020. Of course, there is not the remotest chance of achieving that, and in the past couple of years, that aspiration—that dream—has begun to collide with reality.

Just to give your Lordships a little information on that, I shall repeat what was said in two sets of figures from two separate reports over the degree of delusion that surrounds the wish of our Government in Brussels and their subsidiary here in Westminster that the centrepiece of our energy policy should be to build ever more windmills. The report that drew most attention was from a Scottish environmental charity that focused on the fact that last year, despite our building ever more wind farms, the lack of wind meant that they operated on average at only 21 per cent of capacity, and that was during the period of highest demand. Several times when demand was at its highest the contribution of wind to our electricity supply was virtually zero.

I do not know why, but less attention was given to an interesting report put out by our Department of Energy and Climate Change showing that the 3,168 turbines that we have built at a cost of billions of pounds contributed on average less than the output of one large coal-fired power station. From the DECC figure, it is possible to work out that for this derisory contribution we paid through our electricity bills a subsidy of nearly £1.2 billion on top of the price of electricity itself. In return for getting 3 per cent, roughly, of our energy, nearly 7 per cent of our bills are paid in subsidies for these completely useless wind farms, and that will go up as years go on because we have committed to this 20 per cent from renewables by 2020. That report dealt with last year.

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[Lord Deben]

Might the noble Lord not suggest that there could be a better question: do the people of Britain want to have their climate changed and their health impaired by the continuation of extremely dirty power stations, which happily we are going to close down?

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

The noble Lord says, “happily we are going to close down”. I hope that he has got a generator in his house so that he can watch his television and read his books because with wind power that simply will not happen. Nuclear of course is a different matter, but let us not get into that debate right now.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I merely want to congratulate the noble Lord on having raised the issue of gas storage, which is a subject close to my heart. I ask him to recognise that the best way to improve the level of gas storage in Europe would be to impose a minimum gas storage obligation through the European Union.

[Lord Willoughby de Broke]

Surely it could be up to the nation member states to impose their own minimum gas storage obligation. Why do we have to do it through the European Union? It is perfectly ridiculous. This unhealthy EU obsession, which is what it is—I am very sorry that the previous Government and this Government seem to have signed up to it—of using wind power to keep our lights on is one of the most damaging fantasies of our time. I oppose the amendment and I hope that it will be dealt with accordingly.

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick]

My Lords, I want to make one simple and brief point, but before I do that perhaps I may respond partly to what the noble Lord, Lord Taverne, said because I was a little puzzled by it. He is a former Treasury Minister and chairman of a think tank in the City. He was referring to the two aspects of the banking system in crisis being capital and liquidity, with which I totally agree. But he was, I think, arguing that perhaps we need more European attention to capital. That was quite a surprising thing to suggest because, as he will remember, not long before the Irish banking crisis struck and the Irish banks were revealed as hopelessly undercapitalised, we had stress tests carried out on the European banks—a separate exercise in the European Union and in Britain. The European Union banking tests revealed that no bank had a problem with capital other than one bank in Germany. That was shortly before the crisis was fully revealed in all its horror in Ireland.

I agree with the noble Lord that there is a separate aspect of liquidity which the European Central Bank has, in a skilful and constructive way, provided to the European banking system. Equally, the Bank of England has also exercised its national function well. He did not make the case for further European competence or the transfer of power or competence from this country to Europe by merit of that alone.

The noble Lord went on to make the familiar point about the eurozone and whether we were marginalised by not being in it. It is of course true that eurozone Ministers may make certain decisions affecting themselves in which we do not participate. We do not participate in meetings of the Federal Reserve Bank, although its decisions affect us. However, anything that eurozone Ministers decide to do that is governed by the rules of the single market or competition law continues to be governed by the rules of the single market and competition policy. He was careful to say that issues would arise if we were proposing to join the euro but the implication of his argument was that in order to gain influence we should join the euro, which I am sure he does not really subscribe to. Very few people will own up to arguing that we should join the euro today.