Legislation: Great British Energy Bill – second reading
Lord Alton of Liverpool
18th November 2024
Second Reading debate: Energy Bill
In congratulating and welcoming today’s Maiden Speeches may I also say how much I admire and like the noble lord the Minister, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, and the Government are fortunate to have him to drive forward their Great British Energy Bill.
This relatively small Bill carries a large ticket – some £8 billion of taxpayers’ money – and, rightly, it will be subjected to scrutiny and amendment in your lordships’ House.
I support a mixed economy of ownership – partnerships between the public and private sector and more community owned energy along with diversity in supply – everything from ever more resources for nuclear fusion technology to hydrogen, wind, solar and tidal barrages.
During the 1980 and 90s I founded and was chair of the APPG for a Mersey Barrage . Although the Government promised me it would consider the barrage project as part of the non-fossil fuel obligations and renewable energy policy, it never happened.
The Mersey Barrage would deliver enough clean, predictable energy to power hundreds of thousands of homes for 120 years, creating thousands of local jobs, and turning the Liverpool City region into a worldwide centre of energy excellence.
I hope the Minister will agree to meet with me and with Steve Rotherham, the Mayor of the Liverpool City Region, to help ensure that this unique opportunity, provided by this Bill, is not squandered, as it was forty years ago.
In introducing the Bill in Another Place, the Rt. Hon Ed Miliband MP, rightly pointed to the absurdity that the city of Munich owns more of our offshore wind capacity than the British Government.
He has a point – but the missing reference was, to mix a metaphor, not to the elephant in the room but to the CCP dragon and that is what I wish to address in the context of this Bill.
We all know that dragons wallow in sulphurous caves snorting fire.
Perhaps that is why China is responsible for around a third of global CO2 emissions.
It has pumped out more pollution in eight years than the UK has in 220 years.
It is building the equivalent of two new coal-burning power stations every week.
It is doing this to build its industrial and military might and certainly not to do its bit toward tackling climate change.
And take wind power – where Mingyang Smart Energy (MYSE, )China’s largest wind turbine firm, is involved in several projects in the North Sea.
What are we thinking of in handing over such important capability in the net-zero transition to an entity that comes from an authoritarian and hostile state –and doing so as the European Union is launching its anti-trust investigation into Chinese turbine manufacturers.
The Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security says China has been able to “successfully penetrate every sector of the UK’s economy;” that “Chinese money was readily accepted by the government with few questions asked;” and that external expert concluded “very strongly that the government does not have any strategy on China, let alone an effective one.”
Instead of resilience we have dependency.
We currently have a trade in goods deficit of £32.3 billion with China – which we seem intent on adding to.
A Civitas report documents over 140 million pounds paid to UK universities by Chinese companies – some involved in military projects and some with links to institutions complicit with, facilitating, or directly involved with the Uyghur genocide, nuclear development, military research, espionage, and hacking.
Civitas identified “an existential threat” and says that China’s ambition at a global level is “to become a technological and economic superpower, on which other countries are reliant. That represents the greatest risk to the UK.”
In recognising that threat, your lordships House gave all party support to my successful amendments to the earlier legislation in the Procurement Act, the Health and Care Act and Telecommunications Security Act and for the removal of some of the one million Chinese made surveillance cameras now in the UK.
With RUSI I have also raised the flooding of our markets with Chinese-made electric cars – along with Chinese-made cellular modules that are components in non-Chinese-made cars and other electronic equipment – and which can be used to spy on us and to displace cars made by workers in democratic countries.
South East Asia is awash with Chinese EV car plants and sales and it is producing electric long haul lorries and mass produced cheap EV cars for the mass market.
It is doing this to dethrone and destroy our automotive industry and to enhance its ability to withstand a blockade following the military occupation of Taiwan.
It will also cost around 100,000 European car workers their jobs by the end of the decade – and many will lose their jobs because we cannot compete with slave labour.
There is a significant difference between free trade and trade done on the backs of slave labour.
The Secretary of State has said there should be “no modern slavery in any part.” So, can the Minister say what assessment has been made of reports that there are 96 companies relevant to the automotive sector, and the production of electric cars, operating in the Uyghur region, including 38 that have previous documented engagement in state-sponsored labour transfer programmes –highlighted by the International Labour Organisation and reports from Human Rights Watch detailing the use of slave labour in aluminium production – with Xinjiang accounting for 9%of total global supply?
Note too the call from fifty legislators for Volkswagen to end its presence in Xinjiang and the damning red flag notice to Volkswagen from Morgan Stanley Capital.
A US Congressional Select Committee has found two Chinese EV battery producers, CATL and Gotion High Tech, have links to companies operating in Xinjiang and forced labour programmes.
Their report connected both companies to XPCC a Chinese paramilitary company sanctioned for its links to gross human rights violations in Xinjiang. Their customers include BMW, VW, Mercedes, Volvo, Stellantis and Renault.
I also note that Hikvision and Dahua – now banned across UK “sensitive sites” – and with links to Uyghur internment camps – are selling EV chargers and kit and boasts a facility to “scan licence plates and check them against a DVLA database”.
And the supply chain story doesn’t end there.
Quite recently, as part of an Inquiry into the Democratic Republic of the Congo, I took testimony from Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr Denis Mukwege.
He raised concerns about Chinese exploitation of critical minerals for green technology.
Cobalt is essential in making lithium-ion EV batteries. 75% of global cobalt supply comes from the DRC – and 80% of its output is owned by China.
CATL is linked to the Chinese State enterprise, CMOC, which operate multiple copper-cobalt mines in the DRC.
25,000 children are working in cobalt mines.
Dr Mukwege asked what weight is attached to the use of child labour in the products we buy. I hope the Minister can tell us.
May I also draw the Minister’s attention to the Sheffield Hallam University Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice report “In Broad Daylight: Uyghur Forced Labour and Global Solar Supply Chains”
It indicates that the PRC has placed millions of indigenous Uyghur and Kazakh citizens from Xinjiang into what the regime calls “surplus labour” and “labour transfer” programmes, or as we should call them – modern-day slavery state-sponsored programmes.
Be clear, workers cannot refuse the work, cannot refuse employment, or challenge the inhumane conditions of work. We are talking about the forcible transfer of population and enslavement.
The report concludes that the solar industry is particularly vulnerable to forced labour in the Uyghur Region and identified 90 Chinese and international companies whose supply chains are affected.
In 2023, another report from Sheffield Hallam ,Overexposed” found that transparency has decreased in the solar industry, making it increasingly difficult to verify whether supply chains are free from risk of Uyghur forced labour.
In responding to these findings could the Minister also ask his noble friends in the Ministry of Defence what response it has made to the December 2023, BBC report that the British Army was investing £200 million in solar panels made by companies believed to have an exceedingly high exposure to forced labour in China.
The PRC global market domination across the solar photovoltaic supply chain has been expanding rapidly – with 93% of global polysilicon, about 2.1 million tons – used in almost all solar panels – produced in China – and about half of this produced in Xinjiang.
The Secretary of State has confirmed that he is worried about slave labour in the supply chains.
So can the Minister tell us whether the Secretary of State was warned about companies involved in solar panel production in Xinjiang before awarding contracts to them, and, if so, why he went ahead.
Could I also ask him about the Forced Prison-Made Goods Act of 1897? Given that Xinjiang has been referred to as a vast prison and that British law prohibits the importation of prison made goods will the Minister say what consideration has been given to compatibility of the importation of goods made by Uyghur prison labour with that Act of Parliament.
Against the backdrop of the 2021 House of Commons decision to name a genocide by the CCP, against Uyghurs in Xinjiang, the admirable Labour MP, Sarah Champion – chair of the International Development Select Committee tabled an all party amendment to this Bill to tackle what she called “sinister dependency on forced labour programmes” in the supply chains for solar panels. She said the UK has become “a dumping ground for dodgy solar” – tainted, solar goods.
And that has other implications for the UK too.
In July during the Kings Speech debate I raised the Mallard Pass Solar Project – which uses Xinjiang produced solar panels. On August 1st, in reply to a Written Question the noble lord the Minister said “ Ethical procurement is considered at paragraphs 4.104-109”of the Secretary of State’s planning decision.
Is it the case that elsewhere in the planning decision it states that human rights concerns are not a reason to refuse a planning application. Is that so?
Shouldn’t this Bill be used to change that?.
Today Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, has been meeting Xi Jinping. Reports suggest he raised sanctions against seven parliamentarians, of whom I am one. This is trivial in comparison with Uyghur Genocide. Can the Minister tell us whether the genocide was raised and what response was received.
To end.
On several occasions I have been privileged to stand with the noble lord the Minister when he moved amendments about forced organ harvesting in China.
In a powerful speech, particularly relevant to this Bill, and to Uyghur slave labour in Xinjiang, he described how:
“It is now a multimillion-pound commercial business in China” and went on to described how “Millions of Chinese citizens are currently detained in labour camps. UN experts estimate that at least one million Uighurs are being held in camps in the region of Xinjiang…. Companies from the West are complicit in this. Adidas, Nike, Zara, and Amazon are among the western brands which, according to a coalition of civil society groups, currently benefit from the forced labour of Uighurs in Xinjiang. In July this year, a 13-ton shipment of hair products from Xinjiang, worth more than $800,000, was seized by US Customs and Border Protection. This shipment included wigs made from human hair, which is hugely concerning considering the many reports and personal testimonies of female Uighur Muslims having their heads forcibly shaved in the camps.”
The noble lord reminded the House that parliamentarians had the opportunity to strengthen the legislation and to “prevent British complicity in such crimes and to send an important signal to other countries.”
He reflected that issues such as 5 G and potential Chinese investment in new nuclear energy presented dilemmas but he concluded “but there must be a time when we make a stand.”
ML – Baroness Kennedy of the Shaws and I were sanctioned by the PRC for doing just that.
Although she is unable to participate today, we will work together at later stages in moving all party amendments to create a human rights-centric approach to greener energy supply chains.
Let’s put that insistence on the face of the Bill and amend it accordingly. Let’s do as the Minister said. Let’s make a stand.
