My Lords, this is the first occasion on which I have spoken on this Bill, although during the Queen’s Speech debate, I made remarks very similar to those made by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and others about the crisis that we face in the energy industry. On this occasion, I am prompted to rise for three reasons, all of which involve personal experience. The first has already been referred to by my noble friend Lord Jenkin. He served with me and the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, on the Science and Technology Committee, which looked at nuclear research and development. As he said, it was one of the most dismal experiences that many of us have had.
In our report, we spoke of the extraordinary discrepancy between, on the one hand, the view of some senior government officials and the Secretary of State and, on the other, the views of independent experts from academia, industry, nuclear agencies, the regulator and the Government’s own advisers. A fundamental change in the Government’s approach to nuclear R&D is needed. We went on to recommend an R&D road map and an R&D board. As my noble friend has already pointed out, it must be said that the Government went a good way to meeting a great many of our recommendations. Although they did not set up the advisory board in quite the way we proposed, as a quango, they did set up a body under the chief scientist armed with the advice of experts of just the kind that we were suggesting, with the power and duty to report in public and to make recommendations. On that particular issue, we have made progress. There is a considerable similarity between the recommendations that we made on that occasion and the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, has tabled: essentially, we need an independent expert body, not just to advise the Government but to advise them in public and on the record so that Parliament is aware of what is going on and can take some action accordingly.
I cannot emphasise enough the importance of advice given publicly. Reference has already been made to the plethora of consultancies. I have some knowledge about the work of these consultancies; I have good contacts with those who give advice in this field to the Government, and indeed to Governments around the world. One prominent firm says that it now dreads being asked to give advice to DECC because it realises that that will involve a great waste of time. What happens is something like this: the department is faced with difficult problems; there is a lack of long-term continuity and expertise, as well described by the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh; and there is the agonised
fear among the officials involved that they may be held responsible for any advice given to Ministers that turns out to be faulty, so they commission a consultancy. At long last and after due deliberation, the consultancy firm produces a report, which causes perhaps even greater consultation within the department because it actually gives advice and makes recommendations. Officials then think to themselves, “This is even more dangerous because this advice looks potentially extremely worrying, and we may be blamed even more for what we do”, and the whole thing goes on. Sometimes yet another consultancy is called in and the whole department gets bogged down in a sort of quagmire.
I know that the Government say that they are doing something about this. I am a member of the Constitution Committee and when the Minister for the Cabinet Office, my right honourable friend Francis Maude, came before us, I raised this issue with him. He said, “Oh yes, of course we are aware that there has been a problem of this kind. We are aware that there are far too many consultancies and that the whole system is getting bogged down, but we are doing something about it. We are taking action, and it’s no longer going to happen”. I wish I thought that was true, but I fear that it is not. It is therefore vital that we take steps to ensure that consultancy advice is given by real experts from outside the department, and given publicly.
In this context, I happened to notice in Country Life of 3 August an editorial on the setting up of the new arrangements for English Heritage and the so-called National Heritage Protection Service, which is taking over the principal advisory role to government. The leading article asks: who is effectively to argue its case? If heritage protection is to have any teeth at all, the article says, it now needs to return to the ministry. I cannot think of a more disastrous piece of advice. It is quite certain that if that happened, that would be the last that we heard of the advice, which would be lost for ever in the maw of government, and the work of English Heritage would be almost forgotten.
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I have some personal experience of all this, because—it seems a long time ago—I was asked by Nick Ridley, an outstanding Secretary of State for the Environment, to set up the National Rivers Authority advisory committee to advise government on how the privatisation programme should go forward and the new regulatory system be set up. We worked for a year and then the committee that I had set up was transformed into the first board.
I had the huge privilege of chairing a committee of unrivalled expertise in its field. The quality of the advice that was given could not have been higher. In every aspect of the water environment, I had people on that board who knew infinitely more than any official and certainly more than any Ministers in the department. We gave that advice publicly and fearlessly. We understood perfectly well that Ministers might reject it. I wrote subsequently:
“Alongside these relationships with the public, I had to establish a new relationship with government. On the one hand, this involved presenting clear advice based on sound science and the best professional judgement, even if that advice might be
uncomfortable for the government of the day, and on the other acknowledging that ministers answerable to Parliament have wider responsibilities which might lead them to overrule that advice or vary what we proposed. In the early years, we were much assisted by the way in which ministers encouraged this approach and respected our position”.
The only difficulty was that, even in that situation, the machinery of government ground exceeding slow. I give one example. It was government policy and part of the legislation that we should have statutory water quality objectives, and those were combined with the system of catchment management that we had designed. It was all agreed by government, but it took six years, longer than the duration of either of the world wars, for our first six pilot schemes to be approved by Ministers. That is probably fast progress compared with some of the progress made in recent years in the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
It is argued by some, just as it was argued in Country Life, that we would have greater influence on government policy-making if we submitted more of our advice in private. I wrote in the book in which I recorded the history of these events:
“I do not believe for one moment that is true, although certainly some ministers and officials might have found it a more comfortable approach. An agency that acts in that way will quickly lose the public respect and support that was such an important factor in our success. Ministers must have the final word because they have wider responsibilities than any agency; but it also takes two to tango. Ministers must be prepared to listen, whether the advice is given in public or in private. Most of the ministers with whom I had to deal as chairman welcomed our approach”.
That is an example and a precedent that the Minister and her colleagues in the department would be very wise to follow. It is a good precedent. Indeed, the precedent of the Nuclear Research and Development Advisory Board is another good precedent. Therefore, we are not breaking entirely new ground; we are merely saying that it needs to be done if we are to emerge with any sense of urgency from the real crisis that confronts us.
I hope that, as the my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding has said, the Government will therefore think very carefully about the amendment and not reject it out of hand. The only change that I would make to it would be to increase the numbers involved. I do not think that four or five members are sufficient to provide the breadth of expertise needed. Of course boards should not be too big to be manageable and effective; nobody knows that better than the noble Lord. However, four or five, when we are looking for expertise right across the energy field, including the economic aspects, is not enough. With that one exception, I warmly commend this amendment, and I hope the Government will listen very carefully to what is being said.