As I was so impressed by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, on this issue at Second Reading, I feel emboldened to speak to his amendment even though I did not hear how he introduced it and I apologise for having come late. As an ex-Permanent Secretary, I strongly disagree with the advice just offered. My watchword was from Hilaire Belloc, who wrote:
“Decisive action in the hour of need
Denotes the hero but does not succeed”.
It is often a very good idea to take no decision, particularly if you think your Minister is about to take a silly decision.
I support the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, in his definition of the problem, as in his Second Reading speech. The inability to take the long view and the discontinuities between energy policy, environmental policy and policy on public expenditure and investment in infrastructure, are such that these have come together to make a very real problem. I think that some sort of advisory board might be part of the answer. However, I cannot support the wording of the amendment put forward here because it has limited it. It talks of advice in implementing government policy objectives for energy. You have to go wider than that and you have to allow your advisers to advise you on what policy should be. If they are limited to advising purely on the execution of the policy that the Ministers have already announced, you are still stuck in the short term.
As an ex-Permanent Secretary, I also find it very odd that the amendment should state that although the board shall consist of,
“expert members appointed for their experience in or knowledge of the energy industries”,
the “relevant Permanent Secretary” shall be “in attendance”. What is he supposed to do? If the Permanent Secretary disagrees with his Minister, one of his prime jobs is to disagree with his Minister. He should do that in private. He cannot speak in public against the then policy of the Government. So he is in attendance, spending days sitting there listening to these guys. He cannot speak because the minutes will be published—he could not speak against the views of his Minister anyway. This is neither fish nor fowl. I fear there is a danger that it might turn into a red herring. If we need independent advice, it should be independent. We do not want the presence of the Permanent Secretary and we do not want the remit of the board limited to advice on the execution of policy. We want it to tell us what policy should be.
I would put a long-term element into this as well, by putting five or 10 years somewhere in there, so that it is clear that the board is looking over the horizon. This would ease its relationship with government, because it would be clear that the timescale was not limited by the period of the then present Parliament. Therefore, I support the intention of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, as he has correctly identified a very important problem, but I cannot support the wording of his amendment.
4.30 pm