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Address in Reply to Her Majesty's Most Gracious Speech

My Lords, I am choosing to speak in today's debate on the gracious Speech because as Liberal Democrat spokesman on environmental and rural affairs I know that the effects of decisions made by the Department for Trade and Industry are as critical for rural areas, market towns and the environment as those made by Defra—and possibly more so. I will speak in particular about three areas; the draft marine Bill, energy issues and the role of the Office of Fair Trading. In those areas, the policies of the DTI are critical to the sustainability agenda; an agenda warmly laid out by the Prime Minister on various occasions, but whose realisation will come about only by a much bigger commitment from departments such as the DTI. That is highlighted especially by the anticipated draft marine Bill. Perhaps in reply, the Minister will tell me that my fears are groundless and I shall be most pleased. I am very pleased that the Government are finally bringing forward a draft of such a Bill. The marine environment is our most biodiverse environment and it offers wonderful leisure facilities such as beaches, surfing, sailing and recreational fishing. It is heavily used for freight transport. It is extremely important to major extractive industries—not only oil but also sand and gravel. It is now becoming a major player in the renewable energy field. At the moment, all those elements exist without any spatial planning framework. Decisions to grant a licence for one activity are made in isolation, not within an informed framework that recognises that there may be more or less appropriate places for such activity. In one way or another, the DTI is no doubt being heavily lobbied by interest groups to ensure, I fear, that the free-for-all nature of the present system might continue. However, the lack of a planning system also creates a lack of certainty, making investment harder to achieve, particularly for marine renewables which the Minister and I debated in this Chamber during the previous Session. I believe that it is imperative that the DTI supports Defra in bringing forward a Bill which includes a statutory framework for spatial planning in marine areas. In turning to the issue of energy, I warmly welcome my noble friend Lord Redesdale as our new spokesman on energy. He gave a balanced and wise speech, which I regret the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, treated much too lightly in his rather derogatory reply. My noble friend Lord Redesdale gave a balanced and fair picture of the future, not the kind of one-sided view which the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, always seems to put forward. During canvassing, I was struck by the fact that I saw an enormous number of houses built in the past five years but on only one in thousands did I see any sign of solar panels, photovoltaics or any other form of renewable energy. Why is this country not following the lead of other countries such as Spain where all new build must include such things? No doubt as we debate the future of energy, nuclear power will arise time and again in our debates, and rightly so. Even discounting the terrorist threat that nuclear power stations inevitably bring with them, which has been recognised by all parties, the devastation that an accident, although very unlikely, would bring to a small island such as Britain, and the lack of a solution to the waste problem, I do not believe that the economics yet favour a nuclear solution. But in the light of climate change, I am willing to debate the issue with an open mind and I believe that it would behove all parties in this House to do the same. We in this House, unlike investors, fortunately, do not spend nearly enough time discussing new technologies such as fuel cells. They would merit a debate in themselves and we have as yet talked little about them. But we have talked about community-based combined heat and power technologies and domestic scale microgeneration. I believe that these offer diversity and security of supply. As each house generates its own heat and electricity, there is no loss of power in transmission. Last week, many of us heard the excellent speech given by my noble friend Lord Ezra at the Most Worshipful Company of Fuellers. His long perspective on energy issues over many decades was especially interesting given the debates we will be having in this Parliament about future energy policy. History shows what a cold wind can blow over government by getting energy policy wrong. I hope that both this House and another place will devote the time necessary to getting the energy policy right and help the Government by reaching a consensus on a way forward. I want to mention the Office of Fair Trading and to take the House back to 2000. Then the Competition Commission inquired into the need for a supermarket code of conduct in the light of the effect on suppliers of the buying policy of a consolidated group of supermarkets. The inquiry concluded that this complex monopoly had about 30 practices which affected the competitiveness of some of their suppliers and distorted competition in the supply market. Well, it is now five years later, and unfortunately, although there is a code of practice, it does not seem to have been at all effective—I am aware of the recent review of its effectiveness. I give west country lamb as an example. I believe all Sainsbury's lamb was from the west country and there was a very fast switch from the one processor, which affected dozens and dozens of farmers throughout the area. Sainsbury's is by no means the only or worst offender in this respect. All the other supermarkets must bear much responsibility for the fact that they have not stood by the spirit of the code. Therefore, I believe that the time has come to have a fair trade inspector with real powers to enforce the code. These Benches have called for that time and again. Finally, I turn to the Competition's Commission's view of one supermarket chain, Tesco, having such a large share of the market with hypermarkets, supermarkets, metro stores and corner shops—call them what you like. I ask the Minister to say when ownership by one chain of so many retail outlets becomes unacceptable. That begs fundamental questions about regulation, which seems to be all or nothing. In some areas, regulation by this Government and previous governments has been gold-plated and extremely heavy-handed. The Government bring quite simple directives from Brussels into disrepute by such gold-plating. But in the case that I have just mentioned, regulation seems to be non-existent, and I believe that striking a balance would serve the future of rural areas, in particular, very well.