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Queen's Speech

My Lords, before I focus on the subject of my speech, I refer to recent proposals to disgorge your Lordships from this place while the House authorities refit and refurbish it, possibly over three or four years. In conversation last week, a former distinguished ambassador and I came up with the ideal temporary home for the House of Lords; namely, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Your Lordships could meet in the splendid Durbar Court, while Moses Room meetings could be transferred to the sumptuous Locarno Suite. The Foreign Office could meanwhile be transferred to empty office space in Canary Wharf. Strangely enough, the former ambassador is happy for me to take the entire credit for the idea, and I would be grateful to the Minister for his views on the proposal in his winding-up speech. I hope that I will enjoy the enthusiastic support of the noble Lords, Lord Jay and Lord Wright. The greatest challenges facing the world in the 21st century will be energy, food and water security. Taken together, competition for these resources presents the most pressing threat to global security, against the background of significant climatic change. I shall focus today on energy security, mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Howell of Guildford and Lord Brittan. I make no apology for raising the issue in a debate on foreign and European affairs, international development and defence. It is my contention that energy security impacts on all of those. I was pleased to note the reference, albeit brief, to energy security in the gracious Speech. In raising energy security, I refer noble Lords to my energy and other interests as recorded in the Register of Lords’ Interests, in particular my associate fellowship of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies, in which role I am writing a report on European energy security. Although the price of oil has dipped to around $50 a barrel, most agree that in the medium and long term, it can only go up. Although I do not believe in the concept of ““peak oil””, particularly given the untapped resources of the Arctic and Antarctic, the world’s nation states will for the foreseeable future be competing for finite resources of oil and gas. Despite the new push for nuclear and renewables, we will all remain dependent on fossil fuels for some time to come, with gas and, particularly, coal playing an increasingly important part in our energy mix. In Europe there has been a wide-ranging debate about energy security and securing future sources of supply, an increasingly difficult task as production declines in politically stable OECD countries. The European Commission has just published its second strategic energy review, and three reports of the House of Lords EU Committee have looked at the EU’s targets for renewables, the economic distortion that may arise from pursuing unrealisable targets and the EU-Russia relationships, to which a number of noble Lords have referred. From all this work, a number of conclusions follow. First, political cohesion and developing a functional and liberalised energy market are essential tools in the struggle to avoid energy dependency and enhance security. I think that point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Brittan of Spennithorne. Secondly, the case for European dependency on Russia is overblown. If you look at the statistics, only 6.5 per cent of the EU’s total primary energy comes from Russian gas. A far greater threat, in my view, to energy supply and security is the fall in investment and production in Russia and central Asia, a phenomenon which is spreading to other parts of the world as energy and mining companies pare back crucial investment. Thirdly, while acknowledging the real threat of destructive climate change and the security issues that it may engender, the pursuit of unrealistic renewables targets, particularly focused on wind, may distort investment patterns and lead to energy shortages. These have already been witnessed in South Africa, which, despite energy blackouts, is scaling back plans to build a new generation of nuclear plants. In the UK, if we do not focus on the achievable alongside the pursuit of renewables, with the development of new nuclear, gas and clean-coal plants, we will undoubtedly witness blackouts by around 2015. The current global recession should not blind us to the fact that demand will rebound, and when it does, the necessary investment based on current plans will not have been delivered in Europe or elsewhere. In the United States, President-elect Barack Obama has ambitious plans for a New Deal type of programme for renewables to tackle climate change and end the dependency of the United States on oil. That is to be welcomed, but alone it will not be enough to provide the energy that the United States needs and ensure its energy security. There is no single magic bullet to solve Europe's energy security needs, whether through the Nabucco or other gas pipelines or the somewhat dubious proposal for a trans-Saharan pipeline that would be a security nightmare to protect. As I mentioned, only common action on a common policy and a properly functioning European energy market and grid will provide the necessary security. Apart from the geopolitics and political risks of energy security, whether in relation to countries like Russia, Georgia, Ukraine or others such as Nigeria and Venezuela, there are increasingly obvious military threats to Europe's energy security. NATO's Secretary-General has recently been writing and speaking about the alliance's role in guaranteeing security of energy supply, pointing to the despatch of a NATO maritime taskforce to the Gulf of Aden to protect shipping against piracy, alongside the EU initiative to tackle Somali piracy. NATO, he argues, should also have a role in developing training with partners to protect crucial national infrastructure such as refineries, pipelines and LNG terminals. Direct assistance could be provided in response to energy blackmail or terrorist threat. The question remains: how proactive should NATO and the EU be in protecting our sources of supply abroad, even in partnership with the countries concerned, in often sensitive and hostile parts of the world? What is certain in a globalised world is that whatever happens to one important energy supplier and to one major supply route will have an impact on us here in Europe and the UK. We can only address these major issues together. So, three cheers at least for the perceived demise of unilateralism.