12:40 Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)

Is this not exactly the wrong time to be selling off the GIB, given that the Government have decided to embark on a new industrial strategy, which must, to be in accord with our own climate change commitments, have low-carbon projects at its core? Finally, will the Minister admit that this selling off could lead to the bank being fatally undermined as an enduring institution? Will he stop the killing off of the Green Investment Bank? Will he halt the sale process with immediate effect?

I thank my hon. Friend for her positive observation, and I pay tribute to her record and her absolute integrity and authenticity on protection of the environment and climate change, which are well respected across the House. I can give her this assurance. We have put before Parliament the whole procedure for protecting the green purpose of the GIB through the special share arrangements. It will be held by an independent company and it will have the power to approve or reject any proposed changes to the GIB’s green purposes. This is going to be set in company law. The five trustees were announced on 31 October 2016, selected through a genuinely independent process. If my hon. Friend looks at the names, she will see that they are independent and extremely credible. That is the mechanism that we have set out. I return to the point about the objectives of the sale. We want this to go into the private sector, so that it can do more of what it is doing—unfettered by the inevitable restrictions that the state has to put on it at this stage.

The hon. Gentleman quite rightly talks about the need for investment in renewables, but it would be nice if he could give more recognition of the extraordinary progress this country has made in respect of the profound transition to clean energy and the fact that we have generated more electricity from renewable energy than from coal this year, which is a pivotal moment in our history. Investment continues to flow, and the GIB has played and I am sure will continue to play a very important role as a catalyst for all that.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the test—the proof of the pudding—lies not in how many existing assets of a given kind are owned, but in whether there will be a greater or smaller amount of investment in renewable and other green energy projects in the future? Does he agree that this privatisation will prove to have been a success if investment in new projects increases as a result?

The hon. Lady is flogging rather an old horse, and, if I may say so, that is completely misplaced. Significant investment is being made in clean energy in this country and around the world. Indeed, with the Hinkley deal, the Government made one of the biggest commitments in the world to low-carbon energy. There is no question about our commitment to the transition to a low-carbon economy and a clean energy structure, and we are well along the track. I would add that we inherited an arrangement whereby we were operating on far too low a base in terms of renewable energy. It was a coalition Government led by Conservatives who changed that.

The Minister is being very dismissive about speculation in the press. However, in the Financial Times the former Business Secretary, Vince Cable, has expressed concern about asset stripping, which he thinks was Macquarie’s objective, and Ed Davey, the former Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has said he considers it unlikely that the golden share would give Ministers enough clout to influence the bank’s investment strategy. Does the Minister not think that those two people—who, after all, were very much involved in the setting up of the bank—should be taken seriously and that we should act on their concerns?

With respect to the hon. Lady, I am not entirely sure why Brexit is relevant to this process or to the decisions underpinning it. I agree 110% with her fundamental point about the need to invest in energy innovation, which is why our Department has a £500 million spending review portfolio dedicated to energy innovation that sits in a wider system of budgetary support for energy efficiency. The point she makes is entirely the right one: if we are to achieve what we want to achieve in decarbonisation and the transition to abundant sources of affordable low-carbon energy, we have to continue to innovate. The Government have a role in that, which is why budgetary support is available for it.

“Edinburgh has a lot going for it, both in terms of it asset management and finance sectors…also its proximity to green energy activity”.

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the increased attractiveness of investment in renewable energy and low-carbon infrastructure. Governments in the UK and around the world have helped to facilitate that investment over the years and have seen dramatic falls in the cost of those technologies and the cost of the capital attached to them, making them a more investable proposition. This helps to reinforce our argument that this is the right time to liberate the GIB from state control to enable it to play a bigger part in the market.

The Aldersgate Group has highlighted the fact that the strength of the Green Investment Bank is that it has supported innovative projects throughout the UK that help us not only to tackle climate change but to drive down costs in the NHS and local government through energy efficiency. Will the Government heed the warning of the former Conservative Energy Minister, Lord Barker, that the bank is heading for break-up? Will they halt the sale to ensure that the bank remains a single public institution that is one step ahead of the market in the green projects that it backs?

When taken alongside the cuts to renewable energy and the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change last year, does not the sell-off of the Green Investment Bank show that the Government are no longer committed to being a world leader on climate change and sustainability?

No. I am afraid that that is total nonsense. If the hon. Lady wants proof points on that, I can tell her that one of the first actions of this Department, within days of the new Government being formed, was to put into law the fifth carbon budget. I am sure that she knows the detail of that, so she will know how ambitious it is. That was not the action of a Government who are shirking their responsibilities in relation to Britain’s role in mitigating climate change.

Is the Minister seeking assurances that 100% of the return on any sales of existing assets will be reinvested in green energy in the UK?

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