15:11 Darren Jones (Labour)

The Bill has two key objectives. First, it broadens the scope of activities that the Crown Estate can invest in, in order to support the delivery of its core purpose across net zero, nature recovery, economic growth and generating returns to the public purse. In its current form, it is predominantly a property estate and is significantly limited in its investment options. The Bill would provide it with the ability to invest more widely in new growth opportunities—for example, investing in the further mapping of our seabed. This will enable it to undertake significant de-risking activity, such as pre-consent surveys and supporting grid connections, thus increasing the frequency of leasing for offshore wind and supporting the clean energy transition.

As a result of the changes in the Bill, the Crown Estate will be able to accelerate investment in redeveloping and decarbonising its Regent Street and historic London portfolio, as well as investing in projects to support science and innovation. The Bill will unlock potential investment of up to £1.5 billion in the science, technology and innovation economy over the next 15 years, building on the Crown Estate’s recent investment in the city of Oxford.

I understand that the Minister is proposing that, in relation to the seabed, the Crown Estate will be a licensing authority for renewable energy projects and will now be able to invest in them too. The commissioners have a primary duty to maximise the return to the Crown Estate of any activity they undertake. To comply with the law, will the Crown Estate be compelled to side with renewable energy development at the expense of the fishing industry if, for example, there is a conflict between the siting of an offshore wind farm and the use of that sea by the fishing industry, and is that fair?

The Minister has mentioned GB Energy and the desire to get on with allowing the Crown Estate in England and Wales to borrow. He will not have forgotten that GB Energy is likely to be located in my Aberdeen South constituency, and many of its projects to drive the net zero agenda across the UK will come to fruition in Scotland. Will he provide a little clarity on why he believes these powers should apply to the Crown Estate in England and Wales, yet his Government are not legislating for the powers to be provided to Crown Estate Scotland? I am at a loss to understand the reasoning.

I thank my hon. Friend for his excellent question. He will know from the work of ministerial colleagues in the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero that the enormous potential for offshore wind in the Celtic sea and off the south-west coast is currently largely untapped. A lot of the work that needs to be done to make those seabeds available, and to bring the interconnections onshore and on to the grid to make it viable for private sector investment, requires quite a lot of up-front work. The Bill will enable the Crown Estate, working in partnership with GB Energy, to identify opportunities to invest in things like supply chain and in preparation and planning for the seabed work, and to identify the cost profiles that might relate to the projects that are being developed. That will facilitate the deals that we wish to make with private sector suppliers to unlock those opportunities. We see this as an important enabling mechanism to take advantage of the opportunities we have in the south-west and other parts of the country.

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15:41 Matt Rodda (Labour)

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in today’s debate. I wish to speak in favour of the Bill and to make a few brief points, both general ones about wider policy and some in relation to my constituency. I wish to cover the issue of the Crown Estate in central London. I shall then move on to the estate’s property around the coastline, and, finally, I shall come on to some of what I hope will be significant wider benefits of the just transition to a green economy.

Secondly, let me move to the issues of the coastline. It is worth noting that the UK is a leader in offshore wind. We need to recognise the benefits of the past few years, particularly the move to the majority of British energy being generated by low carbon sources, particularly offshore wind. However, there is a need for a new, significant additional step up, which requires the mapping of new areas of seabed, new interconnectors, and new grid connectivity at the coast, because the whole of the grid at the moment is designed around a post-war model of large, coal-fired generation inland, so there is significant need for further investment in coastal locations. As my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Steve Race) mentioned earlier, some of that is not particularly well mapped, and part of the work that we are seeing allowed today is the ability of the Crown Estates to map much of its property on the coast or on the seabed more accurately, therefore allowing investment as well as supporting and regulating investment as well. I ask the Chief Secretary whether he could outline further detail of aspects of that, in particular the scope for the Bill to allow for and support more investment in interconnectors to other neighbouring countries, as well as more grid connectivity at the coast itself, which can be a bottleneck for renewable energy coming onshore.

Thirdly, I would like to discuss some of the wider benefits of the Bill and ask some further questions. One of the big challenges with the move towards renewable energy is delays in grid connectivity. I have seen that in my own area when I visited a large solar farm next to the M4 motorway, just outside Reading in the seat occupied by my hon. Friend the Member for Earley and Woodley (Yuan Yang). The connection of this large solar array to the grid was delayed by a year because of a lack of capacity among energy companies and wider infrastructure challenges. I hope the Chief Secretary can provide some further detail on how the Bill will allow further acceleration of grid connectivity. I also hope it will add to the wider green energy economy and that the benefits accruing from it could be felt by some smaller onshore schemes.

I certainly ask the Chief Secretary if he could investigate the possibility for it supporting some smaller schemes. For example, in my area there is an innovative scheme to put a low-head hydro generation scheme on the Thames at Caversham. That generates power for several hundred homes. However, there were significant challenges in installing the scheme. Again, grid connectivity, access to capital and other practical issues delayed the project. Up and down the Thames, and other major rivers, there are many examples of sites that could be used for this straightforward, rapidly deployable form of renewable energy. I would appreciate the Minister writing to me if he is unable to comment directly today.

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15:47 Pippa Heylings (Liberal Democrat)

The objectives of the Bill are to broaden the investment and borrowing powers of the Crown Estate and to strengthen its corporate governance, in order to help accelerate, among other things, the delivery of new renewable energy, particularly offshore wind. We are generally supportive of the Bill and would welcome further scrutiny on issues such as the cap on borrowing; accountability in the relationship with Great British Energy; managing the conflicts between competing interests and values of our seabed and coastline, as mentioned by my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael); community benefit; devolution in Wales; and our climate and nature duty. I will proceed to elucidate those issues.

In the UK, we are off track in meeting our climate targets, following previous years when the Conservatives have dithered and rowed back on pledges. We need to increase investment in renewable energy in order to strengthen our energy security and to help families keep warm and lower their energy bills, particularly during this cost of living crisis. As a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, families and businesses have been left exposed to skyrocketing bills. For far too long we have been reliant on autocrats such as Putin to meet our energy needs.

For many years, however, the Crown Estate has been constrained in its ability to borrow through the Treasury, forcing it—as we understand it—to resort to selling off assets in order to fund its investments for the future. The changes proposed in the Bill, in partnership with Great British Energy, hold the potential to unlock investment in vital infrastructure across supply chains, ports and green energy sectors, and to accelerate progress by unblocking the huge delays in the delivery of new green energy, which is desperately needed following the slow progress made under the previous Government.

During the debate in the Lords, an undertaking was given that the framework agreement would be updated to include a definition of the meaning of sustainable development as regards the Crown Estate, with explicit reference to part 1 of the Climate Change Act 2008—the targets for 2050—as well as section 56 of that Act, and to sections 1 to 3 of the Environment Act 2021 regarding nature recovery. I look forward to seeing an updated version of the framework agreement to reassure us that this definition of sustainable development has been included.

This Bill presents a trident of opportunity. It can enhance energy security, reduce household bills and bring us closer to achieving our net zero targets, but we cannot afford to lose sight of the need for financial accountability, the duty to protect nature, the need to devolve to Wales, and the need to ensure that all communities are included in the crucial journey to net zero.

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15:57 Henry Tufnell (Labour)

In our United Kingdom, one of our biggest and most powerful natural resources is wind. To cut bills, deliver energy security and achieve net zero, we have to become to wind what Saudi Arabia is to crude oil. Off the coast of my wonderful, coastal, diverse and rural constituency of Pembrokeshire, we have an abundance of wind, but thankfully not much hot air. However, 12 miles offshore—where that glorious wind blows with such regularity, majesty and force that it would make Aeolus proud—the seabed is owned by none other than the Crown Estate.

In the past few years, creativity in international industrial policy has moved on, leaving the UK in danger of trailing behind. The United States and the European Union are actively incentivising investment in domestic supply chains, justified by their need for national energy security and urgent acceleration to net zero. To keep pace internationally, we must grasp the nettle and do it fast. The Crown Estate must utilise its own financial resources to make enabling investments that crowd in private investment into UK supply chains, such as ports and other coastal facilities for floating wind.

Over the last year I have been doing everything I can to engage constructively with the Crown Estate, but, unfortunately, I have yet to secure any assurances that it will utilise its financial resources for the benefit of our energy security, our jobs of the future and our acceleration to net zero. We cannot sit by and let the conflict between raising national income via annual option fees and incentivising early investment to develop regional supply chains ruin the chances of bringing children out of poverty and giving young people in areas such as mine back home in Pembrokeshire good, secure, long-term and well-paid jobs.

The Bill should give full rein to the Crown Estate to explore all such options to maximise domestic supply chains, particularly for floating offshore wind. The population of south Wales and the south-west will never forgive us if we do not seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to redevelop their regional economies. The Crown Estate has an absolutely pivotal role to play here, and one that speaks to all the King has done across much of his career to address climate change and align business interests with the rejuvenation of economically deprived regions.

There should also be consideration of non-price factors in lease auctions, especially weightings allocated to the sustainability of supply chains, which would give a lifeline to communities in Port Talbot, and the resilience of supply chains, also known as energy security, which are likely to favour geographical port-to-offshore project sites such as my own in Milford Haven in Pembrokeshire. There have been examples of and precedents for this, as in the recent EU Net-Zero Industry Act.

We need this Bill to equip the Crown Estate with powers to introduce non-price factors more directly into the seabed rights auction process—for example, by offering a fee discount, as is done in the United States, for supply chain investments that reduce the risk of offshore wind projects being delayed due to international supply bottlenecks, which in turn would accelerate our progress to a net zero power sector and protect UK energy security.

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16:03 Llinos Medi (Plaid Cymru)

The Crown Estate owns 65% of Wales’s foreshore and riverbeds, and more than 50,000 acres of land. Recent rising demand for renewable energy projects has resulted in the value of the land sky-rocketing. In 2007, the asset value of the Crown Estate in Wales was £21.1 million, and in 2023 this reached £853 million. Correspondingly, profits generated from these assets have also increased. Net revenue profit across the Crown Estate rose from £345 million in 2020 to £1.1 billion in 2024. Profits generated from Wales’s natural resources are, however, not retained for the Welsh public purse; instead they leave Wales and are sent to the Treasury and the sovereign grant. In contrast, in Scotland the Crown Estate is devolved and profits from Scottish natural resources are transferred to the Scottish Government. In 2024 the sum was estimated to be a record £108.3 million. How can the Government justify Welsh profits being sent to the Treasury and the monarch when in Scotland they are held back and put back into the Scottish purse? The situation is worse than that, with Welsh councils having to pay lease fees simply to use the land which is owned by the Crown Estate. In 2023 the sum was nearly £300,000. With huge pressures on council budgets, how can that be justified?

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16:09 Jayne Kirkham (Labour)

The partnership between the Crown Estate and GB Energy has the potential to be a huge force for good, spearheading the development of offshore renewable energy in a speedy but sustainable way and laying the groundwork for our future energy security, building local communities, infrastructure and supply chains in some of the most left-behind and deprived areas of the UK. With a unified strategy between all levels of the public sector, including this public corporation, and faithful allegiance to the aim of clause 3, the achievement of sustainable development in the UK could be the key that unlocks the future potential of the Celtic sea and hopefully kick-starts Cornwall’s clean energy revolution.

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16:13 Angus MacDonald (Liberal Democrat)

I will speak about the Crown Estate’s borrowing powers and the broadening of its investment scope. These changes are intended to enhance the Crown Estate’s capacity to support our ambitious goals for renewable energy, nature recovery and economic growth. The Bill is undoubtedly a significant step forward in enabling the Crown Estate to play a greater role in the transition towards net zero. I fully support its efforts and ambitions.

I want to focus on a critical element that is close to my heart, and perhaps even more familiar to my colleagues, as I bang on about it. That subject is, of course, community benefits. Those of us in remote and rural Britain pay far more for energy than those who can access mains gas, and we also have a much higher level of poverty; especially fuel poverty. Communities hosting renewable energy projects, and particularly those overlooking offshore wind farms, deserve to see tangible benefits from those developments. The Bill presents an opportunity to ensure that offshore wind farm projects—indeed, all renewable energy projects—not only meet our national and global ambitions but provide meaningful real-world advantages to the people most impacted by them.

Funnily enough, as a Highland councillor, it is a subject that I have spent many years working on. Highland council—I know this does not relate to the Crown Estate in England and Wales—had £9.1 million of community benefits and Scotland as a whole had £23 million. This is an industry worth hundreds of billions of pounds across the whole of Britain, so we should have, say, 5% of that as community benefits, which would be transformational for Cornwall, Devon, Pembrokeshire and indeed Scotland. I encourage the House to consider how the Bill could establish a robust framework for community benefits that could serve as a model for renewable energy projects across the whole of the UK, working closely with the Scottish Crown Estate.

The Bill represents a vital step forward in enabling the UK to meet its net zero targets and enhance energy security. However, it is equally vital that we legislate to include statutory powers for the Crown Estate in England and Wales, and indeed in Scotland, to ensure that these transformative projects see their fair share of community benefits for communities.

The Bill represents a vital step forward in enabling the UK to meet its net zero targets and enhance energy security. However, it is equally vital that we legislate to include statutory powers for the Crown Estate in England and Wales, and indeed in Scotland, to ensure that these transformative projects see their fair share of community benefits for communities.

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16:21 Jim Allister (TUV)

In Northern Ireland I have seen proposals for offshore energy, particularly in the South Down area, that have provoked great and rightful opposition from the fishing industry, leading to substantial difficulties. Yet it is quite clear that where the Bill talks about sustainable development, it is not in respect of the historic use of our seas as fishing grounds but in respect of our seas as sites for offshore wind energy. As another hon. Member said, there is a tension between offshore wind farms and fishing. It seems from the Bill that the Government have made up their mind about which is the priority. We have heard in this debate that the definition of sustainable development specific to the Bill will be very much orientated to the climate change theology. It will therefore place the need for wind farms above the needs of the fishing industry, which will not serve the interests of our coastal communities well. There is a need to reinstate some balance in that regard.

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16:29 Dave Robertson (Labour)

Alongside that point, there is another really important issue. There has perhaps not been enough focus on the real value of the Bill in helping us to reach our net zero goals. This week, in large parts of my constituency a large number of farmers have again found their fields replaced by some type of aquatic environment because of flooding. Yet again, King’s Bromley has almost been cut off. Climate change is real. Climate change is here. It is having an economic impact and a social impact—a real-world impact. We need to take steps to achieve our goals. Allowing the Crown Estate to partner with Great British Energy in the way the Bill proposes, allowing it to drive down the carbon cost of our energy and help us to move to that just transition, will not only cut energy bills everywhere in the country—Lichfield, Burntwood, the villages and everywhere—but drive up investment and bring economic growth everywhere across the UK. It will also help us to meet our obligations on the climate crisis, which will have a material impact on the lives of our children, our children’s children and all generations to come.

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16:33 Melanie Onn (Labour)

Having worked with the Crown Estate in a previous role before returning to this place, I must say that I have had a slightly different experience from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid and South Pembrokeshire (Henry Tufnell). I know that in recent years the Crown Estate has sought to expand the areas of work in which it actively engages, and has provided immense support for the renewables sector. We should bear in mind that there has been a collective understanding—not just within our Government—that for energy security purposes we must, as a minimum, look at renewable energy sources to supplement our other energy sources as we progress, and as we view the global economics and the changing impact of the energy industry and the way in which others are maximising this change to encourage wealth into their countries.

The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who is my co-chair on the all-party parliamentary group on fisheries, rightly raised the issues and concerns that the fishing communities will have. However, in Committee in the Lords, there was a conversation about the regional wealth funds that the Bill will create. It seems to me that there is a prize opportunity for support and training for the fishing industry, to make it work alongside the renewables sector and to look at the opportunities that will come from the decarbonisation happening in that sector when it comes to offshore vessels and flexibility of service, so that a fishing vessel is not just a fishing vessel. Can it be used for multiple purposes? Can it be used for surveys? It can, because fishing vessels are already being used for surveys. There is an opportunity for the Bill to support those other industries, and we should not lose sight of that.

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16:50 Luke Charters (Labour)

However, the Bill is not just about numbers on a balance sheet; it is also about impact. Through the Crown Estate’s role in renewable energy, the legislation will support the creation of new projects, secure our domestic energy production and unlock up to £60 billion in private sector investment. That is the kind of forward-thinking approach we need to create a secure and prosperous future.

I always agree with my hon. Friend. He will recognise the impact the Bill brings not only to the Crown Estate but to GB Energy, which was one of the first initiatives implemented by the new Government. Taken together with the Great British Energy Bill, these are two pieces of thoughtful, complementary legislation that will support our green energy transition and economic growth—what a stark contrast to the previous Government, who not only ran out of ideas but failed to make the few ideas they had work in the first place.

The interaction between the Crown Estate Bill and the Great British Energy Bill is vital. In York Outer, we have a number of exciting projects that are ready to go and exemplify how these changes can drive forward our ambitions for a clean, secure energy future. For example, proposed battery storage facilities in York Outer could become critical national infrastructure for our local energy network, and Hessay solar farm was awarded funding from the contracts for difference scheme a few months ago. I welcome the exploration of wind projects, such as the Harewood Whin green energy park and the North Wigginton onshore wind project. Just today, we discovered that wind power was Britain’s largest source of electricity in 2024, topping gas-fired power plants for the first time in history. With the Crown Estate Bill, we can make even more projects like those in York Outer possible, unlocking clean energy for my region and beyond.

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17:01 James Murray (Labour)

We heard from the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Llinos Medi), who asked questions about the devolution of the Crown Estate and its functions to Wales. Some of the points she raised were addressed by my hon. Friends, but it is important to recognise that the proposed powers in the Bill will be of huge benefit to Wales. Combined with its existing scale, expertise and track record, the Crown Estate is uniquely placed to help drive the activities required, such as de-risking and developing offshore renewable energy and other emerging offshore technologies to realise the potential of the Celtic sea. I would be concerned that further devolution of the Crown Estate in the manner suggested could fragment the renewable energy market and undermine the strong international investor confidence in the UK to the detriment of both Wales and the wider UK. It would risk creating further complexity and delay our drive for energy security and net zero at a time when simplicity and accelerated deployment are essential. That is why the Government believe that the existing provisions are the best way to ensure that the assets of the Crown Estate are managed most effectively to benefit people across Wales, England and Northern Ireland.

The hon. and learned Member for North Antrim (Jim Allister) spoke of his concern about environmental impacts. Offshore wind is essential to meeting our net zero and energy security objectives, which I hope he supports, but to get the wider balance right, the habitat regulations assessment process ensures that we can deliver our offshore wind requirements while maintaining environmental protections. The Government are also consulting on revisions to the national planning policy framework to increase support for renewable energy schemes in order to tackle climate change while safeguarding environmental resources.

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