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My Lords, I fully support my noble friend Lady Neville-Rolfe in her general statement about what needs to be done and in her specific criticisms and support for measures in this Bill. It is right that the best way out of the financial hole the Government find themselves in again is by growth. That is a cross-party idea on which we all agree.

Unfortunately, this Government have one main hope, which is that a closer relationship with the EU and taking more EU laws into our system will give them extra growth, whereas all the evidence of the past shows the opposite. Our growth rate halved when we were in the EEC compared with 20 years before we joined it, because of the damage that laws and extra taxes did to our economy after we signed up to first the customs union and then the complete single market. If we look at the leaks and possibilities around the reset, it is practically all cost and no benefit—it is Britain giving in and becoming a rule taker. The rules will be more restrictive on some of our industries that were beginning to benefit from not having to take on all the extra rules that the EU has been legislating. There will be a considerable financial bill with the extra costs of Erasmus, the administrative levies, maybe a solidarity levy and the loss of £6 billion of fish over a 12-year period. I am afraid the Government will not find growth there.

We are today focusing on this set of three limited measures. Like my noble friend, I think two of them are modestly beneficial. It seems perfectly reasonable to increase the mileage allowances given the way that costs have gone over recent years. The previous Government had not done it, and therefore it is perfectly welcome. It is also helpful to a haulage industry in great distress—because volumes are not ideal and because wage, tax and, above all, energy costs have gone up—to be given some relief, though the Government have chosen a rather modest form of relief in this VED reduction.

I have two criticisms. First, I am not sure that a year for VED relief is the right period. I do not think we can guarantee that, miraculously, in a year’s time, other costs will reduce and they will not need this help any more. It would have been wiser to keep it open-ended to see what happens, particularly to energy costs. It is also concentrated on the heavier, bigger end of the commercial fleet. There are a lot of other businesses, particularly small businesses, struggling with the cost of smaller vehicles where there is no help offered. That is a pity, and it would be good if the Government looked again at the full range of businesses and the question of duration, because it may be that this judgment, while helpful, does not go far enough and is not over the right time period.

The biggest item, which I object to quite strongly, is the generator levy. It is quite true, as the Minister pointed out, that this was first introduced by the previous Government. I liked it no more then than I like it now; I made critical remarks to Ministers and tried to get them not to do it. If you are going to impose a windfall tax, it should be a genuine windfall tax geared to a level of price or profit that you have decided to designate as windfall. What has happened is that the last Government and now this one have built this windfall tax into all their Budgets as a regular feature, regardless of what the regional price of oil and gas turns out to be in the months or years ahead. It would be much more convincing as a windfall measure if it were geared to a price target and/or a profit target, came in and was fiercer when there was genuine windfall profit and dropped out as soon as there was not. The Minister will know, observing world markets, that with the continuing uncertainty created by the Ukraine war and the war in the Middle East, we are seeing pretty big volatile swings, particularly in oil prices. That will make a huge difference to the profitability of the businesses being taxed through windfall taxes. I would like the Government to think again about the whole principle of windfall taxation. If they want a windfall tax, it should be targeted and very clearly based on genuine windfall profits.

I have one further worry about the Government’s strategy over energy, which is illustrated by the tinkering measures in this legislation. They have gone in favour of very dear energy, with very high carbon taxes, emissions trading taxes and general impositions—fuel duties and all the rest of it. They say that they have net-zero reasons for this, but I think they also have revenue-raising reasons. They see it as one of the easiest ways forward without violating the central manifesto pledges. Now they realise, correctly, that they are overdoing it. With all the tax, the cost of energy is extreme. This country has a particularly virulent case of it, which is making us uncompetitive and losing us jobs and business, and therefore other tax revenues. So now the Government are in the business of finding ways of parcelling out modest subsidies or rebates on this excessive taxation in the hope that they will see them through and enable them to keep some business going.

I fear that the Government should come to the conclusion that they are not giving enough back to enough businesses and people. If Ministers look out there in the marketplace, they will see jobs being cancelled or lost, vacancies not becoming available, turnover not growing and profits turning into losses. There are factory closures coming through in all the high energy-using areas that we have talked about before, and the closure of oil and gas is having knock-on effects for refining and petrochemicals. We are seeing an industrial collapse mainly led and generated by excessively expensive energy. Offering a few bits back will not solve the problem.

I am glad the Government have now expanded the number of businesses that will get some kind of energy rebate to 10,000, but that is by no means all the businesses out there that are suffering badly from dear energy. They are not offering enough back because they are taking lumps out. They also wish to make it worse by joining the even more expensive EU carbon trading and emissions trading schemes, and introducing the CBAM to catch anybody who dares import higher energy-using products. I ask them please to think again. I want them to succeed in creating more jobs, promoting growth and getting investment and incomes up. This will do the opposite; dear energy is a killer.

My Lords, this is a very strange Bill; it is a Bill in search of a purpose, which proposes and transfers substantial powers to a regulatory body but which gives us no road map for how those powers are going to be used. In the debates we have had so far and in the amendments we are looking at this afternoon, it is inevitable that there will be amendments to try to give the Bill a purpose, to limit the use of the powers, because their use has not been explained, and to get some better regulation directly into the Bill, given the absence of any suggestion for improvements in the legislation that we have before us. That includes some very good proposals that we will come to later to improve the lot of disabled travellers, for example. I can understand why people want to get something worth while into the Bill, which is otherwise this rather strange transfer of powers, in order to be able to trust this independent body. We know that there is no urgency about this because we know from the impact assessment that there will not be any costs or benefits for the foreseeable future, and that the CAA will be given about a year after the successful passage of the Bill, if it goes through, to contemplate and review.

I support my noble friend because he is trying to give the Bill an overriding purpose, which should be entirely at one with the manifesto, the plans and the stated intentions of both the outgoing and the incoming Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. I think we all agree, across parties, that it would be good if our economy grew faster than it has been growing since the great crash of 2008-09. Surely we can all see that this requires a sector-by-sector response, as well as changes in general economic policy that are not the subject of this debate.

My noble friend is right to try to make growth and competitiveness the twin aims. I suspect that the Minister is very sympathetic, but he will need to get colleagues and others to co-operate in speeding up work to try to ensure that the aviation sector—which is normally a fast-growing, modernising, important sector, particularly in an island country that needs good transport links—is one of the attractive means of increasing our activity and our growth, creating more and better-paid jobs.

This legislation covers issues that could make a very material contribution to that faster growth. It covers the question of airport slots. Will there be more of them, and is there a policy to try to create more capacity? What is the Government’s view on airport expansion? Will there be more expansion of smaller and regional airports to take some of the strain off the main centre in London? What is the plan for London, and when will we have the very large number of slots expanded? It is clearly under great pressure of demand.

Regulations on charging are mentioned but not detailed in this legislation. We have already heard from my noble friend about the possible tax charges on certain types of business premise, but we really need to hear from the Government what the charging policy is going to be for scarce airport space, particularly in London, where we are becoming uncompetitive against Schiphol, Paris, Frankfurt and some of the other continental airports that are our natural competitors. If you become not very price competitive, you start to lose the interlining and air-switching business, which can be handled by a big intersection airport such as Amsterdam just as well as it can be handled by Heathrow. We need a bit more guidance on how these regulations might develop and be included.

I urge the Minister to take off one or two of the veils and give us some idea of how these policies on improved regulation for the cost of use of airports, the amount of airport space, the allocation of slots and the general conduct of air traffic in our country might be deployed. I find it odd that, two years into a Government with a very strong majority and a strong mandate for quite a limited manifesto, they do not seem to have those burning desires, for example, to get our aviation sector really growing quickly. They are not answering the questions about these very basic things. How much airport space? How do you allocate the slots? What is the pricing? How much support do you give to the industry? What will the regulatory impact be on that industry? We all want safety regulation and good regulation so that the customer gets a decent deal. We do not want so much regulation that it throttles the industry here as an extremely mobile and fast-moving industry can shift its assets the following day to another hub airport somewhere else, taking a lot of the business away.

There is no point in the Rachel reeves Mansion House speech today unless she has it cleared by Mr Burnham. The announcements she makes could b e cancelled next week when and if a new Chancellor takes up the post, or sidelined in the confusion and demands for new initiatives as a new Chancellor tries to grapple with the job.

The speech has been well heralded, with briefings telling us what will be in it. The centrepiece we read will be easier access to commercial loans for smaller companies. The Chancellor is right to realise that smaller companies have been badly hit by her blizzard of extra taxes, with NI on jobs, business rates on premises and IHT on passing on a family business. She should be able to see that smaller and medium sized businesses have struggled to make profits, cancelled new recruitment, and in some case have had to get rid of staff to try to make the books balance. Encouraging them to take out more loans to pay running costs or to help survive is bad advice. What they need is some relief from the tax attack, and some boost to their turnovers from a more prosperous country having more money to spend on the goods and services they supply.

The Chancellor may be so ill informed she thinks smaller companies need easier access to cash to expand. In  order to expand you need a growing market which she has done her best to stifle by taxing people with a bit of money to spend.   You do not expand your business until it is profitable and generating cash, and has potential customers to serve that you cannot fit in to your existing capacity.  The Chancellor needs to get to know the realities of her low growth bloated publlic sector approach.

What small businesses need to expand is more self generated cashflow. Cash generation comes from  more turnover and from realistic costs. It comes from generating profit. The problem is Labour still seem to see profit as exploitation or as something the state should confiscate. They do not see that the main use of profit is for a company to spend on expansion. A company can afford to borrow more for new property or equipment if it is generating enough cash to pay some of the costs. Try doing it all on borrowing and the company will struggle to pay the interest, let alone repay the debt when due.

The UK steel industry was nationalised in 1967. It hit peak output of 28 m tonnes in 1970 and spent the rest of its life sacking employees, closing plants and sending huge bills for losses to taxpayers. Under Margaret Thatcher it was turned round, made profitable and privatised. In its turn the privatised industry this century has sacked people and closed works, largely as a result of the UK’s ultra  high energy prices and carbon taxes.

The collapse was biggest 1970-80, taking it down from 28 m to 11.3 mtonnes. The Labour government identified many plants in the Beswick review to close to get costs down. The Thatcher government put through the closures in 1980. The industry expanded strongly to 17.8 m tonnes by 1990 as it became privately owned and profitable. In the 1990 s it performed OK, with output of 15.2 m in 2000. There was then another collapse in the period 2000-2010, taking it down to 9.7 m tonnes. After covid it fell away to 7.1 m in 2020, down to 5.6 m in 2023 as net zero policies kicked in against traditional blast furnaces. Under the current government it has halved again to under 2.5 m tonnes.

The original idea of nationalisation was to concentrate production on five coastal modern integrated works. No sooner had the big public investment been made and the pressures started to close at least one as they could not sell all the product . Ravenscraig was the first to close in 1992, followed by Llanwern in 2001 and Teeside in 2015. We are left with PortTalbot trying to build an electric arc furnace to replace its closed blast furnaces, and Scunthorpe struggling to keep 2 remaining blast  furnaces open.

Mr Burnham is claiming his salary and expenses as an MP but has not been a good attender so far. He  is not speaking out in Parliament about the changes he wants to government policy. We have not heard the details of the Makerfield test for spending and policy.

It looks as if the relaxed timetable for nominations for the Labour leadership and then the delays in arranging the handover from Sir Keir are all designed to ensure Mr Burnham  only takes up the job of PM after the Commons has gone into recess. This will mean MPs have  to wait until early September to hear from the new government and be able to ask them questions.

What Mr Burnham should do is to get the current government to announce that Commons will break for the summer recess on 23 July, the date for recess in the Lords, instead of the premature July 16 th in the present timetable. That would allow the new PM to make a statement Monday 20 th of the main changes he wants in government policy. The Chancellor could update the House  on 21  July  to reassure markets about the new governments finances, and the Home Secretary could tell us how they will handle borders , crime and migration on 22 July. Any other department facing serious change could also be fitted in for a statement.

Why doesn’t  Mr Burnham want to start the task of winning over lost voters and reassuring MPs that he does know the changes people want? It looks as if he hasn’t a clue what to do to bring his facile  soundbites into reality. Number 10 is not a good hiding place for a timid or unsure PM.

I have long opposed the policies to stop us buying and making new petrol and diesel cars, and imposing high carbon taxes. It is wrong  to rely on  importing oil and gas instead of getting more of our own domestic gas and oil  out of the ground and wrong to  give grants to farmers to wild or to cover land with solar panels which would otherwise grow food. These are policies which succeed in boosting world CO 2 whilst closing down our factories and farms. They are self defeating in their own carbon counting terms, and self harming on a huge scale as we see the surge in closures and lost jobs they cause.

If Mr Burnham is serious about re industrialising he needs to rebuild our oil and gas industry, re open our refineries, scrap our carbon taxes and emissions charges. He is more likely to go the other way. He wants to give in to the EU more, so that means accepting their higher carbon taxes, their carbon tariffs and emissions trading scheme. These will all add to the closures and job losses Starmer has been racking up.

Kemi Badenoch rightly says to Conservatives we need to oppose these policies. Rumour has it that Burnham may do a bad deal with Miliband and  his net zero disaster machine to allow the Jackdaw gas field to go ahead, but not Rosebank. We need Jackdaw, Rosebank, and all the rest. We need to start up exploration again. Importing LNG weakens our economy, exports tax revenues that we could have for ourselves, and loses us well paid paid jobs. It generates more than 3 times as much CO2 as getting our own gas out and sending it by pipe to UK customers. There is likely to be plenty more gas under our feet and under our seas that we could get out without environmental harm using modern techniques of deviated drilling and reservoir management.

Mr Burnham will soon find out the hard way that government entails making choices. You cannot have a policy of re industrialising without scrapping the crazy net zero attacks on UK plants and energy. You cannot have a policy of faster growth and a policy of closer alignment with the EU, as EU alignment means higher taxes, more EU charges and taxes, and more EU rules to lose us business. Being in the single market gave us slower growth. Cosying up to it will help them take more market share away from our farmers, energy producers and manufacturers.

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Mr Burnham tells us he is going to re industrialise by buying more of our defence equipment from UK factories.

This happens to have been a Starmer government policy. It was always part of Conservative defence planning. Even the EU allowed some leeway on its procurement rules  to recognise the wish of member states to have some domestic capacity. Still, there is nothing wrong with borrowing or continuing with old ideas.

What is wrong is adopting a popular slogan with no research into whether it is happening already and with no new ideas on how you can implement an established policy better. When Mr Burnham gets round to talking to the military about buying weapons, and to appointing a Defence Secretary to help him, he will be told some uncomfortable truths,

We need to buy quite a lot of US weapons because they have technologies and products  we do not have for ourselves. We have bought some support ships abroad because they were under half the price and could be delivered in under half the time compared to UK yards.  How will Mr  Burnham find enough good value modern technology products to buy in the UK after so many factory closures and lack of R and D?

Mr Burnham has also announced a stupid and damaging policy of getting closer to the EU. They will only allow us to do that by relying more on imports from them and sending them more money.Their  demands to foster more defence cooperation are particularly costly and one sided. I am more inclined to believe Mr Burnham will make more punishing  concessions to the EU than he will magic new weapons from UK factories and shipyards.

Try doing some homework , Mr Burnham, before giving us unrealistic  soundbites.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Fox, for reminding us of the importance of contingent liabilities and the need for the Government to complete due diligence before any acquisition. He rightly says that in a hypothetical case—not British Steel Scunthorpe—it might be necessary to move quickly, and then there will have to be some trade-offs. But if we are talking about British Steel Scunthorpe, there is obviously no need to move quickly. The Government moved very quickly many months ago, and there can still be proper analysis. I would hope, indeed, that as Ministers and their chosen executives are now responsible for British Steel, while they do not own the assets, they would have done a lot of this very important preparatory work on discovering the contingent liabilities.

Where in Amendment 11, the contingent liabilities are mentioned by category, there is an omission which could be extremely important: liabilities to employees for past problems with safety and health, and—God forbid that this does not happen—for any liabilities that might follow now that the business is under the operation or control of Ministers and their chosen executives, if some safety or other health problem arose. Where people are running these very large, industrial businesses, with the obvious threats of a very powerful fire in the furnace and the dangers of extremely hot liquid steel being moved around, it is crucial that Ministers and their chosen executives have taken all the right decisions on making sure people have the right protective clothing, there are the right protocols, and there is an absolute segregation for the employees from the risks. There also needs to be an understanding of whether there have been any longer-term health risks from the atmosphere around the blast furnace or the intense heat of some working conditions.

If Ministers have not already done so, they need to take this very seriously. Whenever I was responsible for a big plant, my main nightmare was that something would go wrong on safety, and that would be unforgivable. I am not expecting the Government to give ground on these amendments, but it would reassure the House and the wider public if the Minister could tell us more about where they have got to, at least in general terms, with exposing the contingent liabilities on pensions, safety and employee health, as well as with the other financial matters mentioned clearly in these amendments.