My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, is absolutely right to be asking that question. We can go only on the briefs we get.
Unlike the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, I have not been underground very recently, but we do rely on the briefings we get. LSBUD is described as a
“sustainably-funded UK success story”—
okay, give or take a bit of puff—that
“responds to most requests in 5 minutes or less”.
It has
“150+ asset-owners covering nearly 2 million km and 98% of high-risk assets—like gas, electric, and fuel pipelines”.
That sounds as though we are in the same kind of territory. How can the Minister just baldly state that NUAR is entirely different? Can he perhaps give us a paragraph on how they differ? I do not think that “completely different” can possibly characterise this relationship.