Energy Bill

The right hon. Gentleman has raised two important points with which I hope to deal later. I pay tribute to him for his work on fuel poverty, and I agree with him that the regulator's role needs to be addressed. The Secretary of State and I have crossed swords a couple of times and he tends not to follow my way of thinking, but in a rare lapse, I agree with one of his comments. We do need a diverse range of energy sources; I do not think there is any dispute about that. As I began to say earlier, this is a ““Big Energy”” Bill reflecting the spirit of the old Department of Trade and Industry, the utilities, and the business way of looking at things. I am Liberal Democrat spokesman on the environment with responsibility for energy, and I view energy policy very much through the window of the environment. From that point of view, the Bill is profoundly disappointing. It contains very little on matters such as energy efficiency. Surely an Energy Bill should legitimately deal with that, but where is it? There should be so much more about energy conservation—in the home, for example. Where is all of that? Where is the serious material on microgeneration and distributed power? The Bill should have addressed those matters; it had the opportunity to be visionary instead of, essentially, being about big energy and more of the same. I want to address three main areas: the policy on renewables and its failure to date; the issue of new nuclear; and the omissions from the Bill.