Energy Bill

I am tempted immediately to invite interventions, because of the brilliant timekeeping and discipline shown by all my colleagues. I want to speak in support of the Bill. The Government are to be congratulated on the way in which they have dealt with these extremely difficult issues. They are no longer kicking them into the long grass. However, I also want to endorse the comments made on both sides of the House about what is not in the Bill. I hope that as it passes through the Committee and into its Report stage, we shall see more about fuel poverty and social tariffs, and particularly about rising tariffs, which are one of the most effective means of dealing with fuel poverty and assisting energy conservation. We must also investigate feed-in tariffs, which have proved so successful in Germany. I was struck by the earlier comment by the right hon. Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) about the disconnect between Energy Bill and the Climate Change Bill. He raised the question of whether they should have been combined. He asked whether the Bill dealing with the problem should be linked with the Bill offering some of the solutions. I would go further and point out that if we had a Department of Energy and Climate Change, we would have a completely different kind of Bill. Had we had such a Department 10 years ago, we would already have made far greater progress on renewables and energy efficiency. That is something to ponder. I also want to point out a superb irony in the context of the nuclear debate, on which I want to focus my remarks. The chief lobbyist for the expansion of nuclear power and the creation of a new generation of nuclear power stations is the chief executive of EDF, a company whose nuclear power stations have been built entirely on the back of the French taxpayer in a state that is doing its utmost to prevent the liberalisation of the market. Yet Mr. de Rivaz comes here and tries to tell our Government that he can now build nuclear power stations without taxpayer subsidy in a completely liberalised market. At the same time, however, our Government—who, like every Government in the world, have no experience whatever of regulating nuclear power stations built or operating without subsidy—are assuring the nuclear lobby that there will be no subsidy in the future. We have a kind of twin conspiracy here, whereby the nuclear industry is pretending that it can build these stations without taxpayer subsidy, the Government are pretending that there will be no taxpayer subsidy, but at the same time everybody knows that nuclear can expand only on the back of open-ended taxpayer subsidy. I point that out because I really want to move on from whether we are pro or anti-nuclear, which is no longer the best way to approach the problem. The real issue now is whether nuclear is relevant to climate change, whether it is cost-effective and whether it is timely. It seems to me that a number of my colleagues, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), have produced extremely logical arguments to explain why nuclear is not relevant to the urgent issue of climate change. It also seems to me that if we accept climate change as the imperative for energy policy, we have to focus far more intensively on the growth of renewables and energy efficiency policies to achieve the cuts that will have to be made by 2020. The Stern report was absolutely unequivocal that if we are to avoid dangerous climate change, deep cuts have to be made before 2020 to set us on the right trajectory to make the longer-term cuts by 2050. I commend the nuclear White Paper, as it was an extremely honest document, but the time scale in it shows, as others have pointed out, that there will be no nuclear build until at least 2018—and even then, only if everything goes to plan. In respect of that time scale, therefore, nuclear cannot contribute to the need to have deep CO2 emissions cuts before 2020. Let us also remember that if there is nuclear build before 2020—or, as is hoped, 2018—we are talking only about one nuclear power station. There will not be a new generation of them producing electricity at that time. As the Minister said at Question Time last week, one new 1.2 GW power station will contribute 0.8 per cent. to total energy usage. The fact remains that the contribution of each power station, or even a new generation of 10 new power stations, is marginal in the face of the urgency of the threat of climate change.