European Union (Amendment) Bill

I am grateful to the Minister for the good-natured and thorough way in which he sought to answer some of the worries raised in this debate. I am not in the least bit reassured. When we debate energy in this Chamber, we do it rather well. A great reservoir of expertise is here and a good deal of apprehension about what is coming on the energy policy front, because it is clear that many difficulties are looming to which we have perhaps not given enough attention, so keen have we been to fix our eyes on the longer horizons of saving the planet and so on. There will not be any planet to save if we get all our energy problems wrong. Throughout this debate there has flowed a quality of—what can I call it?—mandarinesque naivety about what is really happening in energy policy throughout the whole of the European membership. We are playing games. We talk about liberalising—and of course that is right. We dream about a better European energy market. We are, as is often said, playing cricket while others are pushing their own national monopolies, securing their own energy supplies and getting on with the job of looking after the number one requirement of a national Government, which is to ensure that energy flows continue. I heard the noble Lords, Lord Wallace and Lord Hannay, assert the virtues of the regional energy market. There is no regional energy market. It is pure imagination to assume that our neighbours, whatever they may say in their rhetoric, are pursuing the free energy market policies required to create such an entity. We know the realities. While the continental champions E.ON, EDF, Iberdola and others are supplying us and taking over our concerns, nobody asks how many French consumers or German consumers are being supplied by British concerns. The answer is none at all. The whole thing is lopsided. Our neighbours in Europe, while talking about common energy policies and drafting them to put into this treaty, are getting on with their own energy policies in quite different ways and doing separate deals with the Russians, as in the case of the Germans, and so on. That is the reality.