Energy Bill

As the hon. Gentleman well knows, private Members' Bills are not taken up by the Front Bench, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Worcestershire (Peter Luff) made an interesting point, and if it is relevant I am sure that it can be taken up in the discussions on renewable energy that the Minister will be promoting. The Bill contains no strategy to deal with fuel poverty, one of the most pressing issues facing the country. Yes, it gives Ministers reserve powers to intervene, but where is the commitment to the only sustainable way in which to reduce fuel poverty, improved home energy efficiency? That is completely absent from the Bill, although it is surely beyond politics and is something that we should get on with. When people's fuel bills are £1,200 a year and more, and they can save money and carbon dioxide and create jobs by improving insulation, how can a serious Energy Bill possibly be completely silent on the issue? It beggars belief. At a time when we need £200 billion of investment in new generating capacity, we know that that investment is not being made. That is partly because people are so uncertain about the policy environment, including the price of carbon, which has been low and very volatile. Where are the measures in the Bill providing for a more stable carbon pricing regime? There is a better way. This was the moment at which the whole House could have united—as we did when we discussed the Climate Change Bill—in devising an ambitious, progressive solution to a crisis that commands all our attention. The Bill, however, contains nothing to close the energy gap, nothing to secure our gas supplies, nothing to accelerate renewables, nothing to improve energy efficiency at home, and nothing to address the price of carbon. What a disappointment it is. I am sorry if the Secretary of State has been distracted, whether by writing the manifesto or by the silly dividing-line nonsense that he tried earlier, when he should have been applying himself to turning his policy thoughts into proposals in the Bill. Let me now deal with the Bill's contents, slight though they are. Given the scale of the challenges, it is a pitiful Bill, and not even a Bill that produces any action today. In the case of each of its three components—carbon capture and storage, Ofgem, and social tariffs—it merely enables Ministers to take powers which they cannot begin to implement without new statutory instruments in a new Parliament, probably following further consultations. Where is the ambition and the urgency that we require from the Secretary of State? Of the 37 clauses in the Bill, 34 are enabling, consequential or technical; only three make actual changes to the way in which things work at present. Let me give my response to the three measures that the Bill does contain. It seems that we do agree on the importance of carbon capture and storage, but not on its urgency. Britain is ideally placed to be in the vanguard of the deployment of carbon capture and storage. We have depleted gas wells and saline aquifers in the North sea. We have along our coastline some of the industries that can lead the world in this regard: processing industries and marine engineering businesses. We have some of the best research establishments in the world, and we should be leading the world. It is important that we do, because carbon capture and storage corresponds to the experience curve: the sooner we get on with it, the more we can establish a lead. There is no great scientific breakthrough for which people are waiting. Given that the present Prime Minister announced plans to support carbon capture and storage in his 2006 Budget, why did the Government wait a further 18 months before launching a competition to deliver a single carbon capture and storage plan? It took until November 2007 for them to do that. More than two years have passed, and we still do not have a winner. Meanwhile, the chance for Britain to lead the world is slipping away. China, Australia, Canada, Germany, Norway and Belgium have all used that delay to overtake Britain. The Bill proposes a new levy on electricity to pay for carbon capture and storage. The first question to be asked is why we have had to wait for a Bill that cannot possibly receive Royal Assent until 2010 to pay for a scheme that was first mooted in 2006. If it needs this levy, why was it not in the 2006, the 2007 or the 2008 Queen's Speech? We believe that, when it came to payment, the first choice should have been the revenues from the European Union emissions trading scheme. The Secretary of State tells me that they have been spent, although they do not begin to accrue in this phase until 2012. If they have indeed been spent, there must be an assumption of the amount that they were going to raise. Let me ask the Secretary of State now what that estimate is, and where it appears in the Red Book. I am happy to give way to him. [Hon. Members: "No answer."] This is typical Labour party economics: the money has been spent on something that is completely invisible and the Secretary of State cannot even find it in the Red Book. No wonder we are in the mess we are in.