Energy Bill

We have had a thoughtful, constructive, well-informed debate which, on rare occasions, related to the content of the Bill. Most of the rest of it dealt with wider energy issues. The Secretary of State would probably say that the Bill is so good that we did not need to discuss it in the Chamber. I listened in vain for the words that one usually hears—the senior Back Bencher who says, "This is a great Bill, which deals with the challenges that we face," or the energetic young Back Bencher who is keen to get promotion in the remaining few months, who says, "My constituents will be very grateful that the Government has had the vision to bring forward these vital measures," but they have not been here. The word that has run through the entire debate is "modest". After 12 years, 15 Ministers, countless reviews, consultations and White Papers—more consultation than one could imagine possible—the culmination is a modest Bill. The issues that have come through are clear. The first theme that has run through the debate is the lack of detail in the Bill. We do not know at what level the levy for carbon capture and storage will be set. The hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) asked who would be exempted from the levy. We need to understand that. We need to understand which technologies might be exempted. Will it be low-carbon technologies or zero-carbon technologies? Will micro generation be exempted? We need a great deal more detail before we can give the Bill the approval that it needs. On the fuel poverty issues, the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) asked who would benefit from the fuel poverty measures. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West (Mr. Jones) and the hon. Member for Angus (Mr. Weir) spoke about the need to protect people who live in rural areas and who are dependent on oil or LPG. We need to understand who the Government have it in mind to exempt. My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr. Goodwill) asked who would own the intellectual property from the carbon capture projects. The hon. Member for Angus wanted to know whether the changes in the transmission arrangements would be damaging to investment in Scotland. If the Bill is to get the necessary agreement to proceed to Committee, we must have answers on those details. They cannot be left vague for the Secretary of State to decide in future. We need to know what is in the Government's mind, so that people can clearly understand what is being supported. The second theme of the debate has been the lack of ambition. The hon. Member for Sherwood talked about carbon capture and storage as a competition without end; the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey talked about the slowness of the whole procedure, which has resulted in Britain moving from the top of the international league in CCS and slipping down the table; and the hon. Member for Angus talked about the need to understand the role of gas in the carbon capture model. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) talked a great deal about his concern that there was not more ambition on energy efficiency, but he also managed completely to reinvent Conservative party policy. He was wrong about what it includes, what it might cost and how it would be paid for—but apart from that, he was pretty close. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) talked about the need to be more ambitious in using the carbon price as a key driver of low-carbon technologies, and many hon. Members called for the need to be more supportive of emerging technologies. The hon. Gentleman talked about marine renewables and the absolute insistence that, with all our natural potential for such technology, we should not end up in 20 years' time looking back and saying, "How did we lose that advantage? Why did the Germans, the Danes and the others manage to master that technology? Why didn't we have the leadership that was necessary in those areas?" My hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby talked about the importance of developing energy from waste technologies, because we must change our whole way of thinking. We have to think of waste as a resource, not just as a cost. We have to do so much to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill or landrise, and we must ensure that we deal with it by addressing both the waste issue and the energy issue. My hon. Friend the Member for St. Albans (Anne Main), warming to the cooking oil theme that she has made her own, also made sure that we start to address those issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd, West talked about pump storage and what we are going to do to realise the potential in that area. The hon. Member for Copeland (Mr. Reed) mentioned nuclear power and gave a broadly thoughtful and sensible speech, until it was taken over by some raging creature, and he launched into a vicious attack on the Opposition parties while trying to say that he sought consensus. It was the sort of speech that, when he re-reads it in the morning, may make him wonder whether he got the balance quite right. Running through the debate is the issue of missed opportunities and the recognition that the Bill does not rise to the challenges that we face on energy policy. We face a genuine crisis, but we do not see any measures to address it. Again, I return to the hon. Member for Sherwood, who is the acting Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change. I always thought that he would be a very good Energy Minister. Indeed, there is still time—we have a change every few months—and he could still have the chance to be the Energy Minister before the next election. The hon. Gentleman's words made it sound as if he were being critical of the Conservative party, but, when one listened to what he was saying underneath, one found that he was actually putting the boot into his own Government. There he was, talking about the £200 billion of investment that is so essential, and which we must make. He said that the investment needed a secure framework—but we have been waiting for that for 12 years, and we are still waiting. He talked about the need to work harder to encourage international companies to invest in Britain and to understand the potential that is here, and he also talked about power cuts. The Secretary of State says, "No, there's no risk of cuts," but he writes articles saying that there may be power cuts. Even the Government's own documentation mentions power cuts: there they are, on page 86 of the UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, although it does not say "power cuts", but "demand unserved", which is Government-speak for power cuts, and the equivalent of a city the size of Manchester being without electricity every night for three months. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman told us where we were failing to respond to the size of the challenge. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth, East (Mr. Ellwood), in a very powerful critique, talked about the serious challenge that we face on gas storage. We have just 15 days' storage, and in January we exported through the interconnector 25 million cubic metres of gas a day—the equivalent of 250 Albert Halls of gas every single day being pumped out of this country. Just as we were approaching a dispute between Russia and Ukraine, during the coldest winter for 18 years, our gas storage was down to just four days. Nevertheless, here we have a Bill, and in it the Government do not have a single word to say about gas storage. We have also missed, particularly on this day when the Copenhagen summit is starting, the challenge of discussing what more can be done urgently to tackle the problem of CO2 emissions. Nowhere in the Bill does one see a driving sense of urgency. There is a little bit of movement and change, but no sense that this is a crisis that has to be addressed. The hon. Member for Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire (Nick Ainger)—I am delighted to see him coming in on cue—talked about a lack of the strategic thinking that is needed if we are to see the development of marine technologies such as offshore wind. The Government must take the lead and put in place down the coastline the high-voltage DC cables to connect up those facilities. In terms of failing to recognise the challenges, most telling of all was the Secretary of State's indication that the Government would come forward with a strategy on fuel poverty in the spring. The numbers of people in fuel poverty have gone up, and they need help now, not need proposals after the winter. We need a sense of urgency and a recognition that the Bill must do more than it currently sets out to do. I turn to the key elements in the Bill. On the CCS levy, there has to be a funding mechanism to make carbon capture and storage happen—we completely support that. However, let me ask the Secretary of State again: where is the money from the third round of the EU emissions trading scheme that was promised? How much is in it, and what has it been allocated to? He says that it has all been spent, so what has been done with it? We recognise that if it is not available, the levy may be a way of trying to support that. However, if the Bill is to go into Committee, we need from Ministers a clear explanation of what has happened to the Government's expected revenue from the third round. However, the levy is just part of this. We still do not have the leadership that we require if we are to lead the world in CCS. We were leading, but we have been overtaken by America, Canada, Germany, Abu Dhabi, Norway, Australia and China— critically, given that this whole project was designed to develop a technology that we could sell to the Chinese. We must have more strategic leadership. How will the whole process be handled? What aspect of Government will make CCS happen? Who will be responsible for scoping the potential sites? Will there be oversized pipelines to facilitate the development of clusters? Can we not do still more to speed up the pace of this competition, which has been absurdly slow? We need to move towards a conclusion, and to know who is going to be the winner on the pilot project. The whole aspect of social tariffs and support for consumers brings home how far away we are from achieving the fuel poverty targets set out by the Government, with the legally binding commitments that by 2010 all vulnerable households would be taken out of fuel poverty and that by 22 November 2016 every household in the country would be out of fuel poverty. The Secretary of State may not know if that will happen in the morning or the afternoon of 22 November; nevertheless, it is a clear commitment, and the Government must now recognise that all the movements are in the wrong direction. As the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown said, prices will be rising, and everything that is necessary will be expensive. Of course we support social tariffs, but we want the Bill to go much further. We want much more information on bills so that people can see how much electricity they are using in comparison with their neighbours in similar houses. We want information on bills about CO2 emissions. We want people to be able to see how much less their bill would be if they were on the lowest tariff available from the company, and, perhaps, information on environmental charges. We want those things because they are the ways in which we can help to deal with fuel poverty. In addition, we need a great drive forward on energy efficiency. It is extraordinary that in a Bill that deals with fuel poverty, energy efficiency does not get a mention. The Bill includes proposals on the remit of Ofgem, which has interpreted its new role well. Project Discovery shows that it has been giving good consideration to the issues that face us. However, we need to understand more clearly who is in charge. The Bill suggests that there are equal powers as between the Government and Ofgem, but it is clear to us that in policy terms Government should have primacy. The Bill will do many worthy things, but it is simply not up to the scale of the challenge that we face. We need to attract £200 billion of investment in the next 15 years.