Energy Bill

As the hon. Member for North Southwark and Bermondsey (Simon Hughes) said, it is sad that we will not have more chance to debate these issues today. We have quite rightly had a substantial debate on carbon capture and storage and emissions performance standards, and it shows the folly and shortcomings of the timetabling of debates that we cannot have more time to discuss such important energy issues at a time when they are so relevant to people in this country. I welcome the Government's tidying-up amendments. They are not likely to win any plain English awards, as they are rather obscure, but we understand that they are important to make the Bill more substantive and put things in order. We also welcome very much the Government's response on the 65-day notification period. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on how he has pushed the matter forward. A 65-day period is simply too long and was unacceptable, and it is quite right that Ministers should now take a power to address the problem and require a reduction in the notification period if Ofgem does not act as we would all expect. I understand that the Minister's hope and preference is that tariffs should be announced in advance, so that there is no retrospection at all, or at worst within 10 days. That would return us to the situation that appertained before the Government changed the notification period to 65 days. We welcome that and hope that it can happen. We also welcome the sunset clause, which is appropriate in these circumstances. We need to act quickly, and that provision will put pressure on the Government and the regulator to do so in an appropriate way. There are other issues that we wished to address, such as concerns about profitability. We recognise that there is a case for openness and information for consumers, but one has to question why it should be uniquely on energy bills. When we buy a car or a holiday we do not need to know the company's profits, and with so many tariffs in existence it is hard to relate the profits of an energy company to the particular tariff that a customer is on and the contribution that they are making to those profits. Those matters need to be explored further with the Government, and we hope to have the chance to do so in due course.