Energy Bill

May I echo the comments made by the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) about the Minister and her colleagues? It is a while since I sat on a Standing Committee, but they were incredibly generous in their approach throughout, as was the Minister herself. I therefore agree with the hon. Gentleman, who was also incredibly courteous and well informed in presenting his points on behalf of the Conservative Opposition. The sadness for me is that the Bill was introduced probably three or four years too late. What it needed was the new Department—I have to compliment the Prime Minister on one thing: setting the Department up—which has been effective in looking at some of the core issues facing our society. I compliment both the Secretary of State and the Minister on bringing those issues forward. Our party has had a number of major concerns during the passage of the Bill, some of which were, to be fair, addressed in part in the House of Lords—I am thinking particularly of the determination of what fuel poverty is. Let us remember that we had a discussion in Committee about that definition. The Minister was quite adamant that we could go no further, but since then there has been some movement on the issue in the House of Lords, for which we thank the Minister. However, the difficultly is that an incoming Government, of whatever persuasion, will immediately have to return to the issue, because if they do not, we will not be able to move forward in what I see as three phases. The first issue is carbon capture and storage. Quite frankly, a huge amount of Government effort will be required to make it come to pass. We have had some movement on piping and some thought has gone into the issue of clusters, but that will need to be put into legislation, otherwise, frankly, it will not work. One area that is missing—we genuinely hoped that the Minister would bring it back in the House of Lords—is this. When will the relationship appear between the installation of the carbon capture demonstrators and what will happen to the disposal of carbon dioxide in the North sea? That relationship—a relationship with those who currently have licences to operate in the North sea and who have an obligation to preserve the aquifers in a state in which they can be used—needs to be created, because once that goes and the whole thing collapses, then we will be in a totally different ballgame. We ought to be able to use this moment as a huge business opportunity and fill the aquifers in the North sea with carbon dioxide from a whole range of countries—particularly those in Europe, but also those further afield—using compression techniques. The only other point that I wish to make is about this whole business of feed-in tariffs. What concerns me is this. Just this weekend I came back from my small farm on the west coast of Ireland. I was contemplating the discussions that we had with the Minister about those sources of energy other than gas that people use for their main heating. As I filled up my tank in Ireland, just as I fill it up in north Yorkshire, it struck me that the cost of delivering liquid gas at the moment is astronomical. When it comes to fuel poverty, the need to get people to think of ways in which they can generate their own heat and electricity and feed it back into the grid is crucial, but we also need to consider how to broaden the use of fuel poverty to include those areas that do not have access to natural gas. The Bill is certainly worth putting on the statute back before this Parliament is dissolved, and I hope that when an incoming Government return to this matter, they will treat it with the same compassion and sense of importance that the Minister has shown, and that we can move on to the next stage as quickly as possible.