It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn). I agree with a lot of what he said, particularly his focus on affordability for the people we represent in this House. I will make sure that my remarks address that point.
The first thing we must remember is that we are all on the same side on this Bill; there is huge cross-party support for what we are trying to do. More precisely, we know that for a cleaner, more renewable, cheaper energy system—cheaper for the people we represent—we need to electrify as much as we can and produce that electricity with as much green energy as possible. That includes nuclear power, in order to make sure we have that baseload in place.
I want to talk a little about cost, because until the right hon. Gentleman’s speech, too much of this debate did not address the fact that unless our constituents can pay their bills and businesses can be run affordably, not only do we not have a thriving economy, but we do not have a thriving society. We know what we need to do over the long term to reduce those costs, but we are in a transition, and I will repeat some of the points I made in intervention on the shadow Secretary of State, particularly in relation to gas.
We all support moving to a net zero future, but in the transition to that point we are going to need to expand our gas storage and oil refining capacity in this country.
The Bill needs to do even more than it already does in that regard. I say that not because I want to burn fossil fuels, but because in the transition to get to the place that we know we need to get to—we can argue about how best we achieve that—if our constituents see their bills going through the roof, the support for the net zero agenda will plummet. So I am concerned about making sure that, as we go through this transition, we keep bills down for our constituents while making the necessary investments for the longer term.
Other Members have mentioned the need to invest in our grid. I believe it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) who said that it is ridiculous if we are taking over a decade to plug in new renewable energy into our grid system. I would like more clarity from the Minister and the Government on how, practically, the measures in the Bill will increase the investment in the grid and the speed with which that will happen, because we do not have forever to wait. All of us will hear examples from our constituencies or elsewhere of that huge delay, and all of our strategies and policies do not mean anything unless we can get them plugged into the grid. That requires real urgency and I look forward to the Government explaining more in that regard.
I wish to make two further points, the first of which is on energy performance certificate standards. This is a small thing on some level but it really matters, because for anyone who owns a home, wants to do the right thing, and can afford to make the investments to make their home more energy-efficient, while reducing the cost of their bills—and why should they not invest to do that?—the EPC we currently have is not fit for purpose, as we all know. I would like more clarity on how we are going to improve it; whether an updated EPC will be focused on the environmental aspect or the bills aspect, or both; and how it will come about. Unless we can do that, businesses, individuals and communities across the country will not know what they need to do, or the investments they need to make and when, to reduce the cost of their energy and the cost for our climate.
The final point I wish to make is about ISOP. I do not want to bore the House, but the detail on that is important and I intervened on the Secretary of State about it. Clause 123(1) explains that ISOP must “have regard” to the strategic policy statement issued by the Government, but subsection (2) then says, “If it can’t achieve a policy aim, it should explain why and how.” We need to beef that up. We need to explain more precisely that when the strategic policy statement is made by the Government, ISOP will be a delivery mechanism, nothing more. This is not the intention of the Government or of anybody in this House, but I fear that unless we can make that clearer, Ofgem will perhaps be doing one thing, ISOP will be thinking it is doing something slightly different, and the Government’s strategic intention will be something different again. We should examine that in Committee.
I should have drawn the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, as chair of the Regulatory Reform Group, in that regard. Overall, I support this good Bill and I am glad it has cross-party support.
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