It has been a pleasure to speak on the Bill on Second Reading and in Committee, but I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg) that it is a great pity we cannot have a long debate on Report or Third Reading, to expand on issues further.
One of the issues that I wanted to expand on is about some of the alternatives. We keep talking about electric vehicles moving down, but hydrogen combustion vehicles offer a real opportunity to move forward. We also talk about net zero, but this has now moved to zero-emission vehicles. That rules out hydrogen combustion, so again, we are going down a rabbit hole of just having electric vehicles, but an electric vehicle is not a zero-emission vehicle. If it was, the underground would have the cleanest air in London, and it does not, because there are a lot of particulates around it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) makes it clear through new clause 47 that we have to look at the sources, and new clause 37 relates to where batteries go. We keep talking about the rare earth metals that are needed. Indeed, the hon. Member for Angus (Dave Doogan) talked about being able to maintain baseload by using various aspects of energy storage. We keep coming back to the need for rare earth metals and materials to enable that, and they come from areas of the world that we do not have an influence over. In the past 18 months, there has been a huge debate about the fact that we cannot be reliant on Russian energy, and yet few Members in today’s debate have recognised the fact that we are wholeheartedly moving towards becoming reliant on China to supply our energy needs.
This is a huge Bill. It is a fundamental Bill that we have brought forward as we look to the future, but it is far too big, with far too many aspects to it. It has become a bit of a hodgepodge, saying, “We want electric vehicles. We want electric heating in homes. We want to have arc blast furnaces rather than coal furnaces, so we will ban new coalmines.” I promise this House that if we move to just arc furnaces, we will destroy steel manufacturing in this country, because we do not have the ability now to produce the electricity that is needed. We are not going to switch off the lights in people’s homes before we switch off an arc furnace, and once it has been switched off, we cannot switch it back on.
That is the big mismatch in the Bill, which is why I regret that we will not have a Third Reading debate to discuss these issues on a slightly wider basis. The rush to renewables is happening quicker than the timeline for making sure we have enough turbines, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) pointed out. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) made very important points as well. Although the aims are there, and I think we all want to follow those aims—not being reliant on foreign energy is highly important—at the moment there does not appear to be a connection between these things as they come online. As such, although the aims of the Bill are good, we have to make sure that we implement them over a consistent timeframe so that we take the public with us.