I remember the birth of the 1989 legislation. At that time, due to what were deemed to be the fundamentals of competition, generation was split from distribution in England and Wales. In Scotland, the companies were vertically integrated. Throughout the 1990s it became a kind of adventure playground for takeovers. We are where we are now in large measure because a number of interested foreign companies, usually American, took over the distribution companies; they subsequently sold them and they were picked up by various people at different times. So we have six players, which by and large are vertically integrated, as well as Centrica.
A lot of wise words are being spoken about competition but I am not sure if these amendments go far enough. As soon as a company becomes big enough to be a threat or to be of interest to the large players, the oligopolists of the present structure, they are gobbled up. We have seen this fairly recently with the takeover of Ecotricity, a very interesting, predominantly Irish company that engages in renewable generation. I am not sure that these amendments are going to make an awful lot of difference.
When we go further and look at the break-up of the vertically integrated companies, there is the likelihood of the two remaining companies being taken over by other foreign players that have money that they wish to expend in the United Kingdom. Therefore, I am very sceptical about how we are going to achieve anything meaningful in the way of competition.
We have at the moment six players—seven if you include First Utility, but that is rather special because it is exclusively in the retail market—and by and large they do the same as each other. They confuse the tariffs, introduce difficult pricing schemes that we do not always understand—