If I may say so, my regulatory system was RPI minus X. I had an interview with a very senior American economist who was one of the world’s experts on regulation. He said that RPI minus X was the best and simplest regulatory instrument that anybody had ever seen. I took some comfort from that. I have not been responsible for competition in the telecommunications industry since then, so I am not in a position to comment on what the noble Lord has said.
Coming back to this amendment, my noble friend Lord Deben is absolutely right: every capitalist wants to have a monopoly. It is the job of the competition authorities to ensure that competition exists, and in this country we have very well established competition laws through the Office of Fair Trading and so on. I will read my noble friend’s reply to the debate very carefully and consult those who have been advising me on this. What I want to see is a very clear duty on the Secretary of State to promote competition.
My noble friend said, “It is in the Bill already and we do not want to duplicate it”. I can tell her that those who have studied this Bill perhaps even more carefully than I have say that actually it is not. We are going to need to look again. I will look very carefully at what the noble Baroness has said and see whether we can come to some understanding on this between now and Report.
I am quite convinced that Ministers—I will not repeat the quotations; indeed, I have given most of them to Hansard already—want to see a more competitive industry. Ofgem wants to see a more competitive industry. At Second Reading, I quoted from its June press release entitled, Opening Up Electricity Market To Effective Competition. Those with whom I, Ministers and officials have been talking feel that there needs to be a duty on the Secretary of State very clearly to promote competition. That is what we are attempting to achieve. I will study my noble friend’s speech and see whether we need to come back to this on Report. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.