My Lords, I briefly signal the support of our Front Bench for the amendments. Although I am familiar with—and may even have been one of the Ministers who rebutted the noble Earl, Lord Caithness, in—long arguments about “may” and “must”, it is slightly different here because it is not so much about parliamentary counsel’s sensibilities on these matters. “Must” is here a statement of fact. The clauses on the capacity mechanism are wide and vague—understandably, at this stage. The Minister and everyone else have
accepted that we will have to translate them into secondary legislation. If we do not do so, we will not have a capacity mechanism. In that sense, there is a stronger argument than there is sometimes for substituting “may” with “must”, because otherwise the whole point of this section of the Bill disappears.
On the second point, although the noble Earl is correct to say that there have been repeated references to the interests of households and small businesses, that is in the context of the demand reduction provisions within the capacity mechanism. It is not obvious from first principles that mechanisms will be involved which benefit the small users of energy, whether they are households or small businesses. I therefore think that it helps to insert that at this point. It will help to guide the drafting of statutory instruments, when we come to that. I hope that the Government will show some sympathy to the amendments.