My Lords, my noble friend has gone quite a long way to reassure me, but I have one or two other questions. However, before I come to them I shall respond to my noble friend Lord Caithness. This amendment simply creates a new power to make regulations that confer powers on the regulator; it does not attempt to say what should be in those regulations. Of course they would be subject to consent by both Houses of Parliament, and I have no doubt that if a significant new power were required, that, too, would have to be subject to an affirmative resolution, or possibly a super-affirmative resolution, in both Houses. I do not see this as being undemocratic and without parliamentary review. The parliamentary review would happen inevitably at each stage. I cannot accept my noble friend’s suggestion that this is the wrong answer.
I recognise and am grateful for the support that the amendment has received, even the somewhat doubtful support from the Opposition Front Bench. I can only echo my noble friend on the Front Bench. The Opposition have yet to explain of what this new marvellous—what should we call it?—“restart” of the whole system is to consist of. I believe in building on what we have got and improving it, rather than taking a leap in the dark and making some entirely new start. These reviews that have been announced—I caught wind of them some time before the Prime Minister made his statement in the other place—are a major new effort to get at why competition has not been working largely because of the reduction in the huge number of generators under the previous Government.
I am grateful to those who supported the amendment. I agree that the main purpose of stronger competition is to protect consumers. A recent National Audit Office report looked at the impact of infrastructure investment on consumer bills. Its view was that,
“Government has made no assessment of the overall impact of infrastructure on future bills or whether those bills will be affordable. Therefore government and regulators are taking decisions on behalf of consumers in the absence of full information about the situation for consumers”.
This is a worrying report. It points to a considerable shortcoming of not just this Government, but all Governments. It is interesting that its first two recommendations are aimed at the Treasury. The Treasury has to set up the structures whereby consumer interests can be considered during the whole question of the infrastructure investment. I do not think I am being unduly alarmist by pointing out that if there has been neglect of the consumer interest in the consideration of the Government’s infrastructure investments, it is not altogether unreasonable to assume that it has also been neglected elsewhere in government, and that this is a wider problem. I do not want to pursue that now except to say that I shall be looking forward to the Government’s response to the National Audit Office report.
My noble friend has gone a long way. She referred to the new powers in the Bill. She also referred to the extra powers that may be available to the Office of Fair Trading and the new Competition and Markets Authority. I shall take her at her word that these are the kind of things that could deal with the proposal that has been made by Which? about separating out
the vertically integrated forms. She indicated that that could well be part of the process. On that basis, it would be wrong to divide the House. One point on which I do agree with the noble Baroness on the Opposition Front Bench is that this is a very late stage to raise an important issue. It arose out of the Statement that was made on 31 October. That was the first time that we got the details of these reviews. I hope I have not been wasting the time of the House in bringing this forward, but in this circumstance it would not be right to take the opinion of the House. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.