My Lords, I am happy to support this amendment. It is probably two weeks ago today that I was in Norway on an Inter-Parliamentary Union visit. We were privileged to have a presentation about the Norwegian sovereign wealth fund: how it started, where it was and the fact that during the recession we have all suffered, the sovereign wealth fund did not suffer. It was interesting to see it from that point of view, but we need to be aware of two things that are very different there.
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Here in England, we find it quite difficult to get agreement across all parties—although today, of course, on shale gas we have had that here. There is a consensus across the political parties in Norway, despite the change of Government recently which we thought might change that. They have carried on with the way they deal with the sovereign wealth fund. It certainly gives them a real buffer for the future. Although it would be very difficult to do it here in exactly the same way as in Norway, there are a lot of lessons to be learnt. I found it absolutely fascinating to listen to the man in charge as he explained how this worked. Another person in this Room who is not allowed to speak in the debate is nodding his head. We enjoyed our visit and this is worth looking at.
One of the other things I picked up is not to do with the amendment. I thought about saying this earlier but did not. I do not know what figures we have looked at for what is coming out of the North Sea but all the predictions about what is happening to the gas and oil fields there have never been quite right. Technology has always advanced and we have always got more out. We need to be aware of that as well. That is an aside which is not about this amendment but I did not say it earlier as it did not seem appropriate to intervene.
We have a lot to learn. If we go down this road, we need to look very carefully at how they did it in Norway, what is applicable to us and what we can learn from that. It was incredibly impressive, particularly —I am repeating myself—the fact that during the recession their fund hardly dropped at all. They managed to keep it up.