My Lords, the Government are certainly getting a lot of advice during the passage of this Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, they really ought to know that they do not have all the answers. So I do hope that the Minister listens.
The amendments in this group follow perfectly the Government’s announcement that they are putting the trade commission on a statutory footing. If the Government want to run an internal market, surely it is right to create a fully functioning governance body for that purpose. Merely tagging on a few functions to the Competition and Markets Authority shows a weakness of purpose and a lack of understanding of exactly how everything should run. Giving the new office for the internal market the power to investigate distortive and harmful subsidies could have a powerful impact
on wiping out the implicit and explicit subsidies for fossil fuels, particularly unconventional oil and gas fracking. These implicit and explicit subsidies include a streamlined planning process and no requirement for the company to make a bond, unlike the landfill industry, equating to the government underwriting of the clean-up of fossil fuel sites in the event of corporate bankruptcy. So once again taxpayers would pay to clean up other people’s mess.
Just to be clear, the journalist at Drill Or Drop? suggests that the OIM can comment on controversial issues such as fracking, which, as we all know, is a dangerous, polluting, expensive, intrusive and—in view of our global need to limit our carbon emissions—unnecessary process. The OIM could give advice contrary to the devolved Administrations’ decisions. Can the Minister tell me if that is true?