My Lords, I strongly support the Bill and agree very much with the things that were said by my noble friend Lord Rooker. There is no doubt that an energy crisis is looming, as we move towards net zero. Indeed, it could be argued that the energy crisis is already here. The amount of electricity used in this country will at least double, as my noble friend Lord Rooker says, if not increase by even more. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned insulation, and I agree that it is very important. However, it is not that easy and straightforward. I have just visited one of my sisters in the West Country and she has had made her house amazingly well insulated. She had to basically demolish the house, almost rebuild it and put everything back together. It is now fantastically energy efficient. If we were to think that millions of people in this country could easily do that, we would have to be in cloud-cuckoo-land. When we are all driving around in electric vehicles, there will be that additional demand and those vehicles cannot be insulated.
Why are we in this position? It is because of the failure of successive Governments—as has been mentioned. It is a national disgrace, actually. We have gone from being the world leaders in civil nuclear—we
made masses of money exporting this stuff to Japan—to a position where we cannot build even one of these large reactors ourselves. That is appalling. Reliance on the Chinese, for example, as has been mentioned by a number of speakers, is extremely dangerous and not good. In terms of Sizewell C, could the Minister let us know exactly what the Chinese involvement in finance will be with the new scheme? Will they still be involved in that? I presume so. Will he let us know whether there is any thought about Bradwell going ahead? I imagine that it cannot, because it is too dangerous in terms of our security.
Some people have said that nuclear should not be used because it is not safe. Let us not kid ourselves—more people die every year in the petrochemical and other energy industries around the world than have died in all the nuclear reactor accidents put together. This is nonsense; we have very strict regulations and do this very well. As regards—