My Lords, I think we are all trying to achieve the same thing here. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blake, said, maybe we need to take this forward as a way to do it. The cost to consumers is absolutely central at the moment, and this is not a short-term thing—it is at least medium term. Later we will come to an amendment which says we should repeal the Nuclear Energy (Financing) Act, which was all about raising costs to consumers in the short term and has nothing to do with nuclear power otherwise.
In my amendment, I am trying to do something very similar to what has already been debated: if we are going to accept this levy—we know levies are always very contentious when implemented in terms of who has to pay for them and who gets the benefits from them, which leads to a lot of argument—it is quite clear that for hydrogen there is only a very limited sector of organisations, people and population who will actually benefit from it. In its own way, my amendment seeks to prevent other consumers who are not benefiting from hydrogen having to pay for that investment.
It is very much in line with other Members’ amendments and it is absolutely fundamental to the messages that we as a Parliament, and the Government, are putting out at the moment to consumers and company users of energy. Let us make sure that, if we have this levy, it is kept to those who benefit from hydrogen rather than those outside who do not.