It is not a fact. The noble Baroness is absolutely wrong. Anyway, I am happy to take her reassurance on that. She was posing the question and I am giving her a direct answer. There are no subsidies involved for oil and gas companies in this Bill. They are not even in scope of the Bill. To answer her question directly, it is about direct support for people to help them with their electricity and gas bills.
Group 1 speaks to delegated powers in the Bill, including procedure, sun-setting use and scrutiny. I thank all those who spoke, those who tabled their thoughtful, well-intentioned amendments and the noble Lords, Lord Cunningham and Lord Rooker, who spoke on them. I also pay tribute, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, did, to the work of the DPRRC for its report on the Bill published last week. I have carefully considered and responded to it.
The first set of amendments would make certain regulations in the Bill subject to the affirmative procedure. I will go through all of them in turn. Amendments 1, 2, 3 and 4 relate to the energy price guarantee schemes in Great Britain and Northern Ireland. The Committee will be aware that the schemes have been operational from the first of this month. I am happy to tell the Committee that the regulations in the Bill to designate the schemes will be extremely brief and will simply identify scheme documents. They will therefore be technical in nature and I deem them perfectly appropriate to be subject to the negative procedure.
4 pm
Amendment 7 would make regulations in Clause 15 subject to the affirmative procedure, and Amendments 17 and 18 would do the same for all regulations in Clause 16. I reassure the Committee again that regulations under Clause 15 will enable bodies to be designated as delivery partners and, following precedent, it is appropriate to use the negative procedure for these essentially technical regulations—no new policy is being made here. The first set of regulations under Clause 16, relating to the cost plus revenue limit, are already subject to the affirmative procedure. Further regulations that will be tabled under this clause are, again, likely to be technical amending regulations, so we have kept the affirmative procedure for the important stuff that I think the House will be interested in and would want to debate, and we have used the negative procedure for the technical amending regulations.
Amendments 33 and 36 would make regulations for the energy bill relief scheme in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, respectively, subject to the affirmative procedure. I am happy to confirm to noble Lords that the regulations are already subject to the affirmative procedure, as confirmed in Clauses 9(6) and 11(6), and Clause 26(4), (5) and (11) provide for exactly the type of affirmative procedure that noble Lords are asking for. As such, regulations will be implemented via the “made affirmative” procedure in the first six months from the date that the Act is passed. After that point, they will be subject to the normal draft affirmative procedure. The amendment also seeks to remove the provision for regulations to provide a power to give directions. I will deal with this and other amendments to the sub-delegation powers as I address amendments from other noble Lords.
Amendments 22, 24, 25, 27, 29, 40, 41 and 42 relate to powers to make energy licence modifications under Clause 21 and directions under Clause 22. Broadly, the amendments would make these powers subject to the affirmative procedure and implement a sunset provision of two years, subject to future extension. The powers in Clauses 21 and 22 have been included in the Bill to provide the Government with the ability—