Climate Change and SustainableEnergy Bill

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The Minister with responsibilities for energy is in his place and I am sure that he will take into account in his deliberations the future of energy policy and my hon. Friend’s passionate commitment to coal mining communities. Not only should microgeneration and diversity of supply play a part in securing our national interest in energy security in future, but encouraging microgeneration is a way of embracing the principle of pluralism, which has been alluded to, to create the right sort of energy market. My hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) referred to the Jurassic age of energy policy in the past, and we all know what he means. It is the man in Whitehall knowing best and taking decisions about the future of energy in a way that was Gosplan-ish at best. We need to ensure that we have genuine pluralism and that people are encouraged to play their part in providing energy to the grid rather than being passive consumers at the behest of decisions that are taken at a strategic level that provide insufficient diversity to ensure that we have the right energy structure in future. In that respect, the Bill should be welcomed,and not only by those people who are natural environmentalists. It should be welcomed also by those people who take our national security seriously and by those who believe in competition, diversity and pluralism in markets. There is another reason why the Bill should be commended, and that is new clause 28, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker). The clause enjoins local authorities to take account of climate change and microgeneration when they consider planning development. The clause is important because, as some hon. Members may know, housing is dear to my heart. I and my party accept that there is a pressing need for new housing development. Unfortunately, there is a need to expand supply to meet the growth in households. Over the past 10 or 15 years we had a mismatch between the growth in the number of households and the provision of new homes. Between 1991 and 2000, according to figures from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, about 500,000 new households were created for which no new homes were supplied. We need to provide new homes for those people for reasons of social justice. We must also do something about the runaway rate of house price inflation. As we accept the need for new homes, we must recognise that there is resistance to new development. We need to analyse why that new development is resisted. The Secretary of State—