My Lords, I thank everybody wholeheartedly for their contributions to this debate. Although I originally felt that it was a dubious prize to win the ballot, I could not have been more wrong. It has been a great, fast-moving—and certainly not boring—debate. I have learnt a huge amount and I thought that I was up to speed on developments, not only on the economic side of energy, but on the supply situation.
To go back to a few of the points raised, I particularly thank the Minister for coming up with some very positive points, namely that the Government will encourage the planned link situation and encourage the energy companies. I hope the Minister, in turn, will remember that in this debate not a single person asked for government money. All we want to do is to encourage: we want encouragement from the Government; we will encourage the Government. I rather liked the fact that my noble friend Lord Patten promised any help the Government want on nuclear energy, as we have helped them out on education.
We all referred to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Owen. He certainly made me think that a lot of my Whitsun Recess reading will be centred on the books on Russia which have remained unopened on my bookshelf. I fear that, like many of my friends, I tend to see Russia has having huge amounts of money to spend on Chelsea Football Club players, and assume that everything must be rosy there. The noble Lord was quite right to draw our attention to the fact that it is not. The noble Lord also made us look again at the whole workings of supply and demand. If you have a scarce commodity that is about your only resource from which you can earn money overseas, there is a huge temptation. One can only hope that wise counsel will prevail and that Russia will not try to kill the goose that lays that golden egg. The speech was most useful and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Owen.
We also need to thank the noble Lord for stressing the geopolitical nature of the issue. The Minister also raised that point. I was particularly struck by the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, that we can never rely on a change of attitude in France, Germany or Italy. That is becoming increasingly clear, as was witnessed by the recent raids, which were also mentioned. The flexibility of movement between diverse sources of energy is something we must all aim for. I do not think anybody would want to put all their eggs in the renewable sources basket, the nuclear basket or the gas basket. We have to keep this thing going, because we never know where the next pressure points will be.
The Minister said that the forecasts were consistently wrong. I am glad he did not say that the economists were in charge; I think they probably were. I also thank my noble friend Lord Jenkin for his description of the Hatfield project. I realise that that is something else I must read up on. It was useful, but not surprising, to know that throughout this country—which has always been innovative in every part of industry—this sort of innovation is going on. The other thing that was new to me was the onboard gasification in, I think, Newcastle. That is pretty good.
My noble friend Lord Dixon-Smith gave us a canter around the whole energy scene. Once again, there were little nuggets there which I am sure we will enjoy thinking about. My noble friend Lord De Mauley made a great plea for removing obstacles. This is right and ties in with my point about looking for encouragement and trying to do away—though not in a massive way, like the French—with nimbyism, which we must get away from. However, we should not be like the French, who knock down everything in sight when they want to build something.
The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, made a very good point about fuel poverty, as did my noble friend Lord Jenkin. It is something we must keep always at the back of our minds. Sometimes we tend to get things slightly out of perspective in the rather rarefied atmosphere in which we exist. I am sure that there are plenty of other points, but I do not want to hold up the Statement on pensions. I shall just say to every person who took part in this debate: it has been a great delight and thank you very much. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.
Energy: Gas Prices
Proceeding contribution from
Baroness O'Cathain
(Conservative)
in the House of Lords on Thursday, 25 May 2006.
It occurred during Debate on Energy: Gas Prices.
About this proceeding contribution
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2005-06Chamber / Committee
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