Energy Bill

No, not on that point. The Minister referred in passing to an advisory committee—the proposed nuclear liabilities financing assurance board—which is mentioned in the White Paper but is strangely absent from the Bill. In Committee, we proposed an amendment that would give statutory force to and statutory reassurance about its role, but that was resisted by the Government. I would not mind hearing the Minister again tell us precisely why the NLFAB was excluded from the Bill and why it is not present in the regime described in the new clause, because that relates to one of the arguments that he is using to assure us on the future financing of the nuclear industry, and the NLFAB surely should have been given legal force. The risk is that 40 years hence some future Government will find themselves with unexpected problems on decommissioning and disposal—perhaps spiralling financial or political costs. They will say that the situation is nothing to do with them and that it is all the fault of Labour Ministers back in the noughties who made bad decisions in 2008, many decades ago, because they did not know what they were planning. They will ask, ““How could those Ministers have landed us with all these problems?”” In the end, the taxpayer will have to pick up the bill because, as the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), a former Minister, described in relation to the previous process, there is no way that we can avoid doing so if we become reliant on nuclear energy and we are to keep the lights on. The chance of this new clause and the Bill being intact in 40 years' time is virtually nil, and the Government are leading us down a high-risk path given the poisonous legacy of nuclear power and the creation of radioactive waste that will last for millenniums. The new clause and the system that it will help to create involves a high risk for generations of British taxpayers.