Energy Bill

May I express our gratitude at the outset to the Clerks and the officials for their work behind the scenes on the Bill? The passage of any legislation takes a lot of work. We are grateful for their professionalism and assiduous attention to the way the House works. The Bill does not really live up to its title. It has come out of Committee after hours of exhaustive debate, but has been largely untouched by the wisdom of colleagues from any part of the House. There has been a clarification here and a little syntactical tweak there, but it is a pretty thin document that waits to be sent to the other place. The Bill's lack of scope and ambition—problems that we identified at the start of its passage—reflect a regrettable absence of decision making in Whitehall. There is some evidence of strategic thought, however. In the past 10 years, there have been innumerable White Papers and lots of reports and reviews, but when it comes to taking what the Prime Minister enjoys calling ““tough, long-term decisions””, Ministers have mumbled their excuses and hidden from their responsibilities. Creating yet another review or holding yet another consultation might seem like a great listening exercise, but it does not give us the action that we need as quickly as we need it. The one thing that we have got out of the Bill is a raft of consultations—no fewer than six—on a series of subjects that we have been talking about and consulting on for years, including microgeneration, decentralised energy and feed-in tariffs, which the hon. Member for Nottingham, South (Alan Simpson) argued for so persuasively this afternoon. Other subjects for consultation include smart meters, the role of Ofgem and priority access to the grid. Only this afternoon, yet another three consultations on smart meters were announced. There is nothing in that list that anyone in the energy industry finds particularly revolutionary any more. Most of it is quite well known and largely uncontroversial. Those ideas have become basic, additional measures that would help the Government to meet their stiff targets on renewables and emissions for 2020 and 2050. I suspect that if we do not put some of them in place right now, today, we will curse our lack of urgency in 10 years' time. It is a great shame that the Government have been unable to find room in what is supposed to be a broad Energy Bill for many of the amendments that have been debated. However, they might be pressed more rigorously in another place. The House has, to some extent, been duped. The Bill is not really an Energy Bill, but a Bill to facilitate nuclear power and create arrangements for decommissioning, all of which is fair enough. When the Government published their White Paper in January, we made it clear that we supported their signal that nuclear power had a role to play in our future generating mix, but we sought particular assurances that there would be no subsidy. We also asked for clarity on the regime for new waste. The funded decommissioning statements that will provide financial cover for companies, and security for the taxpayer, seem to be a satisfactory way of proceeding, but we look forward to examining the details with more scrutiny in coming weeks and months. We will continue to press the Government to move swiftly and with urgency to resolve the high-level waste repository issue. With the current timetable, a repository probably will not be built until 2080. That remains a serious concern. The Bill pretends to sort out all things nuclear, but leaves large questions hanging over the commercial landscape that will govern it. Despite the Secretary of State's speeches about the economic benefits of the new generation of reactors, he has remained uncharacteristically tight-lipped on an issue that has equal resonance for the nuclear industry: the potential sale of British Energy. We are on the brink of one of the most strategically important commercial deals of recent years, but as yet we have heard nothing from the Government. There has been no formal statement of policy, no guidance on how they intend to proceed either with the total sale of British Energy or regarding their own share, and nothing on foreign ownership. What is the Government's position on the conflict between foreign ownership and national competition? What is their verdict on the choice between short-term cash from the disposal of their shareholding and long-term value, which is an alternative? Perhaps, most pertinently—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State mutters, ““It is nothing to do with—”” something, but if he—[Interruption.] If he wishes to intervene, he is very welcome to do so. Perhaps, however, the House would prefer to hear a formal statement on what is going to happen properly in this sector, rather than the silence to which we have been subjected since the rumours hit the press.