I thank the Minister for his clarification. It is somewhat at odds with what was said in Committee by the then Minister, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), but we are where we are—and I am very grateful to the Minister for his announcement about the state aid application, because it gets rid of at least a paragraph of my speech.
Let me now deal with amendment 76, which makes an important point about what the green investment bank should be doing in the light of its potential, the huge opportunities that it provides, and the equally huge scale of the challenge presented by the need for us to decarbonise our economy. If we are to achieve what we want to achieve, we need active government. Working with business, the Government must assess our present comparative advantage in this sector, and work out how we can maintain or enhance that advantage in the future.
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There is a huge, pressing need for policy certainty for investors in the green economy, but so far the Government have not been able to provide it, to the detriment of the country’s chances—this is relevant to what was said by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion—and the chances for jobs and growth.
Only last week, seven of the world’s largest energy and engineering firms wrote to the Chancellor asking for greater certainty in energy policy to kick-start green manufacturing investment. The Times reported that such companies as Siemens, Alstom UK, Mitsubishi Power Systems, Areva, Doosan, Gamesa and Vestas had warned that while they saw
“potential for significant further investment to support the UK’s move to low carbon generation”,
that investment would fail to materialise if the Chancellor and the Government did not take steps to address the high levels of uncertainty and political risk that were afflicting the sector.