Energy Bill

My Lords, I, too, have great concern about the very late date here. It seems that this, perhaps ironically, is the one area where I would hope to put a maximum, which might be 450, in primary legislation but give the Secretary of State discretion to tighten that standard through secondary legislation as years go by. I would expect to do that in most other areas of life, perhaps through European legislation for car emissions, white goods and all those things where we expect to tighten emission and efficiency limits over time. If a number is put in the Bill for the next 31 years, obviously it could be changed by primary legislation but that would take time and would be difficult. Rather than mess around with an EPS, we might as well just say, “We want to stop any coal generating after 2020 and we will let the rest of it do what we want”. That is the effect of writing the Bill as it stands.