I absolutely agree that there are places for advisory boards. There are examples of where that works and I am a member of some advisory boards. However, they tend not to do quite what I believe this body is around to do. I accept much, although not all, of the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. The issue is that we have to get a much better way of governing at department level. We probably have to reform how the Civil Service works in terms of corporate memory. I have spent much of my life in the private sector and my experience is that its corporate memory is probably far worse than that of government. Perhaps it is not true of some in the oil and energy industries, but certainly in many industries there is not a lot of corporate knowledge. Certainly, there is no more than there is in government departments.
It may have been more of an executive authority but in the rail industry, which perhaps has similar levels or timeframes for investment, the Strategic Rail Authority was brought into existence by the previous Government and abolished because it did not work in relation to departments. Ultimately, departments had to take control. Of course, we have now seen problems with franchising but I do not think that the SRA was the answer to that.
Another area in which I would criticise the detail of this amendment is that the list of areas it looks at avoids energy efficiency and demand management, which are fundamental parts of how we think about the economy. Although I agree that it could be varied in the way it is written, from the description of this committee, I worry that it will again look particularly at building or planning energy in terms of capacity and generating capacity. It is interesting and dispiriting that two weeks ago, when the National Grid asked for tenders for demand reduction and for the demand-side response to looking at the future possible energy crisis, there was generally a very negative reaction from the press and wider than that. That is exactly how we should look at this area. We should not necessarily look at planning for more and more plant, although that would be part of it, but look at the demand side as well.
As regards why we are in the situation we are, I suspect that we will get through it although I entirely accept that the margins are less than we would want them to be. Through the Climate Change Act and the whole area of the climate change challenge, we have changed direction quite substantially in what we expect our generating and our energy industries to do. With not a U-turn but certainly a 45-degree turn on what we expect from our generating industry, it does not necessarily surprise me that, through that policy change in areas where there are long gestation periods in investment and planning, we have this difficulty at the moment. That is not necessarily a function of the way in which government works—necessarily imperfect though it is.
My noble friend Lord Deben mentioned the climate change committee. To me, that is the most important committee in this area by far. It may not be a complete substitute and it clearly is not for the energy side, but the Government really need to take notice of it. On the broader agenda, the climate change committee as set up and put into legislation is a good way of doing it. In terms of infrastructure planning, the case is far from proven.