My Lords, my noble friend knows that I do not agree with all the views that he has just put forward on this amendment; indeed, I have my name to the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, has already moved. As the Committee will know, unlike others present I have extremely little experience of this matter. However, I believe that this as an additional body would be value added to the way in which the decision was made.
I came to that conclusion three weeks ago. I was having lunch in the Home Room and found myself opposite the noble Lord, Lord Tombs. I was talking to him about the Energy Bill and indeed this Committee, and mentioned the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. He said, “Yes, the reason I am not really taking any part in the Committee is that I have been trying to solve that problem for a very long time and have never got anywhere with it. I had a number of debates every year in this House from 2002 to 2009 in which I argued for something similar, but never got anywhere”.
He then recommended that I should read his book Power Politics, which I did the following weekend. Having read it, I realise the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, set out: the lack of any long-term understanding of the problem by Ministers who, on the whole, spend a relatively short period dealing with these issues; and the fact that it is in the nature of the Civil Service that there is no specialised knowledge of both the economic and technical aspects of the industry’s problems. I believe that, as the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Jenkin have said, this would be a significant addition to the way in which the real problems to which my noble friend has referred would have a better chance of being solved. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to give a favourable response to what I think is an important idea.