My Lords, I very much like the thrust of this amendment and I hope the Government will take it seriously. I would like it to have included the issue of how one generates more competition. Interestingly, at least half of Germany’s renewable energy is generated by municipalities, co-operatives and individuals. That means that there is very widespread support for renewables, leading to some real competition. That is why the big boys are increasingly angry about renewables—they are bringing the price down and they are serious competition.
My concern is that it is difficult to see, as the Government have admitted, the sort of competition among the six that we would expect. I notice that the Opposition are now seeking to make significant changes on this, but one must admit some of the things that have gone wrong are the very changes they made last time. I think there is a certain cross-party understanding that things are not as they ought to be. The Prime Minister, I understand, has said he wants the six to become 60, and I notice that the Minister for Energy wants 600. That is certainly much closer to what I would like because this is a way in which the public as a whole could have a greater say in the way electricity is produced and would be more supportive of a much more competitive market.
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Whether they accept this amendment or not, I hope that the Government will recognise that if we could only achieve a more competitive system, it would help explain to people the real costs of electricity. One of the difficulties is that we are forgetting that the biggest cost is actually for gas, so we are all talking here about what are in that sense marginalities. Therefore, achieving competition so that people feel there is a good reason to reduce their bills would be very helpful.
The biggest difficulty is that not one of the six has suggested that this is the moment to get new customers by not putting their prices up. They have all merely said, “everyone else is putting their prices up, so we’ll put them up as well”. That suggests we do not have quite the competitiveness that we want. The Prime Minister has made that point and the Opposition feel it too, so we should consider this as a very real issue in a way that does not just encourage another few big or even medium-sized companies. I want to see a world in which it is much more likely that people come into the industry because it is at that level of innovation that you really get the competition that in the end leads to lower prices.