My Lords, as this is my first intervention on Report, I must declare an interest as a farmer with a renewable scheme on my land.
Most of what needs to be said in favour of these amendments concerning competition has already been said and as a co-signatory I very much to support them. However, I want to underline the fundamental point involved. It has become obvious to anyone reading newspapers in recent months that the electricity industry
needs a huge amount of investment. In Europe it amounts to trillions of euros, and in the UK it is hundreds of billions of pounds. This investment is needed for generation, transmission, distribution and supply. If we do not have that investment, to believe some of our journalistic forecasters, we are likely to get power cuts with all the economic and social tragedies which that might involve. This investment cannot be provided by the government. It has to be provided by the private sector; that is, you and me or, rather, our pension funds in most cases.
The other issue on which anyone reading our newspapers in recent days and weeks will have come to a conclusion is that the oligopoly of the big six is not the political flavour of the month. While being aware that the root of the problem is the rise in the price of gas—I was going to say feedstock—there is something to be said for the fact, which I read in a newspaper, that this oligopoly has some sort of stranglehold. We have a vertically integrated oligopolistic situation within our electricity industry, as the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has pointed out. If you wish to deal with this stranglehold, it is crucial that you stick to the golden rule of in no way deterring investment in the panoply of the electricity industry. Investment is crucial. Either freezing electricity prices or putting a windfall tax on the big six does not conform to that rule.
What would conform to that rule, which you have to do, is to increase competition, which ensures that everyone can compete. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has said, that could involve very small competitors at every stage and in every sector of the electricity supply chain. Competition is vital to the success of the Bill and to the entirety of electricity market reform. The Bill will be judged on its long-term effects on the security of supply and on the decarbonisation of the electricity and, above all, on how effective it is attracting competitive investment.