My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for explaining the amendments that she has tabled and spoken to today. I am particularly grateful for new Clause 66 which was something that we debated in Committee.
The issue that was under discussion was that we are, in this Bill, removing the renewables obligation—the policy that has supported renewables and has led to a significant increase in renewable energy and different forms of renewable electricity. The removal of the renewables obligation is significant because it contained an inbuilt incentive on the big six to keep investing in new clean technology. We are now removing that through this Bill. Unfortunately we have not been able to convince the Government to replace any form of obligation into this Bill on either the Government or the suppliers. We are now entering a period where we have to entice investors rather than oblige them. That is an issue that may come back to haunt us—a phrase that has been used before today.
I seek words of reassurance that, in the detailed arrangements that are set out in the regulations that close the RO, the Government will not prescribe a date until they are absolutely certain when the CFDs can come into operation. The issue here is that this Bill is going to be subject to state aid clearance; we need to be absolutely confident that we do not wind down the existing support mechanism before we are completely sure that we have a new support mechanism in its place.
There has been mention of the year 2017 in numerous government consultation documents and documents on this topic. At this stage we cannot be sure that 2017 is the right year. I urge the Minister to make sure that draft regulations are not overly prescriptive and that they give us the flexibility we need to ensure that there is a very good transition from one successful policy to a new untested policy which we hope will deliver but, as has been mentioned on a number of occasions, we still have concerns that it will not—especially for independent generators.