I would like to resume. I was thinking ahead to Paris in the week beginning 7 December, wondering which poor Minister—I hope it is not the noble Lord, Lord Bourne—is going to have to go there and explain how we are going to manage to achieve our targets for reducing carbon emissions by the appropriate date, given what we are doing in relation to solar energy, and now in relation to onshore wind. I certainly would not like to be doing that.
In the light of the fact that there has been this betrayal and that the Government are trying to rush us through some very complicated and detailed amendments with serious long-term effects that will affect not just investors, customers and suppliers but many more people, I must give the Minister notice that I am minded to oppose all his amendments in this Grand Committee unless he can give me some very clear assurances. I will be listening very carefully. If we do not agree this today, it will give the Government another week to try to get it right.
I ask the Minister to go back to his Secretary of State and his other Ministers and ask whether it is really worth the candle to push this through the House of Lords and then go to the House of Commons and try to persuade it, with 55 SNP Members of Parliament snapping away at Ministers’ heels, just for the relatively small amount that it would cost to go ahead as originally planned, and for the relatively small amount of generation involved? Is it really worth pushing ahead with that?
I wonder whether the Government are now regretting having introduced this Bill into the House of Lords. We are supposed to deal with Bills that are not contentious
but this one is proving very contentious indeed. The Minister should go back and explain the problems that he is having getting the Bill through the House of Lords and warn his colleagues that it is going to be not just twice or 10 times as hard but many times more difficult to get it through the House of Commons. The Government have a majority there but there are all sorts of ways that it can be upset. I hope that he will consider changing his mind, withdrawing Clause 66 completely, finding some better arrangement that protects onshore wind schemes and keeping the three promises that I mentioned earlier, which the Government have reneged upon. I give him that very serious warning. Perhaps he will reflect that if he had taken my advice to have this matter dealt with in the Chamber, he might not be in the pickle he is in now.