Energy Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Dixon-Smith and Lord Bishop of Chester

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Dixon-Smith]

My Lords, I do not need to go back to the beginning. My point was that I was paying one shilling and thre’pence and three-eighths of a penny for a gallon of tractor diesel in 1960—50 years ago. I suppose I had better convert that to metric currency, as most people here are probably not familiar with one shilling and thre’pence and three-eighths of a penny. It was about 6.25p for a gallon of fuel or a fraction more perhaps than 1.25p per litre. Currently, the price is around 61p to 62p per litre. That includes an element of tax, which of course has gone up on that as it has on everything else. That, over my lifetime—or all our lifetimes—is an energy price rise of 5,000 per cent.

If anyone had stopped to think about that in 1960, they would have thought that the world would collapse. For sure, the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, has a point when he is concerned about the future. We need to be concerned about the rise in the price of energy and about the way in which that use affects people’s lives. Having said that, we have all lived already through enormous change and I see no reason to believe that we cannot continue to do that.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, whether one takes the view that current government policies will lead to an unpleasant, unfortunate and regrettable increase in energy prices through the renewables obligation and so forth or one takes the line of the noble Lord, Lord Deben, who is not back from the vote yet, that this is all in order to save the universe, the public needs a certain amount of transparency on the issue.

Another reason it is important concerns the great increase in energy prices since the youth of the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, who must be even older than me if it was that cheap when he was young. The key question going forward is how energy prices in this country relate to energy prices in other countries. If such prices in this country get out of step internationally, that would have profound implications precisely for the people in the pub in Burton upon Trent who would find their jobs under threat if they were dependent on energy usage.

Whichever way you look at it, a consistent, annual process of reporting should be as far as possible value-neutral. We can all then make our minds up on a fair and accepted basis of available information, which is important for going forward. It would be very hard to say that that is available at the moment. As has been said, there is a great deal of confusion. One way or another, I do not doubt that this amendment is not right in its present form—perhaps this is not the Bill for it—but we need to have information or there will be misinformation. It needs to be a priority as we go forward with our energy policies.