Infrastructure Projects (Community Benefit)

Charles Walker Excerpts

Thursday 18th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point, which was also made by the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change when it scrutinised the draft Bill. We are in discussions on that issue, and the Department is drawing up that Bill, as she knows. The Secretary of State and I are both clear that demand reduction needs to be given greater emphasis. The hon. Lady, however, would not expect me to anticipate what will be in the Bill. It would certainly be inappropriate, and possibly even worse procedurally, to do so, Mr Walker. However, she can have my absolute assurance that demand reduction will be given an emphasis that it has not had previously. We have listened closely to the representations of the Select Committee and others, as well as the Opposition. Governments can learn from Oppositions—never quite as much as Oppositions can learn from Governments, but none the less, she has made a powerful point to which we will give further consideration.

To conclude the debate, we may shortly be in a position to clarify the community benefits package that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset seeks with such vehemence, to articulate a new paradigm for dealing with major infrastructural investments in the area of energy, and to redress the balance in terms of the debate between supply and demand, and production and consumption. If so, I will then be able to live up to the description that has been made of me, as the people’s Minister for Energy.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Mr Liddell-Grainger, would you like to use your two minutes to respond to the debate?