Energy Bills

Debate between David Anderson and Ed Davey

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

Ofgem is fit for purpose. It needs to ensure that the returns on network business are fair to enable profits, but not beyond that. That is why it has acted. It has asked the network companies to justify the current investment programmes that they have put to it.

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

Is it not true that we were sold the privatisation of utilities on the supposed knowledge that there was a transfer of risk from the public sector to the private sector? What we have seen today is a transfer of risk from the billed utility customer to the taxpayer, so the same people are paying the same money through a different route while the companies get off scot-free and with a £600 million taxpayer bung.

[Mr Davey]

I do not recognise anything that the hon. Gentleman has just said. If he does not understand the difference between bill payers and tax payers, he needs to ask the fuel poverty lobby groups that are saying that people in his constituency on low incomes will benefit from this change, which moves some of the cost from bills to taxes. He really ought to talk to the fuel poverty lobby groups.

[Mr Anderson]

What about the companies doing their bit?

Postal Services Bill

Debate between David Anderson and Ed Davey

Wednesday 12th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I was coming to that, so I am delighted that my hon. Friend intervened just then. There is a legal barrier—

[Mr Anderson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Davey]

Let me just finish the point, because there is a legal barrier. This also addresses the point made by the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson), who asked whether the European Union was involved in creating problems for legislating in the way proposed in the new clause. The legal barrier to legislation requiring an IBA is the EU’s competition framework. Legislation providing an exclusive arrangement between Royal Mail and Post Office Ltd would face a significant risk of legal challenge as being incompatible with competition law. Article 101 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union contains rules prohibiting anti-competitive agreements between undertakings. Article 4(3) of the treaty on European Union obliges member states not to jeopardise the attainments of the objectives of the treaty. The effect of those provisions, together with article 102 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, is that member states cannot introduce measures that would render the competition rules ineffective—that is clear. In addition, legislating for Post Office Ltd to have a guaranteed income stream would risk a successful state aid challenge being mounted. There are real barriers to doing what new clause 2 seeks to do.

However, I can assure the House, as I have done previously, that we, as shareholders, will ensure that the commitment that Royal Mail made in its evidence to the Public Bill Committee—that it would conclude the longest legally permissible contract before separation—is fulfilled.