Gareth Thomas
Main Page: Gareth Thomas (Labour (Co-op) - Harrow West)
Chris Huhne
My hon. Friend will know that the forecasts that we are making for 2020 crucially depend, in terms of their impact on household bills, on what one thinks will happen to the price of oil and gas. If one thinks that it will basically be the same as today, there is a modest increase in the cost of policies compared with the alternative; if one takes the International Energy Agency’s view of a $100 price for a barrel of oil, for example, one sees that our policies are reducing the cost of electricity to households. However, it is absolutely crucial to ensure not only that the policy framework delivers overall lower costs but that poor households, in particular, will not bear the brunt. That is why we are looking at social price support and why, as I said to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Tony Lloyd), it is absolutely crucial to target our energy efficiency measures on fuel-poor households so that we can deal with the cause, not merely with the symptoms.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I was grateful to hear the Secretary of State’s reconfirmation of the doubling of inspections of offshore oil and gas rigs. However, given that we have just seen testimony from the United States about Transocean oil rig managers ordering that a general alarm on the Gulf of Mexico oil rig that exploded be disabled, is it not time for the Secretary of State or the energy Minister to summon the Health and Safety Executive and Transocean to give further assurances about the safety of the 10 Transocean oil rigs that operate in UK waters?
Chris Huhne
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point that we are very aware of and have been devoting a lot of attention to in the Department. We had our own problems in this country with Piper Alpha at the end of the 1980s. In response to that, substantial changes were made in the regulatory regime which meant that there were no conflicts of interest of the sort that have existed in the American regime, and the US Administration are taking on board some of those lessons. We have tightened up the regime, which we want to be as effective as possible, and we will learn the lessons as they come out from the various inquiries into what happened with Deepwater Horizon. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will also be in close discussions with our Norwegian counterparts; we are already doing so at an official level. Last week in the US, at the clean energy ministerial meeting, I had some interesting discussions with my Norwegian counterpart on learning the best lessons from what has gone on in the Gulf of Mexico to ensure that we have an absolutely state-of-the-art regulatory regime, as I assure the hon. Gentleman we will.