Energy Bill

Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan Excerpts

Thursday 11th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I will be brief. I welcome the proposed new clause. Unfortunately, I did not have the opportunity to attend the briefing yesterday evening but wish to make a couple of points. I have had a lifetime’s involvement in fuel poverty, having come from an area where the fuel poor are always with us. Sometimes one of the key things you need when dealing with fuel poverty is not fancy targets or models but a soupçon of common sense. This is one of the areas that troubles me about the Green Deal. If you are expecting the fuel poor to front-end facilitations to their house, for example, they are not going to be able to do it because they cannot afford to do so. It is great having a wonderful model that says, “If you up-front the amendments to your accommodation, you will benefit in the longer-term”. However, if you cannot afford to turn your heating on, you are hardly going to be able to afford cavity wall insulation.

I make a plea for some basic common sense when dealing with this matter. I heard the praise of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, for the fact that the amendment repeatedly says:

“The Secretary of State must”.

Frankly, the Secretary of State needs some enforcement powers to encourage the industry to get involved actively in the campaign to move people out of fuel poverty, unless he is going to go down to B&Q and get a hammer, nails and some insulating material. We need to have enforcement. With this Bill, as always, a lot of the detail will be in secondary legislation. Until we see the nuts and bolts of the secondary legislation, we will not see whether my common-sense points will be met. I welcome the proposed new clause and will read the secondary legislation with interest when it comes along. However, I repeat that common sense matters even more than targets in relation to this. I urge officials to bear that common sense in mind when they craft the secondary legislation.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I am very happy to follow my noble friend. The fight against fuel poverty in the past 10 to 15 years has been bedevilled by loose definitions and arbitrary targets. The amendment goes some way to mitigate concerns that have arisen about that. It sticks in my craw to say this but the Government must be praised for obtaining support for the measure from Derek Licorice, the chair of the Fuel Poverty Advisory Group, and Jenny Saunders of the NEA. The fact that people are giving understandably cautious support, but none the less a blessing, for the measure is an indication that Ministers have sought to build bridges on this issue. Known targets and definitions have been taken away and a rather more complex Hills approach has been adopted. That approach has its drawbacks but does take account of the complexity of the situation. Therefore, it is desirable to move forward not using the bludgeon of statutory change but rather a regulatory approach, as that will enable subsequent Ministers of whatever political complexion to adjust and calibrate the policies.

It is also fair to say that for us in Opposition to try putting forward amendments at this stage would be somewhat premature—although, from what one can gather of the parliamentary timetable ahead of us, we will have time, probably over the Recess, to look at some of these issues. Obviously, the statutory instrument and regulatory approach will be the subject of consultation and discussion. One would hope that that need not take an unduly long period. None the less, it will give us some opportunity to look at the fine print of this.

Some of us would be happier about this if we were to see the colour of the Government’s money, or indeed money at all from the Government. Their approach to fuel poverty has been to withdraw state funding from this and make it a tax on the consumer rather than on the country as a whole. That is a flawed policy. It would not be difficult for the Green Deal to become more successful than it is at present, but if it does not become substantially better we will have to look again at the Government providing funds for some of the major programmes that will be required to address areas of fuel poverty. We are not talking about individual households but street after street after street. If approached on that basis, we could deal with an awful lot of the most deep-seated areas which Hills recognises are the core of the problem.

As I said, I do not wish to be grudging in my support for this approach. There will obviously be difficulties and flaws but this is not the time to identify them. The opportunity for that will come on Report and beyond, when we have had time to digest some of the indigestible graphs to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred. If we can do that, we can perhaps make something of this. At the end of the day, somebody has to pay for it. At the moment, that will fall in the main on the shoulders of the consumer of gas and electricity. That is not a satisfactory approach to social injustice on this scale. Even with the Hills modification, the scale is intolerable for a society such as ours to leave to some kind of slipshod market mechanism, the like of which we have seen in the Green Deal. The Green Deal might work. It is the only show in town but it will have to start working very quickly or some of us will not be confident that the great ideas and reasoned approach in this White Paper, these documents and expressed in this amendment will be enough, without proper financial support, to tackle the major social problem we have here.

[Lord Deben]

My Lords, I again declare my interest as chairman of the climate change committee, which has a specific responsibility to consider and concern itself with fuel poverty. It would be suitable for me to say a few words about this. I am very pleased that the Government have brought forward this amendment, not least because one of the difficulties of advising on fuel poverty has been the very peculiar mechanisms that we have used to measure it. To be able to measure it more effectively, to have a proper and accepted basis, will help us very much in giving advice. As noble Lords know, if you are a scientifically based committee, it is quite hard to move from making decisions on science, which is of course what we do, to making decisions on measurements that would not stand up to any kind of consideration from outside. This is a very good first step. All of us acknowledge the fact that there is widespread support for the principle but there is a lot to be worked through. I think most of us would agree with what the noble Lord who just spoke said.

It is worth realising, too, that it has much wider implications. As usual, we have been very much helped by the intervention of my noble friend Lord Jenkin. I am always amazed that he gets his head so easily around the most complex of issues and then lightly dismisses that by saying that he is not quite there yet. If when I get to the same stage of life, I am “there”—if I may put it so—as well as he is, I shall be very proud indeed. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude.

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[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords for their warm welcome—even though from the Benches opposite it was perhaps slightly lukewarm. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and I genuinely share a concern about fuel poverty and I am extremely grateful that he recognises that the target that was put in by the previous Administration has not worked to alleviate fuel poverty. Something needed to be done and we have an approach that has been reviewed and put forward independently.

I will start by responding to the wide range of interventions. I thank my noble friend Lord Jenkin for his extremely warm welcome for the amendments, and all noble Lords who took the time to attend yesterday evening’s briefing. My noble friend is absolutely right, as are other noble Lords, that we really need to address issues around fuel poverty, and about how important it is that we retain a flexible approach and respond to the change in dynamics across England. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Jenkin for laying out eloquently and with great precision what the Government are trying to deliver. I, like him, when I first came across some of the statistics at which we have to look, was quite puzzled. I have been extremely grateful to my officials for explaining to me, perhaps for longer periods of time than to noble Lords, exactly how they work.

My noble friend also mentioned the gas grid, and the policy of gas grid extensions. Through the fuel-poor network extension scheme, which is part of the new price control arrangements known as RIIO, the gas distribution networks will be required to connect 80,000 fuel-poor households to the grid over the period of 2021. I can confirm that this is not adversely affected by the new definition. We can of course work with the sector on this, including the fuel poverty advisory group, to ensure that those who would benefit from being off-grid can access and benefit from our proposals.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My understanding of the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was that there was an implication that the figures to be connected to the gas grid were going to be far greater. Therefore, that would have a difficult impact upon the existing investment programme for the national grid. Are we being told that they are getting exactly the same number of households connected but possibly in different places?

[Baroness Verma]

The information I am being given is that there will be no change.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Thank you.

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

Perhaps I can help the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill. The point that has been put to me on behalf of the national grid is that it does not yet see what the change in the target would mean for their investment programme. I endorse very much my noble friend Lord Deben’s point that there is now an element of uncertainty. It is that which needs now to be resolved as quickly as possible. I am sure that they will respond firmly to the invitation which has been issued for discussions to take place. Certainly, I do not know and have not been told whether this means investment in different places for different communities. They do not yet know enough about it to be able to make that sort of decision.

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[Baroness Liddell of Coatdyke]

My Lords, I support my noble friend in his amendment. The amendment seems particularly sensible and apposite, because at the time that this legislation was being crafted we were not aware of some of the mis-selling issues that were to emerge from the customers of energy suppliers. The last time I checked, there was something like 27 cases still pending with Ofgem, and that was before the announcement of the fines relating to mis-selling affecting Scottish and Southern Energy. Given the number and complexity of tariffs, many people will be checking whether they have been mis-sold.

It has been suggested that there is a danger that the mis-selling of electricity and energy in general could reach a stage where it matches the mis-selling of PPI and some of the financial services mis-selling. This would be useful for the Government to have in the armoury should that situation emerge. It is not radical; it is actually quite a simple measure. If we take into account that the most recent instances of mis-selling had been in the pipeline at Ofgem for around four years, my noble friend’s proposal to extend the time period from five to 15 years is measured and logical. I do not see this as greatly controversial but as a way of dealing with a problem that may be coming over the horizon and that would save recourse to additional legislation in the future. If the Minister cannot make a commitment today to support my noble friend’s amendment, perhaps this is something we might be able to return to on Report.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Following on from my two colleagues, it seems that mis-selling is endemic in certain areas of our public services—public with a small p rather than in the sense of Government-run.

A bank is as much a utility as the provider of electricity or gas. Mis-selling results in fines and punishments, which seem to be absorbed, and the public end up paying the fines through higher prices. We do not normally see a reduction in dividends as a consequence of this, but we might see a reduction in investment, which is one of the difficulties that we have if we clobber the utilities that want to invest. We require them to invest in order to sustain our supplies of power, gas and the like and, if we fine them very heavily, however understandable that is, we perhaps endanger some of that much needed investment. On the other hand, we are talking about the legitimate concern customers have in getting some kind of redress that they have not had in the past. That should also act as a deterrent to the companies so that they do not go about setting tariffs in the misleading and cavalier fashion that they have in the past.

We are talking about organisations that are persistent offenders when it comes to overcharging and misleading the public and, at the moment, we do not seem to be capable of deterring them. If we had simpler means for the public to get redress and for ensuring that these offenders are punished, we might begin to develop a deterrent culture, under which they would be a lot more reluctant to jump headlong into fiddling tariffs in the way that they have done recently—usually at the expense of not just the vulnerable but the whole spectrum of society. As we do not always know the full character or nature of the abuse, it is about time that we tried to introduce some more blanket form of deterrence. To my mind, a blanket form of deterrence in the form of easier access for the public to seek redress would be a major caution to these potential persistent offenders, which are in the dock at the moment as far as a large section of the community is concerned.

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[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, one important but largely forgotten area of energy policy is the smart meter rollout which has been recently, rightly, postponed to make sure we get it right. To put it into context, nearly 50 million meters altogether will be rolled out to some 30 million homes and businesses at a cost, over about a decade, of £11 billion. That is a major national investment. Sometimes I feel that we do not give this enough attention—I am sure Government do but maybe Parliament does not—to make sure that that investment delivers what should be a real change to the way that the electricity market, distribution and usage, work in this country as the future foundation of a truly smart grid.

One important area is data. I apologise to the Minister for tabling this amendment very late; it is a probing amendment and she might tell me that I have nothing to worry about. If that is so, I will welcome it. I have felt a concern both on the consumer side and from within the industry that this area is not fully clear. If you look up smart meters on the DECC website, it says that both these areas are satisfactory. Clearly, there is no great detail there. The amendment would ensure that the considerable data that come out from smart meters and are transmitted to energy suppliers will remain the property of the consumer who used the meter, and that they will be able to use the information in whatever way they want, primarily to help use their energy more efficiently but also to get quotations from other energy companies. This will ensure that the data are used properly and to the benefit of consumers as well as to the electricity supply industry, which will have reduced collection charges.

Those two areas are fundamentally important. I would be very pleased to hear from the Minister that I have nothing to worry about and that this is already enshrined in a reasonable degree of law. If it is not, it is important that we make sure that it is enshrined in some legislative form. I beg to move.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I should perhaps start by declaring an interest. I am chairman of SmartGrid GB. In some respects we will have an information overload as a consequence of the rollout of smart meters. On the other hand, it would be desirable for the rights of the consumer to be taken properly into account. It is quite likely that there will be a lot of information, and it would be a reassurance to the consumer if they had access to what was out there. Some of the enthusiasts for the new technologies, which have yet to be fully realised, find their eyes glowing at the prospect of smart metering. We have to be a wee bit cautious. There could be civil liberties concerns, although not about the time when you put on a kettle or whether you run the washing machine in the middle of the night. These issues are trivial.

It is a bit like another problem that we have at the moment. If we use our passes on the Underground, we could be tracked over the course of a day or a week. While that might be of use to some authorities, and might be used for beneficial purposes, it could be a problem. It will be the same when we get these new meters in households. I see the noble Lord, Lord Deben, looking at me, but I am sure that, in his experience of constituency surgeries, he had, as I had from time to time, individuals who were convinced that in a television set there was a camera as well as the receiver, and that somebody, somewhere, was finding out what was going on in their living room.

[Lord Deben]

The noble Lord is absolutely right, but we should not allow people to think of this just as a joke. Some newspapers will certainly try to suggest that this sensible proposal is a means of doing untold damage. Therefore, we must get it right from the beginning or we will destroy the whole system.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

I remember being a lorry driver’s mate in the 1960s when I was a student. As a consequence of a Labour Government’s legislation, the haulage companies were trying to introduce the “spy in the cab”. That is now regarded as a very important health and safety measure. At the time it was not very well presented. If we can get an understanding and an appreciation by government of the dangers of the overload of information that could emerge, the public could be educated on the beneficial uses of it and made aware of the dangers—of which the civil liberties lobby could take account—the anxiety that parts of the press might have about the rollout of smart meters would in large measure be mitigated.

Therefore, while I appreciate the probing character of this amendment, it would benefit the process if the Government gave us positive indications today that if this is defective, or if it is otherwise necessary, amendments could be presented at a later stage in the appropriate format. We would do well to keep this in mind even if we do not get completely uptight about it.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I would like to speak to Amendment 51AA, which I tabled with the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth.

I was not at Second Reading but I have been listening to some of the Committee’s sittings. I went to a meeting last week at University College Energy Institute which discussed the difficulties people will have—up and down the country—with the new Energy Bill, which has many laudable objectives. I recalled at this meeting the case of one noble Earl finding that his electricity statement was five pages long. My son-in-law, who works in a green energy company, comments on the great difficulties people have when installing new green systems: heating, insulation, flood-prevention, and so on.

So how are people going to understand it? There seems to be a feeling we are not yet, and perhaps never will be, a society that gets it all on the internet or from a phone call. Perhaps we need to go back to what used to be quite a familiar sight on the high street: the energy showroom. Not only could you see a range of electrical apparatus, you could show your bill to someone. These showrooms were the front office for the energy company.

Our suggestion in this amendment is that the Secretary of State makes adequate provision for the universal availability of information, in order to enable domestic energy consumers to make effective decisions about their energy usage, including information relating to installation, running costs and monitoring equipment— that last point refers to smart meters. People studying smart meters realise they are going to be a source of great difficulty to many people.

My suggestion, therefore, is that we should have energy showrooms up and down the UK’s high streets, where empty shops give organisations such as councils, the Government and energy companies the opportunity to provide places offering this sort of information. As I have explained, it is important that in these places there are people who can provide information.

Like all good ideas this idea builds on the wide variety of existing initiatives run by councils and voluntary bodies. However, the Government should take it as a general responsibility to encourage, where possible, and to provide funding, where necessary, to ensure that these energy showrooms, or information centres, become available. The idea is that in such a place you could not only see technology but make a decision about spending more money on insulation or on heating.

It is true that, under the Green Deal, there are approved operatives who can come and visit you, but that is a second stage. You would really like to see a rather broad overview of all the possibilities as well as having somewhere where you could find out about the bills coming through to you. We have been talking about fuel poverty, which is a complex issue and will be dealt with in many different ways. Again, you need a real person to do it. I know people who work in the CAB, and I fear that the CAB will be overloaded with people trying to ask questions about their energy bills. The effect will be such a big ramp, it will be necessary to have additional or separate places for energy.

One of the other points is who would do this. Well, there are lots of people out there seeking jobs. This would be a rather interesting, useful and perhaps economical, way for people who have technical skills, abilities and inclinations to provide this kind of information. Anybody working in such an energy showroom would of course develop skills that they could quite quickly apply elsewhere, so it might be a practical way of upgrading the skills of many people with a direct objective.

Of course, the information services are available on the internet and via helplines but, speaking for myself, I always much prefer to go and buy something from a shop and talk to a person. Although I am a computer person and use a Japanese supercomputer, when it comes to my bill I like to go and talk to somebody down the street. I am not sure if the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, is in his place, but people like him who go down to their electricity showroom might also like to get some government information about climate change from approved sources. When you go to a doctor’s surgery you learn about your health and how to change your lifestyle, and you learn about science and medicine. Maybe we should be hearing a variety of views, but it seems to me that these would be climate change centres as well as energy showrooms.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I was going to suggest that, in an objective way, you present the official view but you might say that there are some areas where there are questions, as there are in science. However, I am sure that if these centres were formed, the Committee on Climate Change would be able to give excellent advice on how these centres might be used. The other point, as we learnt this afternoon, is the question of safety, including the safety of carbon monoxide and so on. Again, you could have that information at these places.

Secondly, as I have commented before in the House of Lords, I visit the Netherlands quite often—I am a visiting professor there. They have an excellent European energy centre where you can see a tremendous array of all the different kinds of technologies and energy developments available. Of course, in the UK we have the Centre for Alternative Technology at Machynlleth in Wales. There was one in Swindon. Surely we should have many more of these centres where people can make these really quite complex choices between windmills—if you are a Prime Minister, you have one on your roof—solar collectors, heat pumps, biomass generation and new kinds of insulation. Two critical issues are insulation and flood damage. We really need centres up and down this country where people can go and see them, funded and managed by energy companies, non-profit bodies and councils.

These two suggestions are building on what exists already. They are in line with the Government’s big society—going to meet your fellow citizens dealing with energy is surely part of that scene. I believe that all political parties would support this kind of initiative in order to get the whole energy and climate change movement going faster and with less concern to people, and that people would make use of it. DECC should take action quite soon.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

My Lords, I support my noble friend on this issue. As he was speaking, I was thinking that we have a model for what he is talking about. If you go along Oxford Street or the main street of pretty well any town there is at least one telecoms shop, where you can sign up to get a new phone. The last shops to close seem to be the mobile phone shops. Yet this is a far more pressing requirement than just a mobile phone.

One of the consequences of privatisation has been the demise of the old electricity and gas showrooms, in which various pieces of equipment, from washing machines to cookers to refrigerators, were on sale. Unfortunately, of course, they have now been superseded by the likes of Currys and tend to be in shopping areas outside the high street. With regard to the level of public concern about electricity and gas prices, and the confusion over the effectiveness of one piece of equipment against another, it is fair to say that if you go to some of the high street shops you will get very good, helpful assistance but that tends to be in the minority. Due to the churn of staff in the retail trade, people are there for relatively short periods and do not have the experience that was built up in the old showrooms.

The telephone companies and the makers of telecoms equipment seem to be able to provide a service for the public which the big six energy companies seem incapable of doing. They have retreated from the high street. The cost of property on the high street is not very high these days and one would imagine that it would not cost an awful lot to get people in there, but of course they would say that that was too much and that if people were better informed they would probably be looking for better tariffs than the ones that they get and we would be back talking about mis-selling and the like.

This is something that the Government ought to put their mind to and I wait with interest to hear what the Minister has to say. As my noble friend said, it is part of the big society, part of a well informed consumer society, and one would have thought that it might be an attractive proposition for some of the big companies to look at in terms of looking after their customers.

[Baroness Worthington]

My Lords, the amendment in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, raises a really interesting issue, and I commend them for tabling it. It brings this Bill into contact with people, consumers and citizens.

When I read about the amendment, I thought back to my childhood, where in a medium-sized town in south Wales, there was the South Wales Electricity Board showroom, right in the centre among all the shops. You could get advice about your bills and you could speak to people, but it also had a showroom for the sale of electrical goods. Of course, in those days—and I am sure this started a long time before—the energy companies had a great interest in making sure that every family had a washing machine, a fridge-freezer and an electric cooker because it would boost the sale of their product. They were ensuring that we were all making the most of all the labour-saving devices that were coming forward in order to boost the sale of the units of electricity that they generated. It probably made very good business sense. However, times have changed and over the years energy companies have receded into the background. Now they are engaged mainly in a massive database management exercise, in which they try to keep interaction with the consumer to a bare minimum. I have been told that, from a supply company’s point of view, every time someone rings up it is money off the bottom line and it does not like it. Companies invest in call centres, which have become a modern job-creation exercise here and overseas. We can talk to people only on the phone. There is very little interaction on the high street.

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[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I am particularly grateful to the noble Baroness for this opportunity to consider this clause, which will enable the Secretary of State to charge fees for providing energy resilience services in the event of a disruption or threatened disruption to energy supplies. It will allow the Government to recoup some or all of the costs of the services provided to businesses, and to set appropriate fees for these services.

The clause does not set the rate of any fees or charges. It will enable the Secretary of State to set fees either through secondary legislation or through administrative means and, as such, to recoup some or all of the costs of providing the service. It cannot and will not be used as a revenue-raising measure; that is not the purpose of this provision. The services will be provided on a discretionary basis, because businesses can choose to take advantage of them or not, based on balancing the effect on revenues and meeting contractual obligations against cost of the service.

The services which the Government may provide, to help improve the resilience of the energy sector, are those such as making available personnel, supplies, equipment or other assets, to businesses. Examples of where the Government could provide a service for which it might be appropriate to charge businesses include: provision of personnel in event of widespread impacts on workers due to flu or industrial action; equipment or vehicles which have greater flexibility in extreme weather conditions, allowing companies to carry out repairs or clean up more effectively; and provision of assets to enable a critical component of the supply chain to remain viable in the short term and until alternative options are identified.

The need for this power became apparent last year when there was a threat of industrial action by drivers, which would have caused widespread disruption to fuel supplies across the UK. As a result of that, the Government have set up a military fuel school to train military personnel to drive commercial fuel tankers. Drivers could be deployed to haulage companies in the event of a future dispute of this nature, and this power would enable us to charge those companies for some or all of the costs incurred by Her Majesty’s Government—which is to say, the taxpayer.

My noble friend Lord Roper raised the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, and the recommendation for the removal of subsection (3)(b) which enables the Secretary of State to set the levels of the fees by means of a direction to be laid before Parliament, as well as by means of regulation. The Government are considering all the committee’s recommendations very carefully and will respond in due course. However, I take this opportunity to clarify why we feel that this provision is important.

The requirement for the services proposed is likely to arise in the event of a significant unexpected disruption. This may be necessary to plan and provide services in a situation of emergency and urgency. There may well be situations where it would be appropriate and feasible to set out the level of fees to be charged for a particular service in secondary legislation, and the Government would aim to do so in those circumstances. However, it is likely that there may also be circumstances where it is not feasible to work within the timetable required for secondary legislation, and the flexibility afforded by ministerial direction would be required for those sorts of situations. Lack of this flexibility may make the services difficult to deliver within the optimum timescale. At worst, it could render timely delivery completely unfeasible, with the consequential loss of benefit to businesses, the economy and consumers.

My noble friend Lord Roper mentioned other matters in relation to the publishing of the department’s reply. We will be happy to make it available. It will be published on the department’s website as promptly as is possible. That is in hand.

My noble friend Lord Jenkin made some points. I will say that these powers are not connected with, and would not apply to, provisions elsewhere in the Bill on the security of electricity supplies and capacity market provisions.

For the reasons I have set out, and given the importance of the provision for improving national resilience, the clause should stand part of the Bill.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

Will the Minister clarify one point? If there is an official strike, for which due notice has been given, and military personnel are used as strike-breakers, companies will have to pay the Government for the use of the strike-breakers. In that event, what would the companies have to do to recoup the money that they had been forced to lay out to pay for the strike-breaking? Would they have recourse to the courts? Would they be able to sue the unions for the money involved in the strike-breaking activity?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this provision is not designed to interfere with the normal relationships between employers and employees. Wherever possible, the Government’s preference is for the supply of fuel to be maintained by the normal, civilian supply chain. Military personnel would be deployed only where this is not possible. Ministers will take a decision to deploy military personnel only where there is a threat of significant disruption to fuel supplies. Industrial action in this sector can have a very serious impact on the UK economy, as well as endangering the health and safety of our citizens.

[Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan]

The Minister did not answer the question. If the Government impose a charge on companies in the event of an industrial dispute where military personnel have to be responsible for driving tankers, what redress will the companies have to recoup the money that they will have to pay to the Government to fund the strike-breaking exercise?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

We do not anticipate that the companies could recoup in those circumstances.