Energy Bill

Lord Roper Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

No, absolutely. First, this will not solve the problem that we have. There is not time to solve the problem that the noble Lord outlines to this Committee. As he said in his speech, given the timescales involved, we are already too late. What we are trying to do here is to mend the future. I think I said that what I felt should be done was not to add another layer but to fix the way in which the Government and the Civil Service work within departments. To me, that is the challenge, rather than putting a sticking plaster over the top.

[Lord Roper]

My Lords, my noble friend knows that I do not agree with all the views that he has just put forward on this amendment; indeed, I have my name to the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, has already moved. As the Committee will know, unlike others present I have extremely little experience of this matter. However, I believe that this as an additional body would be value added to the way in which the decision was made.

I came to that conclusion three weeks ago. I was having lunch in the Home Room and found myself opposite the noble Lord, Lord Tombs. I was talking to him about the Energy Bill and indeed this Committee, and mentioned the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh. He said, “Yes, the reason I am not really taking any part in the Committee is that I have been trying to solve that problem for a very long time and have never got anywhere with it. I had a number of debates every year in this House from 2002 to 2009 in which I argued for something similar, but never got anywhere”.

He then recommended that I should read his book Power Politics, which I did the following weekend. Having read it, I realise the problem that the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, set out: the lack of any long-term understanding of the problem by Ministers who, on the whole, spend a relatively short period dealing with these issues; and the fact that it is in the nature of the Civil Service that there is no specialised knowledge of both the economic and technical aspects of the industry’s problems. I believe that, as the noble Lord and my noble friend Lord Jenkin have said, this would be a significant addition to the way in which the real problems to which my noble friend has referred would have a better chance of being solved. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to give a favourable response to what I think is an important idea.