Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Mike Weir and Huw Irranca-Davies

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I love it when we get to technical and miscellaneous amendments. They sound innocuous, but, as the Minister knows, there is a great deal of meat within the details—it is the sort of stuff that we love to agonise over. As we heard from both the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson), there are substantive issues within these proposals.

I shall turn my attention purely to one proposal—we support the Government’s proposals—because I want to pay the Minister and his team some compliments. In respect of Government new clause 11, there was a great deal of debate in Committee on the necessary balance to be struck between certainty for the investor community, and—this is paramount—protection for the taxpayer against the foreseen and unforeseen costs of decommissioning. After a great deal of debate and encouragement from the Committee, the Minister, quite worthily, agreed to remove his measure from the Bill and went away to discuss the options that he could bring back to the House.

I thank the Minister for the way in which he has engaged with Committee members and others, including my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead)—I must single him out. Some of his ideas, including on third-party engagement, have contributed significantly to the ideas behind, if not the drafting of, new clause 11.

The new clause is not perfect, and it never will be, but it makes a very good fist of striking the right balance between looking after the needs of different stakeholders, and—I say this categorically—ensuring that we protect taxpayers. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the remarks of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion, because she made some interesting points. I think the Minister has explained very well the use of the word “prudent”, but I am sure that he will address that and other issues that have been raised.

I thank the Minister, because this is how a Bill should evolve—through constructive engagement. Ministers should take measures away, think about them and listen to all the ideas on the table. He has come back with something that might not be perfect, but it is a massive improvement, on which he and his team are to be congratulated.

[Mr Weir]

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on nuclear power, which probably does not come as a great surprise to the Minister. I have nothing to add to what she said, because she made her case very well indeed.

I am glad to be able to support Government new clause 12, on transmission charges. It is a very sensible change. I await with interest the outcome of Operation TransmiT. Will Ofgem finally see sense and deal with transmission charges? I am not overburdened with confidence that it will do so, but one lives in hope.

I want to address the points that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Cathy Jamieson) made about the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995. I received a briefing on that from Friends of the Earth, the World Wide Fund for Nature, and the Association for the Conservation of Energy. I would normally be favourable towards those organisations, but I was not impressed by their briefing, which does not give a reason, other than an emotional one, on why HECA should not be repealed.

Very fairly, the hon. Lady said only that some organisations opposed the repeal of HECA, because some do not. Energy Action Scotland, for example, is much less convinced of HECA’s worth. That is the crux of the matter. She and I probably want to get to the same place, and my argument should be seen not as a political one, but one about the methods of getting there.

As I understand it, the Scottish Government want the repeal of HECA simply because they feel that it did not deliver. HECA places a duty on local authorities to set targets, but nothing over and above that. Out of the 32 local authorities in Scotland, only nine have set targets in the 16 years that HECA has been in operation. Despite the fact that the briefing I received describes HECA as the “main driver” for local authority action on energy saving over the past 15 years, the fact that so few local authorities set targets suggests that it was not particularly effective.