Viscount Ridley
Main Page: Viscount Ridley (Conservative - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I shall intervene briefly because I do not want to pre-empt what I am going to say in moving Amendment 53.
The noble Lord, Lord Deben, and my noble friend Lord O’Neill both hit the nail on the head when they emphasised the problems that we are facing in the market. However, whatever else we do with other amendments, it is important that we have an amendment such as Amendment 52, which puts a duty on government and regulators to promote competition and look after the interests of consumers. There is similar wording in legislation relating to water and the railways but it is the principle on which all other negotiations and discussions are based. It may be meaningless but it is there. There have been many occasions when I have used the railway principle against a particular Government who seemed to do something stupid or something that I did not like, but it is a very important principle. Whatever we do later as we go into more detail, it is very important that we have this kind of policy right at the top to show where the Government and the regulator should be going.
Viscount Ridley
My Lords, I had not intended to intervene on this amendment and I shall do so extremely briefly, mainly because I have been moved by the words of my noble friend Lord Deben and the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, to say that I heartily agree with them. As I do not always agree with them on everything, I suspect that that is terrible news to them, but I think that this little outbreak of what one might call “free-market anti-capitalism” is a very good point. The point of competition is to drive co-operation between producers and consumers—to cause producers to do things that help consumers both by innovation and by the lowering of prices. I shall not go on any further; I just wanted to record that fact.
Lord Crickhowell
My Lords, I had not intended to intervene but, while listening to this debate and agreeing with what has been said, particularly during the recent speeches, I was also glancing at the Explanatory Notes to the Bill. It is rather interesting that under Chapter 6 the Government have an essay on access to markets. The notes refer to wholesale market liquidity as,
“an important feature of a competitive market. It provides market participants with a route to market, risk management opportunities and investment and operational signals”.
It goes on to talk about the importance of liquidity and, further down, it says:
“Independent developers have played an important role in delivering new capacity in the renewable and gas generation sectors and could play a key role in meeting the Government’s goals and deliver essential investment in the future, provided market conditions are right”.
Having said all that, surely it is entirely appropriate that, when we get on to electricity market reform and the duties placed on the Secretary of State, the points made by my noble friend in this amendment should indeed be there. If these are the matters that the Government consider important in their introduction to Chapter 6, it must surely be right that this should be one of the factors that the Secretary of State has to take account of. It should therefore be listed in the Bill.