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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

We have had a useful debate. I am grateful to the Minister for joining in, for telling us what information is available and for offering to write to me about the important question of the amount of energy consumed in this country that was generated overseas by nuclear power. His willingness to try to provide that information suggests that he sees that it would be remiss of the British people to think that they are doing a good thing in rejecting domestically generated nuclear electricity if they continue to rely on surges of French-generated nuclear electricity. The difference between Greenwich mean time, British summer time and continental time mean that peak surges in demand come at different times, which is a great virtue of the interconnector. I was disappointed by the response by the hon. Member for Edinburgh, North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz). The Bill includes many requirements to produce this and that, so I should have thought that he would be pleased to see such a report being presented to Parliament. There is a difference between statistics being published by Departments and statistics being included in a report available to Members of Parliament. I thought that I detected a sneering tone in the hon. Gentleman’s comments about nuclear energy, but perhaps I was mistaken and am being unduly jaundiced. My greatest concern about this short debate is that my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) remains unconvinced. He made the good point that individual figures are not useful unless one can identify trends. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has produced a document examining trends over a 12-year period—not a millennium—which shows significant changes in activity. For example, the amount of nuclear electricity produced in the Czech Republic increased by 48.9 per cent. between 1990 and 2002. Over the same period, the amount increased by 125 per cent. in Sweden, decreased by 0.9 per cent. in South Korea and increased by 33.9 per cent. in the UK. I accept my right hon. Friend’s point that taking one year’s figures alone is not useful, unless one can point to the trend, but obviously if the Secretary of State produced the reports every year, we could compare one year’s report with the next. When the new report was published, we could examine the equivalent figures for the previous year and work out the trends from that.