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As amended in the Standing Committee, further considered.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth) has done the House a service in using the device of tabling an amendment to ensure that we have a debate. This provision was not in the Bill when it was considered on Second Reading; it was, as new clause 21, an amendment to the Bill on 9 February. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) was too modest to repeat in the full Chamber the joke that he made on that occasion, but like him I am a supporter of Southampton football club and I think that it is worth repeating it. He said that dynamic demand"““is not what despairing Southampton football club fans are demanding of their team””." It is important to put that on the record. The other thing that needs to be put on the record is that during that short Standing Committee debate the Minister said, very frankly, that although the Government are committed to these climate change reduction technologies, they"““have done very little proactive work in this area to date—I do not understand why—although we have kept up to date with developments. It is clear that these technologies deserve closer investigation, to establish whether they could make a significant contribution to reducing our carbon emissions.””—[Official Report, Standing Committee C, 9 February 2006; c. 97–100.]" I hope that, following those remarks, the Minister immediately went back to his Department and said, ““Let’s get on with this job and write the report. Don’t let us wait for the Bill to get on to the statute book before we start because there is considerable potential here.”” That potential is recognised in all parts of the House, and the more information we can bring to bear, the better informed the debate will be. It is agreed that any meaningful report will have to have regard to the costs and the necessary equipment. I take the same line as my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker), namely, that the amendments tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst would add unnecessarily to the Bill. I only wish that my hon. Friend’s desire for the light-touch approach had been evident during the debate on the previous groups of amendments, when we had the chance to remove clause 9 and make the Bill no worse by so doing. However, it is good that we should agree as much as possible, and when we do agree we should be proud to say so. I therefore say that I agree with my hon. Friend on the amendments being unnecessary. However, I say also that had my right hon. Friend not tabled them, we would not have been able to have this short but important debate on a potentially impressive area of new technology.