---

Electricity Supply

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. It is not my task to summarise the discussion, but I congratulate noble Lords who have taken part on the standard of discussion. It has been an excellent debate. The absence of old friends has been offset very thoroughly by the acquisition of new faces, who I hope we shall see again. I shall deal with two topics relating to what I tried to demonstrate in my opening remarks. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, seemed to be rather sceptical about the possibility of long-term planning when there are unforeseen circumstances which are likely to occur. That is precisely why one has to have long-term planning. It is not a rigid plan; it provides flexibility or ““resilience””, to use my noble friend’s phrase, or ““diversity””, to use another phrase. This is an area where the market is singularly ill-equipped to operate. Providing diversity means doing what is not in every respect the most attractive thing today. You are paying an insurance policy, and the market does not generally like that point of view. It likes short-term rewards. The Minister said that he hoped that I was convinced that the Government have demonstrated a strategy. His natural optimism overcame him because anything further from the truth I find difficult to imagine. The Government are immersed in short-term considerations and single-factor solutions, both of which are the roads to very deep trouble. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, referred to the BE rescue. It was an outrageous so-called rescue, made more so by the fact that—your Lordships may care to look up an earlier Audit Commission report at the time of the British Energy difficulty—the Audit Commission did not make a judgment. It never makes a judgment. But it pointed out that the DTI had failed to consider the effect of NETA on British Energy and other generators, and failed to consult them on the effects of doing it. That comes back to what I have said before: the rescue was from a crisis of the Government’s own making, which makes the whole solution even more outrageous. I do not know whether it is possible—it might be possible in another place—for the whole issue to be looked at by a Select Committee, which would be very valuable. Finally, my renewed thanks to everyone who has taken part today. I beg leave to withdraw my Motion for Papers. Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.