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Finance (No. 2) Bill

It is part of the process of parliamentary scrutiny, in which we are currently engaged, to try to tease some of that information out of the Government. It might have been preferable, if the figures were available, for them to be in the Red Book. I suspect—although I do not know—that part of the Government’s response will be to say that we are considering a recirculation exercise for corporation tax liabilities, allowable tax losses and so on. That is a strong suspicion, based on what my right hon. Friend the Paymaster General said when we had a brief debate on the matter in the Standing Committee, on which I served. I would like, as I said, to tease out some figures, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman and others would also like to do so. Leaving aside all the environmental issues about nuclear power, which it is not appropriate for us to discuss today—I am sure that you would rule me out of order if I tried to do so, Mr. Deputy Speaker—there are clear financial questions to be asked about the nuclear industry, both in the United Kingdom and around the world. As I was saying, the industry is subsidised around the world. It is a private industry in the United States, where it is heavily subsidised. No nuclear reactor has been built or commissioned in the USA, that bastion of free enterprise, for at least 25 years because the figures do not stand up. In Finland, which has been widely quoted recently because it is opening up nuclear power—quite controversially, perhaps, for a Scandinavian country—there are direct and very indirect subsidies for the power stations that are being built. I want to try to find out whether the Government are subsidising the nuclear industry in this country more than is commonly known, because of course there is a debate about whether there should be more nuclear power stations built in the United Kingdom. It is interesting to note, as I have teased out in the House before by parliamentary questions and in the Trade and Industry Committee on which I serve, that any company could now apply to build a new nuclear power station in the United Kingdom.