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Energy Bill

I thank the Minister for his carefully considered answer to our first question. I am enormously well served by having my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding with me on these Benches. I almost feel that there is not much I can add to what he said. We are all trying to face in the same direction on this and to come up with ideas that will put us in a better place than where we are now. The Government's laissez-faire attitude to storage over the past 10 years has got us where we are today and has made us very nervous. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, referred to the difficult task we have with contract law in some European Union countries. We are not able to see what Norway sold to Germany, at what price or how. Germany had it, stored it, waited until the strike price came and found us in a difficult position. It is not a position that we want to find ourselves in again, which is the reason for the amendment. It might not be a perfect amendment, but it leads us to not finding ourselves in that position again. I say to the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, who opposed the amendment so vehemently, that I come with a little information behind me, having served for 10 years on the board of a company called Cadbury Schweppes, which makes rather a lot of chocolate. We really did have to work out how many beans we needed for the chocolate for that year, and we held our procurement officers to task on making a report to us for what we needed. It is not beyond our capability as a country to know what we need. If the noble Lord was a little more familiar with the private sector, he would understand that in that area you lose your job if you get it wrong, and so do an awful lot of shareholders.