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Energy Bill

I do not understand the case put by the Minister. If you want to de-risk the decommissioning fund, which is a key thing that we all want to do, the easiest way to do so is to take it out of the legal circumference of the operator altogether, and that can be done by paying cash to whichever fund it goes into at the time on a per kilowatt hour basis, an operational time basis or whatever the basis needs to be. That would solve the whole problem and taxpayers would have certainty. It would mean that the public sector had to manage the fund but I am sure that it could delegate that as effectively as an energy operator—it is not the core business of either the public sector or energy operators. I do not understand why that is not seen as a straightforward solution. Certainly, as a taxpayer, I would feel far better about that solution than I would about trying to put national laws around international operators. It seems a simple principle to me.