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Energy Security

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's comments. I was not opposing such developments at that time—I was playing football and chasing birds, but that is another matter altogether. We are dealing with the here and now, and the situation is that the Government do not have enough confidence in clean coal technology, have not put enough investment into it, and have not planned enough for a proper policy. They are simply waiting until 2014, when we might see the outcome of a possible post-combustion project that will not have any commercial impact until 2020, 2022 or thereafter. I am not sure why the Government are being so timid. We have an Energy Minister who is normally robust and speaks his mind, yet I fear that his hand has been forced and he is displaying a level of timidity that he secretly would not want to show. I hope that he can tell us the reason for that timidity. Is it because he felt that the battle to secure the nuclear option would be greater that it has turned out to be, and that he could not have developed CCS adequately against that background? Is it because the oil companies have told him that it would be expensive and take too long, as Mr. Guerrant, the European director of ExxonMobil Gas and Power Marketing told the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Committee two weeks ago? Is that why the Government have balked at the challenge? Or is it because they, as the Government, did not have the confidence to grasp the nettle? By their timidity, the Government have held back the whole CCS process, and Britain's future energy security has been placed in jeopardy. We all must recognise that that is a great pity, to say the least.