---

Energy Bill

This amendment strikes me as pretty ambitious, if I may put it in that way. One should bear in mind the parallel with the Government’s proposals for eco-towns, which all sounded very splendid when they first came out. However, one now reads reports from planning officers, experts and others, and one headline, for example, states that ““An eco-town on a greenfield site is inherently unsustainable””. One has to be extremely careful and think these things through before putting them on the statute book. I suspect that eco-towns will be dealt with in the Planning Bill rather than here. But that is just an example of unintended consequences. While I admire the ambitions of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, in this regard, perhaps they are a bit unrealistic.