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Energy Bill

moved Amendment No. 32B: 32B: After Clause 91, insert the following new Clause— ““Nuclear power generation: report on operation of market (1) The Secretary of State shall, no later than two years following the commencement of this section, and every two years thereafter, report to Parliament on the operation of the market in nuclear power generation. (2) Reports under subsection (1) shall include an assessment of the extent to which any one nuclear power generator has a dominant market position.”” The noble Lord said: My Lords, I am conscious that dinner time is approaching, and I shall be as brief as possible. The amendment follows on very well from the one moved by the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, and the Minister’s remark that he would support—I hope I quote him correctly—the liberalisation of the European energy market. The difficult question is how that liberalisation will be made to happen. I go back to the exchange that we had in the House during Oral Questions on 21 October. I expressed a fear of overdominance by Electricité de France or its English subsidiary, known as EDF, once it had acquired British Energy and was building four new nuclear reactors, as it proposes to do. This is against a background whereby EDF already points out with pleasure that it has 6 million customers in the United Kingdom and that over a quarter of the UK population depends, in its own words, on EDF for their electricity. I suggested to the Minister that it would be wise for the Government to take a substantial minority stake in EDF Energy. This point was taken up by the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, who asked: "““Do the Government have any intention of having a golden share in our nuclear industry in order to protect what will be a vital British national interest? Some of us feel a little uncomfortable about there not being equal access to markets in France””.—[Official Report, 21/10/08; col. 1046.]" That was a very gentle way of putting it, but both those suggestions were turned down by the Minister, who politely dismissed them saying that the Government intend to take the government share in British Energy in cash, which would be used to decommission old nuclear stations. At the moment, we have a split attitude to EDF. There is a twofold problem. On the one hand, the Government welcome EDF buying out British Energy and being ready to go ahead with building new nuclear power stations in this country. On the other hand, EDF already has 6 million customers. I declare an interest; I am one, and from my experience, 6 million customers are already too many. On 22 September, I wrote a letter to the managing director of customer relationships pointing out that I have two different tariffs for my warmwise electricity. That was five weeks ago, but I have not had an answer. Equally, I received a very pleasant piece of paper inviting me, like many others, to claim my four free, energy-efficient light bulbs. I and others in my family claimed them, but none of us has received them.