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Energy Bill

We welcome the Government's response to recommendations made over the last few months about Ofgem's remit. We understand that it was difficult to go down the route of giving Ofgem a dual primary duty. At the end of the day, that would have meant that it had a duty to consumers and an equal duty towards sustainability. It is probably right that it is for the Government to make any decision about the balance between those two objectives, rather than devolving their power to an independent but unelected body. We recognise the Government's sensible approach of attempting to rebalance Ofgem's responsibilities to ensure that the interests of future consumers, alongside those of current consumers, are taken into account. That will allow Ofgem to require that actions be taken now to provide for our long-term energy security and to address issues of long-term affordability as well. Generally speaking, the Minister has found a clever way through the different options put to him, and we support him in that. We welcome the explicit highlighting of the requirement for Ofgem to take account of measures that will assist sustainable development—essentially putting at the top of the list of secondary duties a duty towards sustainability. Although that does not go as far as some might have wished—some wanted sustainability to be a primary duty—it makes it clear that it is at the top of the list of secondary duties. That is also something that we think should work effectively. There has been much discussion—in Committee and more generally—about problems of access to the grid, especially for renewables. The current position, whereby applications have to be connected in the order in which they were applied for, is absurd. It has led to some facilities not getting a connection for years after they have been given planning consent and been built. The worst case I know of is the offer of a connection in 2022—14 years from where we are now—even though the facility will be available to run many years before that. It is right for the system to be able to take account of planning considerations and actual construction issues, and to be able to distinguish between projects that can be brought on stream at an earlier stage than others that are many years off. It is genuinely desirable to achieve the objective through voluntary agreements and it is appropriate to see whether such agreements can work. We await with great interest the outcome of discussions between the regulator and the industry. If agreement cannot be reached, however, we simply cannot allow the situation to drift on; the Government need to have powers, so that a solution can be imposed if it cannot be found through voluntary agreement. We hope that those powers will not be needed, and that the voluntary agreement will work, but we support the Government in taking on these powers, if necessary.