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Energy Bill

We welcome the amendments in general terms, but some aspects of them are a little disappointing. Unlike the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), I am afraid that we regret the fact that the sustainability requirement was not placed alongside security of supply as part of the primary responsibility in Ofgem's remit. Even at the top of the list of Ofgem's secondary requirements, the definition of sustainability remains absolutely key. Unfortunately, in other Government Departments—not necessarily in this new Department—we have seen the use and abuse of the word ““sustainability”” in many different respects: the Department for Transport appears to believe that it is sustainable to build a third runway at Heathrow; the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform thought that it was sustainable to build unabated coal-fired power stations; and the Department for Communities and Local Government thinks it is sustainable to bulldoze over increasingly large areas of the countryside. The word ““sustainability”” is thus one that needs to be tightly defined. Luckily for the Government, one body has been very robust in its definitions and very wise in its advice—the Sustainable Development Commission. I thus urge the Department—and, indeed, Ofgem, in exercising its duty—to take its advice on the precise definition of sustainability and sustainable development. Subsection (2) inserts the words ““existing and future”” in respect of Ofgem's customers. It is an interesting and clever formulation to address this issue and place it within the primary duty, but it is a little obscure and it poses the question of why we cannot one day simply value the environment in its own right, without having to regard it as a consumer entitlement of future gas or electricity customers. It is an awkward formulation, and I am not convinced that it will achieve what some of our noble Friends believed it would, as they thought it would be a completely unambiguous provision, but there is still room for some doubt about that. In the end, we have to encourage Ofgem to look radically at pricing and payment for energy works. The reform of energy pricing should one day break the link between the increased use of energy and electricity and the profits of the energy companies. That link has to be broken in some way. We need to reflect on whether it can be done by allowing consumers to pay still more for increased use of energy or by capping the profit that an energy company can take from an increase, perhaps redistributing it as another means of tackling fuel poverty. These issues are being looked at by other regulators. Ofwat is having some interesting discussions in connection with the current price review on water, attempting to break the link between resource use and private profit. It seems to me that Ofgem should be looking into the same issue, but I am not convinced that the provisions in the Bill will be strong enough to allow that to happen. For another example, some have advocated moving forward on the access transmission system from what is described as the ““invest and connect”” model to a ““connect and manage”” model that would prioritise connections to renewable sources of electricity and provide a structure that would guarantee a priority for low-carbon technologies and an incentive to move towards them. That has been advocated by the British Wind Energy Association—and I suppose we might say that it would advocate that, wouldn't it? But it is also supported by the Sustainable Development Commission, which is there to advise the Government independently on the application of sustainable development policy. It is through tests such as this that we will really see whether this section of the Bill is strong enough to achieve the kind of change that we want to see in the energy markets, and will support the ambitious targets for carbon reduction that we will probably be debating later this evening.