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Energy Bill

My hon. Friend is quite right. I am surprised that the Secretary of State has not taken that evidence into account. In fact, Mr. Buchanan went on to say:""The headline fact is that Britain is the single most exposed country among the big players in Europe"." That is what the Secretary of State's regulator says. I thought that this problem was something on which we could agree, and that the Bill might contain measures to solve it, yet it contains none. The second threat was mentioned earlier. The fact is that during the years ahead we will rely more and more on imported gas. For understandable reasons, North sea oil and gas supplies have peaked and are in decline. Other countries facing this situation have adequate storage capacity. The French have 120 days' supply and the Germans have 99 days, yet we have only 15 days. Where is the proposal in the Bill to increase our level of gas storage? My hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Miss Kirkbride) asked the Secretary of State a question on storage, and he gave a completely incoherent answer. He said that to advance the proposition that we should have the kind of storage on which other countries insist would somehow put off companies from investing. I do not understand what he meant by that. Perhaps the Minister of State will make a better job of explaining it when she winds up the debate. Another problem is our pitiful progress on renewables. I know that the Secretary of State believes in renewables, as do I, and we want to accelerate progress. We agree that wind farms and other renewables projects tend to get bogged down in acrimonious planning disputes. He thinks that we should have more renewables projects, and so do I, but his approach is to go round the country shouting at people for opposing wind farms, like Lady Catherine de Bourgh visiting a disobedient relative to tick them off. But where is the policy in the Bill to provide incentives for local communities to take on such projects?