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Energy Bill

Of course we would support a subsidy for CCS; that is what we have been urging on the Government. The Secretary of State says he has spent the money, although he is unable to say how much he has spent or what it has been spent on. On nuclear, we have said that we do not believe that it is a mature technology, and that it therefore should not be given a specific subsidy. I do not think there is any difference between us on that. If the Secretary of State can convince us that the money has, indeed, been spent, it may be the case that the levy is what we will have to fall back on. I still do not think, however, that he can get away with saying that this money has been spent on something the Government cannot account for. [Interruption.] So far, it is impossible to tell what the impact of the levy will be, because, as the Secretary of State has just said from a sedentary position, he is merely proposing powers to charge a levy in the future. If there were to be a levy, however, would that not offer the Secretary of State an opportunity to provide a clearer price for carbon, which is much needed? Why should suppliers of electricity from renewables, for example, have to pay a levy to support the capture of carbon when they do not generate any carbon dioxide in their production of electricity? Should not the "polluter pays" principle be followed, so that the levy is incurred in proportion to the CO2 emissions generated by each supplier? The Secretary of State might like to consider that, since he has clearly not designed his levy properly yet. Why are the Government restricting themselves to the same approach that they took in respect of the climate change levy: a stealth tax, which did not do what was described on the tin, as it were, because it had nothing at all to do with climate change? If the Government are serious about forbidding CO2 emissions from new coal power stations, why do they not specify—as we have said we would—an emissions performance standard so that no coal-generating plant can be more polluting than the most efficient combined cycle gas turbine station? That must be a totem of their seriousness in this matter. If we are to have investment in CCS, in the hope that it will work and be demonstrated successfully, why will the Government not ensure that the pipelines for the demonstration plants are built oversize so that they can be made use of by future CCS plants, rather than be fully exhausted from day one?