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Energy Bill

My apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. As I was saying, this is a modest Bill. Only three issues, in my view, have not been addressed at all, or have not been addressed as much as they might have been. The reason why we need the Bill is clear, however. We have a liberalised electricity market, for which we must thank the Opposition in their former role as the Government. I sometimes think that our problems with energy policy would be much easier to deal with if we still had the late, lamented dear old Central Electricity Generating Board. If that were the case, we could simply say, "We are going to do this," rather than having to act through a purely commercial market. All change is not progress, and the liberalised electricity markets have created more problems than solutions. Low-carbon or zero-carbon technologies cost more than fossil-fuel technologies. It is as simple as that. Deploying those technologies requires market support mechanisms, or, to put it more crudely, subsidies. There is no way of getting around that in the present circumstances, and it is the reason for part 1 of the Bill. No one will invest in the building of plants with carbon capture and storage without a subsidy to cover the extra cost. That basic fact applies to renewable energy and, indeed, to the nuclear industry. If the nuclear industry had to compete with gas or coal-fired power generation on costs, it would not have a chance. It has made that clear through a number of darkly muttered remarks, for example, about the need for a sufficiently high carbon price to underpin its investment. The industry would also like long-term supply contracts, thank you very much, to guarantee it flat-out running of its reactors and make it as economic as possible.