---

Energy Security

Obviously my hon. Friend looked at the proposal and thought that it was not a good one. As well as the North sea, we need import capacity, which is up by 500 per cent. in the past decade. It is important to say that import capacity now stands at 125 per cent. of the total UK demand for gas—that is, it is greater. That capacity comes from the Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Algeria, Australia, Egypt, Qatar, and Trinidad and Tobago. Why is that list of countries important? It is important because it emphasises the importance of diversity, which is key when it comes to security of supply. To further increase import capacity, the South Hook facility—an extraordinary facility that I urge people to visit, as I have, for its opening—is doubling capacity this quarter. We are also exploring additional pipeline capacity with other countries, which is important. Let me turn to storage, which the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells spent a lot of time talking about. The question is not whether we need more storage in the years ahead; the question is how we get it. What was most disappointing about his speech was that, as far as I could tell, he had no proposals on storage. He complained for most of his speech about what he saw as the lack of storage, but he had no suggestions for how we should get that storage. Let me provide my suggestions for how we need to get more storage in this country. First, we have the national policy statement on gas infrastructure. One thing that has bedevilled the building of more gas storage is the planning process, which is an obstacle to more storage. We established an offshore consents regime under the Energy Act 2008, but the new Infrastructure Planning Commission is also important, not just in relation to gas storage, but more generally. As the Opposition are, today at least, in the mood for seeking consensus, let me say that they should get on and support the Infrastructure Planning Commission's work. Business is saying loudly and clearly that it seems odd that a party aspiring to government should be saying, "We're going to overhaul the planning regime," when we finally have a good planning regime in place. I know that the hon. Gentleman is not in charge of the policy, but I hope that, having listened to this debate, he will go and talk to the shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs. Spelman), and say that he has discovered the spirit of not playing party politics on such questions and so should she. She should accept the planning regime that we are proposing, because it is clearly the right way forward and will speed up the building of energy infrastructure in this country.