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Energy Bill

There is a great deal of truth in what the hon. Gentleman says. However, even with the small, state-of-the-art pilot project in Germany, people have to be convinced about having the carbon under their land. It is not always out in the North sea, which sounds very nice and offshore, as if it will never come back and bite us. In storing something like that underground, one has to find the legal methods of doing it. All these things have a long way to go in development: this is new stuff, and new thinking is required. The trouble with new clause 15 is its time scale. It starts off by saying,""The Secretary of State may by regulation introduce"" an EPS, but then one turns over the page, where it says,""The Secretary of State must set out his proposals for consultation within six months of the passage of this Act"," and that the whole thing has to be in place within 12 months. I do not know where "may" fits into that, as the Secretary of State is being told to do it within 12 months. It is unlikely that during those 12 months we would have acquired sufficient knowledge to have a standard. We could end up with a standard—my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, East (Dr. Strang) gave this away—that was very flexible. I would want a gold standard, not something that could be repeatedly raised and lowered like the tide according to where the science was at any given time.