---

Energy Bill

My Lords, once again we meet to discuss energy. It is a delight to respond to another lively debate. I welcome the comments overall from the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, in welcoming the Bill, and those of the noble Lords, Lord Teverson and Lord Wallace. If it be that we do not have time to go through all the stages of the Bill, I still appreciate that generally warm welcome. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has suggested, while the other place is sometimes criticised for its scrutiny of legislation, this Bill has had considerable scrutiny. As I said in my opening remarks, changes were made with amendments brought by the Government in the light of the discussions in Committee. I say, though, to the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Marland, that I wholly reject their criticisms of the Government and our energy policy. There are not going to be these large-scale blackouts that the noble Lord says will occur in the next few years. We have developed a strong and coherent energy policy. Let us look at the arguments. Yes, plants will close as a result of the large combustion plant directive and the fact that a number of our nuclear power plants are due to go out of commission in the next 10 to 15 years. As I frequently point out to your Lordships, though, we are in the middle of a massive construction programme of new power generation. There is a huge amount— 20 gigawatts—under construction or with planning consent, ready to replace that which goes out of production, with a further 18.5 gigawatts in the consent process. Our modelling shows that for most of this decade, spare capacity, adjusted according to availability, will be around 15 per cent. I turn to the issue of gas, because the noble Lord mentioned it. There are 22 storage projects in the process of development. When was the system tested? In the first three weeks of this year, in the very cold weather when demand was at its highest and when Norwegian gas production went down. Yes, four gas-balancing alerts were issued; they were signals to the market of the demand being placed in on the system, and the market responded. It showed that we had a very resilient system. I would also point out to the noble Lord and the noble Baroness that import capacity has been increased to 125 per cent of annual usage. As the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, suggested we are in a very good position to take advantage of LNG supplies. We do have a robust system. I could not believe that the noble Lord—