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Draft Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy (EN–1)

My Lords, I promised that I would not exercise my right of reply at any length, and I will not. On the Minister’s final point, I am not satisfied that the way that we have dealt with this has been the best one. The right answer—I said this during our debates on the Planning Bill—would have been to have had a Joint Committee of both Houses so that this House as well as the other place could have listened to the evidence and had the chance of examining witnesses. We did not have that; instead, we had what I might call unilateral debates in the Moses Room. I want to put that on the record. There will be further national policy statements, and it would behove whichever Government were in office after the election to have another look at that.