---

Annual Energy Statement

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his response. Let me make it clear that we have set out in this annual energy statement a clear route map with a framework that will deliver the low-carbon economy that I believe we both want. That is something that will be seen in the test of results rather than in the test of rhetoric. If one looks at wind power, for example, I cannot accept that the Government should take lectures from the Opposition on renewable energy. The reality is that we have the third worst record of all 27 European Union member states. I know that the right hon. Gentleman, in the latter years of the last Government, improved the policy settings, to which I pay tribute, but the reality is that, taken as a whole, the record of 13 years of Labour rule on this agenda is truly shocking. For us to take office after 13 years of Labour Government, when they have made no progress whatsoever in improving our rankings on renewable energy compared with all 27 members of the EU, is extraordinary. The right hon. Gentleman knows very well that, on the renewable heat incentive and, indeed, on Sheffield Forgemasters and the fuel poverty commitment, we are inevitably subject to the spending review for the very simple reason that his colleague, the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), said extremely pithily when he left the Treasury, ““There is no money left.”” Although I have enormous respect for the green credentials of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), I do not think that he does the cause of progressive politics or green politics any good by pretending that there is a bottomless bucket of money that we can dip our hands into and throw at problems. The right hon. Gentleman did not say anything about the constraints that, if elected, the Labour party as he very well knows would have laboured under exactly as we do. He certainly talks the talk, but we are delivering. We will introduce a carbon price floor; he did not. We will introduce an emissions performance standard; he did not. We will introduce a green deal to tackle energy saving in every household, including fuel-poor households; and he did not. That should be a matter of shame to Labour Members.