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Energy: Annual Statement

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Woolmer, for his comments. His knowledge of biomass is well known and I defer to no man with greater knowledge. I am glad that he welcomes the Statement on that subject because, as he well knows, it is important that we have ROCs to incentivise and encourage the 400 megawatts of development that we think we can achieve between now and 2013. That is an important and significant step forward. As I indicated earlier, we are committed to nuclear. We shall help nuclear in terms of planning and so on but it will be without subsidy—and an ROC could be considered a subsidy.