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Revised Draft Overarching National Policy Statement for Energy (EN-1)

As I said, the noble Lord has great knowledge in this area and we take on board what he has to say. I am perfectly happy to discuss this with him later to see how we can improve. It is a complicated area, as the noble Lord knows. I will deal with the issue, raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester, of nuclear subsidy. The Government do not intend to provide a subsidy for nuclear because it is a very mature market. Subsidies should be for new technologies, which we can pump-prime to generate electricity. Of course we should maximise our resources in oil and gas, but we should also husband them because they do not last forever, as the noble Lord, Lord Deben, said. That requirement is satisfied. We have just granted licences in the Shetlands to allow new oil drilling to happen. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, for answering half my questions and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, for his sage-like remarks and for laying out the landscape for us. He rightly says, in the true Conservative way, that we will look at the costs. We cannot waste taxpayers’ money and must be careful. We must also remove any impediments to this substantial development. I will be as brief as I can in answering the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, whom I thank for her co-operation. She asked about the Localism Bill and what is material in the Secretary of State putting a matter to the vote. I am not the arbiter of what is material and neither is she. We all know in our heart of hearts what is material and what we would expect. We will bring the usual pressures to bear through the other place or here to make sure that anything material gets debated because of the cross-relationship. I mentioned earlier our reason for abolishing the IPC. The noble Baroness asked me to talk about the green investment bank, which is complicated. We have committed money to it. It is being set up primarily to commit to new technologies. We are investing taxpayers’ money and other banking institutions’ money in it. Therefore, there will be a rigorous test of whether it is a profitable enterprise. It is not a giveaway bank; it is an investment bank. However, it is an investment opportunity that will be available to people with new technologies to help them develop, provided they have a profitable end to them. We are not in the business of unprofitable enterprises. The need case that was referred to is set out clearly in the 2050 Pathways Analysis, which is a very substantive document. If the noble Baroness would like to discuss issues on that after the event, I am very happy to do so. She also mentioned Renewables UK, the ““dash for gas”” and all those sorts of things. We need to have a broad portfolio in order to achieve our 2050 pathway, which is an enormous task. There is no point in saying, ““I don’t like that, and I don’t like that””. We have to like it all because we need it, and we owe it to the next generations among us here to provide it. We cannot say, in our own isolated world, that we think this and we think that. We owe it to the next generations to deliver their requirements in a low-carbon, secure-energy framework. That is why I commend these NPSs to the Committee.