---

Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I do not need to go back to the beginning. My point was that I was paying one shilling and thre’pence and three-eighths of a penny for a gallon of tractor diesel in 1960—50 years ago. I suppose I had better convert that to metric currency, as most people here are probably not familiar with one shilling and thre’pence and three-eighths of a penny. It was about 6.25p for a gallon of fuel or a fraction more perhaps than 1.25p per litre. Currently, the price is around 61p to 62p per litre. That includes an element of tax, which of course have gone up on that as they have on everything else. That, over my lifetime—or all our lifetimes—is an energy price rise of 5,000 per cent. If anyone had stopped to think about that in 1960, they would have thought that the world would collapse. For sure, the noble Lord, Lord Lea of Crondall, has a point when he is concerned about the future. We need to be concerned about the rise in the price of energy and about the way in which that use affects people’s lives. Having said that, we have all lived already through enormous change and I see no reason to believe that we cannot continue to do that.