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Energy Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for clarifying that because that is not the way the original Hansard report read. As I say, I did not pick that up in Committee itself but only subsequently. I think we all agree that we need diversity of supply and that we need oil and gas and offshore wind as a part of our energy mix. We also have a public policy objective of a certain level of renewables to which offshore wind will be the major contributor. Therefore there is another incentive for Government to get this right. Clearly, a general coexistence and co-operation agreement between the two sides would be highly desirable, and I am certainly happy to support the Government’s attempts to get that. I think he will find that this has been on the agenda for some considerable time. It might be five years and not six, but I think it is six years since I was a Minister and it was on the agenda within the former DTI, which sought comments from my department, which was Defra. So it has gone back that far. It may not have been a continuous negotiation, but the issue needs facing up to. The renewables industry certainly feels, particularly in the present tight market, as the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, indicated, that this is a serious deterrent to getting the kind of funds needed to deliver what are, after all, the Government’s own objectives. He is certainly also right that—let us put it kindly—the nature of the legal advice that the Crown Estate appears to be getting does not help the situation either. It is a complex issue. I am happy for today to accept the Minister’s assurance that we will continue to try to get an agreement. I suspect that the timescale of this Bill is not sufficient to get this agreement and the Government at some stage of the process may well consider they need a little bit of leverage here and may come back to something like this agreement. However, for today I withdraw the amendment. Amendment 14 withdrawn. The Bill was read a third time. A privilege amendment was made and the Bill was passed and sent to the Commons.