---

Energy Bill [Lords]

I am not sure about feed-in tariffs, but if the hon. Gentleman is talking about the floor price for carbon, that certainly risks inadvertently subsidising the new, and indeed existing, nuclear industries. Perhaps a windfall tax on the nuclear industry might help to compensate for that, because the floor price for carbon is an important policy for operators. To return—for the final time, I hope—to Fukushima and the example in Japan, the compensation bill looks likely to be about £61 billion for the 80,000 people who have been evacuated from their homes, and for the damage to agriculture, businesses and so on in the area. That is a very extreme case, but it is not impossible to imagine much smaller disasters—natural shocks to the system, terrorist attacks or whatever—that might deliver similarly unexpected large bills. The situation in Japan has resulted in its Government announcing today that they will examine their energy policy from scratch, with a brand new emphasis—surprise, surprise—on renewables and energy efficiency, and almost certainly less emphasis on nuclear. That seems to me a wise decision to take, in the circumstances. I am pleased that we are emphasising energy efficiency before we are forced to do so, and it is important that the Government promote renewables and energy efficiency as cornerstones of their energy policy, but I would not want energy subsidy for nuclear to creep into that mixture, and it seems to me that clause 102 is unnecessary. As the Secretary of State says, it provides reassurance to investors, but it provides very little reassurance to me or to the taxpayer.