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Mr. Battle: We would certainly examine the current levy on renewables and other options. The Government lock out the option of photovoltaics, for example. We would examine options to ensure that we have various sources of fuel, which does not mean writing off the coal industry. The tragedy is that the technology to clean up coal at the front end rather than at a later stage was developed in Britain but it was sold abroad. That technology could help to get rid of some of the noxious emissions, such as sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide, and it is still a possibility.

We will consider the issue of home energy efficiency. We do not think that reducing energy demand is necessarily in conflict with the generation of energy. There should be programmes to promote energy efficiency and to build on home energy efficiency schemes. We could create 50,000 new jobs, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Mr. Blair) spelt out in February. We are committed to taking action to reduce greenhouse gases, which means dealing with the issue of energy generation--as the hon. Member for Truro (Mr. Taylor) mentioned.

We need a more comprehensive approach if we are to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions. It could be argued that the Government have hit their targets only because they have closed down the manufacturing sector that created most of the problem. The Government have cut £31 million in the Budget from the home energy efficiency scheme, which has meant the loss of more than 1,000 jobs and the insulation of 2,000 fewer homes.

As the poet Valery said:

"the future is not what it used to be."

Energy markets may look very different in the future. Already supermarkets are saying that they could be energy suppliers through the use of smartcards. Already we face turmoil in takeovers and mergers in the electricity generation and supply sectors.

We say clearly that we do not want to be faced with a nuclear flotation flop. We do not want to face competition chaos, which risks causing a crisis of public confidence in even the idea of competition in energy markets. We do not want takeover or merger confusion in which the Minister disagrees with the Secretary of State over reports from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission on PowerGen and National Power. The impression that I get from the Minister for Industry and Energy is that, yes, he has been involved in all the privatisations, but he has lit the blue touch-paper and is simply walking away.

The Government lack leadership and vision. They are incapable of providing the leadership and vision to face the fact that we live in an age of transition. We face great

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changes, not least in the energy sector, and the future will look different; but we should face the changes positively, and welcome their challenges.

We are prepared to work with industry to achieve the potential in the energy utility sector. We want to set our sights so that they break out of the restrictions caused by the Government's short-term thinking and to deal with the problems that our society will face half way through the next century. That is too much to expect from this short-term, short-sighted Government. Whoever replaces the Minister for Industry and Energy at the Dispatch Box will not be able to provide the leadership and the vision that we need in energy policy to take us into the next century.

7.43 pm

The Minister for Industry and Energy (Mr. Tim Eggar): I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:

'congratulates the Government on its privatisation of the former state energy sector; notes that its market-based energy policies have led to lower prices and better services for consumers; and looks forward to the further benefits to consumers which will flow from the opening up of the gas and electricity markets in 1998.'.

Whoever replaces me at the Dispatch Box at some stage in the future, I am sure that he will do much better job of it than would the hon. Member for Leeds, West (Mr. Battle), whose speech was completely incoherent. He did not seem to understand most of what he talked about, and he made no attempt at all to describe the Labour party's energy policy, which does not surprise me. Looking at the motion, in a flash I was transported back to the old days of old Labour--back to the 1970s, and to the days when no speech from a Minister in the then Labour Government was complete without making reference to an energy strategy and no paragraph was complete without paying obeisance to an energy plan. Those features can still be found in the motion. Let us go through it.

According to the motion, the hon. Member for Leeds, West and his advisers should decide how much British Energy is really worth. For Labour today, it is a case not only of "Whitehall knows best" but of "Short money advisers know best". There is no role for the market. When my hon. Friend the Member for Rutland and Melton (Mr. Duncan) asked the obvious question, how a deal can be bad for both the shareholder and the taxpayer, the hon. Member for Leeds, West seemed to be totally incapable of understanding the absurdity of his statement. The Opposition motion seems to state that the Government should restructure the electricity industry. According to Labour, the market should of course have no role.

Further on in the motion there is a complaint about coal pits closing. But what is the Labour party's policy on coal? Will it or will it not, if it were to get into power, renationalise the coal industry? We know very well what the right hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) said about it. He was quite clear about it and said:

"I should be astonished if our plans to rescue the coal industry after the next election did not involve public ownership."

That well-known friend of the right hon. Gentleman, the hon. Member for Clackmannan (Mr. O'Neill), was even more precise later in the debate. He said:

"When Labour returns to power . . . we shall restore it"--

the coal industry--

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"to public ownership".--[Official Report, 23 March 1994; Vol. 240, c. 313-84.]

That is a quite clear and unequivocal commitment--one that would really warm the heart of the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner).

We have heard not a word about the Labour party's policy on coal. I ask the hon. Member for Leeds, West now to tell us--I shall willingly give way to him--whether the Labour party will or will not renationalise the coal industry.

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover): Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Eggar: I am always willing to allow the hon. Gentleman to speak for the Labour party, because he is its real core. The hon. Member for Leeds, West does not have the guts to stand up for anything.

Mr. Skinner: The Minister has taken my name in vain, because he said that I would agree with the statement that he just made. Let me put him straight about coal. The Government destroyed the coal mining industry. There are now no pits left in my constituency. There are four or five pit villages in which the unemployment rate is more than 50 per cent. That is the tragedy of the pit closures.

I shall tell the Minister, in case he wants to repeat it, that I believe that the next Labour Government--when he has a job in the City, raking in money from the people whom he has been dealing with--should take the coal industry back into public ownership and not pay any compensation at all.

Mr. Eggar: There we have it. That intervention is interesting, because, a few years ago, the hon. Member for Bolsover would not have prefaced his remarks by saying, "I believe." He would have said, "The Labour Government, if they come into power, will renationalise the coal industry."

Mr. Skinner: Who is an idiot now?

Mr. Eggar: I think that it is the hon. Member for Leeds, West, because he is squirming. He has discovered what all previous Labour energy spokesmen have discovered: they cannot make a single pronouncement, because they are frightened of the hon. Member for Bolsover and what he might do to them. They are concerned about making any commitment at all.

Let us go on and examine what the motion says. According to the Labour party, it is up to the Government to intervene to fix coal contracts and to impose changes on gas take-or-pay contracts. There is no role for the market there, only central direction by the Government.

To cap it all, the motion then says that we are not taking the lead in introducing competition in electricity and gas. Yet the Labour party opposed the Electricity Act 1989, which introduced competition in both the industrial and domestic markets, and the Labour party voted against the Gas Act 1995, which introduced competition for domestic gas consumers. So to accuse us of lacking leadership in introducing competition in electricity and gas is inaccurate humbug.

Ms Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent, North): Will the Minister give way?

Mr. Eggar: No, I shall not give way for the moment.

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I wish to deal seriously with the points made by the hon. Member for Leeds, West. Although he did not have the guts to do so from the Dispatch Box, during the past two or three hours he has been running from television studio to television studio and from radio station to radio station saying that he has a leaked document that shows that British Energy deceived shareholders. That is a serious accusation to make. It is significant that he did not repeat that accusation from the Dispatch Box. I wish to go through the chronology of what actually happened.

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