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Mrs. Helen Liddell (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab): I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for calling me at this early stage, given that I have already had two name-checks this evening. I reckon that I was one of the longest-serving Energy Ministers in this Administration. May I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) that I never regarded the job as a hobby, especially not when I was trying to save the pits in his constituency and trying to secure compensation for his miners. His comment will cost him a cup of tea later.

Mr. Kevin Hughes: I am sure that my right hon. Friend knows that I was not casting any aspersions in her direction. Things may well have altered since she and, particularly, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson) left.

Mrs. Liddell: Obviously I have scared my hon. Friend.

The hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) said that Energy Ministers have often had other responsibilities, but he got it wrong about me, because I was the Minister for Energy and Competitiveness in Europe. There is a perfectly logical reason for that: energy policy is about competitiveness. I am surprised to hear Opposition Members talk with derision about the idea of reducing energy costs. If we are to be truly competitive, our industry requires low energy costs and, frankly, my constituents, who live in one of the coldest parts of the UK, very much require lower energy costs. That is why I am so grateful to the Government for introducing the proposals in the Bill for BETTA.

It is important to end the position whereby Scotland has two major energy companies and its energy prices are higher than in the rest of the UK. We also need to tackle the substantial difficulties in Scotland in respect of the maintenance and repair of the grid. That is particularly important when we talk about renewables. Later on, my hon. Friend the Member for Western Isles (Mr. MacDonald) may wish to catch your eye, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because the great opportunities for the Western Isles will be limited if we cannot upgrade the grid.

As a little anecdote, as I was preparing my thoughts last night, I suffered a two-hour power cut, but I did not blame the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry for
 
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that, and her resignation would not have cooked my tea any quicker, which shows the illogicality of the new clause that was introduced in the other place. I blame it on some of the maintenance problems with the Scottish grid, which must be tackled, particularly in the remoter parts of the country.

Mr. Weir : The right hon. Lady may be surprised to learn that I agree with some of what she is saying, but I am concerned about what she said about the lowering of costs through BETTA. I note that the Public Accounts Committee, in reporting on NETA, observed that although the cost of commercial energy for industry had decreased, it had not done so for domestic customers to anything like the same extent. Is she certain that domestic energy prices will fall under the proposed BETTA provisions?

Mrs. Liddell: I believe that there is an important job for Ofgem in that respect, as there is for every Member of Parliament. Our constituents need to be alert to the fact that switching energy suppliers can produce cheaper bills at the end of the month. Particularly with pensioners and those on pre-payment meters, I always make the point that it is now possible to shop around for cheaper energy. I always encourage them to do so. We have further to go, however, to ensure that reductions in energy costs are passed on to the consumer in a coherent and transparent way. Transparency has often been lacking in the past.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham) and my hon. Friend the Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) made powerful cases in respect of future nuclear generation. If I have one criticism of the Bill, it is that it misses the opportunity to further the debate about nuclear energy. I take wholeheartedly what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said about the skills, particularly with regard to the framework for the nuclear decommissioning authority. However, other skills are also required for the development of a new generation of nuclear capacity. My fear is that we are falling behind in failing to take up and be transparent about our desire for future nuclear generating capacity. I accept the fact that the market has not developed any proposals for new nuclear capacity, but there is a need for further debate and we must not be put off from having such a debate by the sort of intimidation that we face from the anti-nuclear lobby.

Mr. Michael Clapham (Barnsley, West and Penistone) (Lab): I know that my right hon. Friend has worked hard for the energy industry overall. She makes a point about competitiveness and the cheapness of energy, but she will be aware that nuclear power is both inflexible and the dearest electricity on the wires.

Mrs. Liddell: I know exactly where my hon. Friend is coming from and I take his point, but that does not necessarily mean that future generation will have that degree of inflexibility and high cost. My hon. Friend is a great champion of the coal industry. We should look further into the economics of clean coal technology as well.
 
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My hon. Friend the Member for Ochil made a valid point about combined heat and power, as did the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). There are real anxieties about the future of CHP, and we are missing a trick in not paying more attention to the difficulties experienced in the CHP sector. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to tell us in his summing up exactly where the Government are in respect of the future of CHP. I am very attracted to it from the point of view of energy efficiency, having seen it in very effective domestic use, particularly in Sheffield.

I greatly welcome the Bill's proposals for the nuclear decommissioning authority. That represents important recognition of the scale of nuclear liabilities and of the fact that there is a competitive marketplace with international opportunities for decommissioning. We should reflect on the Finnish experience. The Finns were very fast off the mark—partly due to necessity, because they are so close to old reactors from the former Soviet Union—and keen to get ahead with decommissioning. There is a great market for it, and we should be throwing up the skills, experience and expertise to participate in that market.

Mr. Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley) (Lab): Does my right hon. Friend agree that we have great skills in this country and that, especially in the light of problems in the former eastern bloc, failing to put them to good use on decommissioning is disappointing? Any Government who refused to support it would indeed be negligent. We are still the world leaders, even though many other countries are trying to catch up, and we must not lose those skills.

Mrs. Liddell: I take my hon. Friend's point and I congratulate the Government on their vision in recognising that there are great opportunities.

One of the side-effects of the management of our nuclear liabilities has been completely to alter the picture for British Nuclear Fuels. I note that when the decommissioning plans were announced, the chief executive of BNFL talked about opportunities for the new BNFL. I hope that the Minister will give us some idea in his summing up of how he views the future of BNFL after its many different traumas in recent years. I hope that we have now reached a point where we can see some way forward for it far into the future.

I do not want to detain the House much longer. If I have one criticism of the Bill, it is that it is wrongly named. It is more an electricity Bill than an energy Bill, and huge issues of energy policy need to be debated in much greater detail—not least what is happening at the moment. The recent spike in oil prices will, because of the inter-relation of oil and gas prices, lead to an increase in gas prices, which will work its way right through the chain. Any competitive country concerned about energy policy should be looking in some detail at what is happening in international energy markets. I say that from two points of view—those of the United Kingdom as a consumer nation and as a producer nation. Increases in oil prices give a much more secure future to our North sea oil and gas industry as it moves into the third age. There are great opportunities before us, but there are also huge challenges that we must be prepared for.
 
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I wish all who serve on the Standing Committee a great deal of entertainment and enthusiasm. I well remember the Utilities Bill Committee; indeed, one Liberal Democrat Member's wife had a child during its progress, and I was most disappointed that that child was not called NETA. I wish the Minister well with an energy policy Bill that is a start, although I have a feeling that there is such change in the world that we will find ourselves returning to the subject again and again.

6.41 pm

Mr. Richard Page (South-West Hertfordshire) (Con): I am no literary scholar, being more of a hit-it-with-a-hammer-and-hope engineer. I am, however, very much reminded by this Energy Bill of the words of William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell". He wrote: "Energy is Eternal Delight"; the only problem is, Blake put those words into the mouth of the Devil. That is the problem: we all want energy, and we all want it to be eternal, but we also want it to be pollution-free, and there is the rub.

The White Paper and the Energy Bill are full of warm words. Various energy conservation bodies can be cited as saying how much they welcome it, but there are some gaping holes, and important issues are not tackled. The realities of life are avoided.

There is an energy that we on the Opposition Benches are prepared to mention but which the Secretary of State was not prepared to name, because the Government just do not have a policy. I can see the Minister busily looking through his notes and shifting in his seat, so I shall tell him that I mean the "N" word—nuclear. Where is the Government's nuclear policy? It is a simple question. How can the Government produce a Bill dealing with future energy without mentioning the future policy on 25 per cent. of today's production? I sense Government policy produced and dictated by focus groups. It is produced not by the reality of what this nation needs, but by focus groups. In American football terms, the hon. Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) did a splendid job of running interference for the Secretary of State by asking why she should be responsible for any power failures. If a Secretary of State does not grant the power capacity to generate electricity in this country and there is a power failure, then that Secretary of State will be to blame.

We have warm words, but they are a polite description for unrealistic alternative energy production. We have targets for wind farm production that are for the birds, because they have been plucked from the air. As a former Minister in charge of renewables, I favour them, but we cannot harness ourselves to a target that is unachievable. I shall not go through all the green energy sources, but unless there is a huge breakthrough in photovoltaics, such as those that cover the doubtless attractive roof of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan), or unless we discover that the capital cost of wave power has been slashed, or unless we suddenly discover more efficient fuel cells, such targets destroy the credibility of the Government's other proposals, some of which I welcome.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) referred to fish-and-chip recycling, which gives us our biofuels. That is fine, but unless the Government
 
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give a commitment that they will give the biofuel obligation a couple of years or so, there will not be enough plants in place to take advantage of it, and we will not move towards improving on our targets. We will not have farmers starting to plant crops to use it, and we will not have enough plants to generate the fuel. We shall miss a golden opportunity.

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